“To whom, Matthew?”
“To God and the Maharajah of Bwodpur.”
A sound that was a sigh and a sob came over the phone.
“Oh, God!” it whispered—“the Maharajah of Bwodpur!”
“Listen, Kautilya—I know—all.”
“All?” she gasped.
“All! A Maharajah is to be crowned in Bwodpur.”
A little cry came over the wire.
“And you have been summoned to the coronation—is it not true?”
“Yes.”
“And you must go. Bwodpur—the darker peoples of the world call you. Would it not be easier if—if with this far farewell you left me alone to meet the committee and draft the plan?”
“No—no—no, Matthew—you do not—you can not understand. You must come—unless—”
“Kautilya, darling, then I will come—of course I will come. I will do anything to make the broad straight path of your duty easier to enter. Only one thing I will not do, neither for Wealth nor Power nor Love; and that is to turn your feet from this broad and terrible way. And so to bid you Godspeed—to greet you with farewell and to hold you on my heart once more ere I give you up to God—I come, Kautilya.”
Her voice sang over the wires:
“Oh, Matthew—my beautiful One—my Man—come—come!—and at sunrise.”
“I am coming.”
“And at sunrise?”
“But—impossible.”
“Have you read the rescript? By sunrise, the first of May.”
“But, dear, it is April 30. It takes a train—”
“Nonsense. There is an airplane fueled, oiled, and waiting for you at the Maywood flying field. Stop for nothing—go now; quickly, quickly, oh, my beloved.”
Click. Silence. Slowly he let the receiver fall and turned away. He would not falter, and yet almost—almost he wished the truth otherwise. It would have been hard enough to surrender a loved one who wanted to be free, but to send away one who clung to him to her own hurt called for bitter, bitter courage; and dark and bitter courage stood staunch within him as he took out his watch. Or, perhaps, she too was full of courage and blithe and ready to part? He shivered. It was ten o’clock at night. The field was far away. He glanced up at his room, then paused no longer.
“Taxi—Maywood flying field. And quick!”
“Good Lord, boss, that’s forty miles—it’ll cost you near—”
“It’s worth twenty-five dollars for me to get there in two hours.”
The taxi leapt and roared. …
The pilot glanced scowling at the brown face of his lone passenger and climbed aloft. Matthew crawled into the tiny cabin. It was entirely closed in with glass save where up a few steps at the back perched the hard-faced pilot. There were seats for three other passengers, but they were empty.
There arose a roar—a roar that for seven hours never ceased, never hesitated, but crooned and sang and thundered. They moved. The lights of Chicago hurried backward. It was midnight. The lights swayed and swam, and suddenly, with a sick feeling and a shiver of instinctive fright, Matthew realized that they were in the air, off the earth, in the sky—flying, flying in the night.
Slowly and in a great circle they wheeled up and south. The earth lay dark beneath in dim and scattered brilliance. They left the great smudge of the crowded city and swept out over flat fields and sluggish rivers. Fires flew in the world beneath and dizzily marked Chicago. Fires flew in the world above and marked high heaven. Between, the gloom lay thick and heavy. It crushed in upon the plane. The plane roared and rose. Matthew could hear the beating and singing of wings rushing by in the night as though a thousand angels of evil were battling against the dawn. He shrank in his strait cabin and stared. His soul was afraid of this daring, heaven-challenging thing. He was but a tossing, disembodied spirit. There was nothing beneath him—nothing. There was nothing above him, nothing; and beside and everywhere to the earth’s ends lay nothing. He was alone in the center of the universe with one hard-faced and silent man.
Then the strange horror drew away. The stars, the “ancient and the everlasting stars,” like old and trusted friends, came and stood still above him and looked silently down: the Great Bear, the Virgin, and the Centaur. East curled the Little Bear, Hercules, and Boötes; west swung the Lion, the Twins, and the Little Dog. Vega, Arcturus, and Capella gleamed in faint brilliance.
The plane rocked gently like a cradle. Above the clamor of the engine rose a soft calm. Below, the formless void of earth began to speak with the shades of shadows and flickering, changing lights. That cluster of little jewels that flushed and glowed and dimmed would be a town; that comet below was an express train tearing east; that blackness was a world of farms asleep. In an hour Indianapolis was a golden scintillating glory with shadowy threads of smoke. In another hour Cincinnati—he groped at the map—yes, Cincinnati—lay in pools of light and shade, and the Ohio flowed like ink.
Suddenly the whole thing became symbolic. He was riding Life above the world. He was triumphant over Pain and Death. He remembered death down there where once the head of Jimmie thumped, thumped, on the rails. He heard the wail of that black and beautiful widowed wife. “They didn’t show me his face!” He saw Perigua lying still in death with that smile on his lips, and he heard him say, “He didn’t have no face!” Then came the slippers, her white and jeweled feet that came down from heaven and opened the gates of hell. Someone touched his shoulder. He knew that touch. It was arrest; arrest and jail. But what did he care? He was flying above the world. He was flying to her.
A soft pale light grew upon the world—a halo, a radiance as of some miraculous virgin birth. Lo! in the east and beneath the glory of the morning star, pale, faintly blushing streamers pierced the dim night. Then over the whole east came a flush. The dawn paused. Mountains loomed, great crags, gashed and broken and crowned with mighty trees. The wind
