Lord of the World (Dystopian Novel). Robert Hugh Benson

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      “There’s a little more news from the East. They say Felsenburgh’s running the whole thing now. The Empire is sending him everywhere — Tobolsk, Benares, Yakutsk — everywhere; and he’s been to Australia.”

      Mabel sat up briskly.

      “Isn’t that very hopeful?”

      “I suppose so. There’s no doubt that the Sufis are winning; but for how long is another question. Besides, the troops don’t disperse.”

      “And Europe?”

      “Europe is arming as fast as possible. I hear we are to meet the Powers next week at Paris. I must go.”

      “Your arm, my dear?”

      “My arm must get well. It will have to go with me, anyhow.”

      “Tell me some more.”

      “There is no more. But it is just as certain as it can be that this is the crisis. If the East can be persuaded to hold its hand now, it will never be likely to raise it again. It will mean free trade all over the world, I suppose, and all that kind of thing. But if not —— ”

      “Well?”

      “If not, there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even imagined. The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West will be simply wiped out. These new Benninschein explosives will make certain of that.”

      “But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them?”

      “Absolutely. Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West; then he died, luckily for him.”

      Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply refused to grasp it. A duel of East and West under these new conditions was an unthinkable thing. There had been no European war within living memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old conditions. Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed with a single shell. The new conditions were unimaginable. Military experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no precedents with which to compare it. It was as if archers disputed as to the results of cordite. Only one thing was certain — that the East had every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be drawn from these prémisses was not reassuring to England.

      But imagination simply refused to speak. The daily papers had a short, careful leading article every day, founded upon the scraps of news that stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world; Felsenburgh’s name appeared more frequently than ever: otherwise there seemed to be a kind of hush. Nothing suffered very much; trade went on; European stocks were not appreciably lower than usual; men still built houses, married wives, begat sons and daughters, did their business and went to the theatre, for the mere reason that there was no good in anything else. They could neither save nor precipitate the situation; it was on too large a scale. Occasionally people went mad — people who had succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of reality could be obtained; and there was a diffused atmosphere of tenseness. But that was all. Not many speeches were made on the subject; it had been found inadvisable. After all, there was nothing to do but to wait.

      III

      Mabel remembered her husband’s advice to watch, and for a few days did her best. But there was nothing that alarmed her. The old lady was a little quiet, perhaps, but went about her minute affairs as usual. She asked the girl to read to her sometimes, and listened unblenching to whatever was offered her; she attended in the kitchen daily, organised varieties of food, and appeared interested in all that concerned her son. She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down the little path towards the junction. He would be gone three days, he said.

      It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel, running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her rather flushed and agitated in her chair.

      “It is nothing, my dear,” said the old lady tremulously; and she added the description of a symptom or two.

      Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.

      She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her presence in the house a quiet sort of delight. The effect of her upon the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body. The old lady was so tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of Life which informed the world. She found less difficulty in contemplating the end of a vigorous soul, for in that case she imagined a kind of energetic rush of force back into the origin of things; but in this peaceful old lady there was so little energy; her whole point, so to speak, lay in the delicate little fabric of personality, built out of fragile things into an entity far more significant than the sum of its component parts: the death of a flower, reflected Mabel, is sadder than the death of a lion; the breaking of a piece of china more irreparable than the ruin of a palace.

      “It is syncope,” said the doctor when he came in. “She may die at any time; she may live ten years.”

      “There is no need to telegraph for Mr. Brand?”

      He made a little deprecating movement with his hands.

      “It is not certain that she will die — it is not imminent?” she asked.

      “No, no; she may live ten years, I said.”

      He added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector, and went away.

      The old lady was lying quietly in bed, when the girl went up, and put out a wrinkled hand.

      “Well, my dear?” she asked.

      “It is just a little weakness, mother. You must lie quiet and do nothing. Shall I read to you?”

      “No, my dear; I will think a little.”

      It was no part of Mabel’s idea to duty to tell her that she was in danger, for there was no past to set straight, no Judge to be confronted. Death was an ending, not a beginning. It was a peaceful Gospel; at least, it became peaceful as soon as the end had come.

      So the girl went downstairs once more, with a quiet little ache at her heart that refused to be still.

      What a strange and beautiful thing death was, she told herself — this resolution of a chord that had hung suspended for thirty, fifty or seventy years — back again into the stillness of the huge Instrument that was all in all to itself. Those same notes would be struck again, were being struck again even now all over the world, though with an infinite delicacy of difference in the touch; but that particular emotion was gone: it was foolish to think that it was sounding eternally elsewhere, for there was no elsewhere. She, too, herself would cease one day, let her see to it that the tone was pure and lovely.

      Mr. Phillips arrived the next morning as usual, just as Mabel had left the old lady’s room, and asked news of her.

      “She is a little better, I think,” СКАЧАТЬ