The Scarlet Plague Page 5

  V

  "FOR two days I sheltered in a pleasant grove where there had been nodeaths. In those two days, while badly depressed and believing that myturn would come at any moment, nevertheless I rested and recuperated. Sodid the pony. And on the third day, putting what small store of tinnedprovisions I possessed on the pony's back, I started on across a verylonely land. Not a live man, woman, or child, did I encounter, thoughthe dead were everywhere. Food, however, was abundant. The land thenwas not as it is now. It was all cleared of trees and brush, and it wascultivated. The food for millions of mouths was growing, ripening, andgoing to waste. From the fields and orchards I gathered vegetables,fruits, and berries. Around the deserted farmhouses I got eggs andcaught chickens. And frequently I found supplies of tinned provisions inthe store-rooms.

  "A strange thing was what was taking place with all the domesticanimals. Everywhere they were going wild and preying on one another. Thechickens and ducks were the first to be destroyed, while the pigs werethe first to go wild, followed by the cats. Nor were the dogs long inadapting themselves to the changed conditions. There was a veritableplague of dogs. They devoured the corpses, barked and howled during thenights, and in the daytime slunk about in the distance. As the time wentby, I noticed a change in their behavior. At first they were apart fromone another, very suspicious and very prone to fight. But after a notvery long while they began to come together and run in packs. The dog,you see, always was a social animal, and this was true before ever hecame to be domesticated by man. In the last days of the world before theplague, there were many many very different kinds of dogs--dogs withouthair and dogs with warm fur, dogs so small that they would make scarcelya mouthful for other dogs that were as large as mountain lions. Well,all the small dogs, and the weak types, were killed by their fellows.Also, the very large ones were not adapted for the wild life and bredout. As a result, the many different kinds of dogs disappeared, andthere remained, running in packs, the medium-sized wolfish dogs that youknow to-day."

  "But the cats don't run in packs, Granser," Hoo-Hoo objected.

  "The cat was never a social animal. As one writer in the nineteenthcentury said, the cat walks by himself. He always walked by himself,from before the time he was tamed by man, down through the long ages ofdomestication, to to-day when once more he is wild.

  "The horses also went wild, and all the fine breeds we had degeneratedinto the small mustang horse you know to-day. The cows likewise wentwild, as did the pigeons and the sheep. And that a few of the chickenssurvived you know yourself. But the wild chicken of to-day is quite adifferent thing from the chickens we had in those days.

  "But I must go on with my story. I travelled through a deserted land. Asthe time went by I began to yearn more and more for human beings. But Inever found one, and I grew lonelier and lonelier. I crossed LivermoreValley and the mountains between it and the great valley of the SanJoaquin. You have never seen that valley, but it is very large and it isthe home of the wild horse. There are great droves there, thousands andtens of thousands. I revisited it thirty years after, so I know. Youthink there are lots of wild horses down here in the coast valleys, butthey are as nothing compared with those of the San Joaquin. Strange tosay, the cows, when they went wild, went back into the lower mountains.Evidently they were better able to protect themselves there.

  "In the country districts the ghouls and prowlers had been less inevidence, for I found many villages and towns untouched by fire. Butthey were filled by the pestilential dead, and I passed by withoutexploring them. It was near Lathrop that, out of my loneliness, I pickedup a pair of collie dogs that were so newly free that they were urgentlywilling to return to their allegiance to man. These collies accompaniedme for many years, and the strains of them are in those very dogs therethat you boys have to-day. But in sixty years the collie strain hasworked out. These brutes are more like domesticated wolves than anythingelse."

  Hare-Lip rose to his feet, glanced to see that the goats were safe,and looked at the sun's position in the afternoon sky, advertisingimpatience at the prolixity of the old man's tale. Urged to hurry byEdwin, Granser went on.

  "There is little more to tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and ridinga horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went onto a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotelthere I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture wasabundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley wasfull of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness thatnone but a man who has once been highly civilized can understand. ThenI could stand it no more. I felt that I was going crazy. Like the dog,I was a social animal and I needed my kind. I reasoned that since I hadsurvived the plague, there was a possibility that others had survived.Also, I reasoned that after three years the plague germs must all begone and the land be clean again.

  With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out 144]

  "With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out. Again I crossed the SanJoaquin Valley, the mountains beyond, and came down into LivermoreValley. The change in those three years was amazing. All the land hadbeen splendidly tilled, and now I could scarcely recognize it, 'such wasthe sea of rank vegetation that had overrun the agricultural handiworkof man. You see, the wheat, the vegetables, and orchard trees had alwaysbeen cared for and nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender. Theweeds and wild bushes and such things, on the contrary, had always beenfought by man, so that they were tough and resistant. As a result, whenthe hand of man was removed, the wild vegetation smothered and destroyedpractically all the domesticated vegetation. The coyotes were greatlyincreased, and it was at this time that I first encountered wolves,straying in twos and threes and small packs down from the regions wherethey had always persisted.

  "It was at Lake Temescal, not far from the one-time city of Oakland,that I came upon the first live human beings. Oh, my grandsons, how canI describe to you my emotion, when, astride my horse and dropping downthe hillside to the lake, I saw the smoke of a campfire rising throughthe trees. Almost did my heart stop beating. I felt that I was goingcrazy. Then I heard the cry of a babe--a human babe. And dogs barked,and my dogs answered. I did not know but what I was the one human alivein the whole world. It could not be true that here were others--smoke,and the cry of a babe.

  "Emerging on the lake, there, before my eyes, not a hundred yards away,I saw a man, a large man. He was standing on an outjutting rock andfishing. I was overcome. I stopped my horse. I tried to call out butcould not. I waved my hand. It seemed to me that the man looked at me,but he did not appear to wave. Then I laid my head on my arms therein the saddle. I was afraid to look again, for I knew it was anhallucination, and I knew that if I looked the man would be gone. And soprecious was the hallucination, that I wanted it to persist yet a littlewhile. I knew, too, that as long as I did not look it would persist.

  "Thus I remained, until I heard my dogs snarling, and a man's voice.What do you think the voice said? I will tell you. It said: '_Where inhell did you come from??_'

  "Those were the words, the exact words. That was what your othergrandfather said to me, Hare-Lip, when he greeted me there on the shoreof Lake Temescal fifty-seven years ago. And they were the most ineffablewords I have ever heard. I opened my eyes, and there he stood before me,a large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant-browed, fierce-eyed. How Igot off my horse I do not know. But it seemed that the next I knew I wasclasping his hand with both of mine and crying. I would have embracedhim, but he was ever a narrow-minded, suspicious man, and he drew awayfrom me. Yet did I cling to his hand and cry."

  Granser's voice faltered and broke at the recollection, and the weaktears streamed down his cheeks while the boys looked on and giggled.

  "Yet did I cry," he continued, "and desire to embrace him, though theChauffeur was a brute, a perfect brute--the most abhorrent man I haveever known. His name was... strange, how I have forgotten his name.Everybody called him Chauffeur--it was the name of his occupation, andit stuck.
That is how, to this day, the tribe he founded is called theChauffeur Tribe.

  Everybody called him Chauffeur 149]

  "He was a violent, unjust man. Why the plague germs spared him I cannever understand. It would seem, in spite of our old metaphysicalnotions about absolute justice, that there is no justice in theuniverse. Why did he live?--an iniquitous, moral monster, a blot on theface of nature, a cruel, relentless, bestial cheat as well. All hecould talk about was motor cars, machinery, gasoline, and garages--andespecially, and with huge delight, of his mean pilferings and sordidswindlings of the persons who had employed him in the days before thecoming of the plague. And yet he was spared, while hundreds of millions,yea, billions, of better men were destroyed.

  Vesta the one woman 150]

  "I went on with him to his camp, and there I saw her, Vesta, the onewoman. It was glorious and... pitiful. There she was, Vesta Van Warden,the young wife of John Van Warden, clad in rags, with marred and scarredand toil-calloused hands, bending over the campfire and doing scullionwork--she, Vesta, who had been born to the purple of the greatestbaronage of wealth the world had ever known. John Van Warden, herhusband, worth one billion, eight hundred millions and President of theBoard of Industrial Magnates, had been the ruler of America. Also,sitting on the International Board of Control, he had been one of theseven men who ruled the world. And she herself had come of equally noblestock. Her father, Philip Saxon, had been President of the Board ofIndustrial Magnates up to the time of his death. This office was inprocess of becoming hereditary, and had Philip Saxon had a son that sonwould have succeeded him. But his only child was Vesta, the perfectflower of generations of the highest culture this planet has everproduced. It was not until the engagement between Vesta and Van Wardentook place, that Saxon indicated the latter as his successor. It was, Iam sure, a political marriage. I have reason to believe that Vesta neverreally loved her husband in the mad passionate way of which the poetsused to sing. It was more like the marriages that obtained among crownedheads in the days before they were displaced by the Magnates.

  There she was, boiling fish-chowder 153]

  "And there she was, boiling fish-chowder in a soot-covered pot, herglorious eyes inflamed by the acrid smoke of the open fire. Hers was asad story. She was the one survivor in a million, as I had been, asthe Chauffeur had been. On a crowning eminence of the Alameda Hills,overlooking San Francisco Bay, Van Warden had built a vast summerpalace. It was surrounded by a park of a thousand acres. When theplague broke out, Van Warden sent her there. Armed guards patrolled theboundaries of the park, and nothing entered in the way of provisions oreven mail matter that was not first fumigated. And yet did the plagueenter, killing the guards at their posts, the servants at their tasks,sweeping away the whole army of retainers--or, at least, all of them whodid not flee to die elsewhere. So it was that Vesta found herself thesole living person in the palace that had become a charnel house.

  "Now the Chauffeur had been one of the servants that ran away.Returning, two months afterward, he discovered Vesta in a little summerpavilion where there had been no deaths and where she had establishedherself. He was a brute. She was afraid, and she ran away and hid amongthe trees. That night, on foot, she fled into the mountains--she, whosetender feet and delicate body had never known the bruise of stones northe scratch of briars. He followed, and that night he caught her. Hestruck her. Do you understand? He beat her with those terrible fists ofhis and made her his slave. It was she who had to gather the firewood,build the fires, cook, and do all the degrading camp-labor--she, who hadnever performed a menial act in her life. These things he compelled herto do, while he, a proper savage, elected to lie around camp and lookon. He did nothing, absolutely nothing, except on occasion to hunt meator catch fish."

  "Good for Chauffeur," Hare-Lip commented in an undertone to the otherboys. "I remember him before he died. He was a corker. But he didthings, and he made things go. You know, Dad married his daughter, an'you ought to see the way he knocked the spots outa Dad. The Chauffeurwas a son-of-a-gun. He made us kids stand around. Even when he wascroaking he reached out for me, once, an' laid my head open with thatlong stick he kept always beside him."

  Hare-Lip rubbed his bullet head reminiscently, and the boys returned tothe old man, who was maundering ecstatically about Vesta, the squaw ofthe founder of the Chauffeur Tribe.

  "And so I say to you that you cannot understand the awfulness of thesituation. The Chauffeur was a servant, understand, a servant. And hecringed, with bowed head, to such as she. She was a lord of life, bothby birth and by marriage. The destinies of millions, such as he, shecarried in the hollow of her pink-white hand. And, in the days beforethe plague, the slightest contact with such as he would have beenpollution. Oh, I have seen it. Once, I remember, there was Mrs. Goldwin,wife of one of the great magnates. It was on a landing stage, justas she was embarking in her private dirigible, that she dropped herparasol. A servant picked it up and made the mistake of handing it toher--to her, one of the greatest royal ladies of the land! She shrankback, as though he were a leper, and indicated her secretary to receiveit. Also, she ordered her secretary to ascertain the creature's name andto see that he was immediately discharged from service. And such a womanwas Vesta Van Warden. And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave.

  And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave 158]

  "--Bill--that was it; Bill, the Chauffeur. That was his name. He wasa wretched, primitive man, wholly devoid of the finer instincts andchivalrous promptings of a cultured soul. No, there is no absolutejustice, for to him fell that wonder of womanhood, Vesta Van Warden. Thegrievous-ness of this you will never understand, my grandsons; foryou are yourselves primitive little savages, unaware of aught else butsavagery. Why should Vesta not have been mine? I was a man of cultureand refinement, a professor in a great university. Even so, in the timebefore the plague, such was her exalted position, she would not havedeigned to know that I existed. Mark, then, the abysmal degradationto which she fell at the hands of the Chauffeur. Nothing less than thedestruction of all mankind had made it possible that I should know her,look in her eyes, converse with her, touch her hand--ay, and love herand know that her feelings toward me were very kindly. I have reason tobelieve that she, even she, would have loved me, there being no otherman in the world except the Chauffeur. Why, when it destroyed eightbillions of souls, did not the plague destroy just one more man, andthat man the Chauffeur?

  "Once, when the Chauffeur was away fishing, she begged me to kill him.With tears in her eyes she begged me to kill him. But he was a strongand violent man, and I was afraid. Afterwards, I talked with him. Ioffered him my horse, my pony, my dogs, all that I possessed, if hewould give Vesta to me. And he grinned in my face and shook his head. Hewas very insulting. He said that in the old days he had been a servant,had been dirt under the feet of men like me and of women like Vesta, andthat now he had the greatest lady in the land to be servant to him andcook his food and nurse his brats. 'You had your day before the plague,'he said; 'but this is my day, and a damned good day it is. I wouldn'ttrade back to the old times for anything.' Such words he spoke, but theyare not his words. He was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths fellcontinually from his lips.

  "Also, he told me that if he caught me making eyes at his woman he'dwring my neck and give her a beating as well. What was I to do? I wasafraid. He was a brute. That first night, when I discovered the camp,Vesta and I had great talk about the things of our vanished world. Wetalked of art, and books, and poetry; and the Chauffeur listened andgrinned and sneered. He was bored and angered by our way of speech whichhe did not comprehend, and finally he spoke up and said: 'And this isVesta Van Warden, one-time wife of Van Warden the Magnate--a high andstuck-up beauty, who is now my squaw. Eh, Professor Smith, times ischanged, times is changed. Here, you, woman, take off my moccasins,and lively about it. I want Professor Smith to see how well I have youtrained.'

  "I saw her clench her teeth, and the flame of revolt rise in her face.He drew bac
k his gnarled fist to strike, and I was afraid, and sick atheart. I could do nothing to prevail against him. So I got up to go,and not be witness to such indignity. But the Chauffeur laughed andthreatened me with a beating if I did not stay and behold. And I satthere, perforce, by the campfire on the shore of Lake Temescal, andsaw Vesta, Vesta Van Warden, kneel and remove the moccasins of thatgrinning, hairy, apelike human brute.

  "--Oh, you do not understand, my grandsons. You have never knownanything else, and you do not understand.

  "'Halter-broke and bridle-wise,' the Chauffeur gloated, while sheperformed that dreadful, menial task. 'A trifle balky at times,Professor, a trifle balky; but a clout alongside the jaw makes her asmeek and gentle as a lamb.'

  "And another time he said: 'We've got to start all over and replenishthe earth and multiply. You're handicapped, Professor. You ain't got nowife, and we're up against a regular Garden-of-Eden proposition. But Iain't proud. I'll tell you what, Professor.' He pointed at their littleinfant, barely a year old. 'There's your wife, though you'll have towait till she grows up. It's rich, ain't it? We're all equals here, andI'm the biggest toad in the splash. But I ain't stuck up--not I. I doyou the honor, Professor Smith, the very great honor of betrothing toyou my and Vesta Van Warden's daughter. Ain't it cussed bad that VanWarden ain't here to see?'"