Milton Rhodes

“ I looked at Milton Rhodes, and on the instant I knew that he too had been noticing all these things. Had the same thoughts come to him also?
"Everything is still now," I observed. "That sound might have been only a fancy."
He nodded slowly. "Or it might been made by the glacier. No telling, though, Bill. It might have been real enough and something else. We mustn't forget that."
"I am not likely to do so. However, what do you make of this?"
"It may be the way to—the way to Drome. And it may be nothing of the kind. They easily could have vanished into this crevasse." ”

“ I turned at the sound and saw Drorathusa, her figure and mien ineffably Sibylline and majestic, pointing out over the strange landscape, her eyes on the face of Milton Rhodes.
"Drome!" she said again.
"Drome!" echoed Milton. Then to me: "I wonder, Bill, what this Drome really is. And I have an idea that this is only the outskirts that we see. Can we at last be near our journey's end, or is that end still far away?"
"Who can tell? This place seems to be a wilderness."
"Yes; a forest primeval." ”

“ To save myself, I had to let go the angel's arm, and, as the chain jerked to the monster's weight, an awful cry broke from the angel and from Milton Rhodes, and I saw her body dragged farther over.
"Cut it, Bill, cut it!"
"It's a chain."
Rhodes groaned.
"We must try again. Quick. Great Heaven, we can't let her be dragged over into the chasm."
"This horrible spot makes the head swim."
"Steady, Bill, steady," said Rhodes. "Here, hold her while I get a grip with my other arm. Then I'll get a hold on you with my right."
"We'll all be dragged over."
"Nonsense," said Rhodes. ”

“ Then, again, it all seemed so wild and weird that I didn't know what on earth to think."
"I think," he said with a wan smile, "that you know what to think now—now when you are standing in this very way to Drome, whatever Drome may be."
"Yes. And yet the thing is so strange. Think of it! A world of which men have never dreamed, save in the wildest romance! An underground world! Subterranean ways, subterranean cities, men and women there——"
"Cavernicolous Aphrodites!" said Milton Rhodes. ”

“ The account, you observe, is a short one; but it is my belief that it will prove to have been (at any rate, the precursor of) the most extraordinary piece of news that this paper has ever printed."
lie looked from one to the other of us as if challenging us to doubt it.
"What," asked Rhodes, "is it about?"
"The mysterious death (which the writer would have us believe was not mysterious at all) of Miss Rhoda Dillingham, daughter of the well-known landscape painter, on the Cowlitz Glacier, at the Tamahnowis Rocks, on the afternoon of Wednesday last."
"Mysterious?" queried Milton Rhodes. ”

“ Scranton added, "one should not blink the possibility that—"
"Tut, tut, man!" Milton Rhodes exclaimed, laughing. "We mustn't find you a bird of ill-omen now. You mustn't think things like that."
"Yet I can't help thinking about them, Mr. Rhodes. I wish that I could accompany you, at least as far as the scene of the tragedies; but I am far from strong. Even to drive a car sometimes taxes my strength. I doubt if I could now make the climb even from the Inn as far as Sluiskin Falls." ”

“ Rhodes."
A strange look came into the eyes of Milton Rhodes, but he remained silent.
Scranton raised the notebook again.
"Nor is everything here. Nor do I propose to read everything that is here. Just now the details do not matter. It is the facts, the principal facts, with which we have to do now. This record, if you are interested—and I have no doubt that you will be—I shall leave in your hands until such time as you care to return it to me.
"Now for my grandfather's journey.
"With three companions, he left the old homestead near what is now Puyallup, on the 16th of August, 1858. ”

“ Milton Rhodes smiled wanly.
"Don't misunderstand me, Bill. The mind of man is a fearful thing, but it is wonderful too, as wonderful as it is dreadful—and the more wonderful, perhaps, than it intrinsically is because of the very grossness and sordidness that it has to conquer. We are prone, some of us, to think the record of the intellect a shabby one ”

“ And it is very probable that it will prove stranger than any mystery any man on this earth has ever known."
There was not the slightest change on Milton Rhodes' features, and yet I could have sworn that a slight fleeting smile had touched them. ”

“ Scranton said suddenly, "for the warning, I know; and yet I can't help pointing out that this adventure that you are about to enter upon may prove a very dangerous, even a very horrible one."
"Yes," Rhodes nodded; "it may prove a very dangerous, a very horrible adventure indeed."
"Why," I exclaimed, "all this cabalistic lingo and all this mystery? Why not be explicit? There is only one place that the angel could possibly have come from, this wonderful and terrible creature that says Drome and has a demon for her companion."
"Yes, Bill," Milton nodded; "here is only one place. ”

“ An angel and a demon on the slopes of Mount Rainier! And they say that this is the Twentieth Century!"
Rhodes smiled wanly.
"I think that you will find the thing real enough, Billy, me lad," said he.
"Too real, maybe. The fact is that I don't know what on earth to think."
"The only thing to do is to wait, Bill. And we won't have to wait long, either."
When we swung to the grade out of Longmire, I thought that we were at last beginning the real climb to the mountain. But Milton said no.
"When we reach the Van Trump auto park, then we'll start up," said he. ”

“ During that halt for lunch—and what an awful lunch that was!—Milton brought forward his journal, and Drorathusa, by means of pictures drawn in the book, made it clear to us that they would never have missed the route had it not been for the loss of their beloved demon. That, of course, made Rhodes and me very sorry; but, if the demon had not been killed, we certainly should have been even more sorry—and, I'm afraid, in a worse place than this in which we now found ourselves. ”

“ Milton’s [Pg 13] life covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It began with the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and included the brilliant period of exploration and adventure just before Milton’s birth, in which Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh, and other ambitious and not too scrupulous sea-rovers sought, like Cecil Rhodes, jewels and gold, empire, expansion, and renown.
It covered the chief work of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Lord Bacon, Milton, Bunyan, Defoe, Dryden, and fifty other men still read to-day. ”

“ I wonder what it leads to. Why should men have cut that passage into the living rock? In such a horrible place. And how do we know that it was made by men? In this underground world, there may be intelligent beings that are not men."
"Well, that is possible, of course," Milton nodded.
The entrance was about four feet in width by eight in height. Above it, there was some striking sculpturing, evidently work of a mystical character. Its meaning was an utter mystery to Rhodes and me, but not, I thought, to our Dromans. ”

“ Even the angel was affected. Affected by what? By the mere mystery of the place?
"I wonder what is the matter with them," I said. "Why are they staying out there? I tell you, Milton, I don't like this at all. What's the matter with them?"
"Superstitious dread or something, I suppose," returned Rhodes. "Well, it ill becomes a scientist to let superstition stay his steps, to turn back even if a black cat crosses his path; and so on we go."
And on we went into the passage. When we were nearly through it, I glanced back. The Dromans had not moved.
"Look here!" ”

“ The next moment, however, he had turned and was moving down the ledge. I stepped back to the wall (upon which two inscriptions were traced) and waited the result with such composure as I could summon.
At last Rhodes moved behind a projection in the wall. A moment, and the glow of his light had vanished. He was gone, and I was alone in that terrible place.
The blackness seemed to increase, the shadows to thicken about me and grow denser. But one sound broke the awful silence, which sound seemed to have a quality tangible, crushing—the growl of the water in the abysmal depths of the chasm. ”

“ Raid or no Raid, there was a sense, a somewhat tragic sense, in which Rhodes was always a man in a hurry. To the consciousness that life was not long enough for the chosen life-work there was added the knowledge that his own life was almost certain to be cut short. Not in the East only is man liable to receive in mid-career the sudden arbitrary-seeming message to bid everything good-bye. ”

“ Rhodes was given scant time to retrieve, but it was crowded with matter. The 'facing the music' at Westminster, the forlorn hope in Cape politics which his close friend was to take over and carry to success after his death, the peacemaking indaba in the Matoppos, the strangely appealing last scenes and legacy to Oxford and Empire—these are material for the biographer, to make his plot in sober truth more romantic than a novel, but must not tempt us away from the main thread of our story. We have traced the long career of patient reticence; we have tried to account for the one blunder of haste. ”

“ The fanaticism of the covenanter and the sad grace of Petrarch seem to meet in Milton's monody. Yet these opposites, instead of neutralising each other, are blended into one harmonious whole by the presiding, but invisible, genius of the poet. The conflict between the old cavalier world—the years of gaiety and festivity of a splendid and pleasure-loving court, and the new puritan world into which love and pleasure were not to enter—this conflict which was commencing in the social life of England, is also begun in Milton's own breast, and is reflected in Lycidas. ”

“ Rhoda was pleasant and companionable; and with Rodney, the second boy, Mildred found a strong bond of sympathy, for he was to go to Kirkton in the autumn to study engineering at a large motor works, and was glad to hear all that she could tell him about the city.
Though Mildred thoroughly appreciated the advantages of her new life at The Towers, she nevertheless missed the Grahams continually. Generous as the Lorraines were to her in many respects, their conduct was sometimes lacking in thoughtfulness. They were people who could only be kind in their own way. ”

“ All trouble in this wicked world was due to Rhodes; if Rhodes had not been born, or had had the grace to die very early, South Africa would have been little less than a Paradise. Rhodes was a bad man, whose chief aim was to drag the English flag in the dirt. Rhodes was Apollyon and a financier, and the foul fiend himself. And as the old man worked himself into a spluttering rage, he emphasised every point in his declamation by a furious slap, not on his own knee, but on the knee of the journalist who was interpreting for me. ”

“ It was a room into which her young daughters rarely intruded; and when, on the morning in question (it was that of the very day which Honor passed so feverishly with Arthur Vavasour by her side) , Rhoda, poor, timid, nervous Rhoda, was summoned to an audience with her awe-inspiring mamma, she made her entrée with a beating heart, and, though she knew not wherefore, with a strong presentment of evil. The open letter in Lady Millicent’s hand was scarcely evidence enough to awaken in her mind anything at all approaching to the truth. ”

“ Into this strange drama, so alien from all the literature of his day, Milton has poured all the thoughts and emotions with which the spectacle of his own life filled him. All through it we hear a faith that was strong but never blind battling with the spectacle of the wickedness of men and the dark uncertainty of the ways of God. ”

“ At Scotland Yard, Milton’s only son, John, was born, and here his protracted labours in his vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever shut his world from view. For the next twenty years and more it is the blind poet whose life we follow, during the period when his fiery spirit was chastened not only by his own afflictions, but by the nation’s also.
In 1652 Milton moved to Petty France, now York Street, near the Bird Cage Walk, which was so named from the king’s aviary there. ”

“ Such a man may be at once acquitted of any ignoble worship of money. Yet much smaller men have proved capable of equal philosophy. The greatness of Rhodes lay in that very faith which, stated in words, provokes a smile, but, translated into deeds over half a lifetime and half a continent, compels a wondering respect. The racial arrogance with which the faith was expressed may sometimes offend. ”

“ If only as the great Republican pamphleteer, one of the chief State officials under the Protectorate, Milton was a very eminent and important man, visited by many “persons of quality” besides Lady Ranelagh, and by all the learned foreigners of note who passed through London. Some of the old Hartlib-Durie circle of the Aldersgate and Barbican days, with Milton’s pupils, Henry Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner, came about Milton almost daily ”

“ In the first Milton, still angry, clenches his fist in the face of his generation, as a generation of mere hogs and dogs, unable to appreciate any real form of the liberty for which they are howling and grunting; in the second the spleen is less, and he is content with a rigmarole of rhyme about the queer effects among the illiterate of the Greek title of his last Divorce Pamphlet. And here what is chiefly interesting in the rigmarole is the evidence that Milton had been recently attending to the news from Scotland. ”