by Rahul Singh
His flaming eyes were now looking directly into hers. Although a little troubled by his earnestness, she could not hide her proud satisfaction in his manly bearing.
"We believe that every animal is born free and equal," he said. "That the humblest polyp or the most insignificant ant has an equal right with you or me to life and the enjoyment of happiness. Why, are we not all brothers? Are we not all children of a common evolution? What are we human animals but the more favored members of the great family? Is Senator Banks of Massachusetts further removed in intelligence from the Australian bushman, than the Australian bushman or the Flathead Indian is removed from the ox which Senator Banks orders slew to yield food for his family? Have we a right to take the paltriest life that evolution has given? Is not the butchery of an ox or a chicken murder- nay, fratricide- in the view of absolute justice? Is it not cannibalism of the most repulsive and cowardly sort to prey upon the flesh of our defenseless brother animals, and to sacrifice their lives and rights to an unnatural appetite that has no foundation save in the habit of long ages of barbarian selfishness?"
"I have never thought of these things," said Miss Banks, slowly. "Would you elevate them to the suffrage- I mean the ox and the chicken and the baboon?"
"There speaks the daughter of the senator from Massachusetts," cried Mr. Brown. "No, we would not give them the suffrage- at least, not at present. The right to live and enjoy life is a natural, inalienable right. The right to vote depends upon the conditions of society and individual intelligence. The ox, the chicken, the baboon are not yet prepared for the ballot. But they are voters in embryo; they are struggling up through the same process that our ancestors underwent, and it is a crime, an unnatural, horrible thing, to cut off their career, their future, for the sake of a meal!"
"Those are noble sentiments, I must admit," said Miss Banks, with considerable enthusiasm.
"They are the sentiments of the Mongol-Vegetarian party," said Mr. Brown. "They will carry the country in 1940, and elect the next President of the United States."
"I admire your earnestness," said Miss Banks after a pause, "and I will not grieve you by asking you to bring me even so much as a chicken wing. I do not think I could eat it now, with your words still in my ears. A little fruit is all that I want."
"Once more," said Mr. Brown, taking the tall girl's hand again, "I must request you to consider. The principles, my dearest, that I have already enunciated are the principles of the great mass of our party. They are held even by the respectable, easy-going, not oversensitive voters such as constitute the bulk of every political organization. But there are a few of us who stand on the ground still more advanced. We do not expect to bring the laggards up to our line for years, perhaps in our lifetime. We simply carry the accepted theory to its logical conclusions and calmly await ultimate results."
"And what is your ground, pray?" she inquired. "I cannot see how anything could be more dreadfully radical- that is, more bewildering and generally upsetting at first sight- than the ground which you just took."
"If what I have said is true, and I believe it to be true, then how can we escape including the Vegetable Kingdom in our proclamation of emancipation from man's tyranny? The tree, the plant, even the fungus, have they, not individual life, and have they not also the right to live?"
"But how-"
"And indeed," continued the Chinaman, not noticing the interruption, "who can say where vegetable life ends and animal life begins? Science has tried in vain to draw the boundary line. I hold that to uproot a potato is to destroy an existence certainly, although perhaps remotely akin to ours. To pluck a grape is to maim the living vine, and to drink the juice of that grape is to outrage consanguinity. In this broad, elevated view of the matter, it becomes a duty to refrain from vegetable food. Nothing less than the vital principle itself becomes the test and tie of universal brotherhood. 'All living things are born free and equal, and have a right to exist and the enjoyment of existence.' Is not that a beautiful thought?"
"It is a beautiful thought," said the maiden. "But-I know you will think me dreadfully cold, and practical, and unsympathetic- but how are we to live? Have we no right, too, to existence? Must we starve to death to establish the theoretical right of vegetables not to be eaten?"
"My dear love," said Mr. Brown, "that would be a serious and perplexing question, had not the latest discovery of science already solved it for us."
He took from his waistcoat pocket the small gold box, scarcely larger than a watch, and opened the cover. In the palm of her white hand, he placed one of the little pastilles.
"Eat it," said he. "It will satisfy your hunger."
She put the morsel into her mouth. "I would do as you bade me," she said, "even if it were poison."
"It is not poison," he re-joined. "It is nourishment in the only rational form."
"But it is tasteless; almost without substance."
"Yet it will support life for from eighteen to twenty-five days. This little gold box holds food enough to afford all subsistence to the entire Seventy-sixth Congress for a month."
She took the box and curiously examined its contents.
"And how long would it support my life- for more than a year, perhaps?"
"Yes, for more than ten- more than twenty years."
"I will not bore you with chemical and physiological facts," continued Brown, "but you must know that the food which we take, in whatever form, resolves itself into what is called proximate principles- starch, sugar, oleine, flurin, albumen, and so on. These are selected and assimilated by the organs of the body, and go to build up the necessary tissues. But all these proximate principles, in their turn, are simply combinations of the ultimate chemical elements, chiefly carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. It is upon these elements that we depend for sustenance. By the old plan, we obtained them indirectly. They passed from the earth and the air into the grass; from the grass into the muscular tissues of the ox; and from the beef into our persons, loaded down and encumbered by a mass of useless, irrelevant matter. The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form- here they are in this little box. Now shall mankind go direct to the fountainhead of nature for his ailment; now shall the old roundabout, cumbrous, inhuman method be at an end; now shall the evils of gluttony and the attendant vices cease; now shall the brutal murdering of fellow animals and brother vegetables forever stop- now shall all this be, since the new, holy cause has been consecrated by the lips I love!"
He bent and kissed those lips. Then he suddenly looked up and saw Mr. Smith standing at his elbow.
"You are observed- compromised, I fear," said Mr. Smith, hurriedly. "That Italian dancer in your employ, Miss Banks, has been following you like a hound. I have been paying him the same gracious attention. He has just left the Capitol post haste. I fear there may be a scene."
The brave girl, with clear eyes, gave her Mongolian lover a look worth to him a year of life. "There shall be no scene," she said; "we will go at once to my father, Senator Banks, and bear ourselves the tale which they would carry."
The three left the Capitol without delay. At the head of Pennsylvania Avenue, they entered a great building, lighted up as brilliantly as the Capitol itself. An elevator took them down toward the bowels of the earth. At the fourth landing, they passed from the elevator into a small carriage, luxuriously upholstered. Mr. Smith touched an ivory knob at the end of the conveyance. A man in uniform presented himself at the door.
"To Randall," said Mr. Smith.
CHAPTER 3: THE FROZEN BRIDE
The senator from Massachusetts sat in the library of his mansion on North Street at three o'clock in the morning. An expression of astonishment and rage distorted his pale, cold features. The pen had dropped from his fingers, blotting the last sentences written upon the manuscript of his great speech- for Senator Banks still adhered to the ancient fashion of recording thought. The blotted sentences were these:
"The logic of events compel
s us to acknowledge the political equality of those Asiatic invaders- shall I say, conquerors? - of our Indo-European institutions. But the logic of events is often repugnant to common sense, and its conclusions abhorrent to patriotism and right. The sword has opened for them the way to the ballot box; but, Mr. President, and I say it deliberately, no power under heaven can unlock for these aliens the sacred approaches to our homes and hearts!"
Beside the senator stood Paul, the professional dancer. His face wore a smile of malicious triumph.
"With the Chinaman? Miss Banks- my daughter?" gasped the senator. "I do not believe you. It is a lie."
"Then come to the Capitol, Your Excellency, and see it with your own eyes," said the Italian.
The door was quickly opened and Kiara Banks entered the room, followed by the honorable Mr. Brown and his friend.
"There is no need of making that excursion, Papa," said the girl. "You can see it with your own eyes here and now. Paul, leave the house!"
The senator bowed with forced politeness to Mr. Smith. Of the presence of Mr. Brown, he took not the slightest notice.
Senator Banks attempted to laugh. "This is a pleasantry, Kiara," he said; "a practical jest, designed by yourself and Mr. Smith for my midnight diversion. It is a trifle unseasonable."
"It is no jest," replied his daughter, bravely. She then went up to Mr. Brown and took his hand in hers. "Papa," she said, "this is a gentleman of whom you already know something. He is our equal in station, in intellect, and moral worth. He is in every way worthy of my friendship and your esteem. Will you listen to what he has to say to you? Will you, Papa?"
The senator laughed a short, hard laugh, and turned to Mr. Smith. "I have no communication to make to the member of the lower branch," said he. "Why should he have any communication to make to me?"
Miss Banks put her arm around the waist of the young Chinaman and led him squarely in front of her father. "Because," she said, in a voice as firm and clear as the note of a silver bell "-because I love him."
In recalling Mr. Brown the circumstances of this interview, Mr. Smith said long afterward, "She glowed for a moment like the platinum of your thermo-electrode."
"If the member from California," said Senator Banks, without changing the tone of his voice, and continuing to address himself to Mr. Smith, "has worked upon the sentimentality of this foolish child, that is her misfortune and mine. It cannot be helped now. But if the member from California presumes to hope to profit in the least by his sinister operations, or to enjoy further opportunities for pursuing them, the member from California deceives himself."
So, saying he turned around in his chair and began to write on his great speech.
"I come," said Mr. Brown slowly, now speaking for the first time, "as an honorable man to ask of Senator Banks the hand of his daughter in honorable marriage. Her consent has already been given."
"I have nothing further to say," said the Senator, once more turning his cold face toward Mr. Smith. Then he paused an instant, and added with a sting, "I am told that the member from California is a prophet and apostle of Vegetable Rights. Let him seek a cactus in marriage. He should wed on his level."
Mr. Brown, coloring at the wanton insult, was about to leave the room. A quick sign from Miss Banks arrested him.
"But I have something further to say," she cried with spirit. "Listen, Father; it is this. If Mr. Brown goes out of the house without a word from you- a word such as is due him from you as a gentleman and as my father- I go with him to be his wife before the sun rises!"
"Go if you will, girl," the senator coldly replied. "But first consult with Mr. Smith, who is a lawyer and a gentleman, as to the tenor and effect of the Suspended Animation Act."
Miss Banks looked inquiringly from one face to another. The words had no meaning to her. Her lover turned suddenly pale and clutched at the back of a chair for support. Mr. Smith's cheeks were also white. He stepped quickly forward, holding out his hands as if to avert some dreadful calamity.
"Surely you would not-" he began. "But no! That is an absolute low, inhuman, outrageous enactment that has long been as dead as the partisan fury that prompted it. For a quarter of a century, it has been a dead letter on the statute books."
"I was not aware," said the senator, from between firmly set teeth, "that the act had ever been repealed."
He took from the shelf a volume of statutes and opened the book. "I will read the text," he said. "It will form an appropriate part of the ritual of this marriage." He read as follows:
"Section 7.391 states that no male person of Caucasian descent, of or under the age of 25 years, shall marry, or promise or contract himself in marriage with any female person of Mongolian descent without the full written consent of his male parent or guardian, as provided by law; and no female person, either maid or widow, under the age of 30 years, of Caucasian parentage, shall give, promise, or contract herself in marriage with any male person of Mongolian descent without the full written and registered consent of her male and female parents or guardians, as provided by law. And any marriage obligations so contracted shall be null and void, and the Caucasian so contracting shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to punishment at the discretion of his or her male parent or guardian as provided by law.
"Section 7.392 states that such parents or guardians may, at their discretion and upon application to the authorities of the United States District Court for the district within which the offense is committed, deliver the offending person of Caucasian descent to the designated officers, and require that his or her consciousness, bodily activities, and vital functions be suspended by the frigorific process known as the Werkomer process, for a period equal to that which must elapse before the offending person will arrive at the age of 25 years, if a male, or 30 years, if a female; or for a shorter period at the discretion of the parent or guardian; said shorter period to be fixed in advance."
"What does it mean?" demanded Miss Banks, bewildered by the verbiage of the act, and alarmed by her lover's exclamation of despair.
Mr. Smith shook his head, sadly. "It means," said he, "that the cruel sin of the fathers is to be visited upon the children."
"It means, Kiara," said Mr. Brown with a great effort, "that we must part."
"Understand me, Mr. Smith," said the senator, rising and motioning impatiently with the hand that held the pen, as if to dismiss both the subject and the intruding party. "I do not employ the Suspended Animation Act as a bugaboo to frighten a silly girl out of her lamentable infatuation. As surely as the law stands, so surely will I put it to use."
Miss Banks gave her father a long, steady look which neither Mr. Brown nor Mr. Smith could interpret and then slowly led the way to the parlor. She closed the door and locked it. The clock on the mantel said four.
A complete change had come over the girl's manner. The spirit of defiance, of passionate appeal, of outspoken love, had gone. She was calm now, as cold and self-possessed as the senator himself. "Frozen!" she kept saying under her breath. "He has frozen me already with his frigid heart."
She quickly asked Mr. Smith to explain clearly the force and bearings of the statute which her father had read from the book. When he had done so, she inquired, "Is there not also a law providing for voluntary suspension of animation?"
"The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution," replied the lawyer, "recognizes the right of any individual, not satisfied with the condition of his life, to suspend that life for a time, long or short, according to his pleasure. But it is rarely, as you know, that anyone avails himself of the right- practically never, except as the only means to procure a divorce from uncongenial marriage relations."
"Still," she persisted, "the right exists and the way is open?" He bowed. She went to Mr. Brown and said:
"My darling, it must be so. I must leave you for a time but as your wife. We will arrange a wedding"- and she smiled sadly- "within this hour. Mr. Smith will go with us to the clergyman. Then we will proceed at once to the Refuge,
and you shall lead me to the cloister that is to keep me safe till times are better for us. No, do not be startled, my love! The resolution is taken; you cannot alter it. And it will not be so very long, dear. Once, by accident, in arranging my father's papers, I came across his Life Probabilities, drawn up by the Vital Bureau at Washington. He has less than ten years to live. I never thought to calculate in cold blood on the chances of my father's life, but it must be. In ten years, Jack, you may come to the Refuge again and claim your bride. You will find me as you left me."
With tears streaming down his pale cheeks, Mr. Brown strove to dissuade the Caucasian from her purpose. Hardly less affected, Mr. Smith joined his entreaties and arguments.
"Have you ever seen," he asked, "a woman who has undergone what you propose to undergo? She went into the Refuge, perhaps, as you will go, fresh, rosy, beautiful, full of life and energy. She comes out a prematurely aged, withered, sallow, flaccid body, a living corpse- a skeleton, a ghost of her former self. In spite of all they say, there can be no absolute suspension of animation. An absolute suspension would be death. Even in the case of the most perfect freezing, there is still some activity of the vital functions, and they gnaw and prey upon the existence of the unconscious subject. Will you risk," he suddenly demanded, using the last and most perfect argument that can be addressed to a woman "-will you risk the effect your loss of beauty may have upon Brown's love after ten years' separation?"
Miss Kiara Banks was smiling now. "For my poor beauty," she replied, "I care very little. Yet perhaps even that may be preserved."
She took from the bosom of her dress the little gold box which the Chinaman had given her in the supper room of the Capitol, and hastily swallowed its entire contents.