Chapter 27: Bastin Discovers a Resemblance

There is little more to tell.

Shortly after our return Bickley, like a patriotic Englishman, volunteered for service at the front and departed in the uniform of the R.A.M.C. Before he left he took the opportunity of explaining to Bastin how much better it was in such a national emergency as existed, to belong to a profession in which a man could do something to help the bodies of his countrymen that had been broken in the common cause, than to one like his in which it was only possible to pelt them with vain words.

“You think that, do you, Bickley?” answered Bastin. “Well, I hold that it is better to heal souls than bodies, because, as even you will have learned out there in Orofena, they last so much longer.”

“I am not certain that I learned anything of the sort,” said Bickley, “or even that Oro was more than an ordinary old man. He said that he had lived a thousand years, but what was there to prove this except his word, which is worth nothing?”

“There was the Lady Yva’s word also, which is worth a great deal, Bickley.”

“Yes, but she may have meant a thousand moons. Further, as according to her own showing she was still quite young, how could she know her father’s age?”

“Quite so, Bickley. But all she actually said was that she was of the same age as one of our women of twenty-seven, which may have meant two hundred and seventy for all I know. However, putting that aside you will admit that they had both slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years.”

“I admit that they slept, Bastin, because I helped to awaken them, but for how long there is nothing to show, except those star maps which are probably quite inaccurate.”

“They are not inaccurate,” I broke in, “for I have had them checked by leading astronomers who say that they show a marvelous knowledge of the heavens as these were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and are today.”

Here I should state that those two metal maps and the ring which I gave to Yva and found again after the catastrophe, were absolutely the only things connected with her or with Oro that we brought away with us. The former I would never part with, feeling their value as evidence. Therefore, when we descended to the city Nyo and the depths beneath, I took them with me wrapped in cloth in my pocket. Thus they were preserved. Everything else went when the Rock of Offerings and the cave mouth sank beneath the waters of the lake.

This may have happened either in the earth tremor, which no doubt was caused by the advance of the terrific world-balance, or when the electric power, though diffused and turned by Yva’s insulated body, struck the great gyroscope’s travelling foot with sufficient strength, not to shift it indeed on to the right-hand path as Oro had designed, but still to cause it to stagger and even perhaps to halt for the fraction of a second. Even this pause may have been enough to cause convulsions of the earth above; indeed, I gathered from Marama and other Orofenans that such convulsions had occurred on and around the island at what must have corresponded with that moment of the loosing of the force.

This loss of our belongings in the house of the Rock of Offerings was the more grievous because among them were some Kodak photographs which I had taken, including portraits of Oro and one of Yva that was really excellent, to say nothing of pictures of the mouth of the cave and of the ruins and crater lake above. How bitterly I regret that I did not keep these photographs in my pocket with the map-plates.

“Even if the star-maps are correct, still it proves nothing,” said Bickley, “since possibly Oro’s astronomical skill might have enabled him to draw that of the sky at any period, though I allow this is impossible.”

“I doubt his taking so much trouble merely to deceive three wanderers who lacked the knowledge even to check them,” I said. “But all this misses the point, Bickley. However long they had slept, that man and woman did arise from seeming death. They did dwell in those marvelous caves with their evidences of departed civilisations, and they did show us that fearful, world-wandering gyroscope. These things we saw.”

“I admit that we saw them, Arbuthnot, and I admit that they are one and all beyond human comprehension. To that extent I am converted, and, I may add, humbled,” said Bickley.

“So you ought to be,” exclaimed Bastin, “seeing that you always swore that there was nothing in the world that is not capable of a perfectly natural explanation.”

“Of which all these things may be capable, Bastin, if only we held the key.”

“Very well, Bickley, but how do you explain what the Lady Yva did? I may tell you now what she commanded me to conceal at the time, namely, that she became a Christian; so much so that by her own will, I baptised and confirmed her on the very morning of her sacrifice. Doubtless it was this that changed her heart so much that she became willing, of course without my knowledge, to leave everything she cared for,” here he looked hard at me, “and lay down her life to save the world, half of which she believed was about to be drowned by Oro. Now, considering her history and upbringing, I call this a spiritual marvel, much greater than any you now admit, and one you can’t explain, Bickley.”

“No, I cannot explain, or, at any rate, I will not try,” he answered, also staring hard at me. “Whatever she believed, or did not believe, and whatever would or would not have happened, she was a great and wonderful woman whose memory I worship.”

“Quite so, Bickley, and now perhaps you see my point, that what you describe as mere vain words may also be helpful to mankind; more so, indeed, than your surgical instruments and pills.”

“You couldn’t convert Oro, anyway,” exclaimed Bickley, with irritation.

“No, Bickley; but then I have always understood that the devil is beyond conversion because he is beyond repentance. You see, I think that if that old scoundrel was not the devil himself, at any rate he was a bit of him, and, if I am right, I am not ashamed to have failed in his case.”

“Even Oro was not utterly bad, Bastin,” I said, reflecting on certain traits of mercy that he had shown, or that I dreamed him to have shown in the course of our mysterious midnight journeys to various parts of the earth. Also I remembered that he had loved Tommy and for his sake had spared our lives. Lastly, I do not altogether wonder that he came to certain hasty conclusions as to the value of our modern civilisations.

“I am very glad to hear it, Humphrey, since while there is a spark left the whole fire may burn up again, and I believe that to the Divine mercy there are no limits, though Oro will have a long road to travel before he finds it. And now I have something to say. It has troubled me very much that I was obliged to leave those Orofenans wandering in a kind of religious twilight.”

“You couldn’t help that,” said Bickley, “seeing that if you had stopped, by now you would have been wandering in religious light.”

“Still, I am not sure that I ought not to have stopped. I seem to have deserted a field that was open to me. However, it can’t be helped, since it is certain that we could never find that island again, even if Oro has not sunk it beneath the sea, as he is quite capable of doing, to cover his tracks, so to speak. So I mean to do my best in another field by way of atonement.”

“You are not going to become a missionary?” I said.

“No, but with the consent of the Bishop, who, I think, believes that my locum got on better in the parish than I do, as no doubt was the case, I, too, have volunteered for the Front, and been accepted as a chaplain of the 201st Division.”

“Why, that’s mine!” said Bickley.

“Is it? I am very glad, since now we shall be able to pursue our pleasant arguments and to do our best to open each other’s minds.”