The Empty World

by D. E. Stevenson

For a few minutes neither of them spoke, it was enough to be near each other with all their troubles forgotten. But there was still something on Jane’s mind, a slight shadow on her happiness.

  “David,” she said, “what about that girl — the girl you were going to marry?”

  “Elsie?” said David. He sat back and looked up at her with a frank gaze. “She was gone. I went to look for her, because I wanted to be sure. She was not there. I didn’t expect to find her, of course.”

  “What was she like?” Jane said.

  David was surprised at the question; he was too young and too ignorant about women to understand what Jane meant. How could he understand, when she didn’t understand herself?

  “She was tall and fair,” David said, trying to visualise her for Jane’s benefit.

  Jane had not meant that at all, the question that she wanted to ask was quite different, she could not put it into words. She could not say, “Did you love her very much?” She was rather ashamed of her desire to know. Rather humiliated.

  “Tell me about Elsie,” she said instead.

  “Why?” he enquired, and then, as Jane did not answer, he added: “It seems such years ago —”

  David stopped suddenly and held up his head, listening. They both listened. They heard a ringing voice cry out, “Surround the house. See that nobody escapes. Shoot if necessary.”

  David sprang to his feet, but, before he could get to the door, it had opened and three men stood on the threshold. They were dressed in a kind of khaki uniform with shorts, and woollen stockings, and helmets of a strange shape. They were armed with revolvers.

  Jane screamed, she had thought for a moment that they were some of Bolton’s gang, but now she saw that they were not. She had never seen the men before.

  “No need to be alarmed,” one of the men said; he was evidently the officer.

  “What do you want?” cried David. “No wonder the lady was alarmed. What do you mean by walking in like that?”

  “I’m sorry,” the officer replied. “But I didn’t know who you were, and I couldn’t afford to take risks. We saw the light, so we knew there must be somebody here. If we had known there was a lady —”

  “Who are you?” enquired David, more calmly.

  “My name’s Keen,” replied the officer; “Major Keen of Professor Boddington’s Guard.”

  “Thank Heaven,” said David. “Our search is ended!”

  “Do you mean you have been looking for us?” demanded Major Keen incredulously. “Who are you? Where have you come from? How did you escape?”

  “We were in an airliner,” David replied; “it’s a long story —”

  “In that case you had better keep it for the Professor,” said the other; “I shall hear it then, and it’s no good making you tell it twice over. Besides, we haven’t time. Professor Boddington sent us to find you —”

  “How did he know we were here?” Jane asked with interest.

  “There’s an instrument,” replied Major Keen, “something like a seismograph only much more delicate. You can listen in and hear sounds of movement in the earth for a distance of five miles. The Professor knew there was somebody moving about in this direction, and gave orders for them to be brought in — dead or alive, but preferably alive. Those are my orders and I have got to obey them. If you give me your word to come quietly there will be no need for me to make you prisoners — if not —”

  “We’ll come with pleasure,” David said, smiling. “We have been looking for Professor Boddington; in fact, we came here on purpose to find him.”

  “That’s queer,” Keen said. “How did you — but there’s no time to waste. The Professor doesn’t like to be kept waiting. We had better go. I suppose that’s your car in the road.”

  He helped Jane to put on her coat and bustled her off. David followed.

  “You can drive your own car,” Keen told him, “with one of my men beside you. The lady had better come with me. Follow me, but not too closely; the road is narrow and rather steep.”

  David would have preferred to have Jane with him, but he saw that he had no choice. He made up his mind to follow Keen as closely as he could in spite of the steepness and narrowness of the road.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Shallowdale and

  Its King

  It was dark now, and Jane had very little idea where they were going. They climbed a steep hill with twisty corners and came to a big steel gate. Major Keen blew his horn, and two sentries ran out of a little guard-house and opened the gate for them to pass. After that they ran down into a valley, and Jane could hear the sound of a river amongst rocks.

  “That is the River Shallow,” Keen told her; “it makes all our electric power. We use a lot, of course.”

  “What is this place called?” enquired Jane.

  “Shallowdale,” replied Keen shortly.

  The valley was well wooded on the right, and about the river, but on the left there were fields of bare stubble shining in the moonlight.

  “They have cut the corn here,” Jane said in surprise.

  “The harvest is practically over,” Keen agreed. “It is later than usual, but we are short-handed.”

  Jane thought of a dozen questions she wanted to ask. She could not make up her mind which to ask first. It was like coming into a new world where everything was different. Major Keen was not very informative; he replied to her questions, it is true, but he replied grudgingly. She formed the opinion that he did not want to supply her with more information than he need without actually being rude.

  They passed a waggon, laden with sheaves of corn, and drawn by two horses. Strong beautiful creatures of the Clydesdale type. A small group of men and girls were following the waggon; they were laughing and talking with friendly animation. Jane saw several children, clad in shorts and jerseys; they were running along by the side of the waggon and calling out to each other with merry voices. A big sheep-dog barked at the car as it passed.

  Jane could not suppress an exclamation of astonishment at the scene.

  “It’s funny to see horses pulling a waggon,” said Keen. “We’ve got tractors too, of course, but the horses have to be exercised, and the Professor likes old-fashioned ways.”

  “It’s funny to see horses at all — and a dog,” Jane told him.

  “M’m,” said Keen.

  “How were they saved?”

  “The Professor will probably tell you,” Keen replied.

  There was something in the way that Keen spoke which made Jane think that he was frightened of Professor Boddington. She did not pursue the subject, for she was too busy trying to take in all she saw. The road was narrow here, and the waggon was too wide for them to pass. They were obliged to stop for a few minutes while it moved into the gateway of a field.

  “Hurry up, there,” Keen cried.

  The lights of the car cast a queer radiance upon the little group of harvesters. Those who were not engaged in pushing the waggon turned to stare wonderingly at Jane. She saw that they were strong and beautifully made; there was not a weed amongst them. They looked intelligent, and were obviously of good class. She noticed, too, that their clothes were very simple, almost Grecian in style. The whole scene reminded Jane of a picture entitled “The Harvest Moon” which had hung in the drawing-room at her home. The grace and beauty of the harvesters, the peace and quietness of the picture had always impressed her — and here was the picture come to life.

  “These people look as if they had been selected by an artist for their looks,” said Jane to her companion.

  “They were selected by scientists,” replied Keen shortly.

  The road was clear now. Keen pressed the accelerator, and they roared up a short steep hill. There was a farm upon their right. Jane heard the lowing of a cow; it stirred her strangely. A great house loomed up before them, a tall house, surrounded by trees; it looked solid and old-fashioned. Jane judged that it must have been built at least a hundred years ago, about the end of the nin
eteenth century. Nobody built tall houses nowadays, nor built them of that queer grey stone.

  The front door opened as they approached, and a man came out on the steps. He was tall and strong with a large pale face and an underhung jaw. Jane could not place the man at all; he looked a little like a prize-fighter, and a little like a butler.

  “Have you got them, Major? He’s waiting.”

  “Yes, a man and a woman,” Keen replied. “We were as quick as possible, Marker.”

  “He’s waiting,” said the man again.

  “Is anybody with him?” Keen enquired anxiously.

  “Dr. Glover, that’s all. You better come up yourself and tell him about it.”

  “I suppose I had,” said Keen reluctantly.

  Jane and David were shepherded up the stairs by Major Keen and the man he had called Marker. There was a strange musty smell in the house — an old-fashioned smell; it emanated from the furnishings. There were patterned carpets on the stairs, and oil-paintings on the walls. Chairs stood about the hall and the landings, covered with black shiny materials, and there were tables in alcoves loaded with knick-knacks. The lighting was old-fashioned too. Instead of the softly diffused radiance shed from the cornice — to which Jane’s generation was accustomed — there were cords suspended from the ceiling with lights attached, whose glare was neither softened nor distributed by the ugly coloured-glass shades with which they were adorned.

  “What an ugly house!” David whispered, as they went up the steep narrow stairs. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

  “Only in a museum,” replied Jane. “It is pure Victorian — rather interesting but frightfully unhygienic —”

  They had reached the second landing by this time. Major Keen knocked gently on a baize-covered door, and ushered his prisoners into the presence.

  The room was furnished in two styles, partly as an old-fashioned sitting-room, and partly as an office. Jane had time to guess that it had been a sitting-room first, and had been converted into an office with the least possible amount of disarrangement. A large yellow roll-top desk stood in the window between a round table with a plant on it and an old-fashioned cross-stitch screen. There were several office bookcases, and a corner-cabinet, full of coloured china dogs. The mantelpiece was draped with green velvet, and bore a collection of candlesticks and vases of indeterminate shapes.

  Professor Boddington was sitting at his desk, writing. He was a small thin man with large protuberant pale-blue eyes. His skin was the colour of old parchment, and wrinkled like a dried apple, his neck was stringy. He wore a black silk gown ornamented with gold dragons, and a black skull-cap with a gold tassel covered his domed head. Beneath the cap straggled a few lank locks of snow-white hair. The chair in which he sat was pure Elizabethan; it was of fumed oak, black with age. The arms were finished with claws, the back was straight, and high, and ornamented with gold carving. It was a huge chair, a regal chair, and the man in it looked as insignificant as a monkey.

  The only other person in the room was a tall thin man in a brown suit. He had a lean, intelligent face, dominated by a large but well-formed nose. His hair was dark and well brushed, slightly grey over the ears. His eyes were keen and searching.

  Jane’s rapid survey of the room and its occupants was interrupted by a high voice speaking to her.

  “Don’t day-dream,” said the high voice in querulous tones.

  “I wasn’t,” said Jane, looking at the Professor with her frank fearless gaze, “I was looking round at everything — that’s quite a different thing.”

  The little man gazed at her in amazement, but he said nothing.

  “I should like to explain —” David began.

  “No,” snapped the Professor. “Let her explain. She’s got brains.”

  David held his tongue with difficulty. He reminded himself that it was necessary to propitiate this extraordinary little man. They were completely in his power.

  “Do I begin at the beginning?” enquired Jane blandly, “because, if so, I should like to sit down. It’s a long story.”

  The Professor looked at her searchingly, then he signed to Keen to bring a chair, and Jane sat down.

  Jane realised that it was an important moment (perhaps she did not guess how important). It was an exciting tale that she had to tell and she must do it justice. She would take her time about it, and give every incident its dramatic effect. Her instinct had warned her not to allow herself to be frightened of the Professor, but to stand up to him, and speak to him as an equal, and her instinct had been right. She saw now that she must press home her initial advantage and show him that she was a personality to be reckoned with.

  Jane started her tale from the moment that they had left New York in the airliner. She described the storm vividly, giving David due merit for his forethought in climbing high, and his management of the liner during the debâcle. She described the difficulties of navigation due to the absence of radio and lights, and passed on to their arrival at Renfrew and their consternation at finding an empty world. Before she had gone far she knew that she had her audience well in hand; even David — to whom the story was not new — was listening absorbedly.

  The interest of her audience helped Jane, and the fact that she was used to lecturing gave her confidence. Words came to her easily, the right word at the right moment. So might Scheherazade have held the Emperor spellbound in the web of her imaginings.

  When, at last, the tale was finished, and Jane’s voice ceased, there was a little silence in the room. A tribute to her art and the epic quality of the tale. It was broken by the tall man in the brown suit.

  “What a miraculous escape!” he exclaimed.

  The Professor pulled himself together, and shook himself, it was as if he were freeing himself from the spell cast upon him by the story.

  “And if they had believed me there would have been no need for miraculous escapes,” he snapped.

  “How did you save all these people,” Jane asked him, “and the animals —”

  “I used my brain,” he replied pompously. “I left nothing to chance. There was nothing miraculous about my escape from the cataclysm. I used science — or knowledge if you prefer the word — and applied it to the situation which was bound to arise. I warned the world of its approaching fate, but the world was deaf to my warning, or else jeered at me for a madman. It is by no means unusual for the world to treat its great men in this fashion — history has several examples of the same behaviour.”

  “If they had believed you the panic would have been —”

  “If they had believed me in time,” the Professor interrupted her, “steps could have been taken to preserve the lives of those who were worth preserving — a small percentage of the world’s millions. But they did not believe me and so they perished miserably. One moment they were here, alive — in so far as such clods are alive — and the next moment they were gone. A few handfuls of dust to be scattered by the first breeze.”

  Jane was silent. Despite herself she was impressed by the Professor’s words. The man had a powerful personality, and, although his overweening conceit was annoying and even slightly absurd, Jane could not but admit that he had some justification for it.

  “What about a doctor, sir?” enquired David, breaking the silence which had followed the Professor’s last speech.

  “Ah yes, of course. A doctor for this precious Sir Richard of yours. Can you give me any valid reason why I should be troubled to lend you a doctor?”

  “To save his life,” replied David firmly.

  “How do I know that his life is worth saving?” the Professor enquired.

  “Surely any life is worth saving.”

  “Not at all. No life is worth saving unless it is a useful life. My small colony has been carefully selected, each individual chosen by specialists in physiology and anatomy, as the nucleus of a new civilisation. Before accepting an individual he or she was subjected to the most stringent examinations and tests, to prove whether
or not he was worthy — mentally, morally and physically. I have eliminated a man for the apparently trivial reason that his ears were too large,” added Professor Boddington. “Apparently trivial, I say, because the size of a man’s ear seems trivial to the uninitiated. To the physiologist it is important because it is an hereditary trait, and our object is to build up a race which shall outrival Ancient Greece in symmetry of form.”

  “Sir Richard is worth saving by any standard,” said Jane quietly. The man was mad, of course, but he was diabolically powerful. It seemed strange that he, who was almost a dwarf, should admire physical perfection to such insane lengths, but it is often the way. There is no such admirer of strength as the weak man, no such extoller of health as the unfit.

  “I think you should let us go over and have a look at him,” said the tall man who had exclaimed over their miraculous escape. “Willis and I could go over together —”

  “Nonsense, Glover!” the Professor replied. “If anything is to be done about it they must bring the man here. I shall see him myself, and decide about the matter.”

  “I couldn’t do that, sir,” said David desperately. “Sir Richard is ill — he has been very ill. It would be madness to move him —”

  “Let us go over,” Glover said persuasively; he bent down and whispered something in the Professor’s ear.

  “I’m not sure that it would not be best to make an end of the whole lot,” said Professor Boddington, waving him away. “It will upset all my plans having these people in my world — a lot of riff-raff, thrown together in this random way. They may have disease amongst them, they may be immoral and ugly. I shall keep the woman, of course. Willis might like her; she’s very much his type, and he is still moping over the loss of his wife; but I don’t think the man is worth keeping —”

  “You can’t keep either of us,” Jane cried. “We must go back to our friends; besides, we’re married,” she added with sudden breathless inspiration.

  “You didn’t say you were married,” complained the Professor in querulous tones. “Why didn’t you say you were married to start with?”