Bournette watched the child grow and become a mighty hunter; watched him rise to the command of his nomadic tribe; saw depicted the wars that netted to himself and tribal members, mothers for their children. He shuddered in fascinated horror.
Abruptly another form appeared: An impassioned orator, in Roman tunic, was haranguing an excited mob. Words fell from his lips in liquid fire. Bournette found himself on feet, wildly cheering what the orator—his kinsman—said.
Then he fell back into his leathern chair.
THROUGHOUT the night scenes reeled before him, not in sequence, but snatched here and there, out of forgotten history—out of the secret lives of his progenitors. He sat enthralled, experiencing the gamut of human emotions.
The fire in the grate burned low. He rose and replenished its fuel, then took his seat again.
"You have not shown me my immediate forbears," he pointed out when the night was nearly done.
"Your parents, you mean?"
"Precisely— parents, grandparents, great grandparents. Let me look upon some faces I would recognize."
"And some that you would not. It were wise that you see no further."
"I would see it all," Bournette insisted.
"Yet . . . your parents. It were best to forego seeing them."
"You imply?"
"Nothing."
"Then proceed with the pictures. But before you do—Who are you, anyway?"
His visitor regarded him intently, fully a minute, before he answered. Then he said:
"I am the one you have summoned to your presence. I am the one come to wreck your house upon the sands. The lives of others are their own and woe unto him who seeks to wrest from them their secrets. Behold! . . . The price you pay for transcending the bounds of material self."
He turned and flung on the wall a picture of two strange people.
"Your parents; their meeting; their wooing; their marriage; the child that was born to them.
"Yourself; your early life; the adoration of your father and mother; their poverty: Starvation. It threatens to lay hand upon you:
"The sacrifice! You are taken away and given to another: History ever repeats itself, with variations.
"Your foster parents, whom you always thought your own."
Bournette sprang to his feet and closed his eyes in agony, "My God! My God! It can't be true!"
The other laughed with ironic fiendishness.
"But my parents! Where are they? Do they live? Their names? Can I find them? Share with them my wealth?" His hands groped for support, as he reeled against the table beside which he had been sitting throughout the night.
And his visitor mocked him: "I told thee thou couldst not ask of the future."
Silence came down as a pall. Some way Bournette knew it was the end. He opened his eyes. Of the visitor, or his camera, there was not a sign.
One hand, still upon the table, touched a leathern-bound volume, viewed with so much pride the night before. He picked up the book and riffled its leaves. Then he tossed it into the fire and staggered from the room.
True Courage
When the American army was at Valley Forge, in the
winter of 1777, a captain of the Virginian line refused
a challenge sent him by a brother officer, alleging that his
life was devoted to the service of his country, and that he
did not think it a point of duty to risk it, to gratify the
caprice of any man. His antagonist gave him the character
of a coward throughout the whole army. Conscious of not
having merited the aspersion, and discovering the injury he
should sustain in the mind of those acquainted with him,
he repaired one evening to a general meeting of the officers
of that line. On his entrance he was avoided by the company,
and the officer who had challenged him insolently ordered
him to leave the room, a request which was loudly re-echoed
from all parts. He refused, and asserted that he came there
to vindicate his fame; and, after mentioning the reasons
which induced him not to accept the challenge, he applied a
large hand-grenade to the candle, and when the fusee had
caught fire, threw it on the floor, saying, "Here gentlemen,
this will quickly determine which of us all dare brave danger
most." At first, they stared upon him for a moment in
stupid astonishment, but their eyes soon fell upon the fusee of the grenade, which was fast burning down. Away scampered colonel, general, ensign, and all made a rush at the door simultaneously and confused. Some fell, and others made their way over the bodies of their comrades; some succeeded in getting out, but for an instant there was a general heap of flesh sprawling at the entrance of the apartment. Here was a colonel jostling with a subaltern, and there fat generals pressing lean lieutenants into the boards, and blustering majors and squeaking ensigns wrestling for exit; the size of the one and the feebleness of the other making their chance of departure pretty equal, until time, which does all things at last, cleared the room, and left the captain standing over the grenade with his arms folded, and his countenance expressing every kind of scorn and contempt for the train of scrambling redcoats, as they toiled and bustled, and bored their way out at the door. After the explosion had taken place, some of them ventured to return, to take a peep at the mangled remains of their comrade, whom, however, to their great surprise, they found alive and uninjured. When they were all gone, the captain threw himself flat on the floor, as the only possible means of escape, and fortunately came off with a whole skin and a repaired reputation.
