The Diothas, or, A Far Look Ahead/Chapter 33
The usual sequence of a violent storm, the following morning was all that could be desired, combining, as it were, the charms of spring and summer. The change in myself from the grave mood of the preceding night was equally marked. My heart was filled with an unwonted gladness; all seemed colored with the light of an undying spring; for—all-sufficient reason—was I not again, that morning, within a few hours, to see—her? Utis soon perceived and understood my mood, for had he not also been in Arcadia? He quietly made a suggestion on which I was not slow to act. I telephoned an inquiry to Hulmar whether I might breakfast with him.
"Why need you ask?" was the hearty response. "I missed you greatly last evening; and so did, I think, some one else. Be punctual!"
I very narrowly escaped losing a finger that morning; so that Utis, who had observed the occurrence, laughingly put me out of the workshop.
"Busy yourself for an hour or two in the garden," said he, "You will find plenty to do during that time. Then get ready and go. You are not safe in here."
Never had the face of nature seemed to me so lovely as during that morning ride. The very fields from which their golden mantle had been stripped but the preceding day already showed a tender green among the short stub. ble. The multitudinous voice of the song-bird was outvied by the singing within my breast. Yet the storm of the preceding evening had not passed without leaving traces. The active zerdars, under whose care were the roads, had already swept clear the tracks with their machines; but the broken branches piled at intervals by the wayside, and an occasional uprooted tree, already cut into lengths, gave token of the force of the hurricane.
"I knew it was you were coming," said Reva with a bright smile, when I made my appearance at the breakfast-table in company with her father. He had merely requested her to have breakfast for three. I was satisfied that she was pleased at my arrival, and hoped that her prevision of the fact arose from a half-unconscious wish that it might be so.
The meal passed in comparative silence. I was preoccupied with what I had come prepared to say. Reva, for a like reason probably, was unusually distraite.
"Reva," said her father, who had for some time been observing her countenance while she was in a deep revery, "Ziemna was correct in her remark. Your face had just now an expression remarkably similar to that of Ismar. I should hardly have deemed it possible for countenances so dissimilar in feature so greatly to resemble each other in expression. It must arise from some common ancestor in the Diotha line. For you, Ismar," said he, addressing me, "do not at all resemble your father, but greatly the other side of your family."
This remark afforded me an opening of which I at once availed myself. While 1 spoke, the music of the morning concert was not entirely shut off, but only to such an extent as to reach us in subdued tones. It happened, by a strange coincidence, that the music was that of a celebrated drama founded on the story of Metis, and thus served the more appropriately as a background to my narration. The story of my early love for, engagement to, and breach with, Edith Alston, was listened to with absorbed attention. This was especially the case with Reva, to whom the story, now looked forward to for so many hours, was of special personal interest. Was not this the Edith upon whose personality her imagination. had been dwelling since that eventful occasion? As I went on to tell of the strange attraction exercised on me, from the first, by Reva's face, voice, and manner, of my distinct recognition of her, at last, as the exact counterpart of the Edith of my story, Hulmar, too, beginning to see whither all this tended, followed me with eager, almost excited attention. I could well see that he was of my opinion when I finally stated my firm persuasion of the identity of the Reva of the present with the Edith of so long ago.
"I am convinced," was his comment, when I had ended; "and you, Reva?"
"I, too, am convinced," was Reva's reply, uttered in a tone barely audible, almost as if speaking to herself. She then rose, as if about to leave us: it was time for her to go. But taking her stand beside her father, with her hand upon his shoulder, a favorite attitude with her in moments of confidence, she went on, "I must now tell what I have been trying to tell you since it occurred. that moment when Ismar seemed to experience some startling recognition in regard to me, I, too, felt a strange conviction come over me, that we had met in some far-distant past, and had enacted an almost similar scene. I thought at the moment it must be"—Here she hesitated, did not complete her sentence, and saying, "It is full time for me to leave," within a minute could be seen careering down the road.
Mindful of our agreement, I had made no offer to accompany her, having received no sign to that effect. It seemed to me also not at all unlikely that she should desire some leisure for reflection upon what she had heard. Nor was my self-restraint unrewarded. After a good morning's work, Hulmar and I were, in due time, summoned to the dining-room. With inexpressible satisfaction, I marked a sprig of eglantine in the bouquet before my place.
She desired to be taken to see Ialma. It may be imagined that I did not take the shortest route thither, nor was there any protest on the part of Reva against this undue lengthening of the way. Her attention was probably too pre-occupied for her to observe which way we were taking. She wanted to hear again all about Edith, and found question after question to put in regard to her. Having once for all accepted the belief that Edith was her former self, it may easily be imagined how interesting to her was every detail I could impart. Much as I had lengthened our route, she seemed greatly surprised when we had reached our destination.
"How quickly we have come! It seems as if I had dozens of questions yet."
She laughingly rejected, however, my offer to turn back, so as to afford time for those remaining dozens of questions. This was but the first of a series of similar delightful excursions. The conversation was not always on the same topic, yet was most frequently suggested by some new question that had occurred to her since our previous meeting. Round Edith Alston and the former Ismar, as centres, Reva learned to group the varied panorama of the social fabric of the nineteenth century,—so far, that is, as was suitable for her to hear, and me to tell. For her unsullied mind, even that vague impression—the shadow cast by certain forms of evil—was non-existent. Extensive as was her reading, her ignorance of the lonna character had preserved her from even a suspicion of the darkest side of human history.
Nor was the instruction by any means one-sided. I, too, had much to learn,—much of great practical importance in my new surroundings. In Reva I found an efficient informant on all suitable subjects. Much that I could have learned from Utis or Hulmar, I preferred to learn through Reva: it was so delightful for me thus to learn, and—as she told me with charming ingenuousness—for her to teach. What she did not know when asked, she took care, therefore, to learn from her father, who laughingly compared her to a sister giving instruction to a younger brother, and receiving most benefit herself from the task. Though, meanwhile, not a word was uttered by me that she could hesitate to repeat to her father, with whom, I knew, she was wont to rediscuss the topics discussed by us during our ride; though I never so much as touched her hand, except in the customary courtesy of assisting her to mount into or alight from the curricle,—I felt that my suit was progressing favorably; that, unconsciously to herself, the dear girl was beginning to find a pleasure in my society such as she had not found, even in that of the brother she loved so well. I was well content to let matters run their course, knowing that nothing was to be gained by precipitancy.
I have dwelt too long and too fondly, perhaps, on this chapter of my experiences. In the estimation of many, my time would have been better spent in giving some account of the legislative and judicial system of that period, than in entering into so many details regarding a single individual, no matter how charming and accomplished. If I have erred in this respect, I can plead illustrious example. I am not the first, as I shall not be the last, for whom the splendor of a pair of bright eyes has outdazzled all a universe besides.
A more serious reason for this abstinence is founded on the following considerations. No system of government works well beyond the extent to which it represents the average moral and intellectual status of the governed. Laws not originating in the wants, and corresponding to the intelligent conviction, of those legislated for, are generally worse than useless. Enforced not at all, or only in show, they serve only to grant a monopoly of certain acts to the unscrupulous. Now. the system of government prevailing among the contemporaries of Utis and Hulmar presupposed a general moral and intellectual status surpassing that now prevailing, to an even greater degree than their knowledge and control of the forces of nature surpassed ours. The great fault with many of our present institutions is, that they pre-suppose an average citizen much superior in intelligence and public spirit to the really existing average citizen. The machine is too fine for its work. Too many of our laws seem to be the work of wellmeaning phrasolators, who waste much ingenuity in framing laws that will enforce themselves. These are the devices of perpetual-motion cranks. Others, again, are the work of knaves, who throw a sop to an indignant public in an enactment they are well aware will prove worthless before the ingenuity of quibbling lawyers and time-serving judges. These are the devices of traitors.
It was about this time that we made an excursion to the Winter Garden, of which I had previously taken only a cursory view. While going through the extensive palm-house, which covered several acres, we came to a comparatively open space. In the midst stood, raised on a suitable base, a mutilated, weathered fragment of reddish granite. The material, the shape, and especially the almost obliterated hieroglyphics, roused in me a vague suspicion. On inquiry, I found that this fragment—about one-third of the lower part—was indeed all that remained of the famous monolith whose third erection I myself had witnessed. I was strangely affected. I could not refrain from passing my hands over the very hieroglyphics I had examined with so much curiosity so many, many years ago. Then I had regarded it with awe as a venerable stranger, a survival from the time when history. was not. Now I greeted this, the only stone remaining from the New York of so long ago, the sole surviving object upon which certain eyes had once rested,—I greeted it, and it seemed to me as an old familiar friend.
To Hulmar and Reva, when I explained to them whose bright eyes had once looked on this strange-looking bird, whose soft hands had examined its outline, the fragment was no longer of merely historical interest. To them, listening to my account, it was much as if some one could tell us at the present day of having witnessed the erection of this same monolith on its original site, except that the date was twice as remote.
Reva, having first passed her hands, too, over that place, went away to rejoin some companions. Halmar, seated on the lower base of the pedestal, narrated to me the story of the obelisk after my times.
"The government of Nuiore," he began, "as organized at the period when this stone crossed the ocean, was most peculiar. Its utter want of sense, and knowledge of human nature as then existent, is so evident, that the intention of its originators became an enigma to succeeding generations. The most plausible explanation, however, is, that they had no intentions, if by that we mean settled principles of action. A set of incompetent bunglers had drifted into a position in which they were able to do much mischief, and did it. The result may be summed up in a few words. The revenues of one of the wealthiest cities of the world were surrendered as a prey to the organized offscourings of Europe.
"The direct contributors to the revenues were made a powerless minority: the tax-spending majority were reckless in lavishing what seemed to cost them nothing. The régime of aldermen, as the representatives of the proletariat were called, became too onerous, at last, for even the revenues of Nuiore to sustain. The city became bankrupt. The city rulers would fain have imitated the course of certain States of that period, whose only use of a fictitious sovereignty was to commit rascally actions with apparent impunity. The city fathers soon found, however, that the city they dishonored did not possess this doubtful privilege. The revenues passed under the control of receivers. The docks, and large slices of the public parks, were sold to the highest bidder. From being the worst, Nuiore became the best-governed, city in Christendom; for the police no longer granted favors to ruffians on the ground of their being heelers of Mike This or Pat That.
"The city fathers, cut off from their former browsinggrounds, began, on one pretext or another, to nibble away what remained of Central Park. A prosperons Western city made a fair bid for the obelisk. The offer for what they called "the owld sthone" was accepted with alacrity. But their innate love of jobbery must find vent, even in the execution of this little scheme for disposing of what was not theirs to dispose of. The job was intrusted to a contractor willing to share with certain of the committee. He was, as might be expected, a bungler: the obelisk, allowed to fall, broke in three pieces. The Western city refused to accept the pieces, which lay where they had fallen. The upper pieces were finally broken up by a thrifty contractor as macadamizing material. This piece would have shared the same fate, had not the board of aldermen, about that time, been legislated out of existence as an antiquated nuisance. Under the new city government, this fragment was re-erected on its former emplacement, with an inscription to the memory of the public-spirited citizen who had presented it to the city. Finally it was placed here under cover, to preserve it from further injury from the weather."