II
THE PANACEA OF CORUSCATION
He seemed to be uttering her name when he awoke. It was daylight; the sun poured its rays over his face, and he asked himself how he could have fallen asleep leaving the lamp burning on the table near his bed. He must have slept long, for he felt rested, cheerful—happy. As he dressed he speculated whether it was the sunshine, or the prospect of going back to life, or—or—Did he wish to return so soon? He wondered what Mila was doing. Then he went into the stone corridor and coughed as a hint that he was up. Not a sound but the persistent fall at a distance of some heavy metallic substance. It must be Karospina in his workshop, at his rockets, pinwheels, torpedoes, and firecrackers. What a singular change in a bloodthirsty revolutionist. And how childish! Had he squandered his millions on futile experimentings? What his object, what his scheme, for the amelioration of mankind's woes? Gerald's stomach warned him that coffee and rolls were far dearer to him than the downfall of tyranny's bastions, and impatiently he began whistling. The rhythmic thud never ceased. He noticed an open door at the back of the house, and he went out, his long legs carrying him about the yard, toward the beach. The air was glorious, a soft breeze blowing landward from the ocean. He almost forgot his hunger in the face of such a spectacle. The breakers were racing in, and after crumbling, they scudded, a film of green, crested by cottony white, across the hard sand to the young man's feet. He felt exhilarated. And his hunger returned. Then Mila's voice sounded near him. She carried a basket and fairly ran in her eagerness.
"Mr. Shannon, Mr. Shannon, good Prince Gerald—" he was amazed; where could she have heard his Christian name?—"your breakfast. Wait—don't swim the seas to New York for it. Here it is." She opened the basket and handed him a jug of coffee and showed him the rolls inside. Without the slightest embarrassment he thanked her and drank his coffee, walking; he ate the bread, and felt, as he expressed it, like leading a forlorn hope. They went on, the cutting sunshine and sparkling breeze alluring them to vague distances. It was long after midday when they marched back at a slower pace, Gerald swinging the basket like a light-hearted boy, instead of the desperado he fancied himself.
Entering the house, Mila hunted up some cold meat, and with fresh tea and stale bread they were contented. The formidable pyrotechnist did not appear, and so the young people enjoyed the day in each other's company. She conducted him like a river through the lands of sociology, Dostoïewsky, and Chopin. She played, but made him sit in the hall, for the piano was in her private room. And then they began to exchange confidences. It was dusk before the prince returned, in the attire of a workingman, his face and hands covered with soot and grease. A hard day's labour, he said, and did not seem surprised to see Shannon.
After supper he asked Gerald if he would smoke a pipe with him in his laboratory. Mila must have bored him enough by this time! They lighted their pipes; but Mila refused to be sent away. She sat down beside her uncle and put her elbows on the table—white, strong arms she had, and Gerald only took his eyes from their pleasing contemplation to lift them to hers. He was fast losing what little prudence he had; he was a Celt, and he felt that he had known Mila for a century.
"Young man," said Prince Karospina, sharply, "you have the message I gave you last night! Well—and you will say no, to my beloved friend K., without knowing why. And you will think that you have been dealing with a man whose hard head has turned to the mush of human kindness,—an altruist. Ah! I know how you fellows despise the word. But what have Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, or the rest accomplished? To build up, not to tear down, should be the object of the scientific anarch. Stop! You need not say the earth has to be levelled and ploughed before sowing the seed. That suits turnip fields, not the garden of humanity. Educate the downtrodden into liberty, is my message, not the slaughtering of monarchs. How am I going to go about it? Ah! that's my affair, my dear sir. After I read a certain book by Tolstoy, I realized that art was as potent an agent for mischief as the knout. Music—music is rooted in sex; it works miracles of evil—"
"Now, uncle, I won't hear a word against Chopin," said Mila, looking toward Gerald for approval.
"Music, Mila, in the hands of evil men is an instrument dangerous to religion, to civilization. What of Illowski and his crazy attack on Paris and St. Petersburg? You remember, Shannon! Leave Wagner out of the question—there is no fusion of the arts in his music drama—only bad verse, foolish librettos, dealing with monsters and gods, and indifferent scene-painting. Moreover, this new music is not understood by the world. Even if the whole of mankind could be assembled on the roof of the world and at a preconcerted signal made to howl the Marseillaise, it would not be educated to the heights I imagine. Stage plays—Shakespeare has no message for our days; Ibsen is an anarchist—he believes in placing the torpedo under the social ark. Painting—it is an affair for state galleries and the cabinets of wealthy amateurs. Literature is a dead art—every one writes and reads and no one understands. Religion! Ah! Yes, religion; the world will be a blackened cinder or cometary gas before the love of God is stamped from its heart. But religion and art must go hand in hand. Divorced, art has fallen into the Slough of Despond; else has been transformed into an acrid poison wherewith men's souls are destroyed as if by a virulent absinthe. United with religion, art is purified. All art sprang from religion. All great art, from a Greek statue to a Gothic cathedral, from a Bach fugue to Michael Angelo, was religious. Therefore, if we are to reach the hearts of the people, we must make art the handmaid of religion." He stopped for breath. Gerald interposed:—
"But, dear prince, you say 'art.' What art—painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, drama—?"
"One art," harshly cried the now excited man, as he pounded the table with his hard fist. "One art, my art, the fusion of all the arts. I, Prince Igorovitch Karospina, tell you that I have discovered the secret of the arts never dreamed of by Wagner and his futile, painted music on a painted stage; I have gone, not to art, but to nature—colour, fire, the elements. The eye is keener than the ear, vision is easier comprehended than tone. Ah! I have you interested at last."
He began walking as if to overtake a missing idea. His niece watched him cynically.
"I fear you are boring Mr. Shannon," she said in her most birdlike accents. Her uncle turned on her.
"I don't care if I am. Go to bed! I am nearing the climax of a lifetime, and I feel that I must talk to a sympathetic ear. You are not bored, dear friend. I have pondered this matter for more than thirty years. I have studied all the arts—painting particularly; and with colour, with colourful design I mean to teach mankind the great lessons of the masters and of religion."
"Ah, you will exhibit in large halls, panoramic pictures, I suppose," interrupted Shannon.
"Nothing of the sort," was the testy reply. "For thousands of years the world has been gazing upon dead stones and canvases, reading dead words. Dead—all, I tell you, all of these arts. And painting is only in two dimensions—a poor copy of nature. The theatre has its possibilities, but is too restricted in space. Music is alive. It moves; but its message is not articulate to all. I want an art that will be understood and admired at a glance by the world from pole to pole. I want an art that will live and move and tell a noble tale. I want an art that will appeal to the eye by its colouring and the soul by its beautiful designs. Where is that legend-laden art? Hitherto it has not existed. I have found it. I have tracked it down until I am the master who by a touch can liberate elemental forces, which will not destroy, like those of Illowski's, but will elevate the soul and make mankind one great nation, one loving brotherhood. Ah! to open once more those doors of faith closed by the imperious dogmas of science—open them upon a lovely land of mystery. Mankind must have mystery. And beyond each mystery lies another. This will be our new religion."
Gerald had caught the enthusiasm of this swelling prologue and rose, his face alight with curiosity.
"And that art is—is—?" he stammered.
"That art is—pyrotechny." It was too much for the young man's nerves, and he fell back in his chair, purple with suppressed laughter. Angrily darting at him and catching his left shoulder in a vicelike grip, Karospina growled:
"You fool, how dare you mock something you know nothing of?" He shook his guest roughly.
"Uncle, uncle, be patient! Tell Mr. Shannon, and he, too, will become a believer. I believe in you. I believe in him, Mr. Shannon. Don't sneer! Tell him, uncle." Mila's words, almost imploring in their tone, calmed the infuriated inventor, who left the room. He reëntered in a moment, his head dripping, and he was grinning broadly.
"Whenever I encounter a refractory pattern in my fireworks—as you call them—I am compelled to throw a bucket of water over it to quench its too ardent spirits. I have just done the same to my own head, dear Mr. Shannon, and I ask your pardon for my rudeness. Get some fresh tea, Mila, strong tea, Mila." Pipes were relighted and the conversation resumed.
"I forgot in my obsession, in what Jacob Boehme calls 'the shudder of divine excitement,' that I was talking to one of the uninitiated. I suppose you think by pyrotechny I mean the old-fashioned methods of set pieces, ghastly portraits in fire, big, spouting wheels, rockets, war scenes from contemporary history, seaside stuff, badly done—and flowery squibs. My boy, all that, still admired by our country cousins, is the very infancy of my art. In China, where nearly everything was invented ages ago, in China I learned the first principles, also the possibilities of the art of fireworks; yes, call it by its humble title. In China I have seen surprising things at night. Pagodas blown across the sky, an army of elephants in pursuit, and all bathed in the most divine hues imaginable. But their art suffers from convention. They accomplish miracles considering the medium they work in—largely gunpowder. And their art has no meaning, no message, no moral principle, no soul. Years ago I discovered all the aids necessary to the pyrotechnist. I am not a chemist for nothing. If I can paint a fair imitation of a Claude Monet on canvas, I can also produce for you a colourless gas which, when handled by a virtuoso, produces astonishing illusions. In the open air, against the dark background of the horizon, I can show you the luminous dots planewise of the Impressionists; or I can give you the broad, sabrelike brushwork of Velasquez, or the imperial tintings of Titian. I can paint pictures on the sky. I can produce blazing symphonies. I will prove to you that colour is also music. This sounds as if I were a victim to that lesion of the brain called 'coloured-audition.' Perhaps! Not Helmholtz or Chevreul can tell me anything new in the science of optics. I am the possessor of the rainbow secrets—for somewhere in Iceland, a runic legend runs, there is a region vast as night, where all the rainbows—worn out or to be used—drift about in their vapoury limbo. I have the key to this land of dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts I shall extort nobler cadences, nobler rhythms, for men to live by, for men to die for!"
Shannon was impressed. Through the smoke of his host's discourse he discovered genuine fire. The philosopher took his hand and led him to the window.
"Stand there a moment!" he adjured. Mila joined him and after turning the lamp to a pin-head of light, their shoulders touching—for the window was narrow—they peered into the night. They were on the side of the water. Suddenly Gerald exclaimed:—
"What's that light out at sea—far out? It looks like the moon!"
"It is the sun," coolly replied his companion. They saw arise from the waters a majestic, glowing sphere of light, apparently the size of the sun. It flooded the country with its glare, and after sailing nearly in front of the house it shrank into a scarlet cross not larger than a man's hand. Then in a shower of sparks it ceased, its absence making the blackness almost corporeal. Instinctively the hands of the two indulged in a long pressure, and Mila quickly adjusted the lamp. But Gerald still stood at the window a prey to astonishment, terror, stupefaction.
Karospina entered. His face was slightly flushed and in his eyes there burned the sombre fire of the fanatic. Triumphantly he regarded his young friend.
"That was only a little superfluous gas—nothing I cared to show you. Read the newspapers to-morrow, and you will learn that a big meteor burst off the north coast the night before, and fell into the sea." Then he moved closer and whispered:—
"The time is at hand. Within three weeks—not later than the middle of October—I shall make my first public test. 'Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places.'"
His voice rose in passion, his face worked in anger, and he shook his clenched fists at an imaginary universe. So this man of peace was a destroyer, after all! Gerald aroused him. Again he asked pardon. Mila was nowhere to be seen, and with a sinking at the heart new to his buoyant temperament, Gerald bade the magician good night. It was arranged that he would leave the next day, for, like Milton, he was haunted by "the ghost of a linen decency." But that night he did not sleep, and no sound of music came to his ears from Mila's chamber. Once he tried to open his window. It was nailed down.
A gray day greeted his tired eyes. In an hour he was bidding his friends good-by and thanking them for their hospitality. He had hoped that Mila would accompany him a few steps on his long journey, but she made no sign beyond a despairing look at her uncle, who was surly, as if he had felt the reaction from too prolonged a debauch of the spirit. Gerald lit his pipe, kissed the hand of Mila with emphasis, and parted from them. He had not gone a hundred yards before he heard soft footsteps tracking him. He turned and was disappointed to see that it was only Karospina, who came up to him, breathing heavily, and in his catlike eyes the fixed expression of monomania. He stuttered, waving his arms aloft.
"The time is at hand and the end of all things shall be accomplished. You shall return for the great night. You shall hear of it in the world. Tell K. that I said no! He must be with us at the transfiguration of all things, when mankind shall go up the spiral road of perfection."
Gerald Shannon fairly ran to escape knowing more about the universal panacea. And when he turned for the last time the sea and tower and man were blotted out by wavering mists of silver.