Presently he spoke again.
“I was not aware that you had seen me in the glade the night before you left me, Granger. Perhaps the course of the world’s history might have been modified had you summoned courage to challenge me when you returned to the house. After bidding you good night on that occasion, I took my machine out with a view to running a few thousand miles and seeing that all was well. I had not been in the air since my return from America and had encountered heavy weather on the way back. There will be no weather where I am going tonight — a curious thought: no weather. Some trifling fault in the electric lighting caused me to descend a moment after starting. The head of the machine was lowered to mine, that I might adjust it. I rose again, ran for five minutes, sped as far as North Africa, and was probably back in my apartments before you returned to the house. Is there anything else that occurs to you?”
I considered. For a moment I had been overwhelmed by the thought that possibly my cowardice had altered the story of the world’s progress. But the immensity of the idea was, perhaps happily, more than my brain could receive. I put the thought from me and one recollection, of ludicrous insignificance, occurred to my mind.
“Had you anything to do with the phenomenal crop of wheat you showed me on one of your farms last August, Sir Bruce?”
He nodded.
“Yes; before the wheat was sown last spring, I trickled the element upon that field, knowing corn was to be planted there. Whether it would blast, or invigorate the crop, I could not tell. It was applied in the most sparing quantities possible. There is no doubt that in this connection radio-activity will produce results upon our foodstuffs impossible to measure without experience.”
He rang the bell and Timothy Bassett appeared.
“Are you nearly ready?” he asked.
The old man was cast down and tearful.
“Us be most done, master,” he said.
“Have no fear for the future, Bassett. And see that the dogs are removed from the kennel when you go. Mr. Granger will summon you shortly. Now bring something to drink; and each of you take a silver memento of me from the dining room. Then remove all the silver and the family portraits to the empty lodge, where you will spend the night.”
Timothy departed and soon returned with spirits and a siphon.
“My will is with my lawyers,” explained Sir Bruce. “My brother will learn that the family possessions, such as they are, have also been deposited with him, save for the things that Bassett will look after. Hugh is a man in ten thousand. The shock of my departure will probably end his days.”
He drank and then took his manuscript from the table and read it slowly to me. Life can never parallel that solemn experience.
CHAPTER XV
SIB BRUCE’S NARRATIVE
I
“IT is a melancholy fact that the flower of human happiness never yet opened without revealing a worm in the bud. Out of new happiness, new sorrow will infallibly be created, and within the heart of the increased prosperity lies hidden an invisible germ, which must presently develop new forces making against happiness. Thus the eternal circle is completed and the tradition of human suffering sustained from generation to generation. Every human advance, every state of melioration, will still bear along with it the inherent defects of its qualities. In their turn the defects are conquered; another advance is won; and from that advance, new trials, problems and sufferings grow, to keep the children of men in a state of everlasting strife against circumstance. For every battle won promises a crop of new foes sprung out of our very triumphs — a new skeleton at our feast of success.
“We walk the stern road of reality, but keep our eyes and hopes forever lifted to the unreal, since happiness is no more, at best, than the fitful fire of summer lightning against the darkness of the night in which we move.
“When I discovered the new element, this fact, concerning the truth of happiness, was uppermost in my mind, and before all things I perceived how, from a prodigious, potential blessing, there must arise also the inevitable, new peril hidden in every blessing. For once the danger was not concealed: I perceived it as readily as I perceived the immense access of human happiness to be hoped from No. 87. One had to weigh the one against the other.
“Dean Inge remarks, with that luminous bitterness peculiarly his own, that the fruit of the tree of knowledge always drives man out of some paradise; but my hard-won fruit promised to create a new paradise of this desert we call life — to link the oases in it and turn the dreary antres into smiling gardens. With unspeakable joy I first dwelt on this aspect of my discovery and welcomed its stupendous promise. I believed that Providence had sent my element to make good the void created by the Great War; I pushed forward sleeplessly and it was not until the power to apply and control my radio-active agent had been perfected, that real difficulty and doubt gathered like a fog around me. The application presented problems greater by far than either the discovery, or the control.
“I knew the danger of letting my discovery pass into the hands of middle-men — those parasites bred out of feudal law and corrupt government, which fasten like a tick on the back of all civilized nations. My problem was to apply the energy to universal good purpose; but the machinery for so doing did not exist. Thus the physical difficulties I had conquered soon became as nothing before the mightier problem: the means by which my discovery should be launched upon its solemn and salutary task. The creative element was offered — the light waited to irradiate the earth; but man, I found, had as yet no candlestick to hold it. And it is for that reason I extinguish my light again. I have come to the conclusion that the soul of man is not yet sanctified to receive such a bequest; and this I say from no shame and confusion at my own failure — concerning that I have yet to speak — but because now, in these last hours of existence remaining to me, I am still convinced that earth is still unsafe for my discovery.
“Consider the preliminaries of my task. The first thing one connects with an energy, is the power to overcome something else. It may be space; it may be an opposed energy; it may be — and in my case with heart and soul I answer that it was — the forces of evil. To overcome evil with my good energy was my dream. But observe how difficulties leapt up before this ambition. I had, to begin with, only my own standards of good and evil; and it was long before I could convince myself that those standards sufficed. In the full strength of my intellect indeed, I repelled any temptation to use my power myself; it was not until the hopelessness of the position had eaten into the very root of my brains, that such an idea entered them. At first I doubted not that my fellow man might be trusted with my discovery. But reflection steadily darkened this opinion, and when I came to particulars, I dared not take any into confidence.
“Where were the minds; where the pure purposes; where the philosophic spirits to be entrusted with my discovery? They did not exist in any State. And still they do not exist. Man continues subject to a thousand shattering inherited instincts; his life is still too much a question of the survival of the strongest; his temptations are too real; his ideals are too base; his ambitions too earthy; his values too gross. He cannot be trusted in the lump; and had better not be trusted at all.
“Certain men and women, indeed, I thought upon, and knew them for noble beings of unstained honor, inspired alone by enthusiasm for humanity and love of truth. But these were not of the world. They lacked knowledge of affairs, or the practical problems that faced me. These fine souls were above and beyond any sense of the sordid proposition that challenged my attention. I had seen the influence of such men and women on executive operations and perceived how, out of the idealistic flowers they offered, came no seed corn to banish the hunger of men. Is it not Montaigne who says that one laughs, not at man’s folly, but his wisdom?
“Still therefore I kept silence, although every instinct of the true-born scientific inquirer prompted me to proclaim my discovery; for is not concealment of knowledge the sin against the Holy Ghost — a blow struck at the very s
pirit of Science itself? Already the world’s advance in physics was proceeding by leaps and bounds, leaving religions and ethical progress hopelessly in the rear. The best brains, the rarest intellects were being poured into physics; but, for my own part, I never recognized the divorce between material and spiritual advance; I believed that all right thinking should unite them; and I stood now before the problem of translating No. 87 into terms of the soul! I could not solve that problem; and I knew not where to turn for help in so gigantic a task.
“Now, too late, I see my own aberration and measure the disaster to humanity occasioned by my ultimate resolve, to employ single-handed my own discovery. For in truth nothing can be more vicious and immoral than to suppose that deliberate crime may be employed in any holy cause, or evil done that righteousness shall progress. Out of good, evil indeed may come; but not out of evil, good. For my awful error I am now called to pay the price, and my memory and name, instead of being hallowed by future generations, must ever stand convicted and condemned before the judgment of mankind. That is my penalty and sentence.
II
“I will now traverse the stages of my experiment up to the final and terrible error, which went near to overthrowing my reason and for which no power of atonement exists. It was the culminating folly of an intellect powerful in some directions, weak in others; and the megalomania I have revealed proves once again, if it wanted proof, that no man is strong enough to live to himself; that only along the line of inter-communion, fellowship and social co-operation lies any hope for humanity. I put my trust in myself — one no more fitted to judge and condemn than any other. In fighting the forces of superstition, I was grossly superstitious; in laboring against the might of unreason, I was irrational. I committed all the evils I sought to combat; I used my divine energy exactly as I feared it would be used, if placed in the hands of civilization; I displayed no broad understanding, but a native prejudice and hatred of certain activities and personalities; I proceeded on no philosophic principle, but with the narrow-mindedness, malignity and ignorance of a fanatic and partisan. And I have lived to taste my reward, and see how I advanced, rather than retarded the ambitions of those protagonists I swept out of life; how my tyranny brought fresh followers to their tyrannies, new grist to their accursed mills.
“Woe to me that while I mistrusted all other men, I could not extend that distrust to myself!
“I destroyed Alexander Skeat, holding him a sinister force opposed to national honor and genuine progress. He was an avowed enemy of Science and a scoffer at tradition. What he stood for, rather than himself, called for opposition; but his bad manners, egotism, cynicism and lack of any constructive idea might well have been trusted to efface him and his books in fulness of time.
“After his death, I took part in the subsequent discussions, and myself deliberately contributed to confusion of the issue. The appetite grows by what it feeds upon, and a personal deterioration swiftly developed, taking the shape of unscientific delight in my power and unsocial satisfaction in the possession of my secret. I knew myself unique and felt that the kingdoms of earth would fall down and worship me if I invited them to do so. The disparity between my research and my application must ever form a melancholy subject for psycho-analysis. I held the thunderbolt of Jove and might have rent the round world, or torn a dozen fresh volcanoes in its bosom; I might have swept continents, divided seas, poured fertility upon the hungry lands of the earth; brought manna from heaven; but such was my parochial mind, faulty judgment and failing sense of proportion, that I opened my campaign with no worthier initial effort than the murder of an intellectual conjurer whose activities were sterile, whose fate was of no earthly importance to anybody but himself.
“The Albert Memorial, being worthless on all counts, I employed experimentally. It would have been as easy for me to leave a heap of gold in its place as the transmuted dust they found there; but the playhouse which I subjected to my energy had provoked in me a personal animus. Its entertainment I held inimical to all dramatic progress. I know now that it was in reality harmless and even modest as compared with kindred productions of which I have since heard; but on a personal visit, and from a personal standpoint, I found the play to be animal in its appeal, devoid of any excuse for existence and radically remote in spirit from the land it pretended to represent. That a concoction so barbaric, brainless and sensuous should have delighted London for three years outraged my sense of what a theater ought to be, and I swept it off the earth, leaving, as I supposed, London the cleaner for its destruction. Vain fancy! I have lived to see the same play reproduced with enthusiastic welcome at another house.
“In the case of the great temples of Christian Science, I razed them to the ground, because, in my opinion, there was little warrant for the linking of Christianity with Science, and I found such an association objectionable. It is quite possible that I had not weighed all of the facts, or that I saw these through the eyes of personal prejudice. Be that as it may, I resented violently not only their claims but their methods of advertising them which seemed to me hardly in keeping with the dignity of a great religion.
“But how has my assault contributed to lessen the growing grip of this cult? Already mightier churches than those I struck down are arising from their dust. Not a man or woman has been weaned from the error; it is more probable that thousands have been won to it as the result of what I accomplished.
“Thus might I retrace, step by step, my operations, only to find the same story repeated with monotonous regularity. Joseph Ashlar is become a saint of Labor, and the anniversary of his destruction may unchain fresh furies, under conditions such as our generation has never known, but will yet suffer. I have lived to see the place destined for Greenleaf Stubbs occupied by one who will chastise with scorpions, where he would have used whips. I have lived to loosen the precious bonds that united England and America, by the murder of that man.
“Lorenzo Poglaici’s death served only to hasten an end which the good sense of his nation and the wisdom and patience of Jugo-Slavia must have finally attained, without the destruction of that erratic genius; while not a mad hope, or criminal design cherished by the dead anarchists, Bronstein, Clos and Paravicini, has departed out of the hearts of their supporters with their assassination. I have heightened rather than dimmed, I have hastened rather than retarded, their red visions of the future.
“Ozama, the Japanese, and that appalling being who has brought Russia to the abyss, come next. The first I slew for his dishonor. He lied to China and prepared to build an infamous conquest on the foundations of falsehood. I had narrowly watched him for three years, and finding no great Power ready, or willing, to intervene on the part of his distracted victim, herself rent in twain, I struck — only to find another of the tribe of Ozama spring into being and carry on the evil work.
“My act in Russia needs no expression of regret. Here the forces of evil did actually concentrate in the brain of one man, and the harvest of my blow at Moscow is already green above the ground.
“But no anarchist in the world’s history has ever destroyed a life more precious and rich in promise than have I, when ignorant of truth and fearful that my secret was discovered, I sent Ian Noble out of the world. That awful error crowned my life with a crime as dark as any in the annals of international wickedness. The train by which I reached my mistaken opinions can easily be followed and the vital point occurred at Grimwood during August last, when Ernest Granger offered to tell me of his personal experiences with Noble at our little Club of Friends. Had I listened to what he was anxious to narrate, this story might have ended in a manner very different; had chance brought me into contact with Noble, I should have welcomed his wisdom, perhaps even bestowed upon him as a legacy my knowledge, strong in the consciousness that he would put it to higher purpose than I, and efface the memory of my actions. But chance willed otherwise. I never met him, and I never heard the truth concerning him until he was gone. Instead, through Paul Strossmayer, whom I detested from
the moment of our first meeting, I learned that his chemist had discovered the secret of radio-activity and was about to convey it from England to the service of Jugo-Slavia. Upon that information, myself now fallen far from my own sense of justice and ancient judicial faculties, I struck at once, murdered both men and destroyed the life-work of Noble, together with himself. Five nights later I heard the truth of what I had done, and resolved to perish ere my fallen reason committed further crimes against the world. I knew my mind was now disordered and felt that while there remained to me the power to act, I must depart. For my self-control is rapidly passing from me; my intellect is sinking into decay; I am no longer responsible to myself for my actions, as the death of Erskine Owen sufficiently testifies. Nothing save a frantic hatred of his error made me murder him. But shall all men who err pay the price of death for it?
“And now I die, not by the hand of man, but my own. My soul has withered and my humanity shrivelled under this scorching test. Only death remains; and my body shall pass to win a tomb in forgiving space; for the dust of which I am formed is unworthy of return to the earth that lent it. I will remove myself from the world forever.
III
“‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectualism than willingly to see one’s equation written out,’ says George Santayana, the wise Spaniard. Such an experience is, however, not new to men of science, and many a servant of truth has been called to face obliteration of his own equation, and see the faithful labors of a lifetime undone as soon as completed. Would that my actions also might be undone along with myself; but they lie in another category than truth and must take their place in time for evermore. To depart needs no courage, for I hunger to do so. That has long been pre-determined; but it was only within the last days that I have become fixed to write out the equation of my discovery also, leaving the secret for future generations to re-discover.
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