PAGE 11
The End Of All
by
“Quick!” he said. “Help me fasten this door!”
That sudden call of duty struck something habitual in me, and, without knowing exactly what I was doing, I found myself assisting him in barricading the door. The endeavor somewhat changed the current of my thoughts from the danger that was unseen to the danger that was storming under our windows. I must have muttered some kind of excuse for my conduct to the Judge, for he said: “No time for apologies or recriminations now. The house is full of my neighbors, who have come here for protection. Go upstairs and look after the women. The best and only thing we can do is to preserve a quiet place to die in, and not be trampled to pieces. Are you armed?”
I dashed up the broad staircase, and found the upper rooms occupied by women, some of whom, in morning attire hastily thrown on, were sitting around with their heads in their hands, while others were huddled at the windows, staring with strained looks of terror at the crowds on the street. Walking up and down the room, wringing his hands, a middle-aged man was giving expression to the most terrible irony and cowardice, without reference to his listeners.
I ran my eye over the huddled groups of frightened women. The one I sought was not there. I flew through the groaning figures on the stairway up to her chamber. I knocked loudly, and called her by name passionately. Then I listened. I heard nothing but the dull sounds of the human tumult that came through the open casement, and the sighing tones of the telegraph wires as the steady draft from the east swept through them. I shook the door, and abjured her to come to me. Then in my madness I burst it in. She was on her knees at the bed, with her hands on her ears, and her head buried in the bedclothes. I fell down on my knees beside her, and put my arm around her. “Kate,” I said, “we will die together. Look up. Love at least is eternal.” She was cold. I caught her head between my hands, and turned her beautiful face toward me. My God, she was dead! Dead, with her staring eyes full of terror, and her beautiful mouth set in hard and ghastly lines. Then it was that I felt rise up within me for the first time the rebellious bitterness of the natural man. Need I tell you that at such moments man is little better than an animal, save in his free agency that enables him to defy? I passed hours there–moaning, cursing, bewailing. When at last the force of the paroxysm had expended itself, I shook my fist in the face of heaven, with the obduracy of Pagan Greek, and said: “Come on now, you envious Fates, and do your worst speedily, or I will be too quick for you!”
Judge Brisbane found me there, raving.
“Do you know?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “and I am grateful. She is spared much that we must endure.”
“And so,” I said, “life, love, and the vaunted future of the race end in mockery.”
“It seems so,” he replied. “But we cannot be sure. Come with me.”
We ascended to the roof. The spectacle that greeted us was indescribable. The tops of all the houses were black with people, who were staring mutely and with childish terror into the West. The steady, subdued organ tone of the rushing atmosphere could now be heard above all else. We stood there in silence a few moments, and then I said, “It’s terrible. What do you suppose is taking place?”
“I suppose,” replied the Judge, “that we are losing our atmosphere. Reeling it off, so to speak, slowly, as we revolve. Our planet has entered some portion of the ethereal space where the conditions are sucking us dry of oxygen. As it recedes from the earth the water disappears, and we shall be left to revolve like the moon, without air and without liquid, and consequently without life.”