by Anthology
Earth, the mother of the race, was made the home of the new democratic government of the universe.
The organization of government, which has persisted to this day, was the Council of Seven. Anthon, as the man who sparked the rebellion, as the hero of billions, was elected to the original council, was immediately voted Chairman by the other six, who, it seemed, had been the leaders of the unintegrated groups seeking to overthrow Shawn.
For many months after he took over the Chairmanship Anthon was lethargic and depressed. He seemed to be a sick man. Many problems needed solution and there was talk for a time that Anthon, though a hero and a legend during his own lifetime, lacked the administrative ability to discharge properly his responsibilities.
We know, from the diary kept by Calitherous, that it was during a Council discussion of the greatest problem facing the race, that of the regression of procreative powers of the race, that Anthon came alive once more.
He whispered something so softly that no man could make out his words. Then, with eyes that flashed fire, he disbanded the meeting.
His manner was such that no man opposed him.
Anthon was closeted with his scientists for many weeks. One of the peculiarities of that period was the way he occupied himself during every free moment with the acquiring of skill in one of the archaic tongues.
Ibid
Chapter VIII
Re-Run
Howard Loomis spun as he heard a woman cough.
She was a tall girl in a wine evening dress. Her blue eyes were wide with fear and she stood, her hands at her throat. She looked at something in the air in front of her which did not exist. “Rick!” she gasped.
Howard Loomis began to laugh. He couldn’t control it. He staggered to the side of the vast luxurious room, furnished in a manner so strange as to give it the appearance of a dream, and laughed until the tears dripped ridiculously from the end of his sharp nose.
“Too—too much,” he gasped. “Now bring on the golden harps.”
“Who are you calling a harp?” the girl snapped.
The sound of her angry voice brought him out of it. He stared at her in silence. “Where is this place? Who are you?”
“Those are my lines, mister.”
“Is your name Mary?” Howard asked. “If so, there’s a guy here who—” There was no need to finish the statement. The young man with the air of authority, with the golden toga that left his bronzed left shoulder bare, pushed by Howard Loomis and advanced toward Mary Callahan.
In his odd English, he said, “Mary, you are more beautiful than before.”
“Than before what, friend?”
Anthon took her hands in his. His eyes were warm. “There is much to tell you.
There is much that you do not understand.”
“That, chum, is a perfect understatement.”
“All I have time to tell you right now, Mary, is that this is a world thousands of years ahead of yours. You were brought her once before. I met you then. Others will come after you. I promise you a full and rich life at my side. You and those like you are the hope of this world, Mary. Through you we will gain the strength and vigor of times long past.”
Mary Callahan tilted her head on one side. “Brother,” she said, “I’ve been propositioned before but this is the first time I ever heard this line.”
“Line?” he said. “All you have to do is to believe me and trust me.”
She looked up into his eyes. She said, “Never let anybody say that Callahan doesn’t land on her feet.”
Anthon took her arm. He said, “Come with me. You must meet the Council. There are things I must explain to them. You can listen and I will translate for you and thus you will learn much.”
Mary let herself be led toward the vast doorway. As she passed Howard Loomis she winked broadly at him said in a stage whisper, “I don’t know what the deal is, chum, but something tells me I’m going to like it.”
Howard Loomis scratched his head, bewildered and frustrated, as he saw the tall girl, her fingertips on the arm of the oddly dignified young man, pass out through the enormous arched doorway into the sunlight.
Ten minutes later he was hastily wrapping his topcoat around a soaking-wet young lady with blond hair who, in spite of her irate tone, seemed badly in need of a competent man to look after her.
Any good salesman is resourceful.
AN ANACHRONISM; OR MISSING ONE’S COACH
Anonymous
Kind and credulous reader, and I wish for no other, be it known to you that I am one of those who dip into antiquarian lore, and that I am moreover like some of the same tribe, fond of long and solitary rambles on foot, in quest of the wrecks and relics of things forgotten, or forgotten by all but the family of the “Dryasdusts.” Nor ought I to conceal the fact that I am (when a day’s march has failed to bring me in the way of the monuments of remote ages) much given to the indulgence of splendid philosophical poetical speculations concerning the future; thus borrowing from the time to come, entertainment for the time present, in place of that which should have been furnished me by the times that are past. Many a road-side “St. George and the Dragon,” or “Robin Hood,” where I have found shelter for the night, has witnessed the cheap felicity I have created for myself amid these Janus-like meditations.
During several sultry days of last August, or, if you please, of some other August, I had risen at the earliest dawn, and had held on my pilgrim path until sunset, carefully tracking the course of the Piet’s wall, from the shores of Solway Firth, eastward. Toward the close of the last of these days, all my musings upon the past, as well as every bright and fair dream respecting the future, had been dispelled, or had lost its wonted charm over my imagination, partly by the now overpowering sensations of bodily fatigue and mental exhaustion, and partly by the obtrusion, on every side, of objects utterly at variance with sentiment and speculation of whatever sort, and whether retrospective or anticipative; and which forbad any thing to be thought of but the bustling interests of the generation extant. Who, I ask, can be poetical, or who sublimely philosophical, within ten miles of Newcastle-upon-Tyne?
Yet let me not be thought to disparage the town and neighbourhood whence incalculable chaldrons of comfort, cookery, and gas illumination are emanating every day, and are blessing all our eastern shores! This radiating, if not radiant coal mart, I entered about five o’clock in the afternoon—limping, hungry, thirsty, grimed with dust, and shorn of all sentimentality; and notwithstanding the horror I have—an instinctive horror, not to be reasoned with—of large commercial and manufacturing towns, I was now so thoroughly broken down in spirit and so foot-sore too, that I resigned myself to the thought of spending the night at the best inn which would deign to receive a dusty pedestrian, with a wallet on his back. Thus purposing, I made a discreet choice among the caravanseriea of Newcastle, lowering my pride to the dimensions of a fourth-rate hotel; and there, by assuming some airs of importance, I actually so far secured the good opinion and services of waiters, boots, and chambermaid, as to get myself renovated, in the course of two hours, and found myself a new man, or rather my own self again; that is to day, neither very new, nor very old; but now—shaved, dressed, cooled, tested, dined, and enlivened moreover by a sober pint of execrable sherry. In a word, by seven o’clock, I was beginning to readmit, and to dally with swarms of “fine ideas,” which came crowding upon my rather fevered sensorium.
In this mood I felt it to be out of the question to remain, as a prudent man could have done, where I was, in a dusky, smoke-stained coffee-room; and in the very heart of a Babylon, like Newcastle. Although, therefore, any man in my case, would have thought he had had foot-work enough for the day, I rushed forth; yet intending nothing else but to occupy the bed I had engaged; and meaning only to muse away the twilight hour by the river’s side, if I could find free space there, for a time. It happened, however, that, in limping across the market-place, on my way to the quays, I, was almost run over by the impetuous “Edinburg
h and Leeds Mercury,” which, at the moment, swung round the corner with its reeking four. It stopped—and I stopped—and, scarcely thinking what I meant, I accosted the guard as he reached the pavement, with the laconic question—“Room outside?” to which I received the not more wordy answer—
“For one, sir.”
“When do you start?”
“In ten minutes, at the fullest.”
“Keep a place for me in front, then.” The comparison that rushed upon my mind, at first sight of the “Mercury,” between a stifling chamber in a murky inn, for the night, and the splendours of heaven, and the glories of the ensuing dawn—never better enjoyed than on the outside of a night-coach, during the summer months—this instantaneous comparison, carried away all my plans, and actually seemed to dispel my bodily sensations of fatigue.
I hurried back to the den within which I had thought to have gasped till morning, paid my reckoning—lavished gratuities upon waiters, boots, and chambermaid; snatched up my knapsack, and with the precipitation of a man who has scaled the walls of his prison, and in listening for pursuit, hobbled toward the great “Commercial,” whence I was to start. I found that the fresh cattle had not yet come out. I caught the guard by the sleeve, and telling him that I should be on the road, set forward, as if to realize the unexpected pleasure of my escape from Newcastle; or as if to exclude any possible disappointment, although, with this View, it would have been far more wise, as the event proved, to have occupied my seat on the coach, and to have endured the smutty atmosphere of the town a few minutes longer. But the suggestions of vulgar prudence contemned, I made my way, with a hurried, hobbling step through the descending streets, and over the bridge that strides the deep-dyed waters of the Tyne, thence ascending the steep opposite hill on the Durham road, from the brow of which a prospect wide (and fair, if not fouled with smoke) stretches east and west.
Perhaps a restive leader, flinging over the traces, or a lagging passenger, had delayed the Mercury so much beyond the “ten minutes” allowed me,by the guard. In fact, when I reached the summit of, the hill, I listened in vain for either the rattling wheels, or the bugle. In that luckless—or, shall I say lucky—moment, I descried a little to the left, a rising ground, whence the course of the river might advantageously be seen. At the risque (almost the certainty) of losing my place, I darted toward this eminence; and finding, when I reached it, a tempting seat, upon the gnarled roots of a decayed oak, I sat down; yes, I sat; and as my sceptical reader will tell me, nodded and slept. This explanation of what follows I am, however, resolved not to admit; and yet even if this were granted, it would be not the less certain that I looked around me, as I sat with as clear a consciousness of plain reality, as I had had a while before in taking my steak at the Swan. There may, perhaps, be those who will insult me by insinuating that, worn out as I confess myself to have been, I had fallen sound asleep in my box in the coffee-room, with the last half-glass of the “execrable sherry” before me; and that the whole affair of the “Mercury” is no better than a midsummer night’s dream. I shall not condescend to argue the point with any such objectors, too wise already in their own conceits; but shall go on in all simplicity to relate how that, seated in the aforesaid natural arm chair, I looked around and looked beneath, and looked in vain for the roofs, and chimneys, and spires of the dingy Newcastle—for the most entangled quays, for the spouting furnaces, for the glowing fire-heaps, at the pits’ mouths, in the distance; or, in a word, for any one object indicative of recent times, or of the busy wonders of the metropolis of soot; and all which bad a moment before lain outstretched before me.
In the stead of any such familiar appearances, noting the current time, the August of 1837 (or some other August of modern date,) there was, indeed, the same glowing sky, and the same general outline of country; the same winding river, yet winding in a somewhat different track, and seen only at points among overgrowing tufts of trees. But instead of the vast, town and its accompaniments, I gazed upon a wild solitude; or if not a solitude, which in truth it was not, yet such comparatively.
The ground about me was a rugged forest, crossed by rude paths, yet down the hill side, and in the fiats beneath, I descried many small enclosures, each containing a hovel or cabin, and within which there were the indications of thrift and comfort. The distance toward the north, and west was dark with wide-stretching forests, the more sullen in their aspect, as they now lay in gloomy shade, immediately beneath the dazzling expanse, whence the sun had but just sunk away.
But now—mark it, reader—what was the most surprising in this instantaneous shifting of the scene, was that I looked upon it as coolly as if it had not been surprising at all; as if it were just what I had expected, and had actually beheld a hundred times. Never in my life have I seemed more myself, more wide awake, or more calmly and familiarly conversant with things about me. I was conscious of no excitement, no poetic elevation, no wonderment, no exaggerated impressions; there was no fantastic mixing up of chimeras with ordinary realities; all within and all without was sober truth. I, who had the same afternoon entered the Swan covered with dust—I, who had a few minutes before engaged my place to Leeds, and was listening for the coach—the same real and veracious I, now stood gazing upon a scene utterly changed in aspect and objects.
In turning about, I perceived at a little distance an uncouth being—shall I call him peasant or savage—who was dragging his weary steps homeward—if, indeed, he might have a home, other than the hollow of a tree. His hatless head was matted with a mop of caroty hair, brushing his broad and naked shoulders, and almost concealing a florid Scythian-like visage, marked with the hopeless sullennese and mindless wildness, with which cruel bondage deforms the human countenance. A torn woollen jerkin, of the coarsest texture, left uncovered his shaggy bosom and brawny arms. The man, and this startled me more than even his strange appearance, passed me so near as almost to brush me with his tatters, and yet seemed no more to notice me than as if I had been a disembodied spirit. I accosted him with the question—”What place is this?” He started at the sound of my voice, but looked in an opposite direction, as if he had heard himself called from a distance, and seeing no one, went on.
Yet this question had no sooner escaped my lips, than the answer to it, like the most familiarly known fact, came to my recollection. Where am I? Where should I be, after having crossed Tina’s flood—where but on the brow of Gaetshefed; yes, Gaetshefed (Gateshead), and close at hand must be the sacred Girvum (Janoro), and the cloistered retreat of the learned and venerable historian of the British and Saxon Church!
I looked around, and although, to satisfy the strict demands of topography, I should have had some little way to go, and far enough to forfeit all chance of being taken up by the Mercury; yet, so it was, or so it seemed, that I descried, half hid by a clump of oaks, a pile of buildings, seemingly fresh from the mason’s hand, regular in form, but of no great extent or elevation. The main structure was surrounded by a low, scolloped wall of uncemented stones, through which there was access by a narrow gateway, into a court-yard or rough area, variously occupied with sheds and lumber. Behind the building, however, I saw a much loftier wall, apparently enclosing a garden.
The edifice itself—the monastery, for such, in fact, I found it to be—presented, in its general appearance, the combined characteristics of a church, to fortress, a prison, a seignorial mansion, and a farm-house—at least there was a something proper to each of these styles of building, discernible in this sanctuary of piety, whose inmates, while in the main devoting their lives to the business of piety, maintained their ground amid lawless hordes, as well by the aid of substantial defences, as by the awe of religion.
Meantime, in submitting to personal incarceration (as the spider keeps himself snug within the leaf he has coiled), exercised lordly land lucrative jurisdiction over the surrounding country, and in attestation of the vulgar realities that resulted from this influence, could show stowage room enough for provender, and live-stock of al
l descriptions.
The main building, oblong in its general figure, rose to the height of two stories, or I should rather say, a storey and a half; for the position of the upper windows or loops, seemed to indicate that the lofty apartments, or halls of the ground floor, were surmounted by dwarf chambers, or low cloisters next the roof. A circular tower sustained each corner of the western front of the building; and these towers were curiously annulated by bold projections in the brick-work, or rings, at even intervals from the bases to the summits of the towers. In fact, any one whose head was steady, might have climbed the towers, using the belts as steps. The sides of the building were sustained and adorned by pilasters, each of which, for chapter, displayed a several sculpture, and each vying with its neighbour in absurdity.
On the southern side of the building, and close to the tower, at that angle, there was a lofty massive oaken door, with narrow panels, and broad styles, and doubly secured by heavy bars, fastening within. This door seemed to be devoted to rare occasions, for the grass grew rank about the threshold. In advance a few feet of the other, or northern tower, stood insulated, a wreathed, slender column, surmounted by a saint—I mean the image or effigy of one; and I dare say of St. Cuthbert the founder. A flight of narrow stone steps, jutting from the wall between the two towers, and secured by a slender rail, led to an open or balconied hall, or antechamber, fronted by a screen, which rested on fantastic pillars or posts. From beneath, and where I stood, one might discern the narrow apertures in the inner walls of this hall, by which light and air, in parsimonions quantities, were admitted to the apartments beyond.
I approached the sacred precincts with no ordinary curiosity; and, unbidden, passed the wicket of the outer enclosure, within which I found a various assemblage of persons, and more bustle and clatter of tongues than one would expect to see and hear in so holy a place. Several groups occupied the area in front of the monastery; some were ascending and descending the flight of steps, and as many as it could fairly hold, were to be seen in the balcony, or hall, or open corridor already mentioned. These persons, some secular, some religious, far from exhibiting the demure abstraction which one thinks of as proper to a house of piety, were engaged in eager, and some of them in jocose chat, or gossip, of which the subjects were evidently not peculiarly nice or select. Excellent jests, to judge by the bursts of laughter with which they were greeted, enlivened these colloquies; and a burly monk, whose smooth cheeks bespoke a sunshine felicity within, from whatever sources derived, actually made the echoes ring from the wall of the monastery, by the peals of his mirth, while listening to a story told by a lean, raw-boned laic, who seemed to be a traveller.
