CHAPTER XXVII. ALMA SPEAKS.

THAT night Alan, with his heart too full even for the society of his own home, went out of the city a little before midnight and walked down towards the western shore of the lake, where there still stood the same grove of palms in which, more than a hundred and thirty years before, Natasha and Richard Arnold had plighted their despairing troth and under the shadow of what threatened to be an eternal separation spoken the first words of love that had ever passed their lips.

It was not altogether accident that guided his steps in this direction, for all day he had been reviewing the strange chain of events which united the fate of his ancestors with his own, and it was natural that the most romantic episode in their lives should inspire him with a desire to see the scene of it once more.

So it came about that he stood, on what he believed to be his last night in Aeria, beneath the self-same ancient palms which five generations before had heard Natasha confess her love for the man who had sworn to give her in exchange for it that empire of peace which he, their descendant, had been the means of losing.

The story was, of course, familiar to him in its minutest details, and as he stood there, his own heart heavy with a hopeless sorrow, he pictured his great ancestor standing on the[315] same spot, holding the means of universal conquest in his hands, and yet accounting all things as worthless because the empire within his grasp must lack the supreme crown of a woman’s love.

Then, looking back through the mists of the years that had gone by since then, he seemed to see the very shape of the Angel moving over the soft green sward where now the broad marble-paved roadway gleamed white beneath the trees, and to hear the musical murmur of her voice even as Richard Arnold had heard it on that eventful night.

“Alan!”

Was he dreaming, or was it the voice of his ancestress speaking to his soul in that hour of his lonely sorrow? A pale, shimmering, ghostly shape flitted across the quivering plumes of the palm-trees, dropped softly to the ground, and Alma stood before him in the well of her aerial boat.

Before his amazement had permitted him to utter a word she had stepped out and was coming towards him with outstretched hands, saying—

“They told me I should find you here. Alan, I have come to ask you to forgive me if you—before you go upon this mission of yours, if go you must.”

“To forgive you, Alma!” he exclaimed, recoiling a pace in sheer astonishment at her presence and her words. “What can I have to forgive you? Is it not rather”—

“No, Alan, it is not,” she said quickly, still holding out her hands to him and looking up at him with faintly flushed cheeks and shining eyes. “I see it all clearly now. Isma was right. It is I who have sinned against you, and it is for me to ask forgiveness.”

“How can you ask that of me, Alma? How have you harmed me?” he asked, still bewildered by her beauty and the enigmas that she spoke in, yet taking her hands, and, as if by instinct, drawing her towards him.

“I will answer that afterwards,” she said quickly, as though inspired by some sudden thought. “But tell me, first, are you quite resolved to go upon this mission?”

[316]

“Yes,” he said with an almost imperceptible quiver in his voice. “Have I not had a great, if not a guilty, share in bringing this curse upon the world, and is it not fitting that I should give my last days to the task, however hopeless, of bringing back peace on earth so that men may die sane and not mad?”

“But, Alan, is that a higher duty than you owe to your family and your people? You know that in you centre all their hopes for the future, if there is to be one. With you would die the name of Arnold, and the direct line of Natas and Natasha.”

“And with me they would die even if I went with the Children of Deliverance into the caverns of Mount Austral and survived the ruin of the world. How can you mock me like that, Alma? Have I not suffered enough for my weakness and my folly that you would condemn me to wander an exile in the wilderness that the world will be when it has passed through its baptism of fire?

“What is the swift death of battle or the short agony of the conflagration of the world compared with the long death-in-life that I should drag out alone in the new world that may arise from the ruins of this one?”

“And why alone, Alan?”

“Why alone? Can you ask me that, Alma? Surely you are mocking me now. Can you ask why I should be alone if I survived with the remnant of our people? Do you not even yet know why I choose the certainty of death rather than the chance of life?”

“But, Alan, what if I were to tell you that you would not go alone to the caverns, and that if the chosen few survive you will not wander alone on the wilderness of the new world?”

“I should tell you, Alma, that you meant to sacrifice yourself to save me, and that I would not accept the sacrifice even at your hands.”

“Sacrifice! No, Alan, I would not outlive the world, even with you, on those terms. A woman of Aeria does not sell[317] herself even for sentiment. This is no time for secrets or false shame, and I tell you frankly that if you had accepted the order of the Council, you should have lived and I would have died.

“But your rebellion proved to me that Isma was right when she rebuked my false pride by saying that the man who has fallen and risen again is better and stronger than he who has never suffered”—

“But, Alma, remember”—

“No, you must not interrupt me now, or what ought to be said may never be spoken. I know what you were going to say. You were going to tell me to remember that Olga Romanoff is still alive. Let her live—and let God judge her for her sins in the judgment that is so soon to come! What have we to do with her?”

“Nothing, Alma, after you have said that, for it tells me that in your eyes the stain is purged and the fault forgiven. I will take the message to her as to the rest of the world. If she receives it in peace then there shall be peace, and God shall judge between us”—

“And if not?”

“Then I will pit my single ship against hers and her fleet and only one of us, if either, shall see the end.”

“And if that is you—what then?”

“Then it will be for you—under Heaven—to speak the words of life or death, for only you can bid me live, Alma.”

“Only you can bid me live, Alma.” Page 317.

As he spoke the great lights on the mountain tops suddenly blazed out, shone for a few moments, and were extinguished again. It was the answering signal to one from Mars; but it joined two souls as well as two worlds, for by its light Alan saw on Alma’s face and in her eyes the one reprieve from death that honour would permit him to accept.

Without waiting for the words that her now smiling lips were opening to utter, he took her unresisting in his arms. Then her proudly carried, wing-crowned head drooped at last in sweet submission, and rested on his heart; and as he[318] turned her face up to his to take his kiss of re-betrothal, he said—

“That tells me that I may live. Now we are immortal, you and I, for this kiss is our eternity!”

Then their lips met, and for the instant Time had no more beginning or end. The impending ruin of the world was forgotten; for Love had spoken, and the very voice of Doom itself was silent amidst the happiness of their heedless souls.