CHAPTER XXVI. SENTENCE OF DEATH.

AT ten o’clock on the following morning the great temple of Aeria was filled by a congregation of men and matrons who had been summoned together to hear what may, without exaggeration, be described as the death-sentence of the world and the funeral oration of the human race.

As had been previously decided by the President and Council, only the heads of families were present. Of these, some had but just welcomed their first-born into the world, while others, standing almost on the brink of the grave, could see their children of the fourth generation growing up from infancy to youth.

When the President commenced his address by reading in solemnly impressive tones the prophecy of Natas, those present knew instinctively what they had been called together to hear. The possibility of the world being overwhelmed by some tremendous catastrophe in the fifth generation from the year of the Peace was no new or unawaited prospect to the Aerians.

Therefore there was no panic, no sudden outburst of sorrow or dismay, among the grave, earnest congregation assembled in the temple when the President, having read the prophecy, went on to say—

“It is now my solemn duty as Chief Magistrate of Aeria to tell you, the heads of the families of our race, that, in the[304] mysterious workings of destiny, which we can only accept with reverence and resignation, the time has come for us to prepare to meet, with the fortitude worthy of our position among the races of mankind, the doom which is as inevitable as it is universal. The confirmation of the prophecy of Natas has come to us across the abysses of space from one of those sister worlds which, as the Master said, should see with fear and trembling the passing of the messenger of Fate.

“On the night of Tuesday last, Vassilis Cosmo received from the planet Mars a photogrammic message, the transcription of which into our language reads thus—

    ‘A cometary body, primarily formed by the meeting of two extinguished astral spheres at 10 hrs. 38 min. 42 sec. on the night of the 13th of October, in the year 1920, terrestrial reckoning, will cross the orbit of the earth at 11 hrs. 55 min. 22 sec. on the night of the 23rd of September next, time corrected to the meridian of Aeria.

    ‘At this hour the earth will arrive at the point of intersection, and will pass obliquely through the central portion or nucleus of the body. This portion is composed of incandescent metallic gases interspersed with semi-fluid masses, which on contact with the earth’s atmosphere will probably be vaporised.

    ‘The constituents of the incandescent nucleus are iron, gold, tellurium, chromium, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, with smaller quantities of many other substances which spectrum analysis will disclose to you on the appearance of the comet which will become visible from Aeria at 8 hrs. 13 min. P.M. on the 15th of July, when its right ascension will be 15 hrs. 24 min. 17 sec, and its declination north 10 deg. 42 min. 17 sec. Here follow the detailed calculations upon which the foregoing conclusions are based.’

“With these calculations,” continued the President, “this is neither the time nor the place to deal, for I know that all here will be satisfied when I say that for the last three days they have been submitted to the critical examination of our best astronomers and mathematicians, and that not the slightest flaw has been found in them.

“This being so, the only course left open to us as reasonable beings is to prepare to look the inevitable in the face, and to play our part in the closing scene of the life-drama of humanity as men and women who believe that the life we are living here is but a stage on our journey through infinity, and that the fiery sign which will soon appear in the heavens will[305] be to us but a beacon light on the ultimate shore of Time casting a guiding ray over the ocean of Eternity.”

He paused for a moment and looked down upon the hushed throng at his feet. The instantaneous silence was broken by a long, low, inarticulate murmur. Thousands of pale faces were upturned towards him, from thousands of eyes there came one appealing upward glance, and then every head in the great assembly was bowed in silence and resignation.

The death-sentence had been passed. There was no appeal from it, and there was no rebellion against it. The voice of Fate had spoken, and it was not for such men as the Aerians to sacrifice their reason or their dignity by cavilling at it.

The President bent his head with the rest, and for several moments there was silence throughout the vast area of the temple. Then he took up from the desk in front of the rostrum the four sheets of parchment which contained the last message and commands of Natas, and read them out to the assembly.

The perusal was listened to in breathless silence. It was like his voice speaking across the generations from the urn containing his ashes and standing there in their midst. When the President had finished, he laid the sheets down again and said—

“Thus the eye of the Master, looking across the years which separated his day from ours, has seen one gleam of light, one ray of hope piercing the black pall of desolation which is about to fall upon the world, and it is for us to follow where he has pointed the way.

“I have now discharged the first part of the solemn and terrible duty which has devolved upon me. It is now for you to communicate the tidings you have heard to your families, a task which, however awful it may be for loving parents to be charged with, you will yet find strength to perform, even as your children shall find strength to hear their inevitable doom from those lips which will best know how to soften the tidings of death to them.

“When you have done this we will set about making the[306] choice of those who, if it shall please the Master of Destiny, shall be the Children of Deliverance and the parents of the new race that shall repeople the earth when cosmos once more succeeds to chaos.

“If that shall be permitted, then we, who shall never see the new world, may yet go down to the grave knowing that we shall live again in our children, for these will be the children, not only of a few families among us, but sons and daughters of Aeria, the most perfect flower of our race, and in them, if we choose them wisely, the world, purged by fire of the dross of human wickedness, will find a new destiny, and the Golden Age shall return to earth once more.”

As the President finished speaking, he held up his hands as though in blessing, and once more every head was bent. Then the great doors of the temple swung open, the assembly divided into four streams, and passed silently as a congregation of shadows out of the building.

That night the story of the world’s approaching doom was told in every home in Aeria. Children on the threshold of youth learnt that for them youth would never come; youths and maidens on the verge of manhood and womanhood learnt that the bright promise of their lives could now never be fulfilled; and lovers just about to join hands for life saw the grave opening at their feet, and parting them in their earthly personalities for ever. That they would meet again upon a higher plane of existence was the first and most firmly held article of their faith, but so far as the affairs of this world were concerned the end was in sight.

In a less highly developed, a less perfectly organised, state of society, the almost immediate result would have been the end of all control, and the dissolution of all but the most elementary bonds of interest or affection that exist between men and men.

But in Aeria this was not possible. The firm belief, ingrained into the very being of all who had reached the age of thought, that where men left off here, whether in good or evil, they would begin their lives again hereafter, precluded[307] even the thought of such a lapse into social anarchy and individual sin.

For, happily for them, the union of true religion with true philosophy had now been accomplished in a national faith, and the result was that even the terrors of the universal end which was so near failed to shake the fortitude that was founded on a basis firmer than that of the world itself.

Though every home in the valley had its tragedy that night, a tragedy too sacred in its unspeakable solemnity for any mere words to describe it, when the next morning came the first bitterness of death had already passed.

Saving only the little children, who, too young to understand, laughed and played and sang in the sunlight as usual, in happy unconsciousness of their coming fate, the dwellers in Aeria rose with the next sunrise from their sleepless couches and went about their daily associations much as they had done the day before.

They did so rather as a matter of routine and discipline than of necessity, for now nothing more was necessary on earth. They had ample supplies of food to last them beyond the time when they would have no more need of it. It was of no use to dress the gardens and vineyards, or to till the fields that would be blasted into wildernesses before the harvest could be reaped.

There was no need to pursue further the triumphs of creative art and science which had transfigured Aeria into a paradise and a fairyland, for in a few weeks all these would be crumbled to dust with their own sepulchres—and yet they took up the work that lay nearest to their hands and went on with it as though they believed that there were still ages of life before humanity, and that the empire of Aeria was to endure for ever.

They knew that in work only lay the refuge from the torment of apprehension which might in the end drive even their highly disciplined minds into the delirium of despair and transform their orderly paradise into a pandemonium of anarchy and terror.

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As soon as the first shock of inevitable horror had passed, as it did during that first terrible night when the death-sentence went from lip to lip throughout the land, their proud spirits rose superior to their physical fears and conquered them, and they resolved that, until the fatal hour came, nothing short of the dissolution of the world should put an end to social order in Aeria.

They were the royal race of earth, and when death came they would meet it crowned and sceptred in the gates of their palaces, and die as men who had solved the secret of life and death and so had no fear.

With the war that was raging beyond their borders they had now no personal concern. The quarrels of men and nations were as the bickerings of children in the presence of the fate that would so soon involve the world in ruin. And yet the rulers of Aeria were not willing that this fate should overtake their fellow-men in the delirium of blood-drunkenness.

They recognised that their duty to the nations bade them send the warning of the world’s approaching fate far and wide through the earth and call for the cessation of strife, so that humanity might set its house in order and prepare to meet its end.

Whether the warning would be received or not was another matter. It was possible that both the Tsarina and the Sultan would laugh it to scorn, and pursue their path of now certain conquest through carnage and devastation to the end. That, however, was their concern.

As soon as the Council decided to despatch an envoy to summon the warring nations to cease their strife for the now more than ever worthless prizes of earthly empire, and to prepare for the cataclysm which would so soon dissolve all empires and kingdoms to nothing in the fiery crucible of the coming chaos, Alan at once renewed his petition and asked to be allowed to man the Avenger with a crew of volunteers and convey the warning to the Sultan and the Tsarina.

Since his second return to Aeria no word of love had passed between him and Alma. He was still too proud to become a[309] suitor even to her, knowing as he did that she had looked upon him as polluted by his involuntary relations with Olga. As before, they had met as friends whose friendship was warmed by the memory of an early but bygone love.

They had talked calmly and dispassionately of the coming end of earthly things, but neither of them had let fall any hint of a desire to meet it hand and hand with the other. His lips were sealed by the pride and anger of humiliation and hers by a spiritual exaltation which in the presence of approaching death raised her above the consideration of earthly love to the contemplation of even more solemn and holier things.

Then there happened an entirely unexpected event, which completely changed their relationship in an instant. On the third day after the delivery of the message in the temple a company composed of twenty old men, the heads of the noblest families in Aeria, presented to the President in Council, a petition, signed by every father and mother in the nation, praying that all in whose veins flowed the blood of Natas, Richard Arnold, and Alan Tremayne should, irrespective of all other considerations, be included among those who were destined to seek in the caverns of Mount Austral the one chance of escape from the universal doom.

So obvious and so weighty were the reasons advanced in support of the petition that when, like all other matters of State, it was put to the vote of the Council, the only dissentient voices were those of the President and the Vice-President.

The immediate effect of this decision—from which, by the laws of Aeria, there was no appeal—was that Alma, Isma, and Alan were exempted from the ordeal of selection and numbered beforehand among the Children of Deliverance.

The President took upon himself the duty of communicating this decision to those whom it so deeply concerned. He told Alan first, and this was the half-expected reply that he received—

“No, father, I have never disobeyed you or the Council, as you know, but I tell you now frankly that I will not take[310] advantage of what is after all only the accident of birth to save my life in such a crisis as this.

“Not only are there thousands of others in Aeria as good as I am, but I have already told you that, save under one condition, which you know as well as I do can never be realised, I have not the slightest desire to survive the ruin of the world. You may call this disobedience, rebellion, if you will, but it is my last resolve, and in such a time as this one does not make resolves lightly.”

Alan said this standing facing his father in his private study. The President looked at him for a moment or two with eyes which, though grave, were neither reproving nor reproachful. Then he said with the shadow of a smile upon his lips—

“It is both disobedience and rebellion, my son, but though the Chief Magistrate must condemn it, your father cannot. I know, too, that not even the Council of Aeria can now enforce its commands. After all, the last penalty is but death, and that is a mockery now.

“I fully understand, too, the spirit in which you refuse the reprieve from the general doom, and prefer instead a mission which can scarcely end save in honourable death. It is the most noble one that you can choose, and you of all other men are the man to perform it.

“You have shown our enemies that you can strike hard in battle, so if they believe anyone they will believe you when you go to them with a message of peace enforced by such a solemn warning as you will take.”

“Thank you, father,” replied Alan simply, “not for what you say of me, but for the consent that your words imply. But what about the air-ship and her crew? I can do nothing without them, yet I cannot have them without the consent of the Council. Can you get that for me?”

“I believe so,” said the President. “And if I can I will, since you are resolved to go, and since the honour of our name compels me to consent. But I must tell you that I feel sure that it will only be given conditionally.”

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“And what will the condition be?”

“That if you survive your mission you will return to Aeria before the end comes. They will have a right to demand that, for it is no part of your duty to deprive your companions of the chance of life, slender though it may be, that will remain for those who may be among the chosen.”

“That is true,” replied Alan, bending his head in acquiescence. “If we escape with our lives they shall return, though I shall not”—

“You will not return, Alan? Why, where are you going? Surely you are not going to leave Aeria again, and at such a time as this; you, who are already one of the chosen, a first-born son of the Master’s line!”

It was Alan’s mother who spoke. She had entered the room just as he had uttered the last sentence, and the ominous words struck a sudden chill to her heart. She came towards him with her eyes full of tears of apprehension and her hands stretched out pleadingly towards him.

Now that the first terror of the crisis was past, and there was one definite, however slender, hope of safety, she clung to it passionately for Alan’s sake with a faith that made light of all the fearful difficulties which lay in the way of its realisation. In the sublime egotism of her mother-love the fate of a world shrank into insignificance in comparison with the one chance of safety for her only son.

“Yes, mother,” replied Alan, taking her hands in his and bending down until his lips touched her upturned brow. “I am going to leave Aeria again to proclaim the Truce of God against the hour of His judgment, and I have just told my father that I shall not return”—

“No, no, my boy, you must not say that. You must not rob us of the one ray of light in this awful darkness that is falling upon us—of our one hope in all the world’s despair!” cried his mother, letting go his hands and laying her own upon his shoulders as she looked up into his face with eyes that were now overflowing with tears.

“You will not leave us now, surely, for if we lost you we[312] could not even take the chance of life ourselves, for it would not be worth having.”

“Nor would it be worth having, my mother, either to you or to me,” he replied, gently laying his hand on hers, “if I lived and left untried the attempt that it is my plain duty to make. You would see me a lonely and unmated man among the parents of the new race, a man with a shadow upon his name, and the memory of an unfulfilled duty behind him.

“Remember that it is I who have brought the guilt of blood back again upon earth. Would you have me outlive all the millions of my fellow-creatures with the knowledge that I had not made one effort to bring back that peace on earth which was lost through me before the last summons comes to all humanity?”

“Alan is right, wife,” interrupted the President, before she could make any reply to her son’s appeal. “It is his duty to save, if he can, his fellow-creatures from being overwhelmed in the midst of their madness and their sin. Remember that, according to our faith, as all these millions, who are now drunk with battle and slaughter, and mad with the rage of conquest and revenge, end this life, so they must begin the next.

“There is time for him to speak and for them to hear, but whether they hear him or not, if he has spoken he has done his duty. Is it not better that if needs be he should die doing it than live and leave it undone?”

The weighty words, spoken as they were in a tone of blended affection and authority, found a fitting echo in his wife’s breast. She stood for a moment between her husband and her son, looking from the one to the other. Then she dried her tears, and replied in a tone of gentle dignity and resignation—

“Yes, I see. You are right and I was wrong. It is his duty to go, and he must go. But,” she continued, turning to Alan with the sudden light of a new hope in her eyes, “if I bid you ‘God-speed,’ my son, you will promise one thing, won’t you?”

“Yes, mother, I will—whatever it is.”

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“Then promise me that if it shall be proved possible for you to live in happiness as well as in honour, you will come back.”

“Yes,” he replied, smiling gravely as he once more took her outstretched hands. “I will promise that as gladly as I would promise to enter Heaven if I saw the gates open before me.”

“Then you shall go, and God go with you and bring you back in safety to us!” she said. Then, turning abruptly, she went out of the room, leaving them both wondering at her words.

This took place early on the morning of the 21st of May. An hour later the President had applied in Alan’s name for the permission of the Council for him to select a crew of twenty volunteers and to take the Avenger to Europe on his mission to the warring peoples and to proclaim peace on earth and breathing space for humanity to prepare for its end. But then a new difficulty presented itself. Alexis, in spite of all Alan’s remonstrances to the contrary, declared that he should never leave Aeria without him.

“I have shared in your exile and your return,” he said, in answer to all arguments, “and, by the honour of the Golden Wings, I swear that I will either go with you now or you shall see me fall dead the moment that you leave the earth!”

This was the only oath that ever was heard upon the lips of an Aerian, and it was irrevocable, so, as there was no choice, Alan was forced to consent, and Alexis made ready to bid a last farewell to Aeria and all its dear associations.