A Glimpse Of The Doom

: The World Peril Of 1910

After dinner Lennard excused himself, saying that he wanted to make a

few more calculations; and then he got outside and lit his pipe, and

walked up the winding path towards the observatory.



"What am I to do?" he said between his teeth. "It's a ghastly position

for a man to be placed in. Fancy--just a poor, ordinary, human being

like myself having the power of losing or saving the world in his hands!

And hen, of course, there's a woman in the question--the Eternal

Feminine--even in such a colossal problem as this!



"It's mean, and I know it; but, after all, I saved her life--though, if

I hadn't reached her first, that other chap might have got her. I love

her and he loves her; there's no doubt about that, and Papa Parmenter

wants to marry her to a coronet. There's one thing certain, Castellan

shall not have her, and I love her a lot too much to see her made My

Lady This, or the Marchioness of So-and-so, just because she's beautiful

and has millions, and the other fellow, whoever he may be, may have a

coronet that probably wants re-gilding; and yet, after all, it's only

the same old story in a rather more serious form--a woman against the

world. I suppose Papa Parmenter would show me the door to-morrow morning

if I, a poor explorer of the realm of Space, dared to tell him that I

want to marry his daughter.



"And yet how miserable and trivial all these wretched distinctions of

wealth and position look now; or would look if the world only knew and

believed what I could tell it--and that reminds me--shall I tell her, or

them? Of course, I must before long; simply because in a month or so

those American fellows will be on it, and they won't have any scruples

when it comes to a matter of scare head-lines. Yes, I think it may as

well be to-night as any other time. Still, it's a pretty awful thing for

a humble individual like myself to say, especially to a girl one happens

to be very much in love with--nothing less than the death-sentence of

Humanity. Ah, well, she's got to hear it some time and from some one,

and why shouldn't she hear it now and from me?"



When he got back to the house, there was a carriage at the door, and Mr

Parmenter was just coming down the avenue, followed by a man with a

small portmanteau in his hand.



"Sorry, Mr Lennard," he said, holding out his hand, "I've just had a

wire about a company tangle in London that I've got to go and shake out

at once, so I'll have to see what you have to show me later on. Still,

that needn't trouble anyone. It looks as if it were going to be a

splendid night for star-gazing, and I don't want Auriole disappointed,

so she can go up to the observatory with you at the proper time and see

what there is to be seen. See you later, I have only just about time to

get the connection for London."



Lennard was not altogether sorry that this accident had happened.

Naturally, the prospect of an hour or so with Auriole alone in his

temple of Science was very pleasant, and moreover, he felt that, as the

momentous tidings had to be told, he would prefer to tell them to her

first. And so it came about.



A little after half-past eleven that night Miss Auriole was looking

wonderingly into the eye-piece of the great Reflector, watching a tiny

little patch of mist, somewhat brighter towards one end than the other;

like a little wisp of white smoke rising from a very faint spark that

was apparently floating across an unfathomable sea of darkness.



She seemed to see this through black darkness, and behind it a swarm of

stars of all sizes and colours. They appeared very much more wonderful

and glorious and important than the little spray of white smoke, because

she hadn't yet the faintest conception of its true import to her and

every other human being on earth: but she was very soon to know now.



While she was watching it in breathless silence, in which the clicking

of the mechanism which kept the great telescope moving so as to exactly

counteract the motion of the machinery of the Universe, sounded like the

blows of a sledge-hammer on an anvil, Gilbert Lennard stood beside her,

wondering if he should begin to tell her, and what he should say.



At last she turned away from the eye-piece, and looked at him with

something like a scared expression in her eyes, and said:



"It's very wonderful, isn't it, that one should be able to see all that

just by looking into a little bit of a hole in a telescope? And you tell

me that all those great big bright stars around your comet are so far

away that if you look at them just with your own eyes you don't even see

them--and there they look almost as if you could put out your hand and

touch them. It's just a little bit awful, too!" she added, with a little

shiver.



"Yes," he said, speaking slowly and even more gravely that she thought

the subject warranted, "yes, it is both wonderful and, in a way, awful.

Do you know that some of those stars you have seen in there are so far

away that the light which you see them by may have left them when

Solomon was king in Jerusalem? They may be quite dead and dark now, or

reduced into fire-mist by collision with some other star. And then,

perhaps, there are others behind them again so far away that their light

has not even reached us yet, and may never do while there are human eyes

on earth to see it."



"Yes, I know," she said, smiling. "You don't forget that I have been to

college--and light travels about a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles

a second, doesn't it? But come, Mr Lennard, aren't you what they call

stretching the probabilities a little when you say that the light of

some of them will never get here, as far as we're concerned? I always

thought we had a few million years of life to look forward to before

this old world of ours gets worn out."



"There are other ends possible for this world besides wearing out, Miss

Parmenter," he answered, this time almost solemnly. "Other worlds have,

as I say, been reduced to fire-mist. Some have been shattered to tiny

fragments to make asteroids and meteorites--stars and worlds, in

comparison with which this bit of a planet of ours is nothing more than

a speck of sand, a mere atom of matter drifting over the wilderness of

immensity. In fact, such a trifle is it in the organism of the Universe,

that if some celestial body collided with it--say a comet with a

sufficiently solid nucleus--and the heat developed by the impact turned

it into a mass of blazing gas, an astronomer on Neptune, one of our own

planets, wouldn't even notice the accident, unless he happened to be

watching the earth through a powerful telescope at the time."



"And is such an accident, as you call it, possible, Mr Lennard?" she

asked, jumping womanlike, by a sort of unconscious intuition, to the

very point to which he was so clumsily trying to lead up.



"I thought you spoke rather queerly about this comet of yours at

breakfast this morning. I hope there isn't any chance of its getting on

to the same track as this terrestrial locomotive of ours. That would be

just awful, wouldn't it? Why, what's the matter? You are going to be

ill, I know. You had better get down to the house, and go to bed. It's

want of sleep, isn't it? You'll be driving yourself mad that way."



A sudden and terrible change had come over him while she was speaking.

It was only for the moment, and yet to him it was an eternity. It might,

as she said, have been the want of sleep, for insomnia plays strange

tricks sometimes with the strongest of intellects.



More probably, it might have been the horror of his secret working on

the great love that he had for this girl who was sitting there alone

with him in the silence of that dim room and in the midst of the glories

and the mysteries of the Universe.



His eyes had grown fixed and staring, and looked sightlessly at her, and

his face shone ghastly pale in the dim light of the solitary shaded

lamp. Certainly, one of those mysterious crises which are among the

unsolved secrets of psychology had come upon him like some swift access

of delirium.



He no longer saw her sitting there by the telescope, calm, gracious, and

beautiful. He saw her as, by his pitiless calculations, he must do that

day thirteen months to come--with her soft grey eyes, starting,

horror-driven from their orbits, staring blank and wide and hideous at

the overwhelming hell that would be falling down from heaven upon the

devoted earth. He saw her fresh young face withered and horror-lined and

old, and the bright-brown hair grown grey with the years that would pass

in those few final moments. He saw the sweet red lips which had tempted

him so often to wild thoughts parched and black, wide open and gasping

vainly for the breath of life in a hot, burnt-out atmosphere.



Then he saw--no, it was only a glimpse; and with that the strange

trance-vision ended. What must have come after that would in all

certainty have driven him mad there and then, before his work had even

begun; but at that moment, swiftly severing the darkness that was

falling over his soul, there came to him an idea, bright, luminous, and

lovely as an inspiration from Heaven itself, and with it came back the

calm sanity of the sternly-disciplined intellect, prepared to

contemplate, not only the destruction of the world he lived in, but even

the loss of the woman he loved--the only human being who could make the

world beautiful or even tolerable for him.



The vision was blotted out from the sight of his soul; the darkness

cleared away from his eyes, and he saw her again as she still was. It

had all passed in a few moments and yet in them he had been down into

hell--and he had come back to earth, and into her presence.



Almost by the time she had uttered her last word, he had regained

command of his voice, and he began clearly and quietly to answer the

question which was still echoing through the chambers of his brain.



"It was only a little passing faintness, thank you; and something else

which you will understand when I have done, if you have patience to hear

me to the end," he said, looking straight at her for a moment, and then

beginning to walk slowly up and down the room past her chair.



"I am going to surprise you, perhaps to frighten you, and very probably

to offend you deeply," he began again in a quiet, dry sort of tone,

which somehow impressed her against all her convictions that he didn't

much care whether or not he did any or all of these things: but there

was something else in his tone and manner which held her to her seat,

silent and attentive, although she was conscious of a distinct desire to

get up and run away.



"Your guess about the comet, or whatever it may prove to be, is quite

correct. I don't think it is a new one. From what I have seen of it so

far, I have every reason to believe that it is Gambert's comet, which

was discovered in 1826, and became visible to the naked eye in the

autumn of 1833. It then crossed the orbit of the earth one month after

the earth had passed the point of intersection. After that, some force

divided it, and in '46 and '52 it reappeared as twin comets constantly

separating. Now it would seem that the two masses have come together

again: and as they are both larger in bulk and greater in density it

would appear that, somewhere in the distant fields of Space, they have

united with some other and denser body. The result is, that what is

practically a new comet, with a much denser nucleus than any so far

seen, is approaching our system. Unless a miracle happens, or there is a

practically impossible error in my calculations, it will cross the orbit

of the earth thirteen months from to-day, at the moment that the earth

itself arrives at the point of intersection."



So far Auriole had listened to the stiff scientific phraseology with

more interest than alarm; but now she took advantage of a little pause,

and said:



"And the consequences, Mr Lennard? I mean the consequences to us as

living beings. You may as well tell me everything now that you've gone

so far."



"I am going to," he said, stopping for a moment in his walk, "and I am

going to tell you something more than that. Granted that what I have

said happens, one of two things must follow. If the nucleus of the comet

is solid enough to pass through our atmosphere without being dissipated,

it will strike the surface with so much force that both it and the earth

will probably be transformed into fiery vapour by the conversion of the

motion of the two bodies into heat. If not, its contact with the oxygen

of the earth's atmosphere will produce an aerial conflagration which, if

it does not roast alive every living thing on earth, will convert the

oxygen, by combustion, into an irrespirable and poisonous gas, and so

kill us by a slower, but no less fatal, process."



"Horrible!" she said, shivering this time. "You speak like a judge

pronouncing sentence of death on the whole human race! I suppose there

is no possibility of reprieve? Well, go on!"



"Yes," he said, "there is something else. Those are the scientific

facts, as far as they go. I am going to tell you the chances now--and

something more. There is just one chance--one possible way of averting

universal ruin from the earth, and substituting for it nothing more

serious than an unparalleled display of celestial fireworks. All that

will be necessary is perfect calculation and illimitable expenditure of

money."



"Well," she said, "can't you do the calculations, Mr Lennard, and hasn't

dad got millions enough? How could he spend them better than in saving

the human race from being burnt alive? There isn't anything else, is

there?"



"There was something else," he said, stopping in front of her again. She

had risen to her feet as she said the last words, and the two stood

facing each other in the dim light, while the mechanism of the telescope

kept on clicking away in its heedless, mechanical fashion.



"Yes, there was something else, and I may as well tell you after all;

for, even if you never see or speak to me again, it won't stop the work

being done now. I could have kept this discovery to myself till it would

have been too late to do anything: for no other telescope without my

help would even find the comet for four months to come, and even now

there is hardly a day to be lost if the work is to be done in time. And

then--well, I suppose I must have gone mad for the time being, for I

thought--you will hardly believe me, I suppose--that I could make you

the price of the world's safety.



"From that, you will see how much I have loved you, however mad I may

have been. Losing you, I would have lost the world with you. If my love

lives, I thought, the world shall live: if not, if you die, the world

shall die. But just now, when you thought I was taken ill, I had a sort

of vision, and I saw you,--yes, you, Auriole as, if my one chance fails,

you must infallibly be this night thirteen months hence. I didn't see

any of the other millions who would be choking and gasping for breath

and writhing in the torture of the universal fire--I only saw you and my

own baseness in thinking, even for a moment, that such a bargain would

be possible.



"And then," he went on, more slowly, and with a different ring in his

voice, "there are the other men."



"Which other men?" she asked, looking up at him with a flush on her

cheeks and a gleam in her eyes.



"To be quite frank, and in such a situation as this, I don't see that

anything but complete candour is of any use," he replied slowly. "I need

hardly tell you that they are John Castellan and the Marquis of

Westerham. Castellan, I know, has loved you just as I have done, from

the moment we had the good luck to pick you out of the bay at Clifden.

Lord Westerham also wants you, so do I. That, put plainly, brutally, if

you like, is the situation. Of your own feelings, of course, I do not

pretend to have the remotest idea; but I confess that when this

knowledge came to me, the first thought that crossed my mind was the

thought of you as another man's wife--and then came the vision of the

world in flames. At first I chose the world in flames. I see that I was



wrong. That is all."



She had not interrupted even by a gesture, but as she listened, a

thousand signs and trifles which alone had meant nothing to her, now

seemed to come together and make one clear and definite revelation. This

strong, reserved, silent man had all the time loved her so desperately

that he was going mad about her--so mad that, as he had said, he had

even dreamed of weighing the possession of her single, insignificant

self against the safety of the whole world, with all its innumerable

millions of people--mostly as good in their way as she was.



Well--it might be that the love of such a man was a thing worth to weigh

even against a coronet--not in her eyes, for there was no question of

that now, but in her father's. But that was a matter for future

consideration. She drew herself up a little stiffly, and said, in just

such a tone as she might have used if what he had just been saying had

had no personal interest for her--had, in fact, been about some other

girl:



"I think it's about time to be going down to the house, Mr Lennard,

isn't it? I am quite sure a night's rest won't do you any harm. No, I'm

not offended, and I don't think I'm even frightened yet. It somehow

seems too big and too awful a thing to be only frightened at--too much

like the Day of Judgment, you know. I am glad you've told me--yes,

everything--and I'm glad that what you call your madness is over. You

will be able to do your work in saving the world all the better. Only

don't tell dad anything except--well--just the scientific and necessary

part of it. You know, saving a world is a very much greater matter than

winning a woman--at least it is in one particular woman's eyes--and

I've learnt somewhere in mathematics something about the greater

including the less. And now, don't you think we had better be going down

into the house? It's getting quite late."