CHAPTER VII.
THE FIDELITY OF JOHN LAX.
That morning, while I was in my private laboratory, idly turning over certain Notes on experiments conducted for the artificial manufacture of food, I was interrupted by a knock at the door.
My visitor was the Porter of the House of Life, our most trusted servant, John Lax. His duty it was to sleep in the House—his chamber being that ancient room over the South Porch—to inspect the furnaces and laboratories after the work of the day was closed, and at all times to keep an eye upon the Fabric itself, so that it should in no way fall out of repair. His orders were also to kill any strangers who might try to force their way into the House on any pretence whatever.
He was a stout, sturdy fellow, vigorous and strong, though the Great Discovery had found him nearly forty years of age; his hair, though it had gone bald on the top, was still thick on the sides, and gave him a terrifying appearance under his cap of scarlet and gold. He carried a great halberd as a wand of office, and his coat and cap matched each other for color and for gold embroidery. Save as representing the authority of the House and College, I would never have allowed such a splendid appearance to any one.
"What have you come to tell me, John?" I asked.
I may explain that I had always found John Lax useful in keeping me informed as to the internal condition of the College and its Assistants—what was said and debated—what opinions were advanced, by what men, and so forth.
"In the College itself. Suffragan," he said, "and in the House, things are mighty dull and quiet. Blessed if a little Discontent or a Mutiny, or something, wouldn't be worth having, just to shake up the lot. There's not even a grumbler left. A little rising and a few heads broken, and we should settle down again, quiet and contented again."
"Don't talk like a fool, John."
"Well, Suffragan, you like to hear all that goes on. I wonder what you'll say to what I'm going to tell you now?"
"Go on, John. What is it?"
"It's irregular, Suffragan, but your Honor is above the Law; and, before beginning a long story—mind you, a most important story it is—"
"What is it about? Who's in it?"
"Lots of the People are in it. They don't count. He's in it now—come!"
"He?"
John Lax had pointed over his shoulder so clearly in the direction of the Arch Physician's residence that I could not but understand. Yet I pretended.
"He, John? Who is he?"
"The Arch Physician is in it. There! Now, Suffragan, bring out that bottle and a glass, and I can then tell you the story, without fear of ill consequences to my throat that was once delicate."
I gave him the bottle and a glass, and, after drinking a tumblerful of whiskey (forbidden to the People) he began.
Certain reasons, he said, had made him suspicious as to what went on at night in the Museum during the last few weeks. The lights were up until late at night. Once he tried the doors, and found that they were locked. He heard the playing of music within, and the sound of many voices.
Now, there is, as I told John Lax at this point, no law against the assemblage of the People, nor against their sitting up, or singing and playing together. I had, to be sure, hoped that they had long ceased to desire to meet together, and had quite forgotten how to make music.
He remembered, John Lax went on to say, that there was a door leading into the Picture Gallery from the College Garden—a door of which he held the key.
He opened this door quietly, and then, night after night, he crept into the Picture Gallery, and watched what went on through the door, which opened upon the Museum. He had found, in fact, a place close by the door, where, hidden behind a group of statuary, he could watch and listen in almost perfect security.
I then heard, to my amazement, how a small company of the People were every night carrying on a revival of the Past; not with the laudable intention of disgusting themselves with the horrors of that time, but exactly the contrary. It was only the pleasant side of that time—the evening life of the rich and careless—which these foolish persons reproduced.
They had, in fact, gone so far, John Lax told me, as to fall in love with that time, to deride the Present, and to pour abuse upon my name—mine—as the supposed chief author of the Social Equality. This was very well for a beginning. This was a startling awakener out of a Fool's Paradise. True, the company was small; they might be easily dispersed or isolated; means might be found to terrify them into submission. Yet it gave me a rude shock.
"I've had my suspicions," John Lax continued, "ever since one morning when I looked into the Museum and see that young gal dressed up and carrying on before the looking-glass, more like—well, more like an actress at the Pav, as they used to make 'em, than like a decent woman. But now there's more." He stopped and whispered, hoarsely, "Suffragan, I've just come from a little turn about the Garden. Outside the Picture Gallery, where there's a bit o' turf and a lot of trees all standin' around, there's a very curious sight to see this minute; and if you'll get up and go along o' me, Suffragan, you'll be pleased—you will, indeed—astonished and pleased you will be."
I obeyed. I arose and followed this zealous servant. He led me to a part of the Garden which I did not know; it was the place of which I have spoken. Here, amid a great thick growth of underwood, he took me into the ruins of an old garden or tool-house, built of wood, but the planks were decaying and were starting apart.
"Stand there, and look and listen," whispered John Lax, grinning.
The open planks commanded a view of a semicircular lawn, where the neglected grass had grown thick and rank. Almost under my eyes there was sitting upon a fallen trunk a woman, fantastically dressed—against the Rules—and at her feet lay none other than the Arch Physician himself! Then, indeed, I pricked up my ears and listened with all my might.
"Are we dreaming, Mildred?" he murmured. "Are we dreaming?"
"No, Harry; we have all been dreaming for a long, long time—never mind how long. Just now we are not dreaming, we are truly awake. You are my old playfellow, and I am your old sweetheart," she said, with a little blush. "Tell me what you are doing—always in your laboratory. I suppose, always finding some new secrets. Does it make you any happier, Harry, to be always finding something new?"
"It is the only thing that makes life endurable—to discover the secrets of Nature. For what other purpose do we live?"
"Then, Harry, for what purpose do the rest of us live, who do not investigate those secrets? Can women be happy in no other way? We do not prosecute any kind of research, you know."
"Happy? Are we in the Present or the Past, Mildred?"
He looked about him, as if expecting to see the figures of the Pictures in the Gallery walking about upon the grass.
"Just now, Harry, we are in the Past. We are back—we two together—in the glorious and beautiful Past, where everything was delightful. Outside this place there is the horrible Present. You have made the Present for us, and therefore you ought to know what it is. Let me look at you, Harry. Why, the old look is coming back to your eyes. Take off that black gown, Harry, and throw it away, while you are with me. So. You are now my old friend again, and we can talk. You are no longer the President of the Holy College, the terrible and venerable Arch Physician, the Guardian of the House of Life. You are plain Harry Linister again. Tell me, then, Harry, are you happy in this beautiful Present that you have made?"
"No, Mildred; I am never happy."
"Then why not unmake the Present? Why not return to the Past?"
"It is impossible. "We might go back to the Past for a little; but it would become intolerable again, as it did before. Formerly there was no time for any of the fleeting things of life to lose their rapture. All things were enjoyed for a moment, and then vanished. Now"—he sighed wearily—"they last—they last. So that there is nothing left for us but the finding of new secrets. And for you, Mildred?"
"I have been in a dream," she replied. "Oh, a long, long nightmare, that has never left me, day or night. I don't know how long it has lasted. But it has lifted at last, thank God!"
The Arch Physician started and looked astonished.
"It seems a long time," he said, "since I heard those words. I thought we had forgotten—"
"It was a dream of no change, day after day. Nothing happened. In the morning we worked; in the afternoon we rested; in the evening we took food; at night we slept. And the mind was dead. There were no books to read; there was nothing to talk about; there was nothing to hope. Always the same work—a piece of work that nobody cared to do—a mechanical piece of work. Always the same dress—the same hideous, horrible dress. We were all alike; there was nothing at all to distinguish us. The Past seemed forgotten."
"Nothing can be ever forgotten," said Dr. Linister; "but it may be put away for a time."
"Oh, when I think of all that we had forgotten, it seems terrible! Yet we lived—how could we live?—it was not life. No thought, no care, about anything. Every one centred in himself, careless of his neighbor. Why, I did not know so much as the occupants of the rooms next to my own. Men looked on women, and women on men, without thought or emotion. Love was dead—Life was Death? Harry, it was a most dreadful dream. And in the night there used to come a terrible nightmare of nothingness! It was as if I floated alone in ether, far from the world or life, and could find nothing—nothing—for the mind to grasp or think of. And I woke at the point of madness. A dreadful dream! And yet we lived. Rather than go back to that most terrible dream, I would—I would—"
She clasped her forehead with her hand and looked about her with haggard eyes.
"Yes, yes," said Dr. Linister; "I ought to have guessed your sufferings—by my own. Yet I have had my laboratory."
"Then I was shaken out of the dream by a girl—by Christine. And now we are resolved—some of us—at all costs and hazards—yes, even if we are debarred from the Great Discovery—to—live—again—to live—again!" she repeated, slowly. "Do you know, Harry, what that means? To go back—to live again! Only think what that means."
He was silent.
"Have you forgotten, Harry," she asked, softly, "what that means?"
"No," he said. "I remember everything; but I am trying to understand. The accursed Present is around and above me, like a horrible black Fog. How can we lift it? How can we live again?"
"Some of us have found out a way. In the morning we put on the odious uniform, and do our allotted task among the poor wretches who are still in that bad dream of never-ending monotony. We sit among them, silent ourselves, trying to disguise the new light that has come back to our eyes, in the Public Hall. In the evening we come here, put on the old dresses, and live the old life."
"It is wonderful," he said. "I knew all along that human nature would one day assert itself again. I told Grout so. He has always been quite wrong!"
"Grout! What does Grout know of civilized life? Grout! Why, he was your own bottle-washer—a common servant. He thought it was justice to reduce everybody to his own level, and happiness for them to remain there! Grout! Why, he has only one idea—to make us mere machines. Oh, Harry!" she said, reproach in her eyes, "you are Arch Physician, and you cannot alter things!"
"No; I have the majority of the College against me."
"Am I looking well, Harry, after all these years?"
She suddenly changed her voice and manner and laughed, and turned her face to meet his. Witch! Abominable Witch!
"Well, Mildred, was it yesterday that I loved you? Was the Great Discovery made only yesterday? Oh, you look lovelier than ever!"
"Lovely means worthy of love, Harry. But you have killed love."
"No, no. Love died. We did not kill love. Why did the men cease to love the women? Was it that they saw them every day, and so grew tired of them?"
"Perhaps it was because you took from us the things that might have kept love alive; music, art, literature, grace, culture, society—everything."
"We did not take them. They died."
"And then you dressed us all alike, in the most hideous costume ever invented."
"It was Grout's dress."
"What is the good of being Arch Physician if one cannot have his own way?"
Harry sighed.
"My place is in the laboratory," he said. "I experiment, and I discover. The Suffragan administers. It has always been the rule. Yet you live again, Mildred. Tell me more. I do not understand how you contrive to live again."
"We have a little company of twenty or thirty, who meet together in the evening after the dinner is over. No one else ever comes to the Museum. As soon as it is dark, you know very well, the People all creep home and go to bed; but my friends come here. It was Christine who began it. She found or made the dresses for us; she beguiled us into forgetting the Present and going back to the Past. Now we have succeeded in caring nothing at all about the Present. We began by pretending. It is no longer pretence. The Past lives again, and we hate the Present. Oh, we hate and loathe it!"
"Yes, yes. But how do you revive the Past?"
"We have dances. You used to dance very well formerly, my dear Harry. That was before you walked every day in a grand Procession, and took the highest place in the Public Hall. I wonder if you could dance again? Nature's secrets are not so heavy that they would clog your feet, are they? We sing and play: the old music has been found, and we are beginning to play it properly again. We talk; we act little drawing-room plays; sometimes we draw or paint; and—oh, Harry!—the men have begun again to make Love—real, ardent Love! All the dear old passions are reviving. We are always finding other poor creatures like ourselves, who were once ladies and gentlemen, and now are aimless and soulless; and we recruit them."
"What will Grout say when he finds it out?"
"He can never make us go back to the Present again. So far, I defy Grout, Harry."
The Arch Physician sighed.
"The old life!" he said; "the old life! I will confess, Mildred, that I have never forgotten it—not for a day; and I have never ceased to regret that it was not continued."
"Grout pulled it to pieces; but we will revive it."
"If it could be revived; but that is impossible."
"Nothing is impossible to you—nothing—to you. Consider, Harry," she whispered. "You have the Secret."
He started and changed color.
"Yes, yes," he said; "but what then?"
"Come and see the old life revived. Come this evening; come, dear Harry." She laid a hand upon his arm. "Come, for auld lang syne. Can the old emotions revive again, even in the breast of the Arch Physician?"
His eyes met hers. He trembled—a sure sign that the old spirit was reviving in him. Then he spoke in a kind of murmur:
"I have been living alone so long—so long—that I thought there was nothing left but solitude forever. Grout likes it. He will have it that loneliness belongs to the Higher Life."
"Come to us," she replied, her hand still on his arm, her eyes turned so as to look into his. Ah, shameless Witch! "We are not lonely; we talk; we exchange looks and smiles. We have begun again to practise the old arts; we have begun to read in each other's souls. Old thoughts that we had long forgotten are pouring back into our minds; it is strange to find them there again. Come, Harry; forget the laboratory for a while, and come with us; but come without Grout. The mere aspect of Grout would cause all our innocent joys to take flight and vanish. Come! Be no more the Sacred Head of the Holy College, but my dear old friend and companion, Harry Linister, who might have been but for the Great Discovery—but that is foolish. Come, Harry; come this evening."