CHAPTER XX.
BETWEEN TWO LIVES.
Six weeks after he had made his speech in the House of Lords,Tremayne was sitting in his oak-panelled library at Alanmere, in deepand earnest converse with a man who was sitting in an invalid chairby a window looking out upon the lawn. The face of this man exhibiteda contrast so striking and at the same time terrible, that the mostcareless glance cast upon it would have revealed the fact that it wasthe face of a man of extraordinary character, and that the story ofsome strange fate was indelibly stamped upon it.
The upper part of it, as far down as the mouth, was cast in a mouldof the highest and most intellectual manly beauty. The forehead washigh and broad and smooth, the eyebrows dark and firm but finelyarched, the nose somewhat prominently aquiline, but well shaped, andwith delicate, sensitive nostrils. The eyes were deep-set, large andsoft, and dark as the sky of a moonless night, yet shining in thefirelight with a strange magnetic glint that seemed to fastenTremayne's gaze and hold it at will.
But the lower portion of the face was as repulsive as the upper partwas attractive. The mouth was the mouth of a wild beast, and the lipsand cheeks and chin were seared and seamed as though with fire, andwhat looked like the remains of a moustache and beard stood in blackragged patches about the heavy unsightly jaws.
When the thick, shapeless lips parted, they did so in a hideous grin,which made visible long, sharp white teeth, more like those of a wolfthan those of a human being.
His body, too, exhibited no less strange a contrast than his facedid. To the hips it was that of a man of well-knit, muscular frame,not massive, but strong and well-proportioned. The arms were long andmuscular, and the hands white and small, but firm, well-shaped, andnervous.
But from his hips downwards, this strange being was a dwarf and acripple. His hips were narrow and shrunken, one of his legs was someinches shorter than the other, and both were twisted and distorted,and hung helplessly down from the chair as he sat.
Such was Natas, the Master of the Terror, and the man whose wrongs,whatever they might have been, had caused him to devote his life to awork of colossal vengeance, and his incomparable powers to theoverthrow of a whole civilisation.
The tremendous task to which he had addressed himself with all theforce of his mighty nature for twenty years, was now at lengthapproaching completion. The mine that he had so patiently laid, yearafter year, beneath the foundations of Society, was complete in everydetail, the first spark had been applied, and the first rumbling ofthe explosion was already sounding in the ears of men, though theylittle knew how much it imported. The work of the master-intellectwas almost done. The long days and nights of plotting and planningwere over, and the hour for action had arrived at last.
For him there was little more to do, and the time was very near whenhe could retire from the strife, and watch in peace and confidencethe reaping of the harvest of ruin and desolation that his hands hadsown. Henceforth, the central figure in the world-revolution must bethe young English engineer, whose genius had brought him forth out ofhis obscurity to take command of the subjugated powers of the air,and to arbitrate the destinies of the world.
This was why he was sitting here, in the long twilight of the Juneevening, talking so earnestly with the man who, under the spell ofhis mysterious power and master-will, had been his second self incompleting the work that he had designed, and had thought and spokenand acted as he had inspired him against all the traditions of hisrace and station, in that strange double life that he had lived, ineach portion of which he had been unconscious of all that he had beenand had done in the other. The time had now come to draw aside theveil which had so far divided these two lives from each other, toshow him each as it was in very truth, and to leave him free todeliberately choose between them.
Natas had been speaking without any interruption from Tremayne fornearly an hour, drawing the parallel of the two lives before him withabsolute fidelity, neither omitting nor justifying anything, and hiswondering hearer had listened to him in silence, unable to speak forthe crowding emotions which were swarming through his brain. Atlength Natas concluded by saying--
"And now, Alan Tremayne, I have shown you faithfully the two pathswhich you have trodden since first I had need of you. So far you havebeen as clay in the hands of the potter. Now the spell is removed,and you are free to choose which of them you will follow to theend,--that of the English gentleman of fortune and high position,whose country is on the brink of a war that will tax her vastresources to the utmost, and may end in her ruin; or that of thevisible and controlling head of the only organisation which can atthe supreme moment be the arbiter of peace or war, order or anarchy,and which alone, if any earthly power can, will evolve order out ofchaos, and bring peace on earth at last."
As Natas ceased, Tremayne passed his hand slowly over his eyes andbrows, as though to clear away the mists which obscured his mentalvision. Then he rose from his chair, and paced the floor with quick,uneven strides for several minutes. At length he replied, speaking asone might who was just waking from some evil dream--
"You have made a conspirator and a murderer of me. How is it possiblethat, knowing this, I can again become what I was before yourinfernal influence was cast about me?"
"What you have done at my command is nothing to you, and leaves nostain upon your honour, if you choose to put it so, for it was notyour will that was working within you, but mine. As for the killingof Dornovitch, it was necessary, and you were the only instrument bywhich it could have been accomplished before irretrievable harm hadbeen done.
"He alone of the outside world possessed the secret of the Terror. Awoman of the Outer Circle in Paris had allowed her love for him toovercome her duty to the Brotherhood, and had betrayed what shecould, in order, as she vainly thought, to shield him from itsvengeance for the executive murders of the year before. He too had onhim the draft of the secret treaty, the possession of which hasenabled us to control the drift of European politics at the mostcrucial time.
"Had he escaped, not only would hundreds of lives have beensacrificed on suspicion to Russian official vengeance, but Russia andFrance would now be masters of the British line of communication tothe East, for it would not have been possible for Mr. Balfour to havebeen forewarned, and therefore forearmed, in time to double theMediterranean Squadron as he has done. Surely one Russian's life isnot too great a price to pay for all that."
"I do not care for the man's life, for he was an enemy, and even thenplotting the ruin of my own country in the dark. It is not thekilling, but the manner of it. England does not fight her battleswith the assassin's knife, and his blood is on my hands"--
"On your hands, perhaps, but not on your soul. It is on mine, and Iwill answer for it when we stand face to face at the Bar where allsecrets are laid bare. The man deserved death, for he was plottingthe death of thousands. What matter then how or by whose hands hedied?
"It is time the world had done with these miserable sophistries, andthese spurious distinctions between murder by wholesale and byretail, and it soon will have done with them. I, by your hand, killedDornovitch in his sleep. That was murder, says the legal casuist. Youread this morning in the _Times_ how one of the Russian war-balloonswent the night before last and hung in the darkness over a sleepingtown on the Austrian frontier, and dropped dynamite shells upon it,killing and maiming hundreds who had no personal quarrel with Russia.That is war, and therefore lawful!
"Nonsense, my friend, nonsense! There is no difference. All violenceis crime, if you will, but it is a question of degree only. The worldis mad on this subject of war. It considers the horrible thinghonourable, and gives its highest distinctions to those who shedblood most skilfully on the battlefield, and the triumphs that arewon by superior force or cunning are called glorious, and those whoachieve them the nations fall down and worship.
"The nations must be taught wisdom, for war has had victims enough.But men are still foolish, and to cure them a terrible lesson will benecessary. But that lesson shal
l be taught, even though the wholeearth be turned into a battlefield, and all the dwellings of men intocharnel-houses, in order to teach it to them."
"In other words, Society is to be dissolved in order that anarchy andlawlessness may take its place. Society may not be perfect,--nay, Iwill grant that its sins are many and grievous, that it has forgottenits duty both to God and man in its worship of Mammon and its slaveryto externals,--but you who have plotted its destruction, have youanything better to put in its place? You can destroy, perhaps, butcan you build up?"
"The jungle must be cleared and the swamp drained before thehabitations of men can be built in their place. It has been mine todestroy, and I will pursue the work of destruction to the end, as Ihave sworn to do by that Name which a Jew holds too sacred forspeech. I believe myself to be the instrument of vengeance upon thisgeneration, even as Joshua was upon Canaan, and as Khalid the Swordof God was upon Byzantium in the days of her corruption. You may holdthis for an old man's fancy if you will, but it shall surely come topass in the fulness of time, which is now at hand; and then, where Ihave destroyed, may you, if you will, build up again!"
"What do you mean? You are speaking in parables."
"Which shall soon be made plain. You read in your newspaper thismorning of a mysterious movement that is taking place throughout theBuddhist peoples of the East. They believe that Buddha has returnedto earth, reincarnated, to lead them to the conquest of the world.Now, as you know, every fourth man, woman, and child in the wholehuman race is a Buddhist, and the meaning of this movement is thatthat mighty mass of humanity, pent up and stagnant for centuries, isabout to burst its bounds and overflow the earth in a flood ofdesolation and destruction.
"The nations of the West know nothing of this, and are unsheathingthe sword to destroy each other. Like a house divided against itself,their power shall be brought to confusion, and their empire be madeas a wilderness. And over the starving and war-smitten lands ofEurope these Eastern swarms shall sweep, innumerable as the locusts,resistless as the pestilence, and what fire and sword have sparedthey shall devour, and nothing shall be left of all the glory ofChristendom but its name and the memory of its fall!"
Natas spoke his frightful prophecy like one entranced, and when hehad finished he let his head fall forward for a moment on his breast,as though he were exhausted. Then he raised it again, and went on ina calmer voice--
"There is but one power under heaven that can stand between theWestern world and this destruction, and that is the race to which youbelong. It is the conquering race of earth, and the choicest fruit ofall the ages until now. It is nearly two hundred million strong, andit is united by the ties of kindred blood and speech the wide worldover.
"But it is also divided by petty jealousies, and mean commercialinterests. But for these the world might be an Anglo-Saxon planet.Would it not be a glorious task for you, who are the flower of thissplendid race, so to unite it that it should stand as a solid barrierof invincible manhood before which this impending flood of yellowbarbarism should dash itself to pieces like the cloud-waves againstthe granite summits of the eternal hills?"
"A glorious task, truly!" exclaimed Tremayne, once more springingfrom his chair and beginning to pace the room again; "but the man isnot yet born who could accomplish it."
"There are fifty men on earth at this moment who can accomplish it,and of them the two chief are Englishmen,--yourself and this RichardArnold, whose genius has given the Terrorists the command of the air.
"Come, Alan Tremayne! here is a destiny such as no man ever hadbefore revealed to him. It is not for a man of your nation andlineage to shrink from it. You have reproached me for using you tounworthy ends, as you thought them, and with pulling down where I amnot able to build up again. Obey me still, this time of your own freewill and with your eyes open, and, as I have pulled down by yourhand, so by it will I build up again, if the Master of Destiny shallpermit me; and if not, then shall you achieve the task without me.Now give me your ears, for the words that I have to say are weightyones.
"No human power can stop the war that has now begun, nor can anycurtail it until it has run its appointed course. But we have at ourcommand a power which, if skilfully applied at the right moment, willturn the tide of conflict in favour of Britain, and if at that momentthe Mother of Nations can gather her children about her in obedienceto the call of common kindred, all shall be well, and the world shallbe hers.
"But before that is made possible she must pass through the fire, andbe purged of that corruption which is even now poisoning her bloodand clouding her eyes in the presence of her enemies. The overweeninglust of gold must be burnt out of her soul in the fiery crucible ofwar, and she must learn to hold honour once more higher than wealth,and rich and poor and gentle and simple must be as one family, andnot as master and servant.
"East and west, north and south, wherever the English tongue isspoken, men must clasp hands and forget all other things save thatthey are brothers of blood and speech, and that the world is theirsif they choose to take it. This is a work that cannot be done by anynation, but only by a whole race, which with millions of hands and asingle heart devotes itself to achieve success or perish."
"Brave words, brave words!" cried Tremayne, pausing in his walk infront of the chair in which Natas sat; "and if you could make mebelieve them true, I would follow you blindly to the end, no matterwhat the path might be. But I cannot believe them. I cannot thinkthat you or I and a few followers, even aided by Arnold and hisaerial fleet, could accomplish such a stupendous task as that. It istoo great. It is superhuman! And yet it would be glorious even tofail worthily in such a task, even to fall fighting in such a Titanicconflict!"
He paused, and stood silent and irresolute, as though appalled by theprospect with which he was confronted here at the parting of theways. He glanced at the extraordinary being sitting near him, and sawhis deep, dark eyes fixed upon him, as though they were reading hisvery soul within him. Then he took a step towards the cripple'schair, took his right hand in his, and said slowly and steadily andsolemnly--
"It is a worthy destiny! I will essay it for good or evil, for lifeor death. I am with you to the end!"
As Tremayne spoke the fatal words which once more bound him, and thistime for life and of his own free will, to Natas the Jew, thiscripple who, chained to his chair, yet aspired to the throne of aworld, he fancied he saw his shapeless lips move in a smile, and intohis eyes there came a proud look of mingled joy and triumph as hereturned the handclasp, and said in a softer, kinder voice thanTremayne had ever heard him use before--
"Well spoken! Those words were worthy of you and of your race! Asyour faith is, so shall your reward be. Now wheel my chair to yonderwindow that looks out towards the east, and you shall look past theshadows into the day which is beyond. So! that will do. Now getanother chair and sit beside me. Fix your eyes on that bright starthat shows above the trees, and do not speak, but think only of thatstar and its brightness."
Tremayne did as he was bidden in silence, and when he was seatedNatas swept his hands gently downwards over his open eyes again andagain, till the lids grew heavy and fell, shutting out the brightnessof the star, and the dim beauty of the landscape which lay sleepingin the twilight and the June night.
Then suddenly it seemed as though they opened again of their ownaccord, and were endowed with an infinite power of vision. The treesand lawns of the home park of Alanmere and the dark rolling hills ofheather beyond were gone, and in their place lay stretched out acontinent which he saw as though from some enormous height, with itsplains and lowlands and rivers, vast steppes and snowclad hills,forests and tablelands, huge mountain masses rearing lonely peaks ofeverlasting ice to a sunlight that had no heat; and then beyond theseagain more plains and forests, that stretched away southward untilthey merged in the all-surrounding sea.
"You have seen the Field of Armageddon."
_See page 149._]
Then he seemed to be carried forward towards the scene until he coulddi
stinguish the smallest objects upon the earth, and he saw, swarmingsouthward and westward, vast hordes of men, that divided into longstreams, and poured through mountain passes and defiles, and spreadthemselves again over fertile lands, like locusts over green fieldsof young corn. And wherever those hordes swept forward, a long lineof fire and smoke went in front of them, and where they had passedthe earth was a blackened wilderness.
Then, too, from the coasts and islands vast fleets of war-ships putout, pouring their clouds of smoke to the sky, and making swiftly forthe southward and westward, where from other coasts and islands othervessels put out to meet them, and, meeting them, were lost with themunder great clouds of grey smoke, through which flashed incessantlylong livid tongues of flame.
Then, like a panorama rolled away from him, the mighty picturereceded and new lands came into view, familiar lands which he hadtraversed often. They too were black and wasted with the tempest ofwar from east to west, but nevertheless those swarming streams cameon, countless and undiminished, up out of the south and east, whileon the western verge vast armies and fleets battled desperately witheach other on sea and land, as though they heeded not those locustswarms of dusky millions coming ever nearer and nearer.
Once more the scene rolled backwards, and he saw a mighty cityclosely beleaguered by two vast hosts of men, who slowly pushed theirbatteries forward until they planted them on all the surroundingheights, and poured a hail of shot and shell upon the swarming,helpless millions that were crowded within the impassable ring offire and smoke. Above the devoted city swam in mid-air strange shapeslike monstrous birds of prey, and beneath where they floated theearth seemed ever and anon to open and belch forth smoke and flameinto which the crumbling houses fell and burnt in heaps of shapelessruins. Then----
He felt a cool hand laid almost caressingly on his brow, and thevoice of Natas said beside him--
"That is enough. You have seen the Field of Armageddon, and when theday of battle comes you shall be there and play the part allotted toyou from the beginning. Do you believe?"
"Yes," replied Tremayne, rising wearily from his chair, "I believe;and as the task is, so may Heaven make my strength in the stress ofbattle!"
"Amen!" said Natas very solemnly.
That night the young Lord of Alanmere went sleepless to bed, and layawake till dawn, revolving over and over again in his mind themarvellous things that he had seen and heard, and the tremendous taskto which he had now irrevocably committed himself for good or evil.In all these waking dreams there was ever present before his mentalvision the face of a woman whose beauty was like and yet unlike thatof the daughter of Natas. It lacked the brilliance and subtle charmwhich in Natasha so wondrously blended the dusky beauty of thedaughters of the South with the fairer loveliness of the daughters ofthe North; but it atoned for this by that softer grace and sweetnesswhich is the highest charm of purely English beauty.
It was the face of the woman whom, in that portion of his strangedouble life which had been free from the mysterious influence ofNatas, he had loved with well-assured hope that she would one dayrule his house and broad domains with him. She was now Lady MurielPenarth, the daughter of Lord Marazion, a Cornish nobleman, whoseestates abutted on those which belonged to Lord Alanmere as BaronTremayne, of Tremayne, in the county of Cornwall, as the _Peerage_had it. Noble alike by lineage and nature, no fairer mistress couldhave been found for the lands of Tremayne and Alanmere, but--whatseas of blood and flame now lay between him and the realisation ofhis love-ideal!
He must forsake his own, and become a revolutionary and an outcastfrom Society. He must draw the sword upon the world and his own race,and, armed with the most awful means of destruction that the wit ofman had ever devised, he must fight his way through universal war tothat peace which alone he could ask her to share with him. Still muchcould be done before he took the final step of severance which mightbe perpetual, and he would lose no time in doing it.
As soon as it was fairly light, he rose and took a long, rapid walkover the home park, and when he returned to breakfast at nine he hadresolved to execute forthwith a deed of gift, transferring the wholeof his vast property, which was unentailed and therefore entirely athis own disposal, to the woman who was to have shared it with him ina few months as his wife. If the Fates were kind, he would come backfrom the world-war and reclaim both the lands and their mistress, andif not he would have the satisfaction of knowing that his broad acresat least had a worthy mistress.
At breakfast he met Natas again, and during the meal one of hisfootmen entered, bringing the letters that had come by the morningpost.
There were several letters for each of them, those for Natas beingaddressed to "Herr F. Niemand," and for some time they were bothemployed in looking through their correspondence. Suddenly Nataslooked up, and said--
"When do you expect to hear that Arnold is off the south coast?"
"Almost any day now; in fact, within the week, if everything has goneright. Here is a letter from Johnston to say that the _Lurline_ hasarrived at Plymouth, and that a bright look-out is being kept forhim. He will telegraph here and to the club in London as soon as theair-ship is sighted. Twenty-four hours will then see us on board the_Ariel_, or whichever of the ships he comes in."
"I hope the news will come soon, for Michael Roburoff, thePresident's brother, who has been in command of the American Section,cables to say that he sails from New York the day after to-morrowwith detailed accounts. That means that he will come with fullreports of what the Section has done and will be ready to do when thetime comes, and also what the enemy are doing.
"He sails in the _Aurania_, and as the Atlantic routes are swarmingwith war-ships and torpedo-boats, she will probably have to run thegauntlet, and it is of the last importance that Michael and hisreports reach us safely. It will therefore be necessary for theair-ship to meet the _Aurania_ as soon as possible on her passage,and take him off her before any harm happens to him. If he and hisreports fell into the hands of the enemy, there is no telling whatmight happen."
"As nearly as I can calculate," said Tremayne, "the air-ship shouldbe sighted in three days from now, perhaps in two. It will take the_Aurania_ over four days to cross the Atlantic, and so we ought to beable to meet her somewhere in mid-ocean if she is able to get so farwithout being overhauled. Unfortunately she is known to be a Britishship and subsidised by the British Government, so there will be verylittle chance of her getting through under the American flag. Stillshe's about the fastest steamer afloat, and will take a lot ofcatching."
"And if the worst comes and she falls into the hands of the enemy, wemust fight our first naval battle and retake her, even if we have tosink a few cruisers to do so," added Natas; "for, come what may,Michael must not be captured."
"Arnold will almost certainly come in his flagship, and if she iswhat he promised, she should be more than a match for a whole fleet,so I don't think there is much to fear unless the _Aurania_ gets sunkbefore we reach her," said Tremayne.
Natas and his host devoted the rest of the forenoon to theircorrespondence, and to making the final arrangements for leavingAlanmere. Tremayne wrote full instructions to his lawyers for thedrawing up of the deed, and directed them to have it ready for hissignature by two o'clock on the following day. After lunch he rodeover to Knaresborough himself with the post-bag, telegraphed anabstract of his instructions in advance, and ordered his privatesaloon carriage to be attached to the up express which passed throughat eight the next morning.
The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror Page 21