CHAPTER XXV
It was “afterward.” There could be no doubt of that. His Highness, so far as Dolores was concerned, had retired into one of his silences. He must be enraged with her for her interference in the pool play. But for what could he be waiting?
True, the concession for which she had offered to pay any price was no longer an issue. There was no need now for her to be put in spirit connection with Earth, even had she not discovered that her own concentrated will could accomplish the projection—that the dead might return to their quondam surroundings, ruling and being ruled through senses stronger far than physical. Could she sooner have realized this of the strange laws which governed her present state of existence, what heart-hurts of foreboding and regret she might have spared John and herself!
Not for an hour of the days and nights since the failure of that “Greatest Show” had she forgotten that the time set for her own answer as to her fate was approaching. On this afternoon—the sixth of those allotted “seven days of disgrace”—she felt herself no nearer decision than before the end of her séances.
She tried not to dread. Dread shriveled the soul; would mar her progress. And she was determined now to progress, despite her sentence to Gehenna. Hope was the immortal soul of love. Once John had joined her, no law of the lowlands could kill their hope.
So the girl-shade was happy in her deplorable state as she never had been happy when the gateway of the mortal world had opened to her youthful tread. He whom she loved loved her. That was the lyric of her song of the soul. Deep-chording into the accompaniment was her absolute knowledge of his worthiness. Expectancy played a running obbligato through each measure, with here and there a trill of errant joy. He was coming, John; must by now be nearing the end of that long, drear journey from Earth to Shadow Land.
Every hour helped now. From far away, whispers of the altruistic philosophy she had taught young Jack Cabot penetrated her moods. How better prepare for the eventualities of to-morrow than by good cheer to-day? Since all the to-morrows must come disguised as to-days, she would make the best of the here and now.
A bit advanced were such ideas for the shell-pink ear of her infant, yet to the wee-shade she murmured them this late afternoon while out for a stroll. Although Adeline accompanied her, she herself carried the spirit-child to save the maid’s pride.
Their practice had been to take their evening walks through the Garden of Bad Luck. To-day, for the first time Dolores chose the Avenue of Locusts, which led from the palace direct to the Limbian Gates. The ex-great lady protested against walking beside her mistress, even when ordered to do so, on the plea that she must work out her term of degradation. The young mother’s hopeful adjurations to the instinct-fretted babe seemed only to increase her bitterness.
How could m’lady benefit, Adeline demanded in French, even though her lover did come through the gates that eventide? Her own husband’s pretense to care for her was only the last-lingering impulse of self-protection. He was assuming the virtue of constancy though he had it not. But he would rue the attempt, since he was insulting, not only her intelligence but that of the Mind Prince as well. M’lady must remember the rule of the realm; must clear her mind of the heresy of earthly ideals, lest they become known and she punished therefor. She would be saved a shock could she but realize beforehand that the lover she had loved would hate her even as she him. In Gehenna he and she who had caused each other’s fall would be, indeed, bad met.
“See yonder warehouse beyond the wall?” Adeline pointed out a low structure. “There is checked all such superfluous baggage as love. Only hate may be brought within.”
Dolores wondered that so small a building could store the lingering loves of the Hadean hordes. Before she could comment, there came to them from the entrance of the wireless station just inside the gate a high shriek rent by a deeper staccato of laughter. Down the steps and directly into her path came rolling what looked an oversized foot-ball. Close followed His Evil Majesty himself. In one hand he waved a knout with snapping lashes. The laughter was his and more cruel than his instrument of torture.
After handing over her babe to Adeline and commanding a quick retreat, Dolores hurried toward the ball, which was unwinding as it rolled. Its arms, legs and head proved to belong to a male manes, terrified beyond coherency. By the time Satan reached them with knout upraised, she had pushed the wretch behind her and started him after the noble-maid. Beyond a stinging of her consciousness, she did not feel the blow that fell. Almost at once she recovered; was able to face His Highness with calm inquiry.
“What has he done to deserve this attack?”
“Done?” Satan’s voice crackled as had the whip. “Shouldn’t the chief inter-world operator know better than to retail me bad tidings? Out of my way—I’m highly charged!”
“No.” Dolores stood firm.
“You’d rather I’d experiment on you?”
“Yes.”
“Best look out, unless you want to be blinded until Judgment.”
She was able to disregard the Boss Bully’s warning by centering her mind upon her great happiness. He had been love-worthy, John.
“You can’t strike me blind,” she said.
Into the confidence of the purple-black eyes uplifted to his Satan scowled.
“You’d not be blind. You’d only think you were because I say so and my mind is stronger than yours. Everything is a thought down here, as you must have learned ere this—just a bad thought.” With the lash in mid-air he added: “But, thank me, you can’t kill a bad thought.”
As her hair was lifting to the magnet of the knout, he dropped it. The respite, however, was not for mercy’s sake.
“You didn’t change expression. You don’t cringe. Why?”
“Pain is a coward’s thought. I know that you, Augustness, cannot hurt me.”
Interestedly he contemplated her and this, her first open defiance. “You’re smarter than I thought. You have a certain regardlessness that is the next-best thing to conscious power.”
“I have,” she said, “faith that——”
“Faith?” he jeered. “Then I have it, too—faith that I’ll do my damnedest. I cannot hurt you physically, no. But I hold a record for hurting minds that may cause you to reconsider.”
“Not while I believe that all will be well with me.” The voice of her contention sounded like the balmy winds of spring, to which nor man nor devil may say nay.
Perhaps her glance toward the gates suggested the source of her beatitude. Perhaps he sensed it from his own irritation. He passed her point to level one of his own.
“And has this belief absolute padded your senses against the fact that I am displeased with you, she-fool? Don’t worry. I never let personal prejudice interfere with The Cause. This faith-theory is valuable with the reverse English put on it. As a science, it has done considerable harm to the religions of the world. I’ve been waiting until your week was up. Why not have it now—your answer?”
“My answer to—to——”
“To my indecent proposition that you organize the vice of womanhood. Are you going to take that Low Priestess job?”
“I have until to-morrow to decide.”
“True. And you hope meantime that your love-hound will come barking at our Avernian door. Oh, don’t deny it! Why else should you be hanging ’round the gates? Why else should I?”
“But you said the judgments of men would never send a hero here.”
Stooping to recover his electric lash, Satan used it to punctuate his reply. “I’m hoping against hope, just as you are. If only he would be sent this way—ah! My latest wireless from Earth, however, leads me to fear not. The newspapers are headlined with his heroism. Imbecile earthlings are going to erect a memorial to him. And, would you believe it, that hunting parson of yours has used your friend’s death as a stepping-stone out of the muddle-puddle of his ecclesiastical disrepute? With Cabot as his text, he preached to thousands in Central Park, exampling himself through the viciously attacked philanthropist who, although proved guilty of weakness of the flesh, rose to the moral strength of a god in an emergency. Get the idea? His plea is for all men who have been dragged down by women. Should not he know that Cabot was too greatly tried, since the same she-devil ruined him with his church? You recognize the allusion? The prayers he sent up for the soul of his fellow victim were indirectly for himself. As a result he is to head the new Church of the Broad-Minded. Could you beat it—or him?”
At her consternation, he chuckled enjoyably.
“How the people of Earth like to bunk themselves! But you look fogged. Is your faith getting cured? Care to come into the receiving room and sit while you wait? I left some unfinished business.”
As they mounted the steps of the stone-like structure, he added a mental lash to her punishment.
“You remember, of course, the lawyer who lost Mrs. Cabot’s divorce case? Last you saw of him, in ‘The Turn-Turtle,’ he was being thrown out of his profession for mal-practicing that delicate art called ‘double-crossing.’ The timely birth of your ill-begot, with fatherhood pinned on John Cabot by Seff’s testimony and the guilty admission of your suicide, was a-plenty and to spare to ruin Rufus Holt. But along comes that judge you tricked, Roscoe Strang, of the good-sport tie. He has Holt’s case re-opened and carries through a daring example of man-to-man friendliness.”
From his belt he took the paper-like slip on which wireless messages were sent down by Gehennan operators.
“Let’s see just what he testified, this brotherly judge. Oh yes; ‘The accused did bring the Trent girl to me, but to let me judge of her guilt. She looked so pure that I was not convinced and stood, as I stand now, on my right to judge. If fault there was, that fault was mine.’ After that, there was nothing for the Bar Association to do but open their arms to the brother they had misjudged.”
“I am glad,” Dolores said. “For a time I blamed Rufus Holt for my sufferings. But he tried to be a true friend to John.”
“I dare say,” sneered Satan as he opened the station door, “and made a mess of it, as true friends usually do. At that, you’ve got a good start with him and can use him in our new campaign.”
Within, an operator wearing a receiving head-dress, sat among his instruments. Beside a window which commanded a view of the entrance, His Highness placed a chair for her.
“The gates will open soon,” he advised. “Watch the new arrivals trickle in and call me in case you catch sight of your John. I am pardonably impatient to meet him.”
To sink into the chair was a relief. At sight of the preparations outside which the pigmy ushers were making for the reception of the evening’s recruits, Dolores’ mental pulse accelerated. She strove for the strong thoughts which lately had sustained her and tried to keep out of her expression the pinch of hope long deferred.
“Are these likenesses, sweet Grief?”
Turning, she found Satan at her elbow, offering her half-a-dozen sepia-like photographs. She took them; looked; exclaimed:
“John—wonderful! And this is Catherine at her best. How splendid of dear Clarke Shayle! Rufus Holt, too. Have you had them made for me? But why include these of Vincent Seff and Dr. Willard? I’d rather forget them.”
“Does the murderer forget the features of the slain? Nay, fair assassin, you won’t need this collection for your dressing table to remember your victims. These are stills selected from our stock of life-films. I am glad you pronounce them such likenesses, for I’m sending them up to old Mors of the Mystery Gate to hang in his rogues’ gallery.”
“To Mors?”
Satan nodded. “I mean to put a stop-order on the lot, in case any of them come through ticketed to Elysium. I need their kind down here.”
“But I thought it was written in the tome called Judgments of Men where shades should spend the time until the Call,” she puzzled. “Doesn’t each enter his new estate as he left the old? Must not his Earth record hold?”
His Highness frowned at the reminder. “Just because a rule never has been broken is no reason why it never will be. I may try, mayn’t I? Queer if I can’t frighten Mors into making a few exceptions.” He turned to the operator. “Get the old ghoul. I would a word with him.”
The connection soon was made. Ensued a brief exchange, but one so vehement that the operator cautioned his master to calm down, lest he blow out all the fuses about the place.
“There is one of them I must have, old-timer,” Satan continued less offensively. “John Cabot by name and physiognomy. Likely to come through this very night.... What ... What for, in the name of Hell?... Gallantry on Earth, eh?... Death, you’re a choicer fool than your sister Birth!”
As he banged the receiver on its hook, Dolores arose.
“John has gone on—up into Elysium?” Her voice was more faint from surprise than his had been strong. “He won’t—- come down—this way?”
At the nod which His Highness spared her from his rage, she crossed the room, went out the door and down the steps. She was well along the path when he caught up with and stopped her.
“A word to the unwise,” said he. “To be without a job is an embarrassing situation anywhere—particularly so down here. Your fancy position as First Royal Entertainer has come to an end. You’ll do well to take on the next best thing that offers, lest your ability become discredited. I really believe you’re the ablest she-devil ever given a chance to work out her own damnation. You have unique powers, but there is no personal power that cannot be destroyed. And I am the Destroyer.”
“This position you offer is so—is very difficult,” the girl-soul protested.
“Isn’t everything worth while difficult? And you are very clever, although in ways that may be used for or against you. On Earth you failed, just as badly managed talent often fails. Here I, the Boss Producer of a play called Sin, stand ready to star you in a success such as you, with your present limitations, cannot conceive. Already you know something of me——”
Dolores interrupted, although haltingly. “I know that you are—that you, too, are difficult.”
“At least that.” He bowed, as if thanking her. “Since it confuses you to consider me, pray consider yourself. It is plain that you’ve been, like myself, wrong since birth. Count the men you’ve ruined, every one of whom turned to good works after your influence was removed. Think of what you did—the first earth-law for women that you broke. What you’ve needed is a manager just a shade worse-minded than yourself. Now you’re offered one and a chance such as no vampire of Earth or Hell ever aspired to. It is a position fitted to the applicant, as your employment-agency friend, née Shinn, would say. What more ambitious rôle could you find than arousing the worst, not in one, but in all the men controlled by women in the world?”
She drew her arm from his detaining clutch. “I have, you know, until——”
“Very well. I’ll wait. But mind you, there’ll be no extension of time. Yes or no, and Hell help you if it be no! I want to get you started, so that I can give my own energies to the incipient race riots in America. Great field for trouble. All the wealth of the world is there, with the basest traitors cast out of other countries to misuse it. Go home, since you must have that last day of disgrace. But be ready with your answer to-morrow.”
Like well-aimed shot, the syllables riddled Dolores’ brain. A wounded doe, she hurried on her way to cover.
To-morrow.
That night while she lay bleeding of her heart wound, Dolores roused to the perception of an unaccustomed metallic sound. She realized that, for some time, she had been hearing it. Tap, tap, tap—it now increased in peremptoriness. Someone must be trying to attract her attention from outside the window.
She sat up among her pillows of satin sheen. By the sulphuric glow of the night-light, she saw that it was after one o’clock, three long hours since Adeline had tip-toed out.
After one and to-morrow——
The face of the sardonyx-like clock seemed to grin back at her in anticipation of the seventh—said to be the perfect day. “The faith of fools—the faith of fools!” it ticked away.
Until she knew that John was not to join her, she had failed to appreciate how greatly she was relying upon his assistance and advice. To choose between His Majesty’s diabolic assignment and the ingenious torments to which she and her babe would be subjected became the more impossible the longer she considered.
Were she what she once had been, expectant of the best because all-ignorant of the worst, she would have decided, without a moment’s hesitation, upon what she knew to be right. But knowledge was weakening. Constant association with sin and suffering wore away the best intentions. To struggle against fore-assured failure until the negligent hopes of Gehenna changed to fear and fear changed, to despair——
She covered her eyes from the suggestive leer of the clock-face and sank back into the veil of her crepe-black hair.
“Amor ... Innocentia ... Where are you?”
“Tap! Tap!”
As though in answer to her stifled sob of loneliness, the metallic sound was repeated on the pane. Could they be without, the comrades of her youth, come to console her even before she called? Into peignoir and mules she hurried; crossed the room; threw wide the casement.
“Who is it? Who is there?”
“Sh—hush!”
In the answering rasp sounded neither the lilt of Innocentia nor the fearlessness of the love-lad Amor. From out the deep shadows that hugged the palace wall limped the lately-promoted General Cummings. More spectral than seemed consistent with his brief lapse from mortality he looked as he crossed the sill. From his once tranquil eyes shone the hell-haunted look of the archaics. His kindly old face was stretched and blanched.
“What has happened to you, Corporal Sam?” Dolores’ tones sounded her distress at the change in him.
Before replying he drew the window hangings and dimmed the night lamp. “No one must discover I’m here. They say His Highness knows everything that goes on in the palace, but I have risked it. You seem the only chance of saving us.”
From the edge of the bed, Dolores focused her amazement upon the doughty soldier-soul. “Saving you—from what?”
“From his Great Intention.” Old Sam’s voice shivered into a whisper. “You don’t understand? I’ve heard that even the prime minister is not in his confidence. But I hoped that you had wormed it out of him. Since I understood, I haven’t rested day nor night, although there’s little I can do. You have no idea what a hold he’s got on those fight-fiends. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, miss, that is to say ma’am, but from the reports of your séances you’ve turned some mighty powerful mortal minds topsy-turvy. For your own sake, for the sake of God Himself—wouldn’t you be willing to try?”
“To try just what?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.” Stiff from apprehension, the old manes’ lips formed clumsily to his revelation. “His Lowness aims to march into the Fields before Judgment, conquer the Elysiumites and hurl the Great-I-Am from His throne. Don’t you understand yet? He aims to set himself on high as God-of-all!”
“Oh, but he can’t do that! How could he conquer God?”
“You wouldn’t be so sure could you see how those hordes take to training. Every decent impulse is drilled out of them. The kind of frightfulness he’s planning makes a lately mortal brain reel. Ma’am, I calculate that he’s going to win.”
“No! The Great-I-Am would not let him.”
At the girl-shade’s vehemence the old soul waggled his head, in his eyes the shadow of horrors that might not be forgot.
“You’ve seen wrong conquer right on Earth, or you wouldn’t be here. I’ve lost all hope unless—From what I hear I wasn’t so far off about his having a weakness for you. In camp every officer has his joke about the modern Delilah that’s destroying the Destroyer. All Gehenna is talking over his neglect of affairs of state to amuse you with shows and such. Not once of late has he been to most of the sham battles that he used to review daily.”
“I am afraid you overrate——”
“Pardon me, ma’am, but that’s the best. The worst can’t be overrated. You see, they call him the Hope of Hell. His hold on the hordes is that, if they drive on to victory in the great offensive, they win eternal release. They fight for themselves, not him. If they lose, they’ll be the first cast into the bottomless pit forever and ever, amen. If they win, he’ll give them rank and estates in the new autocracy of universal, everlasting, licensed crime. I don’t fear for myself so much. I and even you might sink low enough to get by without exciting suspicion that we’re unsympathetic. It’s the Elysiumites that are going to suffer. Miss, can’t you imagine what a Satanic victory would mean to a gentle spirit like——”
To hide his emotion Old Sam covered his face with both hands.
“My Mary Gertrude never was mistreated in her life. But I wouldn’t put it past these helliot hordes to——”
Dolores shuddered. “The damned masters and the blessed their slaves?”
“You begin to understand. Isn’t there someone up there that you feel grateful to—someone you’d hate to see——”
“My mother died to give me life,” the spirit-girl breathed. “And my father must be with her. He’s not down here. Intemperance, you know, is considered a disease, not a crime, in the eyes of men. And then there’s little Jack Cabot. He seemed really to trust every word I told him about his reward if he did what was right. I couldn’t bear to see poor, crippled Jack——”
General Sam nodded. “It comes home, doesn’t it, ma’am, when you think of those you love?”
“Love?” With the word, Dolores threw up her head. Into the veteran’s pale eyes her dark ones gloomed. “Already the King hates the one I love. If Satan should come into this limitless power, what torments he would devise for the great soul of John Cabot!”
A sound startled them. The soldier-shade hobbled toward the window by which he had entered, motioning her to follow. Before opening the shutter, he whispered:
“I’d best go. I dare not come again and there’s no way I can help you. You’ll have to make up your own mind what to do. Only remember there isn’t much time. He’s nigh about ready to strike. God A’mighty give you wisdom, ma’am.”
He had wrung her hand. Almost was he over the sill when a blinding flash struck at him from out the drab-dim night. Not a sound escaped him. Not so much as a clutch at the air stayed his fall. His right hand raised to his cap visor in his old-time salute. Then backward he fell upon the floor.
When Dolores’ eyes had recovered from their momentary confusion, she saw His Majesty standing just without. His pleased look reminded her of the fearing wretch she had saved from a like attack yesterday. Only the hope born of her happiness had defeated his power to hurt her. Although not happy now, she was far from despair. Should he turn next on her, only faith could save her. She must believe that, despite appearances on Earth and in Shadow Land, good was stronger than evil.
He stepped aside, the King; glanced at the procumbent figure; smiled his attractive smile.
“Damme if one can count upon the taste feminine!”
The cynicism he addressed to the double of himself that showed in the nearest mercurized pier-panel of her chamber. For a moment he contemplated the dim reflection of his splendid proportions, the clean-cut features of his infernally youthful face and the perfection of his evening attire.
“Is no age or fraction of he-man safe from you?” he commented. “So this is why he always plead your cause, why I caught him rendezvousing with you in the garden, why he talked me down? These shallow-looking folk, forsooth, are the deep ones.”
“Your Lowness—” Dolores approached him with blaze-indignant eyes—“surely you do not assume that I or General Sam——”
“I never assume. I know the worst. That’s my power. I ought to be disgusted with you, and yet——” He considered her face almost as interestedly as he had his own. The charm of his smile increased. He added: “I’ve often noticed that men never get disgusted with the lady in the case. But I’ll make a horrible example of that broken-winged old moth, lured here by your light, for benefit of other mashers. Have to protect your promiscuous stamp of vamp from the outside.”
That he was angrier than he sounded was suggested by the snap of his fingers toward the window. Into the chamber sprang a pair of the palace guards.
“Nerve shock—boomeranged.” Laconically His Highness gestured toward the soldier-soul. “Lay him out in the Revival Room. See you handle him gently until I advise you what particular form his mistreatment is to take. I must work out something especially effective.”
He followed to the casement, as the stalwarts carried out the victim of his inviolate will. There he turned, as though chancing to remember the recipient of the two nocturnal calls.
“Miss or madame, I wish you good morrow. As your—ah—friend was saying at the moment of my interruption, remember that there isn’t much time. Think things over.”
Dolores took the repeated advice. Through the long, vague hours of the Avernian dawn she did think things over; thought and thought.
His Highness said she had power. Indeed, she must have power, else she could not have flouted, even in small ways, his mastery. But hers was not the power for sin which he ascribed to her. Long ago a brilliant lawyer had toasted it as “truth.” Before that she herself had called it “sincerity.” She knew before trying that she should fail at the task of rousing the worst in women, when their best had been her Earth-life ideal.
Since nothing in all the universe was meant to be wasted—not a throb of heart or thought of mind—why had she been given power? To lose it in the chaos of disappointment into which she had sunk after realizing that John Cabot was not to come to her—that the sentences for the same crime in man and his woman were not necessarily the same? She had been anticipating Hell. Although the time before That Day might be short, she might yet earn progression; perhaps might go to John, since he had not come to her. Suppose she had the right with everyman to draw upon the exhaustless supply of strength which they claimed was God—— Suppose she could possess more and still more of this power of sincerity——
Stronger than the gleams of the up-rising electric sun grew her determination; brighter her hope; realer her faith. The Rex of Reversals did not know everything, else would he have realized ere this that he could not conquer her. And he had some sort of weakness for her. Otherwise he’d have crushed her long ago. In the present emergency she would seem to yield to him. She would match power against power, wit against wit, subtlety against subtlety. She would take the case of the women of the world, but take it, as had Rufus Holt that of Cabot versus Cabot, to lose. By stress of her own emotion she had learned that only spiritual strength was necessary to communicate with Earth. That discovery should not be wasted. Over the official wireless through the days would she command evils. In the night-time, with only her own yearning soul as sending station and the souls of Earth’s sad women as receivers, would she counter-command.
Perhaps the time would be shorter than General Cummings feared or His Majesty hoped. Perhaps The Call would sound before he found her out. And if she was insincere toward her enemy, it would be that she might be the more sincere toward her friends. A judge of Earth had absolved her of guilt at first sight because he saw in her face that her motive was innocent. Surely the Great Judge would be as keen.
As for the unspeakable thing known, without being known, as The Great Intention, that also might she delay and divert. On Earth she had been called a menace to men. If wiles enough remained at her command, now that she needed them to save rather than destroy herself—if the value of her favors did not decrease with deliberate use of them—she soon would have the soldier messenger set free. With or without him, however, she would find ways to weaken the King’s hold upon his military. While Satan was giving the whole of his intelligence to inciting riot among the mixed races of her own America she would be sowing schism among the condemned who had been drafted and branded into the Hadean armies.
The truth ought to be spreading propaganda. With what little she could disseminate on Earth and the much she must begin at once to spread in Gehenna——
Adeline’s tap on her door announced that what couldn’t happen had happened—that she had caught up with the elusive to-morrow. But sufficient unto the seventh day was the enlightenment thereof.
Dolores was ready at last with her answer.