Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

“But to imagine this is the only good thing in the world, where there are millions and millions of people just like us, all with their own particular bits of happiness, their own hopes and dreams, honestly, Andrea, that’s so self-centred and egoistical-why-it’s diseased-sheer megalomania-a sort of madness. And don’t tell me that’s really you. Never! You’d never have thought like that, left to yourself. You’re quite different, really. This is just a foul lesson you’re repeating. It was taught you by your father-and your two uncles.”

“What if it was?”

“Andrea,” he said solemnly, “you’ve got to tell me what those three are doing.”

She gave a sharp exclamation, and then was silent, determinedly silent.

“I’ll tell you this. I’m not the only one who’s worrying about them. There are two other men-one of them is that scientist, Hooker-who have been trying to puzzle out what they’re doing.”

She shook her head.

“That’s not why I’m here,” he continued, trying to make her look at him. “You know why I’m here, because I fell in love with you. I don’t care tuppence about your father or your uncles-they can do what they like, so long as it doesn’t interfere with our happiness. But then it seems it does. They’ve made you believe life’s hopeless. You talk as if this were the only time we could have together. You know something, and you won’t tell me what it is.”

“I can’t,” she gasped.

“If it didn’t affect us, I wouldn’t ask you,” he went on, pressing her. “But it does, and you know it does. It makes all this-I mean, everything between us-a mockery, a bit of faked-up happiness snatched-at for a day-”

“No, it doesn’t,” she protested. “Just the opposite. Something perfect that nothing can spoil.”

“That’s not true. How can it be perfect when you’re thinking one thing and I another, when you have a secret, big enough to cast a shadow over all your life, that you hide from me, when we’re not really sharing our thoughts, when I regard to-day as a beginning and you talk of it as an end? That’s just playing at love, just pretending for a few hours-”

“No, no, no, Malcolm-please!” And she wept, clinging desperately to him.

He waited, then asked quietly: “What is it, Andrea?”

She looked at him very earnestly, took his hand and put it against her cheek and then kissed it quickly. “This is real, isn’t it? I mean, you and me?”

“Yes,” he replied, rather sadly, “I know it’s real with me. Nothing like it before, and there’ll be nothing like it again.”

She nodded. “Same here,” she said slowly. “And you’re right-I see it now-I must tell you. My father-and my two uncles-are planning-something.”

“I thought they were. But what?”

“They want to end the world.”

He stared at her. She looked perfectly serious, even tragic. “Wait a minute,” he stammered in his bewilderment, “you don’t mean, literally, they want to end the world?”

“Yes, I do,” she replied hastily. “They want to destroy everything, everything -and you know why, because I’ve told you already

– they believe life’s hopeless, that it’s gone all wrong, that it would be better if people were no longer born, just to suffer pain and misery-so they want to end it all. They’d destroy the whole earth, if they could-”

“I dare say,” he retorted grimly, “but that’s simply ridiculous. And I don’t see what they can do.”

“They think they can destroy every living thing,” she told him gravely, “almost in a flash. I don’t understand it, but I know they think they can wipe out all the surface of the world, even if they can’t blow up the whole earth. And they’ve been working at it now for several years.”

“But, Andrea, it’s-it’s-preposterous.”

“I knew you’d say that, but you don’t know them. And don’t forget that Uncle Paul is a great scientist.”

He was busy now remembering things that Hooker had said, and was silent for several moments. When he spoke again, they had reversed the roles in which they found themselves that morning, for then he had been uncertain and indecisive, rather helpless, and she, in her deeply feminine, maternal, urge and will towards their happiness, had known her own mind exactly and had been sharply decisive; but now she was uncertain and rather helpless, not knowing what should be done next, whereas he was now sure, curt, commanding, and she found herself compelled to accept his decision without protest.

“We must go back,” he announced. “And I’m going there with you.”

Never in Malcolm’s experience had there been-and he felt there could never be again-a sunset like that they saw on their return to Lost Lake. It was as if the world was already ending. The whole western sky was swept with brooms of fire; the furnace doors of Heaven were flung open; the horizon was one huge conflagration; red-gold castles flamed and melted on burnished peaks of gold; islands of violet and palest green came through a dissolving fiery mist; the clouds to the north were like black guttering torches; the eastern sky had been sprayed with rose and amethyst; the south glowed orange and then paled to an egg-shell green; and at last the west forgot its anger and streamed out into blanched and tender night; and that was the end of the day’s vast heroic death. When they were riding down the last slope the earliest stars were twinkling, though faint light from beyond the horizon still caught the pale stretched silk of the sky. The hills huddled down, their edges blunted, and the valley’s length was lost in soft shadow. Angry little lights, like angry little questions, spluttered from the grouped buildings and the white tower, but above them the night arched itself, immense and ancient and still at peace. Without another word Andrea and Malcolm rode through the gateway, side by side.

CHAPTER NINE

The Three Destroyers

The room they had given Hooker was perhaps the most handsome and costly apartment he had ever owned, even if only for a day; although it was only one of many guest rooms, and of no importance in the establishment. The floor was covered with coloured and highly-polished tiles, with two fine Oriental rugs over them; the chairs and the bed were old Spanish, carved in dark wood; the curtains were of the best Italian weaving; there were some valuable pictures on the creamy walls, and a well-stocked scarlet bookcase; everything there was pleasant, instantly gratifying, to the sight or the touch; a sumptuous and staggeringly expensive room. And Hooker had hardly noticed it, though he had already spent some time within its charming walls. Outside, reached through the two long windows, was a broad balcony, running the length of the front of the house and looking down the valley; all tiled and polished and artfully coloured too, with magnificent fat lounging chairs and convenient low tables scattered about on it. Hooker had spent most of his time up there either wandering round and round his room or going out on to the balcony and moving restlessly between his window and the stone balustrade. He was trying to put his thoughts in order, to collect and weigh evidence, to make reasonable deductions from the evidence, to arrive at some conclusion. It just couldn’t be done.

Ever since his session with Paul MacMichael that morning, when MacMichael had asked him to run his eye over some calculations, had then made various strange remarks, boastful in tone but mysterious in content, and had promised to show him a certain curious experiment before the day was out, Hooker had been trying to make up his mind about his fellow scientist. It amounted to this. Either MacMichael had resigned and disappeared and finally settled himself in this remote place because he was now so far ahead of his colleagues in physics that he could only work independently, had, in short, outdistanced the rest of them completely. Or MacMichael was going quietly mad, and had taken himself away, or had been removed by his wealthy brother, in order to play at being the greatest physicist on earth, here in this wilderness. Hooker was convinced there was no other adequate explanation of his behaviour and talk. Either he had left them all standing, or he was mad; though it was just possible, if not at all likely, that he had kept his scientific wits and was losing all his others, in short, that he was a great man going mad.