The Spiral Road

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Title:     The Spiral Road
Author: James Huneker [More Titles by Huneker]

There can be nothing good, as we know it, nor anything evil,
as we know it, in the eye of the Omnipresent and the Omniscient.
--Oriental Proverb.

I

THE STRAND OF DREAMS

"I must see him if only for a minute. I can't go back to the city after coming so far. Please--" but the girl's face disappeared and the rickety door, which had been opened on a chain, was slammed after this imperative speech, and Gerald Shannon found himself staring exasperatedly at its rusty exterior. To have travelled on foot such a distance only to be turned away like a beggar enraged him. Nor was the prospect of returning over the path which had brought him to Karospina's house a cheering one. He turned and saw that a low, creeping mist had obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this remote strand--he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers, the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face Karospina, even if he had to force his way into the house.

Two hours earlier, at the little railway station, they had informed him that the road was easy flatland for the greater part of the way. He had offered money for a horse or even a wheel; but these were luxuries on this bleak, poverty-ridden coast. As there was no alternative, Gerald had walked rapidly since three o'clock. And he had not been told the truth about the road; where the oozing, green, unwholesome waters were not he stepped, sometimes sinking over his ankles in the soft mud. Not a sign of humanity served him for comfort or compass. He had been assured that if he kept his back to the sun he would reach his destination. And he did, but not without many misgivings. It was the vision of a squat tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir, fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings soon repelled him. His reception was the final disenchantment.

He played a lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before him a middle-aged man with a smooth face and closely shaven head, who quietly asked his name and business.

"I have a letter for you, Mr. Karospina--if you are that gentleman--and as I have put myself to much trouble in getting to you, I think I deserve a little consideration."

"A letter, my worthy sir! And for me? Who told you to come here? How do you know my name?" This angered the young man.

"It is from Prince K. The Prince. Now are you satisfied?" he added, as his questioner turned red and then paled as if the news were too startling for his nerves.

"Come in, come in!" he cried. "Mila, Mila, here is a guest. Fetch tea to the laboratory." He literally dragged Shannon within doors and led him across a stone corridor to a large room, but not before he had bolted and barred the entrance to his mysterious fortress. Seeing the other's look of quiet amusement, he laughed himself:--

"Wolves, my dear sir, wolves, human wolves, prowl on the beach at night, and while I have no treasures, it is well to be on the safe side. Mila, Mila, the tea, the tea." There was a passionate intensity in his utterance that attracted Gerald from his survey of the chamber. He saw that in the light Karospina was a much older man than he had at first supposed. But the broad shoulders, the thick chest, and short, powerful figure and bullet head belied his years. Incredulously his visitor asked himself if this were the wonderful, the celebrated Karospina, chemist, revolutionary, mystic, nobleman, and millionnaire. A Russian, he knew that--yet he looked more like the monk one sees depicted on the canvases of the early Flemish painters. His high, wide brow and deep-set, dark eyes proclaimed the thinker; and because of his physique, he might have posed as a prize-fighter.

He took the letter and read it as the door opened and the girl came in with the tea. She wore her hair braided in two big plaits which hung between her shoulders, and her bold, careless glance from eyes sea-blue made the Irishman forget his host and the rigours of the afternoon. A Russian beauty, with bare, plump arms, and dressed in peasant costume; but--a patrician! Her fair skin and blond hair filled him with admiration. What the devil!--he thought, and came near saying it aloud.

"My niece, Princess Mila Georgovics, Mr. Shannon." Gerald acknowledged the introduction with his deepest bow. He was dazzled. He had come to this dreary place to talk politics. But now this was out of the question. And he began explaining to the Princess; Mila he had fancied was some slattern waiting on the old fanatic of a prince. He told Mila this in a few words, and soon the pair laughed and chatted. In the meantime Karospina, who had finished the letter, began to pace the apartment. Apparently he had forgotten the others.

"Tea, tea, where's the tea?" he presently shouted. As they drank, he said: "The prince asks an impossibility, Mr. Shannon. Say to him, no, simply no; he will understand, and so will you, I hope. I'm done with all militant movements. I'm converted to the peace party. What's the use of liberty to people who won't know what to do with it when they get it? Tolstoy is right. Let the peasant be shown how to save his soul--that and a little to eat and drink and a roof are all he needs in this life."

Gerald was startled. He had expected to find an "advanced" leader of the Bakounine type. Instead, a man of the "vegetarian" order,--as he had heard them called,--who talked religion instead of dynamite;--and after all the bother of bringing the letter down to this remote country! Decidedly the princess was more enjoyable than a reformed anarchist. She was gazing at him seriously now, her society manner gone. Her nose, rather large for the harmony of her face, palpitated with eagerness. Evidently, thought Gerald, the young lady is the real revolutionist in this curious household. He also ventured to say so to her, but she did not meet his smiling declaration. Her uncle, irritated by his interrupted discourse, exclaimed:--

"Never mind what the Princess Mila thinks, Mr. Shannon. Women change their minds. The chief matter just now is that you cannot go away to-night. You would lose your way, perhaps be drowned. Can you sleep on a hard bed?" He was assured by Gerald that, if he had been turned away, he would have slept in an outhouse, even under one of those windmills he saw in such number on the strand. Karospina smiled.

"Hardly there--that is, if you expected to awaken." Then he left the room, saying that some one must see to the supper. His niece burst into laughter. Gerald joined in.

"He's always like that, fussy, nervous, but with a heart of gold, Mr.--Mr. Shannon. Thank you. It's an Irish name, is it not? And you look like an Irishman; a soldier, too, I fancy!"

Gerald blushed. "A soldier in the cause of humanity," he answered, "but no longer a hireling in the uniform of kings." He felt so foolish after this brave bit of rhetoric that he kept his eyes on the floor. In an instant she was at his side.

"Give me your hand--comrade!" she said, with a peculiar intonation. "Oh! if you only knew how I longed to meet the right men. Uncle is a convert--no, hardly a backslider; but he swears by the regenerating process instead of violence. Formerly the cleverest living chemist, he now--oh! I shame to say it--he now indulges in firework displays instead of manufacturing bombs with which to execute tyrants." She slowly dropped his hand and her eyes wore a clairvoyant expression. He was astounded.

"Fireworks! Doesn't the prince hold by his old faith--he, a pupil of Bakounine, Netschajew, and Kropotkin?" Just then the prince came in, bearing a tray. He seemed happy.

"Here, sit down, dear sir, and partake of a few things. We live so far from civilization that we seldom get a good chicken. But eggs I can offer you, eggs and ham, cooked by me on an electric machine."

"You have no servants?" Gerald ventured.

"Not one. I can't trust them near my--toys. The princess plays Chopin mazourkas after she makes the beds in the morning, and in the afternoon she is my assistant in the laboratory." Again the young man looked about him. If the room was a laboratory, where were the retorts, the oven, the phials, the jars, the usual apparatus of a modern chemist? He saw nothing, except an old-fashioned electric fan and a few dusty books. The fireworks--were those overgrown wheels and gaunt windmills and gas-house the secret of the prince's self-banishment to this dreary coast? What dreams did he seek to incarnate on this strand, in this queer tower, locked away from the world with a charming princess--a fairy princess whose heart beat with love for the oppressed, in whose hand he might some time see the blazing torch of freedom? He, himself, was enveloped by the hypnotism of the place. Mila spoke:--

"I fear I must leave you. I am studying to-night and--I go early to rest. Pray dine as well as you can, with such a chef." She smiled mischievously at her uncle, courtesied in peasant fashion to the bewildered Gerald, who put out his hand, fain to touch hers, and disappeared. The prince gazed inquiringly at the young man.

"Revolutionists soon become friends, do they not? The Princess Mila is part Russian, part Roumanian,--my sister married a Roumanian,--hence her implacable political attitude. I can't lead her back to civilized thinking. She sees war in the moon, sun, and stars. And I--I have forsworn violence. Ah! if I could only make the prince change. Bakounine's death had no effect; Netschajew's fate did not move him; nor was Illowski's mad attempt to burn down Paris with his incendiary symphony an example to our prince that those who take up the sword perish by the sword. Ah, Tolstoy, dear Leon Nikolaievitch, you showed me the true way to master the world by love and not by hate! Until I read--but there, it's late. Come with me to your room. You may smoke and sleep when you will. In the morning I will show you my--toys." They shook hands formally and parted.

His bed was hard, and his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow, rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to the tower. How weary he was! Hark--some one played the piano! A Chopin mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How lovely her touch!... Mila! What a lovely name! A sleeping princess. A prince with such a sleepy head. How the girl could play ... along the spiral road he saw the music glow in enigmatic figures of fire....

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, Dostoiewsky, 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, Elisee 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 reentered 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.

III

THE FIERY CHARIOT

The young man soon heard of Karospina's project. A week before the event the newspapers began describing the experiments of the new Russian wonder-worker, but treated the matter with calm journalistic obliviousness to any but its most superficial aspects. A scientific pyrotechnist was a novelty, particularly as the experimentings were to be given with the aid of a newly discovered gas. Strange rumours of human levitations, of flying machines seen after dark at unearthly heights, were printed. This millionnaire, who had expended fortunes in trying to accomplish what Maxim and Langley had failed in achieving, was a good peg upon which to hang thrilling gossip. He promised to convince the doubting ones that at last man would come into the empire of the air, and by means of fireworks. In searching carefully all the published reports Gerald was relieved not to encounter the name of Mila.

That celebrated afternoon he found himself, after the distressingly crowded cars, in company with many thousands, all clamouring and jostling on the road to the tower. This time there were vehicles and horses, though not in any degree commensurate with the crowd; but the high tax imposed by the speculators gave him an opportunity of securing a seat with a few others in a carriage drawn by four horses. Gingerly they made their way down the narrow road--time was not gained, for the packed mass of humans refused to separate. Fuming at the delay, he was forced to console himself with smoking and listening to the stories told of Karospina and his miracles. They were exaggerated. Karospina here, Karospina there--the name of this modern magician was hummed everywhere in the brisk October air. A little man who occupied the seat with Shannon informed him that he knew some one who had worked for Karospina. He declared that it was no uncommon sight for the conjurer--he was usually called by that name--to float like a furled flag over his house when the sun had set. Also he had been seen driving in the sky a span of three fiery horses in a fiery chariot across the waters of the bay, while sitting by his side was the star-crowned Woman of the Apocalypse clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. Gerald held his counsel; but the grandeur of the spectacle he had witnessed still shook his soul--if he had not been the victim of a hallucination! The journey seemed endless.

At last the strand came into view with the squat tower, the rusting machinery, and the reservoir back of the house. There were, however, changes in the scene. Within a quarter of a mile of the beach tents were set and booths erected. Seemingly all the city had rushed to this place, and the plain, with its swampy surfaces, was dotted by masses of noisy men and women. Gerald, finding that approach to the house was impossible from the land side, made a wide detour, and on reaching the shore he was gratified to find it empty. The local constabulary, powerless to fight off the mob near the house, had devoted their energies to clearing the space about the gas retorts. After much bother, and only by telling his name, did he pass the police cordon. Once inside, he rushed to the back door and found, oh! great luck--Mila. Dressed in white, to his taste she was angelic. He had great difficulty in keeping his arms pinioned to his side; but his eyes shone with the truth beating at the bars of his bosom, and Mila knew it. He felt this and was light-headed in his happiness.

They greeted. Mila's face wore a serious expression.

"I'm very glad you have come down. I think uncle will be glad also. I am happy to see you again; I have missed you these past weeks. But my happiness is nothing just now, Gerald! [He started.] My uncle, you must speak with him. From brooding so much over the Holy Scriptures, and the natural excitement of his discoveries--they are so extraordinary, dear friend, that he means always to keep them to himself, for he rightly believes that the governments of the world would employ them for wicked purposes, war, the destruction of weaker nations--he has become overwrought. You may not know it, he has a very strong, sane head on his shoulders; but this scheme for lifting up the masses, I suspect, may upset his own equilibrium. And his constant study of the Apocalypse and the Hebraic revelations--it has filled him with strange notions. Understand me: a man who can swim in the air like a fish in the sea is apt to become unstrung. He has begun to identify himself with the prophets. He insists on showing biblical pictures,--worse still, appearing in them himself."

"How 'appearing in them'?" asked Gerald, wonderingly.

"In actual person. I, too, have promised to go with him."

"In a transparency of fire, you mean? Isn't it dangerous?" She hung her head.

"No, in mid air, in a fiery chariot," she murmured.

"The Woman of the Apocalypse!" he cried. "Oh! Princess Mila, dearest Mila Georgovics, promise me that you will not risk such a crazy experiment." Gerald pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples.

"It is no experiment at all," she said, in almost inaudible tones; "last night we flew over the house." He stared at her, his hands trembling, and no longer able to play the incredulous.

"But, dear friend, I fear one other thing; the gas which uncle has discovered is so tenuous that it is a million times lighter than air; but it is ever at a terrible tension--I mean it is dangerous if not carefully treated. Last summer, one afternoon, a valve broke and a large quantity escaped from the reservoir, luckily on the ocean side. It caused a storm and water-spouts, and destroyed a few vessels. The coruscating gas creates a vacuum into which the air rushes with incredible velocity. So promise me that while we are flying you will stay with the police at the gas machines and keep off the crowd. Promise!"

"But I shan't permit you to go up with this renegade to the revolutionary cause--" he began impetuously. She put warning fingers to her lips. In the white flowing robes of an antique priest, Karospina came out to them and took Gerald by the hand. He was abstracted and haggard, and his eyes glared about him. He chanted in a monotone:--

"The time is at hand. Soon you will see the Angels of the Seals. I shall show the multitude Death on the Pale Horse and the vision of Ezekiel. And you shall behold the star called Wormwood, the great star of the third angel, which shall fall like a burning lamp upon the waters and turn them bitter. And at the last you will see the chariot of Elijah caught up to heaven in a fiery whirlwind. In it will be seated the Princess Mila--we, the conquerors of the wicked world."

"Yes, but only as an image, an illusion," ejaculated the unhappy lover, "not in reality."

"As she is," imperiously answered Karospina, and seizing Mila by the arm, said, "Come!" She threw a kiss to Gerald and in her eyes were tears. He saw them and could have wept himself. He followed the sacrificial pair as far as the reservoir, muttering warnings in which were mixed the fates of Phaethon and Simon Magus--that heretic who mimicked the miracles of the apostles.

* * * * *

It was now dark; the order to extinguish all lights on the moor had been obeyed. Only a panting sound as if from a wilderness of frightened animals betrayed the presence of thousands. As long as the sun shone there had been a babel of sound; at the disappearance of our parent planet, a hushed awe had fallen with the night. Gone the rude joking and wrangling, the crying of children, and the shrill laughter of the women. A bitter breeze swept across from the waters, and the stars were mere twinkling points.

Then from the vault of heaven darted a ribbon of emerald fire. It became a luminous spiral when it touched the sea of glass, which was like unto a floor of crystal. This was the sign of Karospina's undertaking, his symbol of the road to moral perfection. Gerald recalled Whistler's pyrotechnical extravaganzas. Following this came a pale moon which emerged from the north; a second, a third, a fourth, started up from the points of the compass, and after wabbling in the wind like gigantic balloons, merged overhead in an indescribable disk which assumed the features of Michael Angelo's Moses. Here is a new technique, indeed, thought Gerald; yet he could not detect its moral values.

A golden landscape was projected on land and sea. A central aisle of waters, paved by the golden rays of a lyric sun high overhead, was embellished on either side by the marmoreal splendours of stately palaces. An ilex inclined its graceful head to its liquid image; men moved the blocks that made famous in the mouth of the world Queen Dido's Carthage. Clouds of pearl-coloured smoke encircled the enchanting picture. And the galleys came and went in this symphonic, glittering spectacle.

"Turner would have died of envy," said Gerald aloud. There was a remarkable vibration of life, not as he had seen it in mechanical bioscopes, but the vivid life of earth and sunshine.

The scenes that succeeded were many: episodes from profane and sacred histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the milky way like the tail of a starry serpent. Followed the opening of the dread prophetic seals; but, after an angel had descended from heaven, his face as the sun and at his feet pillars of fire, the people, prostrate like stalks of corn beaten by a tempest, worshipped in fear. These things were supernatural. The heavens were displaying the glory of God.

Not knowing whether the signs in the skies might be construed as blasphemous, and lost in fathomless admiration for the marvellous power of the wizard, Gerald sought to get closer to Karospina and Mila. But wedged in by uniformed men, and the darkness thick as an Egyptian plague, he despairingly awaited the apotheosis. His eyes were sated by the miracles of harmonies--noiseless harmonies. It was a new art, and one for the peoples of the earth. Never had the hues of the universe been so assembled, grouped, and modulated. And the human eye, adapting itself to the new synthesis of arabesque and rhythm, evoked order and symbolism from these novel chords of colour. There were solemn mountains of opalescent fire which burst and faded into flaming colonnades, and in an enchanting turquoise effervescence became starry spears and scimiters and sparkling shields, and finally the whole mass would reunite and evaporate into brilliant violet auroras or seven-tailed, vermilion-coloured comets. There were gleaming rainbows of unknown tints--strange scales of chromatic pigments; "a fiery snow without wind;" and once a sun, twice the size of our own, fell into the ocean; and Gerald could have sworn that he felt a wave of heated air as if from a furnace; that he heard a seething sound, as if white-hot metal had come in contact with icy water. Consumed by anxiety for Mila's safety, he wished that these soundless girandoles, this apocalypse of architectural fire and weaving flame, would end.

He had not long to wait. A shrewd hissing apprised him that something unusual was about to occur. Like the flight of a great rocket a black object quickly mounted to the zenith. It did not become visible for several seconds; Gerald's nerves crisped with apprehension. The apparition was an incandescent chariot; in it sat Karospina, and beside him--oh! the agony of her lover--Mila Georgovics. As the fiery horses swooped down, he could see her face in a radiant nimbus of meteors, which encircled the equipage. Karospina proudly directed its course over the azure route, and once he passed Gerald at a dangerously low curve earthward, shouting:--

"The Spiral! The Spiral!"

It was his last utterance; possibly through some flaw in the mechanism, the chariot zig-zagged and then drove straight upon the reservoir. To the reverberation of smashed steel and blinding fulguration the big sphere was split open and Mila with Karospina vanished in the nocturnal gulf.

Gerald, stunned by the catastrophe, threw himself down, expecting a mighty explosion; the ebon darkness was appalling after the scintillating rain of fire. But the liberated gas in the guise of an elongated cloud had rushed seaward, and there gathering density and strength, assumed the shape of a terrific funnel, an inky spiral, its gyrating sides streaked with intermittent flashes. Its volcanic roaring and rapid return to land was a signal for vain flight--the miserable lover knew it to be the flamboyant ether of the pyromaniac transformed into a trumpeting tornado. And he hoped that it would not spare him, as this phantasm twirled and ululated in the heavens, a grim portent of the iron wrath of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning multitude. And prone upon the strand between the stormy waters and the field of muddy dead, Gerald Shannon prayed for a second cataclysm which might bring oblivion to him alone.

[The end]
James Huneker's short story: Spiral Road

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