Immortal Love
:
The Blue Germ
On the same afternoon Miss Annot paid me a visit. I was still sitting in
the waiting-room, and Sarakoff was with me. My mind had been deeply
occupied with the question of the larger beliefs that we hold. For it
had come to me with peculiar force that law and order, and officials
like the Home Secretary, are concerned only with the small beliefs of
humanity, with the burdensome business of material life. As long as a
ma
dressed properly, walked decently and paid correctly, he was
accepted, in spite of the fact that he might firmly believe the world
was square. No one worried about those matters. We judge people
ultimately by how they eat and drink and get up and sit down. What they
say is of little importance in the long run. If we examine a person
professionally, we merely ask him what day it is, where he is, what is
his name and where he was born. We watch him to see if he washes,
undresses and dresses, and eats properly. We ask him to add two and two,
and to divide six by three, and then we solemnly give our verdict that
he is either sane or insane.
The enormity of this revelation engrossed me with an almost painful
activity of thought.
I gazed across at Sarakoff and wondered what appalling gulf divided our
views on supreme things. What view did he really take of women? Did he
or did he not think that the planets and stars were inhabited? Did he
believe in the evolution of the soul like Mr. Thornduck?
A kind of horror possessed me as I stared at him and reflected that
these questions had never entered my consciousness until that moment. I
had lived with him and dined with him and worked with him, and yet
hitherto it would have concerned me far more if I had seen him tuck his
napkin under his collar or spit on the carpet.... What laughable little
folk we were! I, who had always seen man as the last and final
expression of evolution, now saw him as the stumbling, crawling,
incredibly stupid, result of a tentative experiment--a first step up a
ladder of infinitive length.
Whilst I was immersed in the humiliation of these thoughts Miss Annot
entered. She wore a dark violet coat and skirt and a black hat. I
noticed that her complexion, usually somewhat muddy, was perfectly
clear, though of a marble pallor. We greeted each other quietly and I
introduced Sarakoff.
"So you are an Immortal, Alice," I said smiling. She gazed at me.
"Richard, I do not know what I am, but I know one thing; I am entirely
changed. Some strange miracle has been wrought in me. I came to ask you
what it is."
"You see that both Professor Sarakoff and I have got the germ in our
systems like you, Alice. Yes, it is a miracle; we are Immortals."
I studied her face attentively, she had changed. It seemed to me that
she was another woman, she moved in a new way, her speech was unhurried,
her gaze was direct and thoughtful. I recalled her former appearance
when her manner had been nervous and bashful, her eyes downcast, her
movements hurried and anxious.
"I do not understand," she said. "Tell me all you know."
I did so, I suppose I must have talked for an hour on end. Throughout
that time neither she nor Sarakoff stirred. When I had finished there
was a long silence.
"It is funny to think of our last meeting, Richard," she said at length.
"Do you remember how my father behaved? He is different now. He sits all
day in his study--he eats very little. He seems to be in a dream."
"And you?" I asked.
"I am in a dream, too. I do not understand it. All the things I used to
busy myself with seem unimportant."
"That is how we feel," said Sarakoff. He rose to his feet and spoke
strongly. "Harden, as Miss Annot says, everything has changed. I never
foresaw this; I do not understand it myself."
He went slowly to the mantelpiece and leaned against it.
"When I created this germ, I saw in my mind an ideal picture of life. I
saw a world freed from a dire spectre, a world from which fear had been
removed, the fear of death. I saw the great triumph of materialism and
the final smashing up of all superstition. A man would live in a state
of absolute certainty. He would lay his plans for pleasure and comfort
and enjoyment with absolute precision, knowing--not hoping--but
certainly knowing, that they would come about. I saw cities and gardens
built in triumph to cater for the gratification of every sense. I saw
new laws in operation, constructed by men who knew that they had
mastered the secret of life and had nothing to fear. I saw all those
things about which we are so timid and vague--marriage and divorce, the
education of children, luxury, the working classes, religion and so
on--absolutely settled in black and white. I saw what I thought to be
the millennium."
"And now?" asked Alice.
"Now I see nothing. I am in the dark. I do not understand what has
happened to me."
"What we are in for now, no man can say," I remarked.
"It's the extraordinary restfulness that puzzles me," said Sarakoff.
"Here I have been sitting for hours and I feel no inclination to do
anything."
"The thing that is most extraordinary to me is the difficulty I have in
realizing how I spent my time formerly," said Alice. "Of course, father
is no bother now and meals have been cut down, but that does not account
for all of it. It seems as if I had been living in a kind of nightmare
in the past, from which I have suddenly escaped."
"What do you feel most inclined to do?" I asked.
"Nothing at present. I sit and think. It was difficult for me to make
myself come here to-day." She smiled suddenly. "Richard, it seems
strange to recall that we were engaged."
She spoke without any embarrassment and I answered her with equal ease.
"I hope you don't think our engagement is broken off, Alice. I think my
feelings towards you are unchanged."
"Ah!" exclaimed Sarakoff. "That is interesting. Are you sure of that,
Harden?"
"Not altogether," I answered tranquilly. "There is a lot to think out
before I can be sure, but I know that I feel towards Alice a great
sympathy."
"Sympathy!" the Russian exclaimed. "What are we coming to? Good heavens!
Is sympathy to be our strongest emotion? What do you think, Miss Annot."
"Sympathy is exactly what I feel," she replied. "Richard and I would be
very good companions. Isn't that more important than passion?"
"Is sympathy to be the bond between the sexes, then, and is all passion
and romance to die?" he exclaimed scornfully. He seemed to be struggling
with himself, as if he were trying to throw off some spell that held
him. "Surely I seem to recollect that yesterday life contained some
richer emotions than sympathy," he muttered. "What has come over us? Why
doesn't my blood quicken when I think of Leonora?" He burst into a
laugh. "Harden, this is comic. There is no other word for it. It is
simply comic."
"It may be comic, Sarakoff, but to speak candidly, I prefer my state
to-day to my state yesterday. Last night seems to me like a bad dream."
I got to my feet. "There is one thing I must see about as soon as
possible, and that is getting rid of this house. What an absurd place to
live in this is! It is a comic house, if you like--like a tomb."
The room seemed suddenly absurd. It was very dark, the wallpaper was of
a heavy-moulded variety, sombre in hue and covered with meaningless
figuring. The ceiling was oppressive. It, too, was moulded in some
fantastic manner. Several large faded oil-paintings hung on the wall. I
do not know why they hung there, they were hideous and meaningless as
well. The whole place was meaningless. It was the meaninglessness that
seemed to leap out upon me wherever I turned my eyes. The fireplace
astounded me. It was a mass of pillars and super-structures and
carvings, increasing in complexity from within outwards, until it
attained the appearance of an ornate temple in the centre of which
burned a little coal. It was grotesque. On the topmost ledges of this
monstrous absurdity stood two vases. They bulged like distended
stomachs, covered on their outsides with yellow, green and black
splotches of colour. I recollected that I paid ten pounds apiece for
them. Under what perverted impulse had I done that? My memories became
incredible. I moved deliberately to the mantelpiece and seized the
vases. I opened the window and hurled them out on to the pavement. They
fell with a crash, and their fragments littered the ground.
Alice expressed no surprise.
"It is rather comic," said the Russian, "but where are you going to
live?"
"Alice and I will go and live by the sea. We have plenty to think about.
I feel as if I could never stop thinking, as if I had to dig away a
mountain of thought with a spade. Alice, we will go round to the house
agent now."
When Alice and I left the house the remains of the vases littered the
pavement at our feet. We walked down Harley Street. The house agent
lived in Regent Street. It was now a clear, crisp afternoon with a
pleasant tint of sunlight in the air. A newspaper boy passed, calling
something unintelligible in an excited voice. I stopped him and bought a
paper.
"What an inhuman noise to make," said Alice. "It seems to jar on every
nerve in my body. Do ask him to stop."
"You're making too much noise," I said to the lad. "You must call
softly. It is an outrage to scream like that."
He stared up at me, an impudent amazed face surmounting a tattered and
dishevelled body, and spoke.
"You two do look a couple of guys, wiv' yer blue faices. If some of them
doctors round 'ere catches yer, they'll pop yer into 'ospital."
He ran off, shrieking his unintelligible jargon.
"We must get to the sea," I said firmly. "This clamour of London is
unbearable."
I opened the paper. Enormous headlines stared me in the face.
"Blue Disease sweeping over London. Ten thousand cases reported to-day.
Europe alarmed. Question of the isolation of Great Britain under
discussion. Debate in the Commons to-night. The Duke of Thud and the
Earl of Blunder victims. The Royal Family leave London."
We stood together on the pavement and gazed at these statements in
silence. A sense of wonder filled my mind. What a confusion! What an
emotional, feverish, heated confusion! Why could not they take the
matter calmly? What, in the name of goodness, was the reason of this
panic. They knew that the Blue Disease had caused no fatalities in
Birmingham, and yet so totally absent was the power of thought and
deduction, that they actually printed those glaring headlines.
"The fools," I said. "The amazing, fatuous fools. They simply want to
sell the paper. They have no other idea."
A strong nausea came over me. I crumpled up the paper and stood staring
up and down the street. The newspaper boy was in the far distance, still
shrieking. I saw Sir Barnaby Burtle, the obstetrician, standing by his
scarlet front door, eagerly devouring the news. His jaw was slack and
his eyes protruded.
The solemn houses of Harley Street only increased my nausea. The folly
of it--the selfish, savage folly of life!
"Come, Richard," said Alice. "The sooner we get to the house agent the
better. We could never live here."
"I'll put him on to the job of finding a bungalow on the South Coast at
once," I said. "And then we'll go and live there."
"We must get married," she observed.
"Married!" I stopped and stared at her with a puzzled expression. "Don't
you think the marriage ceremony is rather barbarous?"
She did not reply; we walked on immersed in our own thoughts. At times I
detected in the passers-by a gleam of sparrow-egg blue.
My house agent was a large, confused individual who habitually wore a
shining top hat on the back of his head and twisted a cigar in the
corner of his mouth. He was very fat, with one of those creased faces
that seem to fall into folds like a heavy crimson curtain. His brooding,
congested eye fell upon me as we entered, and an expression of alarm
became visible in its depths. He pushed his chair back and retreated to
a corner of the room.
"Dr. Harden!" he exclaimed fearfully, "you oughtn't to come here like
that, you really oughtn't."
"Don't be an ass, Franklyn," I said firmly. "You are bound to catch the
germ sooner or later. It will impress you immensely."
"It's all over London," he whimpered. "It's too much; it will hit us
hard. It's too much."
"Listen to me," I said. "I have come here to see you about business. Now
sit down in your chair; I won't touch you. I want you to get me a
bungalow by the sea with a garden as soon as possible. I am going to
sell my house."
"Sell your house!" He became calmer. "That is very extraordinary, Dr.
Harden."
"I am going out of London."
He was astonished.
"But your house--in Harley Street--so central...." he stammered. "I
don't understand. Are you giving up your practice?"
"Of course."
"At your age, Dr. Harden?"
"What has age got to do with it? There is no such thing as age."
He stared. Then his eyes turned to Alice.
"No such thing as age?" he murmured helplessly. "But surely you are not
going to sell; you have the best house in Harley Street. Its commanding
position ... in the centre of that famous locality...."
"Do you think that any really sane man would live in the centre of
Harley Street," I asked calmly. "Is he likely to find any peace in that
furnace of crude worldly ambitions? But all that is already a thing of
the past. In a few weeks, Franklyn, Harley Street will be deserted."
"Deserted?" His eyes rolled.
"Deserted," I said sternly. "In its upper rooms there may remain a few
Immortals, but the streets will be silent. The great business of
sickness, which occupies the attention of a third of the world and
furnishes the main topic of conversation in every home, will be gone.
Sell my house, Franklyn, and find me a bungalow on the South Coast
facing the sea."
I turned away and went towards the door, Alice followed me. The house
agent sat in helpless amazement. He filled me with a sense of nausea. He
seemed so gross, so mindless.
"A bungalow," he whispered.
"Yes. Let us have long, low, simple rooms and a garden where we may grow
enough to live on. The age of material complexity and noise is at an
end. We need peace."
Strolling along at a slow pace, we went down Oxford Street towards the
Marble Arch. It was dusk. The newsboys were howling at every corner and
everyone had a paper. Little groups of people stood on the pavements
discussing the news. In the roadway the stream of traffic was incessant.
The huge motor-buses thundered and swayed along, with their loads of
pale humanity feverishly clinging to them. The public-houses were
crowded. The slight tension that the threat of the Blue Disease produced
in people filled the bars with men and women, seeking the relaxation of
alcohol. There was in the air that liveliness, that tendency to collect
into small crowds, that is evident whenever the common safety of the
great herd is threatened. In the Park a crowd surrounded the platform of
an agitator. In a voice like that of a delirious man, he implored the
crowd to go down on its knees and repent ... the end of the world was at
hand ... the Blue Disease was the pouring out of one of the vials of
wrath ... repent!... repent!... His voice rang in our ears and drove us
away. We crossed the damp grass. I stumbled over a sleeping man. There
was something familiar in his appearance and I stooped down and turned
him over. It was Mr. Herbert Wain. He seemed to be fast asleep.... We
walked to King's Cross, and I put Alice without regret in the train for
Cambridge.