Chapter V: Epilogue (1)

It was long hours afterward that Paul Joseph Weston sat with Ethel alone in the library.

“But yourself, dear—you have not told me yet how you came to be here,” he said.

She laughed softly.

“Rash boy! Was there not need of someone’s preparing your father and mother for so wonderful a home-coming? I found out by judicious inquiry that you had not yet left the city, so I knew, when I took the train, that I had at least a few hours’ start of you.”

“But how—what—how could you, dear? Surely I didn’t tell——”

Again she laughed, but this time she dimpled into a rosy blush.

“When your very disquieting letter came, sir, I remembered something Mr. Martin had once said to me. I went to town, sent for Mr. Martin and insisted upon his telling me all that he knew of—your youth.”

“And that was?”

“That he believed you to be Paul Weston, who had quarreled with his father and run away after apparently killing the poor gentleman. Mr. Martin said that the father did not die, but slowly recovered from his wound and made every possible effort to find his son, even sending Martin himself to seek for him. Once Martin traced the boy to a mining camp, but there he lost the trail and never regained it until he thought he saw Paul Weston’s features in Joseph Westbrook’s face.”

“Ethel, what did Martin first tell you of me that caused you to go to him for aid?”

“He hinted that you were a—ah, don’t make me say it, please!”

The man’s face grew stern.

“And he knew all the time it was false!” he cried.

She put a soft finger on his tense lips.

“We just won’t think of him—and really, I’ve forgiven him long ago, for it was he that helped me in the end, you know. Besides, he acknowledged that he didn’t really suppose you were Paul Weston. I—I fancy he didn’t want me to think too highly of this interesting Mr. Joseph Westbrook!” she added saucily.

The arm that held her tightened its clasp.

“He needn’t have worried,” she continued, with uptilted chin. “I shall never, never marry Mr. Joseph Westbrook!”

“Ethel!”

“But if Hustler Joe or Paul Weston should ask——”

Her lips were silenced by a kiss and a fervent, “You little fraud of a sweetheart!”

_Interludes_

The rich man speaks about how he spends his money, while his friends speak about how he made it.

* * * * *

You could tell the old-time hero by his medals; the modern one is known by his collection of loving-cups.

* * * * *

The spendthrift sometimes does more good with his money than the philanthropist.

* * * * *

The fact that figures won’t lie probably accounts for the invention of statistics.

* * * * *

A political job differs from any other kind, inasmuch as you work before you get it, instead of afterward.

* * * * *

The miser holds on to his own money; the millionaire to other people’s.

* * * * *

_His Cogitation_

“Well, then, amongst others, there’s the man who habitually talks to himself,” ruminatingly said the Pruntytown Philosopher the other evening. “If he does it in order to listen to himself, he is a fool; if he does it to avoid listening to his friends, he is a sage; and if he does it to save his friends from listening to him, he is a philanthropist.”

* * * * *

_The Safe Side_

REPORTER—Were you quoted correctly in that interview in the morning papers?

SENATOR—Come around the day after tomorrow. How can I tell until I see how the interview is going to be taken?

* * * * *

_An Inference_

“My wife and I have lived happily together for twenty-five years.”

“Now, tell me, old fellow—in confidence, of course—which one of you has had the other bluffed all this time?”

_The Constitution_

BY FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS
_Author of “The Kidnapped Millionaires,” “Colonel Monroe’s Doctrine,”
“President John Smith,” “Shades of the Fathers,” etc._

The practical man values a house not by its antiquity, but by its conformability to modern standards of construction and equipment. If he purchases an ancient structure he is not required to pay an added price because of its lack of plumbing, its absence of gas and electric lighting fixtures, and he is not entranced that its roof leaks and that its cellar is damp and moldy.

This same man, if he gives the subject a passing thought, will likely assure you that the Constitution of the United States is a perfect document because it is more than one hundred years old. It also is likely that this is the extent of his information concerning that famous document.

The average lack of knowledge concerning our National Constitution is astounding. Like children who have been drilled to repeat the Lord’s Prayer without the faintest conception of what the petition means, we have mentally drilled ourselves to believe that our Constitution is perfect, that it was inspired by a superhuman wisdom, and that it is treason to criticize or even discuss its infallible precepts.

In this respect we are the most narrow, bigoted and prejudiced people who pretend to keep in alignment with progress. For more than one hundred years we have been proclaiming the perfection of our free governmental institutions, and calling on other nations to admire us and to follow our example.

Within the past few years the truth has been forced home on us that the officialdom of our townships, villages, cities, counties, states and of the nation is maggoty with corruption; that our local, state and national legislatures are openly controlled by mercenary private interests; that the scandals concerning our judiciary can no longer be smothered or concealed; that our citizens are powerless to pass laws demanded by the majority, or to defeat those aimed to despoil the majority; that the burdens of taxation are spurned by those who have amassed wealth by means of unfair and ofttimes purchased legislation, and that the domination of corporations and vested interests is so complete as to be apparent to the dullest of the plundered.

This language is not exaggerated. It is impossible to overstate the enormity of the depth to which we have descended in the scale of political morals. Ten years ago any one of the disclosures which now are made from week to week would have aroused the nation; today the repetition of these horrors dazes those who attempt to keep track of them. Not one crime in a hundred ever sees the light in printer’s ink. The bigger thieves are so buttressed and protected by the fortifications of wealth, and so secure behind the barbed wire entanglements woven by the courts, that their enraged dupes cannot reach them.

Great Britain is a republic in all save name, yet no such conditions prevail under its government. France is a republic, yet its people are not despoiled by official brigands, neither is the free expression of its electorate crushed beneath the massed weight of its moneyed interests.

I count it a disgrace to be an American so long as these degrading conditions prevail. It is a dishonor to live in a city, community, state or nation where thievery is condoned or tolerated, and it is cowardly weakness for the honest majority to assume that the problem of corruption is past their solving.

The most formidable barrier in the way of permanent redress has been erected and is maintained by those who are checked by it. It consists of the absurd assumption that our material prosperity has been the consequence of the perfect provisions of our National Constitution. It is manifested in the senseless worship of the forefathers, and the ignorant deification of the founders of the document, which for more than a hundred years has served as a model for our state, municipal and local governments.

We have come to recognize the hopelessness of honest majorities when pitted against the machinery of our municipal governments; we no longer deny that the cumbersome machinery of our state governments lends itself to the manipulation of corrupt private interests; the suspicion has dawned on us that our National Congress is more concerned with thwarting public sentiment than in conforming to it; and despite all this knowledge we steadfastly refuse to direct our gaze to the prime cause of these abuses.

With a hundred monopolies filching from us that which we have created—and doing it under the guise of law and by sanction of the Constitution; with legislatures, executives and courts scorning to put into operation those remedies for which we have legally voted—and declining to do so under the authority of the Constitution; with a system of taxation which places all the burdens on those who are poor because they are producers of wealth, and releasing from taxation those who have become rich because of their exploitation of labor and through the debauching of its representatives—this system being founded on constitutional decisions—we yet cling to the childish delusion that ours is the only perfect government ever bequeathed to mankind.

Compared with the governments of England and France we have only the semblance of self-rule, while they possess the substance. The people of Germany have more direct influence over legislation than have those of the United States. Despite an autocratic emperor, surrounded as he is by a nobility and protected by the most powerful standing army in the world, the people of Germany have made greater progress along the road of democracy within the last twenty years than we have.

If in England there is valid reason to believe that the majority of the people hold an opinion counter to that of the administration in power, Parliament is dissolved and a direct appeal is made to the voters for a new body of representatives. The new Parliament meets and proceeds to pass the laws demanded by the electorate. There is a House of Lords, but it does not dare reject a measure known to be popular. There is a king, but he has not exercised his veto power for more than a century and a half, and one need not be a prophet to hazard that he never will exercise it again. There is no supreme court in England. In that benighted monarchy when the people pass a law it is a law, and not a guess.

To all intents and purposes the same procedure obtains in France and in a score of other countries which might be named. Ours is the only country on earth where the vote of a citizen has no direct significance.

We are not permitted to vote for a President, but are allowed to help choose electors who represent not us, but the state. There is no such thing as a citizen of the United States, so far as the franchise is concerned. If you have a vote it is by grace of the state in which you reside. The Constitution does not recognize your individual sovereignty in any way. If you doubt this assertion read that document.

The state fixes your qualifications as a voter. It might debar you because of your sex, because of your height, because you were not worth $100,000, and you would have no redress under the Constitution of the United States. Possibly you did not know this.

In practice you are privileged to vote for members of the Lower House of Congress. That is the beginning and the end of your influence so far as your national government is concerned. You have nothing to do with the selection of senators, and I doubt if you are consulted as to the composition of the Supreme Court.

As I have explained, if the Lower House of the Legislature in England passes a law, it at once becomes a law. Under our Constitution the Senate has the power to amend or defeat it. This is supposed by us to be the quintessence of all earthly legislative wisdom. This is Check Number One on the mandate of the foolish people. In passing, I desire to repeat that this is the only alleged republic or constitutional monarchy yet remaining on earth which assumes that its majorities are unfit to influence legislation.

If the measure demanded by the people be so fortunate as to pass the House and Senate, the President may veto it. This is Check Number Two on the mandate of the foolish people. If the President sign the measure the Supreme Court may declare it unconstitutional, and that is the end of it, unless a subsequent infallible Supreme Court should overrule the decision of the first infallible Supreme Court. This is Check Number Three on the mandate of a free and enlightened people. In the event that the Supreme Court should decide that a law is a law, the financial interests adversely affected may and do defeat its enforcement by legal quibbles as to details, or may and do resort to the bribery of the officials charged with the execution of the law. These are Checks Numbers Four and Five on the will of the people in this, the one perfect system of popular government ever designed in all history.

We are the most corrupt nation on earth because of “our peculiar form of Government”; because of the exactions and limitations of a Constitution which was designed to protect and conserve the interests of property rather than of citizenship. Those who are astounded or offended at this statement need only read the record of the convention which drafted the Constitution in order to satisfy themselves as to its moderation. I do not mean to insinuate that the fifty-five delegates who met in Philadelphia in 1787 had any idea of establishing a system which would foster corruption, but the records absolutely prove that they deliberately planned to suppress the rule of the majority in order that popular clamor might not menace property interests. The train of abuses from which we now suffer flow logically from the checks they then provided; checks which place selfish and corrupt wealth beyond the reach of public redress.

Those foolish persons who have been taught in school and in the public prints that the founders of our Constitution were sincerely desirous of establishing a system of government in which the will of the people should find free expression, will be shocked and undeceived when they read its debates and proceedings as recorded by James Madison, one of the delegates from Virginia. When one comes to learn of these fifty-five delegates that not more than ten are on record as voicing the slightest degree of confidence in the wisdom of the people or their fitness to rule, he is likely to take a new view of the Constitution framed by them, and he is able to account for the innumerable ills which we are compelled to suffer.

I will quote a few expressions of opinion from delegates who wielded the greater influence in the construction of the Constitution:

_Roger Sherman_—“The people should have as little to do as may be about the Government.”

_Elbridge Gerry_—“The evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy, the worst of all possible evils.”

_John Dickinson_—“A limited monarchy is one of the best governments in the world.”

_Rufus King_—“It is immaterial to the people by what government they are possessed, provided they be well employed.”

_Alexander Hamilton_—“The British monarchy is the best government in the world,” and he doubted if anything short of it would do in America. “Their House of Lords is a most noble institution.”

_Alexander Hamilton_—He acknowledged himself not to think favorably of republican government. “Inequality in property constitutes the great and fundamental distinction in society.”

_Gunning Bedford_—“Are we to act with greater purity than the rest of mankind? Our votes are actuated by interest and ambition.”

_Gouverneur Morris_—“The Senate must have great personal property; it must have the aristocratic spirit; it must love to lord it through pride. To make it independent it should be for life. Property is the main object of society.”

_John Rutledge_—“Property certainly is the principal object of society.”

_Pierce Butler_—“Slaves should have an equal representation in a government which is instituted principally for the protection of property, and is of itself to be supported by property.”

_Charles C. Pinckney_—“Property in slaves should not be exposed to danger in a government instituted for the protection of property.”

_George Mason_—“It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for President to the people as to refer a test of colors to a blind man.”

_James Madison_—“In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed but any sort of property. If they combine, the rights of property will not be safe in their hands.”

_James Ellsworth_—“As population grows, poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless.”

The thirteen delegates, from whom I have quoted were the dominating characters in that convention, and it is possible to cite innumerable passages expressing the same distrust and contempt for the people. It should be understood that the great mass of the people had no representation in that secret conclave, and that half a century passed before its proceedings were made public by Act of Congress.

I have touched on these facts for the purpose of indicating clearly that the right to ignore the majority is inherent in the Constitution. The Senate was provided for the special benefit of property interests, and at one time a clause was adopted, decreeing that no one could be elected a Senator of the United States unless he was worth $50,000 or more. This cautious provision was abandoned because there were states which had no men with that amount of property. Having provided a Senate they continued to pile up checks against the people, until such aristocrats as Gerry, Randolph and Mason attempted to call a halt, declaring that the people would be so stripped of power that the last of their rights would disappear. Their warnings were disregarded, and they absolutely refused to sign their names to the document.

With these facts within access of every citizen of the United States, the vast majority of us still adhere to the myths and falsehoods contained in our school books and uttered by ignorant demagogues and editors.

It is likely that the aristocratic delegates who framed the Constitution had just reason to fear the people it was intended to hold in check. The average citizen of 1787 was a savage compared with the average voter of today. He knew of no world beyond the narrow limit of his horizon. He was ignorant, prejudiced, suspicious and envious. The builders of the Constitution regretted that it was necessary to grant him even the shadow of political power and were consumed by the dread that the Lower House of Congress would overawe all other branches of the new government.

In that day wealth had little influence as a mass, but it was strong in its instinct of self-preservation. It trembled lest the poor should combine at the polls in a crusade for the legal despoiling of the rich. Having absolute control of the convention it was free to design a document which would include every possible check against the aggressions of the dreaded masses, and it rightly conjectured that the magic of the name of Washington would induce the people to consent to the provisions aimed against them.

We of today are caught in the trap set for those who lived more than a hundred years ago. Not until after the nation had been plunged into a civil war between two factions—each of which claimed strict allegiance to the Constitution—did conditions arise which afforded a fair test of the restrictive features of that document. So long as the wealth of the nation was so distributed as to prevent the formation of conspiracies in its behalf, the masses were able to conserve their rights, despite all of the checks and restrictions in the Constitution. It was this fairly maintained state of equilibrium which half a century ago gave rise to the worship of our system of government.

When the first unscrupulous man found himself in possession of millions of dollars the Constitution became not his master but his tool. When the officials of our first great corporation found it practical to bribe legislation, the trap set by the forefathers was sprung. I do not mean to hint that the founders of the Constitution foresaw any such outcome. They constructed a device to protect themselves, and their bones had crumbled into dust before wealth was sufficiently armed and equipped to take advantage of their mistakes.

Wealth seized upon the senates, state and national. It found in the judiciary a natural ally, and it did not hesitate to invoke the aid of partisanship and the unblushing use of corrupt influences, direct and indirect, in order to subject the courts to its domination. This is a blunt statement, but the time has arrived when the courts can no longer be covered with a machine-made robe of sanctity. There are good judges and bad judges, but the decisions of the latter are as binding as those of the former. A corporation judge is not a priest; he is a low type of politician.

Our aristocratic forefathers designed a Constitution intended to protect themselves against a majority. Our modern corporations and vested interests have discovered that the same machinery oiled with bribery can be used by the minority for the purpose of plundering the majority. Our forefathers invented checks; our trusts have converted them into bludgeons. Our forefathers constructed constitutional ramparts, behind which they hoped to be safe from the attacks of the majority; our vested interests have bristled them with guns, behind which they demand and receive tribute.

NOTE—In the May number Mr. Adams will treat of the
necessity for the revision of the Constitution, and
consider how it may legally be accomplished.

_In Absence_

BY EUGENE C. DOLSON

With miles between us—miles of land and sea,
However far my wandering footsteps roam,
Still memory ever backward turns to thee—
Queen of my heart and home.

_In Outline_

“Many a man complains that he lost his health in business, although he was not in business for his health.”

* * * * *

“The quickest way to get to the top in this world is to have someone let you in on the ground floor.”

* * * * *

“Money often fails to bring happiness, on account of the way it has been made.”

* * * * *

“The world may owe you a living, but you have to work hard to collect the debt.”

* * * * *

“One-half the world doesn’t care how the other half lives.”

* * * * *

“The man who courts an investigation has generally been making love to other people’s money.”

* * * * *

_Not Guilty_

TAVERN LOUNGER—That ’ere smooth-shaved, horse-faced feller jest goin’ into the dinin’-room looks like an actor.

LANDLORD—Yes; but you bet yer life he ain’t one! He came day before yesterday, paid his bill in advance, and ain’t kicked about anything yet!

* * * * *

_A Discovery_

“I have looked the matter over with reasonable care,” said the Pruntytown Philosopher, with his usual acridity, “and I have reached the conclusion that it is not absolutely necessary to send boys to college in order to have ’em act the fool.”

* * * * *

_A One-Sided Alliance_

JUDSON—Do you think capital and labor will ever work together?

BUDSON—It looks that way. At the present time the landlord and the tenants seem to be both engaged in raising the rent.

* * * * *

_At the Zoo_

THE PARROT—The eagle says he has been bald ever since he can remember.

THE COCKATOO—Gee-whiz! Those eagles marry very young, don’t they?

_The Gray Weed_

AN EXTRACT FROM THE “LONDON TIMES” OF FEBRUARY 8, 1909

BY OWEN OLIVER

Owing to the lamented death of Professor Newton, to whose wisdom and courage the world owes its deliverance, I have been asked to contribute to the first newspaper issued in the new era some account of the terrible weed which overran the earth, and threatened to stifle out mankind.

The professor had intended dealing with the origin of the weed, its relations to ordinary plants, the nature of its growth, so far as this proceeded, and the forms which it would ultimately have assumed. Unfortunately his notes upon these points are so abbreviated and technical as to be unintelligible to me; and personally I possess no qualifications for dealing with the scientific aspects of the case. So I must confine myself to a plain narrative of the occurrences which I witnessed.

* * * * *

It was nine o’clock in the evening of November 10, 1908, when I left my office in Norfolk Street, letting myself out with a duplicate key which the hall-porter had intrusted to me. I thought at first that it was snowing; but when I put out my hand and caught a few of the particles, I found that they were flimsy white seeds, something like those of melons, only less substantial. Where they lay in heaps—as I thought—in the road, their color appeared to be gray. At the Embankment end of the street the “heaps” were larger; and when I came to them I discovered that they were not seeds, but a growth of gray weed, which fastened round my shoes as I tried to walk over it.

I stooped and took hold of a piece to examine it; but, when I attempted to pluck it, it stretched like elastic, without breaking off. The tendrils were round, and about one-fourth of an inch in diameter when not stretched. They had, at intervals, spherical bulges which, at a distance, bore the appearance of small berries. These appeared to be of the same substance as the tendrils. The latter began twining round my fingers, and I had some difficulty in releasing them. The road and the Embankment were deserted by people, but three or four horses at the cab stand were plunging with fright as the weed wound round their legs. It had grown perceptibly in the few minutes that I had been observing it, and, feeling somewhat alarmed, I made my way back along Norfolk Street.

The weed had spread a good deal there also; and I noticed that wherever a white seed fell a fresh plant sprang up, and grew with marvelous rapidity. In the Strand the weed was nearly a yard high. The ’bus drivers were whipping their frightened horses in a vain attempt to drive over it. The foot-passengers were unable to move, except a big man, who, with a small axe, hacked a passage through the growth for himself, his wife and his daughter—a pretty girl of about nineteen.

They were making their way down to the Embankment, but I warned them that the weed was thick there. The young lady then suggested that they should try to get into one of the houses, and I invited them to come to my offices. The tendrils were seizing people and pulling them down and binding them like flies in a spider’s web. We could hear cries and screams all along the Strand, and a cab was upset by the struggles of the horse. The weed had spread over Norfolk Street, while we were talking, and it clung to our feet as we ran. The lady tripped and fell. The tendrils seized her immediately, and we had great difficulty in freeing her. When we had entered the door of the house we could not close it until we had chopped away the tendrils that followed us.

I turned on the electric light in the halls, and took my new friends to my rooms, which were on the fifth floor. The elder lady was faint, and I gave her some brandy and soda and biscuits. I had a good stock of these fortunately.

The gentleman’s name was George Baker, his wife was Marian Baker, and the girl was Viva. They had been buying curiosities in the Strand, and the axe—a roughly engraved Moorish instrument—was fortunately among their purchases. Some people whom they met in the streets had told them that the weed was growing all over London, and that the Guards had been ordered out to cut it away. A learned old gentleman had conjectured that the seeds were the atoms of some dissipated planet, or the elements of some world that was to be, and that they contained the raw elements of life, which set them growing when they came into contact with suitable matter.

“It’s diabolical!” Mr. Baker said furiously. “The vestries ought to send round water-carts with weed-killer, or—or something. I don’t know what they ought to do; but they ought to do something.” He wiped his face excitedly with his handkerchief. “Diabolical!” he repeated. “It grows through the flagstones, the wood paving, everything. It—it seizes people!”

“Seizes people!” his wife repeated, wringing her hands. “We saw it.”

“It clings to you,” the girl added tremulously. “_Clings_ to you. If it goes on growing——!”

Her mother gave a sharp scream, and her father groaned.

“If it goes on growing—!” they said together.

“It won’t,” I assured them, with an indifferent appearance of confidence. “Those things that grow like—like fungi—never do. It will shrivel up suddenly, and let people go again. I don’t suppose they’re really hurt, only frightened. In an hour or so you’ll be on your way home, and laughing about it; and I shall be thanking the—the fungus—for some pleasant acquaintances. I look upon this as a little surprise party.”

The girl wiped her eyes and forced a smile.

“A little surprise party,” she agreed. “What are you going to do for our entertainment, Mr. Adamson?—I saw the name on the door-plate.”

“Henry Adamson,” I said, “and very much at your service, Miss Viva—I have some cards, but——”

I paused doubtfully. Her mother held up a trembling hand, and her father shook his head.

“We won’t have any fool’s games,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

Viva and I talked in broken sentences, and her mother and father in monosyllables. We kept glancing at the window, but no one had the courage to draw up the blind for nearly an hour. Then we opened the window and looked out. The weed was fully six feet high in the street, and higher in the Strand. It had overrun the ’bus that stood at the opening. If there were people on the ’bus, it had overrun them, too.

“It doesn’t seem to hurt,” I said. “There’s no screaming now.” I shuddered as soon as I had said it.

“There is no screaming now,” Viva repeated. “I suppose they—they are all——”

Her voice broke. Her father shut the window sharply and drew her away.

“It will be gone in the morning,” he asserted, “as—as our friend said. We shall have to impose on your hospitality for the night, I am afraid, Mr. Adamson.”

“There is no question of imposing,” I assured him. “I cannot say how glad I am to have your company.”

We made a couch for the ladies by putting several hearth-rugs on the table in the clerks’ room, and laying two rugs of mine to cover them. Mr. Baker and I dozed in front of the fire in my room in chairs. Toward the morning I fell into a sounder sleep. When I woke he had pulled up the blind.

“It’s fifteen feet high at least,” he told me. “Halfway up the second windows. God help us!”

I joined him and saw the roadway filled with a sea of gray weeds. They looked like india-rubber reeds. The largest were as thick as my little finger, and the bulges were the size of damsons. We opened the window and listened. Presently a caretaker opened a window nearly opposite and called to his wife.

“Here’s a rum go, Mary,” he shouted, with a laugh. “Bulrushes growing to the street! We sha’n’t have any clerks pestering us today.”

The woman joined him, and they laughed together because they would have a holiday. They treated the matter as a joke, and evidently disbelieved us when we told them of the terrible events of the preceding night. So we closed the window and called the ladies. I made some tea on my ring-burner, and we breakfasted on that and biscuits. The ladies avoided the window, and so did I, but Mr. Baker went to it every few minutes. After each visit he whispered to me that it was still growing. Mrs. Baker seemed in a stupor, but Viva tried hard to cheer us. She sang little snatches of song under her breath as she washed the tea-cups; and once she said that it was great “fun.” Her mouth trembled when I looked reproachfully at her.

“Mother is so nervous,” she whispered. “I have to pretend, to cheer her. Do you think it will—grow?”

“Heaven knows!” I said. “But you are very brave.”

After this, she and I sat at the window, watching the tendrils growing and growing, and clutching incessantly at the air. I thought, at first, that they were swaying in the wind, but there was no breeze. Also there was an indescribable air of purpose about their movement. A number of long branches spread themselves over a window opposite. Their swaying ceased, and they pressed on it steadily, till at last it broke with a dull crash. Mrs. Baker fainted, and her husband lifted her on to the sofa. Viva clung to my arm. The malicious tendrils broke down the window-frame, piece by piece, and spread slowly into the room, winding themselves round the tables and chairs.

“If anyone had been there,” Viva cried hoarsely. “If—if—” She looked at me. Her eyes were big with fright.

“They must be doing something to stop it,” I said—“the—the authorities. If we could find out! I’ll try the telephone.”

After several calls I obtained an answer. It was a girl’s voice. Six of them had stayed all night in the exchange, she said. They were in communication with the police and the Government Offices. The soldiers had been out since the previous evening, and had cut their passage from Chelsea Barracks to Victoria Street, and along this almost to Westminster Bridge. They had intended coming on to Whitehall and the Strand; but the stuff grew almost as quickly as it was cut down, and had overpowered many of them. Over a hundred had been crushed to death by it, and they had sent for gun-cotton to try and blow it up, as a last resort. It was known, through the telegraph, that the weed had appeared all over England and on the Continent. It was also growing out of the sea. The English Channel was choked in places, and several vessels had been bound by the weed in sight of the coast. “It’s alive!” she wailed; “alive! Its eyes are watching us through the windows!” (The bulges had the appearance of eyes.)

I was unable to obtain any further answers, although I tried the telephone several times. By one o’clock the third-story windows were covered. The thickest tendrils were then nearly the diameter of a florin, with the bulges the size and shape of exceedingly large plums. The stems and bulges seemed to be of one homogeneous material. There were no leaves or fruit or flowers at this time, but branches were beginning to sprout from the main stems. There did not appear to be any communication between one stem and another; but, according to Professor Newton’s notes, this undoubtedly took place at the roots, which interlaced so as to form a gigantic nervous system or brain.

We made another meal of tea and biscuits. Mrs. Baker seemed stupefied with horror, and her husband was evidently overcome by his anxiety for her, and scarcely spoke. Viva and I tried to talk, but our voices broke off in the middle of words. We listened vainly for any explosions, and concluded that the attempt at rescue had failed. By four o’clock the weed was up to the window-sill. Mrs. Baker was in a prolonged faint. Her husband sat beside her, with his head on his hand. He did not look up when I suggested carrying her out on the roof.

“The cold would rouse her,” he said. “It is best as it is. You’re a good chap, I think. Do what you can for my little girl.”

I put on my overcoat, crammed the pockets with biscuits and a flask, and persuaded Viva to accompany me to the roof to look for a way of escape, for us and for her parents. We never saw them again.

Some people from neighboring houses were on the adjoining roofs already, two old caretakers, a man and a lad. We saw about twenty more on the roofs in other streets. Some of them were raving and singing. The caretakers who had spoken to us in the morning flung their window open. They were laughing as if they had been drinking. They brought two pailfuls of boiling water and emptied it upon the weed. There was a soft hissing sound. Then two—four—six quivering tendrils reached slowly toward them. The man and woman seemed fascinated. They did not attempt to move, only screamed. The tendrils seized them; bound them round and round. Viva buried her head on my shoulder, and I shut my eyes. It was about half a minute, I think, before the screams ceased. Then there was crash after crash as windows were broken in. The weed had its passions, it seemed.

“Take me back to my mother and father,” Viva begged. “We can all die together—if you would rather die with us?”

“Yes. I would rather die with you, Viva,” I said. “I should have liked you very much if we had lived.”

We returned to the trap-door, but the staircase was choked with the weed. As we looked down it seemed to be a pit of twirling gray snakes. We called to her mother and father, but there was no answer. Viva would have flung herself among the weed, but I held her and carried her back to the roof. The weed was beginning to crawl over the gutters. Long rope-like filaments were surrounding the other people who were on the roofs. They huddled together and did not attempt to escape. The tendrils overran them and bound them round and round. I think they had mostly fainted. There was only one cry.

The tendrils lashed one another and fought over their prey. Their struggles made a repulsive, “scrooping” noise—a noise like the sound of stroking silk, only louder. There was also a sound of crunching bones.

I did not notice the weed closing round us till Viva clutched my arm.

“Hold me,” she begged. “Hold me tight! I thought life had only just begun——”

I supported her on one arm, and backed toward the Strand end of the roof, where the weed had encroached less. We stumbled against a skylight. The attic below was empty. I opened the frame, lowered Viva and jumped down after her. We crouched in a corner watching the window. One—two minutes passed. Then the gray weed, with the bulges that simulated eyes, pressed upon it. The glass shivered upon the floor. I lifted Viva in my arms—she was too faint to walk—and carried her out on the landing.

The light was bad, and I saw no weed till we reached the next landing. Then it stretched toward us from the broken window-frame. A dozen gray ropes crept toward us from the stairs when we approached them. The lift was standing open. I pushed Viva in, jumped after her, slid the steel railing to and lowered us. A tendril caught at the lift as we started. I heard it snap.

In my excitement I lowered the lift too fast. We were thrown against the sides and almost stunned when it stopped. There was barely a glimmer of light, and we did not know if we had reached the bottom of the shaft or had been stopped by the weed. We listened for a long while and heard nothing. Then we let ourselves out and advanced a few inches at a time, feeling round us with our hands. We seemed to be in the hall of the basement. We came upon a table and found a tray on it with biscuits and milk. We drank the milk and Viva stuffed the biscuits in her pockets, as mine were full. There was a dim, barely perceptible light from an area window. We peered up through the grating into the forest of huge weeds. The trunks, which had grown to the size of young elms, only swayed a little; but the branches above twisted and twined incessantly. Viva shuddered when she saw them, and I took her away.

“We are safe down here,” I assured her; but she pressed her hand over my mouth.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Hush! It may hear.”

We wandered about in the darkness till we found a caretaker’s room. We sat there on a sofa, holding hands. We never lost touch of each other all the time. I do not know how long it was. It seemed years. The basement was very quiet, but the sound of the india-rubbery motion came down to us. Once or twice we thought we heard a human cry. Once a mouse squeaked, and a spider dropped on the couch beside us with a thud. We were always listening.

After an unknown time we groped our way into the scullery to get water. We had just drunk when we heard the sound of india-rubbery tentacles dragging themselves over the walls. Something clung to my hand. Something held her skirt. It tore as I pulled her from it. Something was in the way when we tried to close the door. It followed us across the room and into the passage. We felt along the walls for the door that we thought led to the cellars—found it—fastened it after us—groped down the stairs. It was darker than the darkness of the basement above—darkness that could be felt. We stumbled over some coals—and a rough, hoarse voice came out of the darkness.

“Give us your hand, guv’nor,” it said, “just a touch of your hand. I’ve been alone here for—for a thousand years!”

Something staggered toward us—stumbled against us; and a huge rough hand gripped my arm.

I put myself between him and Viva and pressed her arm for silence. The voice and grip were not reassuring, and I hoped he did not know she was there.

“Here is my hand,” I said.

“And mine,” said Viva eagerly. “You are a friend—of course you are a friend. God bless you.”

“God bless you, lady.” The rough voice softened strangely. “I—I’m sorry to intrude.”

He drew back a little way from us and sat down. I could not see him, but I could hear him breathe. Another unknown time passed. Then Viva whispered that she was thirsty.

“There’s a pail of water,” the man said, “if I can find it.” He moved about in the darkness till he kicked it. Then he brought it to us. We drank from the pail and ate a few biscuits. I offered him some, but he said that he had a crust left. Viva and I explored the cellar and found a shovel and a pick. I suggested that we should try to break through into the next cellar, on the chance of finding food; but Viva and the man feared that the weed might hear us.

She and I sat on an empty packing-case, and she laid her head on my shoulder and slept. After a time I slept too. The man woke us.

“There’s something moving, guv’nor,” he said hoarsely. “I think it’s growing out of the floor. Strike a match, and give me the shovel.”

We found forty or fifty weed plants growing. He beat some down with the shovel, but others clutched him round the legs. He was a strong, rough-looking man and he fought furiously, but they pulled him down. I gave Viva the matches and went to his rescue with the pick. The weeds seized me too, but he cut us both free with a clasp-knife, and at length we destroyed them all.

We saw by the matchlight that the wall was cracking in one place. So we resolved to try to get through it. The man dislodged a few bricks with the pick, and we pulled others away till our fingers bled and the last match gave out. At length he managed to crawl through.

“You come next, sir,” he proposed. “The lady would be frightened of me.”

“Dear friend,” Viva said, “I am not in the least afraid of you.”

So he helped her through, and I followed. We discovered a passage, and along the passage another doorway—and people. I do not remember our words when we found one another in the dark—only the gladness of it.

There were about twenty of them—men, women and children. They had food and drink which they had collected before they fled to the cellar. Professor Newton was among them. He seemed acknowledged as their leader, and he proposed me as his second. He wanted the aid of an intelligent and educated man, he whispered, in fighting the weed.

“We _must_ fight it,” he declared, tapping me on the arm with his finger, “but I don’t know how. I—don’t—know—how!—I can’t even guess what it is; still less what it is going to be. It may be mere vegetable life—a man-eating plant. It may be brute animal life—a _carnivorous_ animal! It may be intelligent—diabolical intelligence. Whatever it is, it will develop as it grows, develop new organs and new powers, new strength and new weaknesses. We must strike _there_. What weaknesses? Ah-h! I don’t know! It may outgrow itself and wither. It may perish from the little microbes of the earth, like the Martians in Wells’s romance. We thought that an idle fancy _then_. It may grow into an intelligent—devil! It may be one now and merely lack the organs to carry out fully its evil will. On the other hand, its malevolence may be purposeless—a blind restlessness that it will outgrow—after we have stifled in the darkness at its feet. We must fight it anyhow. To fight it we must understand it. To understand it we must study it. Will you risk your life with me?”

“Yes,” I said.

Viva cried softly when I told her I must go; but she did not try to keep me from my duty. The professor and I crawled up the stairs into the basement, and finding nothing there went up in the lift in the dark. We heard the weed moving about on the second landing. I jumped out, turned on the electric light, and jumped in again. The tendrils followed me and clutched at the steel curtain, but could not break it. We hacked with our pen-knives at those that crept through. The juice which ran out from them had an oily smell. They beat furiously on the curtain. The professor studied them calmly with a microscope. The bulges were the beginning of eyes, he thought. He pronounced some feathery sprays sprouting from them to be the rudiments of organs like hands. I do not know whether he was right, but he always maintained that they would develop organs of sense. Anyhow the character of the weed was clearly changing. It had grown harder and drier, but without losing its flexibility or strength.

After a time the professor decided that I should return to the others. He went up again in the lift when he had lowered me. Viva was waiting for me in the dark just inside the door.

I had obtained some candles. We lit one and stuck it in a bottle. I shall never forget the group in the low, wide cellar, huddled together on boxes or on the floor. The man we met first was nursing an ailing child. Lady Evelyn Angell had gathered a young flower-girl under her opera cloak. A policeman was binding up a wounded hand with his handkerchief. A shivering old match-seller wore his cape. Viva took a little boy on her lap and told him about Jack and the Beanstalk. Steel—a card sharper, I learned afterward—who had been indefatigable in helping everyone, was chatting to Lady Evelyn. Some ill-clad youths had draped themselves in sacking. A rouged and gaudily dressed woman was mothering some younger ones. She had comforted Viva while I was away, I heard, and had offered to accompany her in a search for me, but the others had persuaded them that they would only be a hindrance to us.

After a couple of hours—I had wound my watch again—the professor reappeared. His clothes were torn and his face and hands were bleeding.

“They broke the steel curtain at last,” he explained, “but I got away. Good heavens, how it grows! I can’t make up my mind about it.”

After a time, when most of us were dozing, a portion of the roof and the wall fell in. The growth of the roots under the street had pressed the earth upon it, the professor conjectured. A faint light streamed down the tall weeds and through the opening. The branches overhead were still moving, but the lower stems seemed inert. The professor decided to venture among them in search of knowledge. I went with him. There was just room enough between the weeds for us to pass.

The houses upon the other side of the street were all down. So were many in the Strand. In Fleet Street we saw the way it was done. The huge weeds leaned upon them, till they fell with a crash. The Law Courts went so. We found the clock among the weeds. Sometimes the branches pushed themselves through the windows and walls of houses which were still standing. Once or twice we heard human cries. We found a woman, with a baby and a dog, walking among the weed-trees, and took them with us.

The light which straggled down through the waving branches overhead was feeble and patchy, and we lost our way for a time. At length we found Norfolk Street; but as we were entering it, some of the tendrils, which seemed to be fighting one another viciously overhead, broke off and dropped at our feet. They writhed upon the ground like huge gray snakes, and wound themselves round the weed-trees and lashed out blindly. One of them caught the woman and dashed her against a trunk. We pulled her away from the tendril as its violence lessened, but she was dead. The baby was not hurt and still slept. I carried it in my arms.

A moment later a broken tendril dropped right upon the dog. He howled loudly, and in his fright bit at an unbroken tendril hanging down among the trees. (There were a good many such, but we had succeeded in avoiding them hitherto.) It shook as if with rage and pain, wrapped its extremity round the dog, and bore him aloft, still howling. Hundreds of tendrils stretched toward it, and fought with it for the dog. They still fought after his cries ceased; and other tendrils began reaching downward, in every direction round us, as if searching for further prey. The professor watched them intently, oblivious of danger.

“They make a different sound now,” he remarked abstractedly. “It is no longer the scroop-scroop of clammy india-rubber—they _rustle_. It doesn’t seem like decay. They are stronger—stronger. There is always weakness in excess of anything—even strength. Let me think!”

“Quick!” I cried. “Quick! They are falling upon us. Run!”

We dodged rapidly among the weed-trunks. He was slow and I pushed him. Tendril after tendril rustled downward, and the trunks themselves swayed. Two almost fixed the professor between them—he was a stout man—but I dragged him through. The light from above was entirely shut out by the descending tendrils, and we must have been lost but for an electric lamp burning in one of the houses. As it was, the descending tendrils must have caught us but for their struggles among themselves. Broken pieces dropped and wriggled madly all round us, and we had to dodge them. One caught at my foot, and dragged my shoe off as I pulled myself away. Several touched us as we slid down the debris into the cellar. They followed us there.

A few of the people screamed. A few fainted. The rest backed in a huddled, wide-eyed crowd toward the farthest wall. Lady Evelyn stood in front of the children, holding out her arms as if to shelter them. Steel came and stood in front of her.

“Dear lady,” he said, “these have been the best days of my life—since we met. I should have been a better man if I had met you before.” She smiled very sweetly at him.

“I like you greatly, Mr. Steel,” she said.