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On Believing : Being Right in a World of Possibilities
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Copyright © 2024 by Paul Halpern
Cover design by Emmily O’Connor
Cover images © Matis75 / Shutterstock.com; © Wirestock Creators /
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Basic Books
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Print book interior design by Bart Dawson.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Halpern, Paul, 1961– author.
Title: The allure of the multiverse : extra dimensions, other worlds,
and parallel universes / Paul Halpern.
Description: New York : Basic Books, 2024. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023019652 | ISBN 9781541602175 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781541602182 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Multiverse. | Cosmology.
Classification: LCC QB981 .H247 2024 | DDC 523.1—
dc23/eng/20231011
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023019652
ISBNs: 9781541602175 (hardcover), 9781541602182 (ebook)
E3-20231123-JV-NF-ORI
 CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction: When One Universe Is Not Enough

Chapter One: Eternity Through the Stars

Chapter Two: Theories from Another Dimension
Chapter Three: Showdown in Hilbert’s Hotel
Chapter Four: Order from Chaos
Chapter Five: Burgeoning Truths
Chapter Six: Tangled Up in Strings
Chapter Seven: Seasons of Rebirth
Chapter Eight: The Time Travelers Party
Conclusion: The Reflecting Pool and the Sea

Acknowledgments
Discover More
Further Reading
Notes
About the Author
Also by Paul Halpern
Praise for The Allure of the Multiverse
Dedicated to the memory of David Zitarelli, an outstanding
teacher, mentor, and historian of mathematics
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If the doors of perception were cleansed then everything
would appear to man as it is: Infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’
narrow chinks of his cavern.
—William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
I think we have enough tsuris with one Verse.1
—Stanley Deser, award-winning theoretical physicist
 INTRODUCTION
When One Universe Is Not Enough

In a society with omnipresent cameras, seeing is an essential part

of believing. Messages are stamped and certified with the
watermarks of pictorial proof. “Pics or it didn’t happen,” states a
popular meme. In these days of photographic manipulation not
every image is genuine, but authentic photos continue to convey a
certain legitimacy.
No wonder the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope
(JWST) on Christmas Day 2021 and its ever-growing cache of
stunning images released since July 2022 have proven so exciting.
Faint, distant galaxies from the nascent era of the universe, only
several hundred million years after the Big Bang, have suddenly
come to life. Nurseries for stellar formation sparkle and glisten like
dew-speckled, blazing wildflowers. No simulations or theoretical
equations could match in the public eye such vivid photo evidence—
albeit converted from infrared radiation to colorful visible portraits.
Space pics, and it did happen!
Given the desire for visualizable signals—by telescope or other
means—to cement reality, physicists’ growing interest in a multiverse
—including unobservable enclaves—seems, at face value, to make
little sense. The time-tested scientific method requires experimental
verification. Yet the very idea of a multiverse—supplementing the
discernable universe with realms beyond direct detection—seems
antithetical to the goal of testability. Would any detective draw a
conclusion about a possible crime if there were absolutely no
possibilities for gathering evidence, such as access to the scene,
eyewitness testimony, and so forth?
Moving beyond the potentially observable, therefore, which
multiverse theories suggest, seems a radical step, not to be taken
lightly. Why not just stick to the measurable, and map out the
recordable using powerful instruments such as the JWST?
Undoubtedly, within the bounds of telescopic observation, there
remains so much out there left to explore.
By instinct and tradition, humankind has sought to understand its
environment as thoroughly as possible—to ward off dangers,
embrace beneficial opportunities, and make helpful predictions.
Charting the world—and, beyond that, the cosmos—out to the very
frontiers of detection, following the pathways of the great voyagers,
has been a key part of our heritage. By carefully documenting what
we find, we strive to fill in the gaps in our comprehension. Maps,
once complete, offer the comfort and benefits of knowing all that is
out there.
Yet, paradoxically, in scoping out our territory, we also become
aware—like fenced-in animals—of the impossibilities. Our curiosity
knows no bounds. Any map or system claiming to describe
everything begs the questions, “Might there be something else?”
and, if so, “Could we somehow access those regions beyond?”
Multiverse models appeal to that sense of wonder. Our
imaginations spawn countless alternatives, many beyond the
threshold of testability. Fascination with alternate histories and
curiosity about worlds unknown has driven public enthusiasm for
recent films and television series with multiverse motifs, such as the
Academy Award–winning movie Everything Everywhere All at Once,
the highly watched streaming series The Man in the High Castle, and
numerous Marvel Cinematic Universe projects. In the popular
television series Rick and Morty, the titular characters journey, in
nearly every episode, to various offbeat parallel universes,
sometimes encountering bizarre alternative versions of themselves,
such as megalomaniac Ricks and Mortys. Such otherworldly
adventures stem from a long-standing literary tradition. Breaking
physical barriers, such as limits in space and time, has been a
mainstay of science fiction for years.
For serious scientists to consider multiverse notions, however,
requires far more than fanciful ruminations about uncharted regions
and unrealized possibilities. There needs to be a strong explanatory
benefit that overcomes the stark disadvantage of a lack of direct
detectability. In general, multiverse models offer virtually unlimited
mathematical and/or conceptual frameworks upon which the
observable features of the universe might be justified, like the
enormous, unseen concrete foundations underlying many
skyscrapers to support their sleek, lofty structures.
Take, for example, the physics community’s ardent pursuit of a
simple, unified explanation of the natural forces. Its goal is to
express gravitation, the strong nuclear force, and the
electromagnetic and weak interactions using the same basic
language. One hitch is that gravitation, unlike the other forces,
defies conventional attempts to integrate it with quantum physics. In
order to accommodate its resistance to standard methods,
superstring theory, based on energetic, vibrating strands of energy,
has emerged as the leading unification proposal. For reasons of
mathematical consistency, the theory makes sense only if housed in
a high number of dimensions, typically ten or eleven. Typically,
through a mathematical process called compactification, the extra
dimensions—beyond ordinary space and time—become curled up
into immeasurably minuscule balls or knots. In some variations, they
are large, but inaccessible to matter and light, and thereby unseen.
Thus, in essence, superstring theory and related higher-dimensional
unification attempts apply realms beyond direct detection in order to
craft mathematically rigorous, unified descriptions of the natural
forces. Assuming such a model someday grasps the trophy of unity,
many physicists might find elegant explanation enough, and discount
the need for testability and falsifiability of its hidden elements.
If you live in a plush suite in a high-rise building in Chicago, and
marvel that it is exceptionally stable in high winds, you are not going
to complain that you can’t explore the bedrock under its basement.
Similarly, many theorists are willing to accept unobservable
components in a multiverse model if it supports a promising way of
explaining the basic facts of the reality we experience. Just as there
are clashing preferences in architecture, though, there is a wide
range of opinions and tastes about how seriously to take multiverse
schemes.
On one end of the spectrum lies absolute realism—demanding
photographic proof or its equivalent to support any claim. The
universe, in that view, should be as ironclad as a perfect engine,
with all parts labeled and functioning in mechanical precision. Such
is the heritage of Isaac Newton, and the clockwork cosmos he
delineated. From that point of view, a multiverse is blind faith rather
than trusted science.
On the other end is the concept of a “landscape” that embraces
every conceivable option. As weird as it sounds, entire universes
would exist that we’d never have access to, yet would be as
legitimate as ours. The presence of the other universes would be
used to help bolster a comprehensive theory of ours. In that case,
why would we be in this one, and not in one of countless others?
Might there be a selection mechanism that singles out our own
enclave as being the best suited for the emergence of intelligent life
—an “Anthropic Principle” (as it is called) explaining why we are here
by ruling out lifeless alternatives? Or could our presence in this
particular universe simply derive from the vagaries of chance—our
cosmic abode being a windswept tumbleweed in a desert of
meaninglessness?
Extreme caution, outrageous fancifulness, or somewhere in
between—such is the range of opinions in the physics community
today. A brilliant idea for some might be sheer folly to others,
according to taste and tolerance. Without consensus, every funding
request for a research project dedicated to indirect tests of
multiverse ideas potentially raises battle cries. Yet, a theory
explaining nature’s workings in a unified way that includes only
directly testable assumptions seems further away than ever before.
If we don’t abandon the key theoretical goal of unification, we may
need to compromise—and reconcile conflicting opinions on where to
draw the line.
 The boundaries in contemporary physics between mainstream
and far-flung ideas have shifted significantly throughout the years.
What is fringe sometimes slips into vogue, and the converse. For
instance, before relativity, only a handful of scientists took seriously
the notion of a fourth dimension. Now it is standardly applied as a
way of including time along with space in amalgamated space-time.
Considering such turnabouts, it seems best, therefore, to remain
cautiously open-minded about various multiverse schemes—rather
than dismissing them outright. One of my goals in writing this book
is to demonstrate how the fluidity of certain physical notions—in
some cases transforming a concept that appears unbearably strange
into something that seems eminently sensible—suggests avoiding
rendering blanket judgments about multiverse ideas. Between
unbridled enthusiasm and brutal dismissal lies ample space for
thoughtful appraisals of the costs and benefits of various proposals.

QUANTUM WEIRDNESS AND ZOMBIE CATS

Given the scientific-method tradition of confirming every theory
through experimental testing, complete realism might seem the
most practical approach. However, nature has not made that easy.
While in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Newtonian
physics, also known as classical mechanics, offered the promise of
being able to track the trajectories of any object one chooses—and
thus theoretically map out the paths of all things in the observable
cosmos—developments in the early twentieth century led the
mainstream physics community to abandon the notion that
everything is measurable at all times.
In quantum mechanics, which emerged in the mid-1920s,
German physicist Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle negates
that very possibility. Strangely enough, it maintains that certain pairs
of physical properties, such as the position and momentum (mass
times velocity) of an elementary particle, are such that the more
precisely one of them is known the fuzzier the other one becomes. If
an experimenter desires exact results, he or she thereby needs to
make a choice about which property to measure.
 Photographers often need to decide if either the foreground or
the background of a scene comes into absolute focus. In some
cases, it is impossible to record both exactly in the same high-
resolution image. If there is a single photo of an event, and the most
important part of it is blurry, pictorial evidence goes out the window.
Luckily, often multiple, near-simultaneous photos are taken,
providing a complete record for the “pics or it didn’t happen” crowd.
In quantum physics, there is no such luxury. Even with the best
instruments, experimentalists cannot measure the exact location and
precise momentum of a particle at the same time. Moreover, in
complex interactions, as renowned American physicist Richard
Feynman showed, particles might take multiple routes
simultaneously in traveling from one point to another, an idea called
“sum over histories.” Unlike classical physics, in which each object
travels along a single, predictable trajectory, in Feynman’s scheme, a
particle’s overall behavior emerges from an array of different paths,
each weighed with different probabilities. We witness the overall
outcome, not the alternate histories that went into it. Fundamentally,
therefore, the world we see contains only a fraction of all
information about its potential characteristics. The complete set of
data, called quantum states, resides in an abstract realm of
unlimited dimensions—which Hungarian-American mathematician
John von Neumann dubbed “Hilbert space.”
In line with the philosophical musings of modern physics titan
Niels Bohr, in the late 1920s von Neumann described a two-step
procedure for quantum processes. Widely adopted, it has become
known as the “Copenhagen interpretation,” in honor of the Danish
city where Bohr, at his institute, gathered some of the most
prominent thinkers dedicated to quantum physics. It is also called
the “orthodox interpretation.”
In the first phase of von Neumann’s process, quantum states
evolve according to objective, deterministic relationships, albeit
within Hilbert space rather than the tangible world. Describing such
developments is relatively straightforward.
In phase two, however, he introduced a very peculiar role for
human observers. By taking measurements of a particular kind—for
instance, position—observers would cause a complex quantum state
embracing a range of possible positions to “collapse,” with certain
likelihoods of outcome, into one of its simpler components. The state
would topple like an intricate house of cards down to a narrow pile,
resulting in a single value of the measured property—for instance,
the pinpoint location of an electron. Weirdly enough, if a different
type of measurement had been chosen—momentum instead of
position, let’s say—the comprehensive quantum state would offer a
blend of momentum possibilities and collapse, upon measurement,
into one of those options. Thus, quantum mechanics, according to
the Copenhagen interpretation, depends on conscious observation to
single out a particular property and narrow down its value.
As Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and many others have
pointed out, one major issue with that interpretation is the artificial
division between the observed and the observer. After all, human
observers are fundamentally made of elementary particles too. What
gives humankind—or conscious entities in general, able to decide
which kinds of physical measurements to take—the special power to
initiate a quantum process?
In one of his final lectures, Einstein wondered if even a mouse
observing a quantum system could measure a physical property and
cause its state to collapse. Why just people? The need for a sentient
observer, Einstein felt, was a clear inadequacy of the theory, which
needed to be replaced by a more objective mechanism.
Choosing a different animal to make his point, in his famous cat
conundrum, Schrödinger brilliantly illustrated some of the tricky
dilemmas associated with quantum measurement. Imagine, he
wrote, a cat placed in a closed box, along with a radioactive sample
with a 50 percent chance of decay during a given time interval, a
Geiger counter, a hammer wired to the counter, and a flask of
poison. Suppose if the sample does decay, it would set off the
counter, trigger the hammer to strike and shatter the flask, release
the poison, and kill the cat. On the other hand, if it doesn’t decay,
the cat would be spared.
According to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics,
the sample would remain in a mixed quantum state of decayed and
not-decayed until the box is opened. At that point, a sentient
observer would effectively measure that state and cause it to
collapse into one of the two possibilities. Similarly, therefore, until
the box is open, the poor cat would hypothetically persist in a
zombie-like mixed quantum state of dead and alive. Clearly that’s
absurd, Schrödinger noted, necessitating a more sensible description
of quantum processes.
Furthermore, as American physicist John Wheeler and others
have pointed out, if quantum mechanics is universal, it should apply
to the universe itself. In theory, the cosmos as a whole should be
represented by a quantum state of unimaginable complexity. But
clearly the universe cannot have an outside observer triggering its
overall quantum state to collapse.2
Weaving the need for conscious observation into natural
processes that have taken place for billions of years seems strange
indeed. However, as Bohr once said to Austrian physicist Wolfgang
Pauli, in a completely different context:

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that
divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of
being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.3

While Bohr, who stubbornly upheld the orthodox quantum view,

did not always apply the same standard to himself, another thinker,
Hugh Everett, a young PhD student under Wheeler in the 1950s at
Princeton, pressed quantum measurement theory to even greater
“craziness.” In his proposal to remove human intervention from the
quantum picture, Everett introduced the first prominent type of
multiverse model. The implausibility of the mainstream approach
thereby drove the weirdness of the multiverse at its very start.
Everett’s imaginative alternative effectively chopped off von
Neumann’s step two, as if it were the moldy part of an otherwise
savory loaf of bread. It posited that quantum states never actually
collapse. Rather, there is a “universal wave function” that evolves
indefinitely—akin to an ever-flowing river with many persistent
branches. Strangely enough, even after measurement, both what is
observed and the observers themselves would remain in mixed
states, encompassing a range of outcomes and witnesses.
Everything would happen smoothly and privately—like isolated movie
theaters in a multiplex each projecting a different experience. The
replica scientist in each branch would never know about those in the
other branches. The universe would simply go on with parallel
strands representing each possible outcome woven together into a
resilient fabric of reality.
For example, if someone tried to enact—cruelly enough—
Schrödinger’s cat experiment, there would be no ambivalence. In
one branch of reality, the sample would decay, the hapless feline
would be poisoned, and one version of the observer would open the
box and mourn the loss. In another, the sample would remain intact,
the cat would survive, and another, equally real version of the
observer would rejoice. Both outcomes would coexist in the universal
quantum state representing reality.
Wheeler sent a version of Everett’s thesis to astute gravitational
physicist Bryce DeWitt for publication in a journal. Initially, DeWitt
raised deep objections to the notion that observers split, arguing
that he’d never personally experienced such a sensation. Everett
responded that we don’t feel Earth rotating either. DeWitt was
impressed, became a convert to the idea, and ended up as its
principal promoter in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In
a paper published in 1971, he dubbed it the “Many-Universes
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,” which would become more
commonly known as the “Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI).”4
Bizarre as the notion of ever-branching universes sounded to a hard-
headed physicist such as him, it was far less ludicrous to him than
the notion that mere humans—collections of atoms themselves—
played a critical role in nature’s workings. His thoughtful advocacy of
going even “crazier” to explain quantum weirdness in a self-
consistent manner sparked broad public fascination with the notion
of a multiverse.
A MÉLANGE OF MULTIVERSES
Surprisingly the term “multiverse” did not originate in the world of
physics. Rather, it was American philosopher and psychologist
William James who introduced the expression in the 1890s as a way
of characterizing a morally ambiguous cosmos that doesn’t
distinguish right from wrong. Around 1970, speculative-fiction writer
Michael Moorcock applied the same term in a very different context.
He envisioned characters with different avatars in various parallel
worlds. Each avatar would share some, but not all, of the personality
traits of the overarching character.
When, in the same year, DeWitt first brought the MWI—with its
mind-bending prospect of alternative realities populating a universal
quantum state—to widespread public attention through an article in
Physics Today, the physics community had yet to adopt the term
“multiverse.” The epithet gradually caught on among physicists
when, spurred in part by the MWI, interest in parallel universe ideas
began to pop up in assorted fields like spring crocuses.
Once physicists began using the expression, its use in popular
culture blossomed even further. In the past decade, in particular, the
term has surged in popularity.5 The increasing use of the expression
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including blockbuster films such as
Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of
Madness, has lifted the idea from a technical construct to a widely
shared meme. The critical acclaim and record number of major
Oscar wins for Everything Everywhere All at Once has undoubtedly
bolstered the term’s popularity even more. Of course, currently only
in fantasy, such as the world of movies, might we imagine characters
passing swiftly from one universe to another and encountering (and
often fighting) their near-doppelgängers. Science, focused on
complex calculations and technical proofs, is far less flashy.
How does one make a multiverse? Let me count the ways. Better
yet, let’s try to delineate various uses in physics for realms beyond
the directly observable—from higher-dimensional spaces to enclaves
of the universe with distinct physical properties. Some physicists
have strived to classify multiverses into numbered types—notably
MIT physicist Max Tegmark’s taxonomy involving four levels: two in
cosmology, the MWI representing the third, and the set of all
mathematical structures rounding out the bunch.6
However, any such numerical scheme tends to pave over nuances
in the thinking of various physicists about which not-directly-
measurable components of theories are acceptable and which are
outlandish. Given that modern physics has largely broken with pure,
objective realism already, the barriers between normal and
intolerable are not always obvious—nor are they universally
accepted. What is weird to some might be run-of-the-mill to others—
and to yet others, not quite weird enough.
Take, for example, the idea of dimensions. Traditionally speaking,
we observe only three—length, width, and height. Most nineteenth-
century physicists would have shaken their heads and rolled their
eyes upon hearing talk of anything beyond that. At that time, they
associated the fourth dimension and beyond with either esoteric
mathematics or sham psychic mediums. Indeed, when Einstein
proposed the special theory of relativity in 1905—what happens as
bodies approach light speed—he framed the effects of such ultrafast
travel as contractions along the direction of motion in three-
dimensional space, as well as the stretching of time intervals. That
is, he kept the two categories, space and time, distinct.
Two years later, however, mathematician Hermann Minkowski
cleverly expressed special relativity in a much more natural way by
proposing a four-dimensional amalgamation of space and time,
called space-time. He reframed the contractions and stretchings as a
kind of four-dimensional rotation that takes from space and gives to
time—keeping space-time, as a whole, invariant. Within a four-
dimensional context, Einstein’s Alice in Wonderland–like
transformations suddenly made more sense.
Thinking of four dimensions as unnecessarily abstruse, Einstein
resisted Minkowski’s proposal for several years, until respected
colleagues persuaded him that its mathematical formalism actually
made his theory simpler, rather than stranger. He would go on to
make excellent use of the fourth dimension in the general theory of
relativity, published in 1915.
In general relativity, Einstein expressed gravitation as the warping
of space-time in the presence of matter and energy. Its curvature
takes place along a normally inaccessible extra dimension—similar to
how we generally travel along the surface of spherical Earth, and
rarely in the direction of its interior.
No matter how much a theory asserts that an additional
dimension is impenetrable, however, its mere presence conjures
visions of hidden passages and furtive shortcuts. Indeed, Einstein
and a collaborator explored such possibilities, which, in the mid-
1950s, Wheeler incorporated into the notion of “wormholes”:
shortcuts through space that connect widely separated regions. In
the late 1980s, Wheeler’s student, Kip Thorne, further explored the
possibility of identifying traversable wormholes that astronauts might
safely cross. The wormholes might join two otherwise distant parts
of ordinary space, link to different eras of time, or even connect with
regions of space-time that would otherwise be wholly separate from
ours. Director Christopher Nolan played with that idea in the 2014
film Interstellar, for which Thorne served as scientific consultant and
co-producer.
Conceivably, wormholes might allow for travel to parallel
universes, suggesting one variety of multiverse model: the space of
all universes connected with ours. Or they hypothetically might
permit travel into the past and changes to the timeline of history—
spawning yet another multiverse scheme involving alternative
realities. For example, a backward time traveler who inadvertently
prevented Franklin Roosevelt from ever becoming president might
return to an alternative future on a different branch of reality in
which the Axis powers defeated the Allies. Backward time travel
scenarios remain very theoretical (and perhaps even impossible), for
sure, but are discussed, nonetheless, in the pages of serious
scientific journals.
Higher dimensions have captivated physicists in another way:
offering the prospect of unifying the natural forces, with the aim of
bringing gravitation and other interactions within a common
mathematical framework. Only a few years after Einstein published
the general theory of relativity, Theodor Kaluza, a young
mathematics instructor, sent him a paper proposing a way of adding
another dimension to allow for the inclusion of electromagnetism—
the other then-known fundamental force—along with gravitation.
Some time later, Oskar Klein independently developed an equivalent
five-dimensional unification model that meshed well with quantum
physics. Hence, unification proposals that include extra dimensions
are sometimes called “Kaluza-Klein theories.” Despite his earlier
distrust of higher dimensions, Einstein worked with several different
research assistants on his own five-dimensional unified field theory
notions, before finally giving up in 1943 and spending the final years
of his life pursuing other schemes for unity.
Once again, we might raise Bohr’s critique of Pauli. Is unification
in five dimensions crazy, or not crazy enough? By the 1970s and
1980s, physicists realized that they’d need to expand their horizons.
Two more natural forces—the strong and weak nuclear interactions—
had come to their attention. They turned to even-higher-dimensional
models to encompass them, along with gravitation and
electromagnetism, in unification proposals. Supergravity models of
eleven dimensions and superstring models of ten dimensions
emerged as contenders for paths to unity. Theorists determined that
the high number of dimensions was needed for mathematical rigor—
to cancel out certain questionable terms that appear in lower-
dimensional models—as well as to encompass all four forces. Hence,
in only a few decades, such large dimensionalities evolved, according
to the theoretical community’s perspective, from being almost
laughable to virtually essential.
Superstring theories, and string theories in general, involve
replacing point particles on a fundamental level with vibrating
strands of energy. The “super” part refers to a hypothetical property
of the subatomic world called supersymmetry, in which, at extremely
high energies, matter components could transform into force
carriers, and the converse. In the 1990s, vibrating membranes
entered the picture through an amalgamation of the various models
called “M-theory.”
 Clearly, despite theoretical musings, ordinary space remains
three-dimensional, and conventional space-time is four-dimensional.
Therefore, in string and M-theories the extra dimensions are typically
curled up into tiny balls or knots. Imagine walking along such a
curled-up extra dimension, and barely getting anywhere before
ending up exactly where you started—in a kind of spatial Groundhog
Day. Those twisted-up spaces are so minuscule—far, far smaller than
the scale we measure with particle colliders—that they cannot
possibly be observed. As it turns out, researchers have estimated
that there are some 10500 (1 followed by 500 zeroes) ways of curling
up the extra dimensions, each of which specifies a kind of universe.
Rather than home in on a unique vision of how all of the natural
interactions emerge from mathematical relationships in a ten- or
eleven-dimensional realm, string and M-theories have generated an
embarrassment of riches. There is no clear mathematical trick for
narrowing the options down to a single theory. Consequently, the
numerous possible configurations have led to yet another kind of
multiverse, called the “string landscape.” It consists of the range of
possible universes bearing different physical properties associated
with the myriad ways of curling up the extra dimensions—with one
of those universes ours, theorists hope.
In little more than a century, the theoretical physics community
has evolved from reluctantly accepting time as the fourth dimension
to make relativity more straightforward, to embracing a mayhem of
string theory scenarios in ten or eleven dimensions that seem to
have scant hope of simplification. While some researchers decry the
currently confusing state of affairs, others concede that string theory
seems the only viable way forward for unification, given the failure
of particle-based approaches in the past.
While such a high number of dimensions seems odd, mainstream
quantum physicists perform calculations in abstract Hilbert spaces of
unlimited dimensions all the time. A key difference, however, is that
quantum physicists expect that measurements in Hilbert space
(explained via the Copenhagen interpretation or other means)
ultimately produce perceptible results in lower-dimensional space.
For the string landscape, the process for narrowing down the
possibilities to our own tangible reality remains far less certain.
String theory thereby currently lacks a recipe for unification—only
serving a taste of what could be someday—even though it is based
on an age-old cookbook that includes Minkowski’s space-time union,
geometric relationships in general relativity, five-dimensional Kaluza-
Klein theory, and mathematical transformations applied to quantum
states in Hilbert space as some of its antecedents.

LANDSCAPES AND DREAMSCAPES

While the notion of a multiverse in physics is relatively recent, the
mental construction of alternative worlds is an age-old pursuit.
Weaving yarns is a natural process. In dreams, our minds
automatically craft strange visions of events that never actually
happened or at least transpired differently. Successful planning often
involves mentally weighing alternative scenarios, and singling out
the optimum. Grandmasters in chess, for instance, might consider
numerous chains of potential moves and countermoves—thinking
many steps ahead—before even advancing a pawn.
Some philosophers and theologians, in trying to fathom divine
thought processes, have imagined a deity similarly pondering every
manner of creation before bringing one into existence. For instance,
Gottfried Leibniz speculated that God is not only all-seeing and all-
knowing about everything in the cosmos but is similarly omniscient
about the composition and doings of every conceivable reality. From
that set, He has chosen the best of all possible worlds to be ours.
The brilliant satirist Voltaire ruthlessly mocked that idea through the
chronically sanguine character Pangloss in Candide, who distills from
any tragedy the rosiest interpretation. Its wit relies on our inclination
to see the dark side of history and feel that humanity has been
rather unlucky. Yet, compared to every possible cosmic outcome, we
must concede that at the very least we are lucky enough to be on a
thriving planet with the underlying conditions to support intelligent
life.
Multiverses, we see, aren’t necessarily extensions of the tangible,
physical world. We might divide them broadly into two categories:
those that enlarge the universe along physical lines, such as
proposing realms beyond observability that are still “out there”
somewhere, versus those that exist in a hypothetical domain of
possibilities and are used mainly for purposes of comparison. That is,
some are landscapes, and others are dreamscapes.
Contemporary physics, in grappling with the questions of “What is
real?” and “Why does reality have particular properties?” has
considered both varieties—physical extensions and unrealized
alternatives. Both arise in Einstein’s general theory of relativity,
which includes a plethora of finite and infinite solutions for the
geometry of the universe. For example, space might be positively
curved, like the surface of a sphere; negatively curved, like a saddle
shape; or “flat,” perfectly straight in all three dimensions, like a box
extended forever in every direction. Each of those possibilities—and
more—turn up as general relativistic solutions.
In contrast with Newtonian physics, which posits a single,
unchangeable grid called “absolute space” through which astral
bodies move during a uniform timeline called “absolute time,”
general relativity embodies astonishing flexibility. Nevertheless, after
proposing the theory, Einstein deeply hoped to find physical reasons
to guarantee a single, finite, stable cosmic solution.
Much to his dismay, the first solution he developed, based on a
positively curved hyperspherical geometry, proved unstable.
Attempting to rectify that situation, he added a new stabilizing term
to this theory, called the cosmological constant, which counteracted
the clumping effects of gravity. That gave him the static result he
sought.
However, once mounting evidence for an expanding universe
emerged through telescopic investigations of galaxies, Einstein
shifted his stance. Along with Dutch scientist Willem de Sitter, in
1932 he proposed a model of the universe that is infinite in extent,
expanding indefinitely, and spatially flat. In crafting what became
known as the Einstein–de Sitter universe, they set the cosmological
constant to zero, removing it from the theory—which no longer
required a stabilizing factor. That model formed the conceptual seed
of what later became known as the Big Bang theory.
Take a cauldron of scientific curiosity, infuse it with universe
models that extend endlessly in all directions, stir in the myriad
alternative solutions, and all manner of concoctions arise—
landscapes and dreamscapes alike. For example, one such landscape
stems from the finiteness of the speed of light, limiting what we
could possibly observe. Beyond the zone from which any signals
could reach us must almost certainly lie enclaves that forever elude
detection. The result suggests an essential multiverse—logically
necessary, because it would be nearly impossible to believe that the
universe simply stops beyond the horizon of observability.
More abstractly, within the theoretical space of cosmic parameters
—such as curvature, smoothness, cosmological constant, and so
forth—there would be numerous other options, leading to a more
conceptual kind of multiverse. Those might either be dismissed as
purely mathematical or be taken seriously as physical alternatives—
depending on theorists’ preferences. That is, a multiverse composed
of alternate solutions to general relativity could be seen as a kind of
intellectual dreamscape (conjuring the alternatives and then
dismissing them as unphysical) or treated instead as actual
contenders within a landscape of genuine options. Theorists’
proclivities steer such choices.
In aspiring to create a quantum theory of gravitation, Wheeler
favored treating the alternative solutions in general relativity as
constituents of an effervescent “geometric foam” that emerges at
extremely high energies. Somehow, out of that foam, our simple
cosmology emerged as the optimum path through the abstract space
of parameters—which, according to Feynman’s “sum over histories”
approach, represents the “classical” (Newtonian physics) limit.
Wheeler’s notion sounded fascinating, but never got very far,
because of the experimental impossibility of reaching such high
energies coupled with the formidable mathematical challenges of
constructing viable quantum representations of general relativity
(the kinds of difficulties that ultimately drove many theorists to
string theory).
 Quantum physics aside, even in standard cosmology, questions
arise as to how the universe ended up so regular. Flat geometry and
isotropic (same in all directions) expansion turn out to be right on
the mark—a good call by Einstein and de Sitter. Observations that
the growth of the universe is speeding up, however, are consistent
with a cosmological constant that is not exactly zero but, rather, a
very small positive value. Why so close to zero, theorists wonder, but
not quite? Other cosmic oddities include the fact that the entropy, or
measure of disorder, of the observable universe must have begun
extremely low; otherwise, it would have started with little or no
usable energy to create the stars and other thriving astral objects we
observe. Finally, many of the constants of nature, such as the
strength and range of electromagnetism versus that of the other
forces, seem auspicious for the creation of galaxies, stars, and
planets.
In 1970, hoping to use the existence of intelligent observers to
explain particularly favorable cosmic conditions, Brandon Carter—
encouraged by Wheeler—proposed several variations on what he’d
dubbed the “Anthropic Principle”: the notion that conditions in our
region of space-time and/or in the universe itself must be consistent
with the eventual emergence of humans (or other intelligent beings)
able to observe such favorable properties. The most far-reaching
version, the “Strong Anthropic Principle,” relies on a multiverse to
explain the benign conditions of our universe. Cosmological
parameters and conditions would be very different from one
universe to another. Ours would be selected as the one universe that
could produce the stable stars with planetary systems that support
the physical and chemical processes required for intelligent life to
thrive. Thus, our mere presence as conscious observers would
guarantee that we resided in such a cosmic oasis among the
wasteland of alternatives.
Decades later, Carter’s hypothesis would be applied to the string
landscape in an attempt to narrow down the myriad possibilities.
The main selection principle, in that case, would be models that lead
to a small, but nonzero, cosmological constant—producing just the
right spatial growth to support the eventual emergence of living
planets such as ours. A large cosmological constant, in contrast,
would have counteracted gravity’s ability to clump together material
and prevented the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets. Without
stable worlds and shining stars, life as we know it never could have
developed. The fact of our existence thereby rules out such lifeless
universes with sizable cosmological constants, and weeds out the
string theory configurations that produce such unfavorable models.
However, back in the 1970s, at the time Carter published his
paper, the bulk of physicists were still holding out hope of explaining
physical parameters via calculations rather than philosophizing. They
anticipated that innovations in the science of the universe would
ultimately suffice to resolve all mysteries about its properties.
Indeed, Carter conceded in his article that whenever possible, it
would be best to take a purely mechanistic approach and leave
humanity’s presence out of cosmology. Certain facts, such as the
size and density of a hydrogen gas cloud sufficient to coalesce via
gravity into a shining stellar body, leading to stars of particular mass
ranges, fell into the category of “traditional predictions” based purely
on physical constraints. Likely, most theorists reading the article at
the time fully agreed with that practical slant.

BUBBLE, BUBBLE, JOY OR TROUBLE?

Indeed, by the close of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, Alan
Guth and others had introduced a variation of the Big Bang theory
intended to explain cosmic regularities without necessarily invoking
the Anthropic Principle. Dubbed “inflation,” Guth’s model supposes
that the universe went through an extremely brief stage of ultra-
rapid expansion very early in its history. Just as pulling a carpet
quickly in all directions reduces its wrinkles, the inflationary era,
according to its advocates, helped even out any irregularities in the
early universe. Such an interval of smoothing helps explain why
many of the features of the celestial dome are so consistent in all
directions despite their tremendous distances from each other.
Smoothing during the spurt of inflation similarly justifies why the
universe appears spatially flat, rather than negatively or positively
curved.
Strangely enough, shortly after Alan Guth and others introduced
the notion of cosmic inflation, Paul Steinhardt, Andrei Linde, and
Alexander Vilenkin—who had each developed variations of the
theory—separately pointed out that if the observable universe began
with inflation, such a process would likely be easy to trigger
elsewhere in the cosmos, leading to other inflationary bubbles. In
fact, the primordial cosmos would be a bubbling froth of multiple
expanding universes—yet another kind of multiverse. In some of
these, inflation might just keep going, a situation called “eternal
inflation.” The alternate universes would be inaccessible today, lying
far beyond the reach of observability.
Many advocates of eternal inflation have brought back the
Anthropic Principle to explain why we reside in our particular
universe. Ironically, a theory originally intended to smooth out the
observable universe dynamically (by means of physical processes
directly causing changes), without use of a selection principle, now
seems to need one to rule out us having ended up in any of the
myriad other contending universes with less favorable conditions.
Though such parallel domains would be unreachable at present,
in 2010 researchers Hiranya Peiris and Matthew Johnson speculated
that the imprint of early collisions between their formative bubbles
and those of our own observable universe might have persisted.
They proposed analyzing the cosmic background radiation with the
aim of identifying such “scars.” Their research team identified a few
contenders in data gathered by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe (WMAP) satellite, but none with statistical significance. Since
then, novel proposals for attempting to find such bubble collisions
using polarization (the direction in which photons coil) profiles of the
cosmic background radiation have emerged, awaiting possible
realization via new surveys. Hence, testing the eternal inflation
hypothesis—and thereby one version of the multiverse notion—
remains conceivable, but far from a sure thing.
Without even indirect evidence to bolster the various multiverse
hypotheses, from the MWI to the string landscape and eternal
inflation, they have continued to invite strong criticism from those
who insist—rightly or wrongly—that anything lacking the prospect of
verification or falsifiability through testing isn’t truly science. The
urges of multiverse enthusiasts to await comprehensive explanations
of the natural world that might lie ahead before dismissing the
means to get there does little to allay skeptics’ concerns. A deep rift
has opened between those willing to include completely unreachable
cosmic regions as aspects of theories, and those who find extending
physics beyond potentially measurable domains to be utter folly.
To get a taste of the latter, consider the scathing words of writer
John Horgan:

Science is ill-served when prominent thinkers tout ideas that

can never be tested and hence are, sorry, unscientific.
Moreover, at a time when our world, the real world, faces
serious problems, dwelling on multiverses strikes me as
escapism—akin to billionaires fantasizing about colonizing
Mars. Shouldn’t scientists do something more productive with
their time?7

That debate came to the fore in 2017, when Steinhardt, along

with physicists Anna Ijjas and Abraham “Avi” Loeb, rattled the world
of science by publishing a sharp critique in Scientific American of the
notion of an inflationary era. Given that Steinhardt was one of the
pioneers of inflation, that critique was especially jolting. The
researchers argued that one of the original goals of inflation, to
explain why our observable universe looks the way it does, no longer
applied. In fact, they argued, inflation theory’s implication that other
bubble universes likely exist meant that our universe would no
longer be unique and that the chances of its special features would
reduce to zero. As the team noted: “Because every patch can have
any physically conceivable properties, the multiverse does not
explain why our universe has the very special conditions that we
observe—they are purely accidental features of our particular
patch.”8
 Steinhardt further expounded his critique in a 2020 oral history
interview:

The issue with the multiverse is, it predicts literally that there
are patches of space which manifest every possible
conceivable outcome that the laws of physics allow.… The goal
of inflation was to explain, among other things, why the
universe is spatially flat. But in the multiverse, there’s an
infinite number of regions which are [negatively curved] and
[positively curved].9

In launching his critiques of eternal inflation, Steinhardt had

another type of cosmological model in mind—with bounces instead
of a bang and bubbles. In the early 2000s, he, along with several
other physicists including Neil Turok, Justin Khoury, and Burt Ovrut,
had developed an alternative to inflation, called, in various
incarnations, the “Ekpyrotic Universe” and the “Cyclic Universe,” that
removed the need for a spatial multiverse by positing recurring
cataclysmic events that smoothed out the universe without inflation.
However, curiously it introduced the requirement of at least one
other parallel universe—separated from us by a fifth dimension—that
would periodically crash into ours. Therefore, while it isn’t a
multiverse in space, one might argue that it is a multiverse in
hyperspace.
Moreover, the concept of cycles in time has deep kinship with
multiverse notions. Given an unlimited sequence of cosmic eras, it
allows for the possibility that events on Earth might someday be
repeated. Trillions of years from now, a randomly reassembled
version of you might be perusing a replica of this very page.
The notion of endless repetition is hardly new; it pops up
repeatedly in the history of ideas. We’ll see how nineteenth-century
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche obsessed about the prospect of his
entire life, for better or worse, randomly recurring over and over
again in what he called “eternal return.”
Indeed, Steinhardt’s critique that eternal inflation would allow for
“every possible outcome” could well be said of a reality with an
indefinite (and perhaps even infinite) series of cycles. In many ways,
cyclic models—including another alternative called “Conformal Cyclic
Cosmology,” proposed by Roger Penrose—possess a reliance on
unobservable realms similar to multiverse models, albeit in time
rather than space.
Linde and others soon penned a rebuttal to the Scientific
American piece, pointing out the testability of the inflation
hypothesis. Indeed, from their perspective, cyclic collisions in an
unseen dimension beyond direct observability was the far-fetched
model. Better a multiverse in ordinary space, which is subject to
known physical law, rather than speculations about higher
dimensions, they argued.
The fiery debate rages on. For some, multiverse schemes are
perfectly acceptable science. For others, they are all gleam and
glitter, without genuine substance. If parts of the cosmos are wholly
disconnected, does it make sense even to talk about them? Or might
their existence, though only inferred not directly measured, be
needed to shed light on our own part of space? As in the famous
skirmishes between Einstein and Bohr about quantum mechanics,
assertions of realism battle more abstract approaches. In that case,
history has declared Bohr the winner. Ultimately, we don’t know how
it will judge the multiverse clashes of today.
Virginia Trimble, who has written much about the history of
astronomy and astrophysics, takes the concept seriously. As she
remarked:

From a historical point of view, every time there has been a

one/many controversy (Earth-like things around sun; stars
with planet families; galaxies; clusters of galaxies; epochs of
star formation—those are not in chronological order), the
“many” folks have turned out to be the winners (adjudged
more nearly correct over the years). This very much inclines
me to “many” here again. The Astronomer Royal [Martin Rees]
 does take it seriously, and he has always been one of my
sources of “ground truth.”10

Indeed, our concept of space and the universe—which, by

traditional definition, includes everything that’s out there—has
changed dramatically over the millennia. Some, but not all, of the
ancient Greek philosophers thought that Earth was central, and that
the sun, moon, five visible planets (from Mercury to Saturn), and
starry dome were kept aloft above us in a realm not particularly far
away by modern standards. Eventually, a heliocentric vision of the
solar system won out, thanks in part to Galileo’s invention of the
astronomical telescope in 1609. As astronomers mapped out the vast
number of stars in the Milky Way, many began to regard it as the
entirety of the universe. It took more than three centuries before a
far larger instrument showed that spiral objects once thought to be
gas clouds within the Milky Way were actually galaxies in their own
right instead, far beyond its periphery.
In tandem with trying to map out the knowable, speculation
about realms beyond is one of humanity’s most ancient pursuits. In
many cases, such as the assertion by sixteenth-century Italian
philosopher Giordano Bruno that there are myriad worlds in space—
which led, in part, to him being burned at the stake11—such
ruminations have eventually proven accurate. Vindicating Bruno and
others, astronomers have identified many thousands of exoplanets in
recent decades and believe that is only the tip of the iceberg. Even
as you read these words, the Webb space telescope is being put to
good use to find many more—with a good portion of comparable
size to Earth. Scientists remain optimistic that habitable planets will
eventually be found.
Luckily, belief in a multiverse doesn’t draw the wrath of an
Inquisition. Nonetheless, until it is testable, at least indirectly, it
remains controversial. For many, it has already proven enticing, but
will it prove correct? Only time will tell.
At the present time the entire life of our planet, from birth
until death, is being detailed day by day with all its crimes and
misfortunes on a myriad of brother stars. What we call
progress is imprisoned on every Earth, and fades away with it.
Always and everywhere in the terrestrial field the same drama,
the same décor; on the same limited stage a boisterous
humanity, infatuated with its greatness, believing itself to be
the universe, and living in its prison as if it were immense
spaces, only to soon fall along with the globe that carried—
with the greatest disdain—the burden of its pride. The same
monotony, the same immobility on foreign stars. The universe
repeats itself endlessly and fidgets in place. Eternity infinitely
and imperturbably acts out the same performance.
—Louis-Auguste Blanqui, Eternity Through the Stars,
translated by Mitchell Abidor
 CHAPTER ONE

ETERNITY THROUGH THE

STARS
Louis-Auguste Blanqui, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Quest
for Replica Worlds

Perched on a small planet, and confined to the present moment as

it ambles steadily toward the future, humanity’s vantage point within
all eternity is humble, isolated, and tenuous, to say the least. Yet
we’re an audacious lot. Though Earth today is plenty complex—and
has always been baffling—our ambitions have always reached much
farther than the confines of our rocky stoop.
Before we explore strange visions of the multiverse, our first step
is to venture well beyond our home planet and appreciate the sheer
vastness and complexity of the observable universe itself. Even in
that domain, which used to be considered far smaller and has grown
considerably in measured scale over the millennia, thinkers have
pondered parallel Earths—worlds similar to our own, assembled
through sheer chance.
Space travel is relatively modern and still awfully slow. Human
transport has taken us to the moon, but disappointingly not much
beyond that. Robot craft—a much safer pursuit—have now reached
just beyond the limits of the solar system, but this has scarcely
made a dent in our prospects for interstellar travel. While ancient
mariners could extend global knowledge by sailing to lands hitherto
unknown (by those of their homelands at least), the prospect of
spacecraft exploring the immense reaches of the cosmos is still far
off.
Fortunately, Earth is bathed in the light of the distant heavens—a
tiny fraction of which might be seen by the naked eye, but sufficient
nonetheless to galvanize our imaginations and propel them skyward.
Telescopes and modern instruments complete the task by
concentrating those luminous signals into vivid images, which can be
analyzed scientifically. Yet even in ancient times, well before such
instrumentation, enough could be seen to inspire thoughts of realms
beyond the mundane.
Along with stargazing, finding patterns in nature is an age-old
occupation. There are plenty of patterns in astronomy, from the
phases of the moon and the rhythms of solstices and equinoxes, to
the steady passage of the constellations and the traceable paths of
the planets amongst the stellar background, as well as more exotic,
but still anticipatable, phenomena such as the advent of comets and
the coming of eclipses. Those in ancient days who understood and
tracked such astral repetitions lent their skills to rulers as respected
authorities—in terrestrial, as well as celestial, affairs—serving as
astrologers as well as astronomers. Such sages helped develop
elaborate calendars, which in some cultures spanned many
thousands, millions, or even billions of years. Consider, for example,
the Long Count of the Maya calendar, including cycles lasting almost
eight thousand years, and the kalpa of the Hindu tradition, which the
Puranas scripture describes as a great cycle lasting more than four
billion years—in each case involving the creation and destruction of
the entire universe.
Greek philosophers debated the essential ingredients of nature, a
pursuit that has a deep connection with the concept of cycles. Plato,
for instance, spoke of a Great Year of tens of thousands of terrestrial
years, in which the visible planets returned to their original sky
positions. If they were aligned in conjunction, they’d return again to
that position. The link between components and repetition stems
from the fact that in a closed system (which the heavens were
thought to be at the time) a finite number of elements can be
arranged in only a finite number of ways before all of the
possibilities are exhausted. Roll a set of dice enough times, and
eventually the same combinations will repeat themselves. While
most Greeks believed in cycles, they differed on what components
were being recycled. What constituted the smallest things—which
would add together in various permutations to form the stuff of
Earth and the heavens—was the subject of much philosophical
musing.
For example, the Pythagoreans—including the fifth-century BCE
philosopher Philolaus, whose writings are preserved in fragments
and quoted by later sources—believed that “all is number.” The
properties of odd and even numbers, particularly the first ten
integers, governed the workings of the world and the sky in a
fundamental way, they argued. Odd numbers represented light and
good qualities; even numbers, darkness and evil.
Pythagorean cosmology is based on the simple geometry of
circles, and the numerological associations of the number ten. Ten is
sacred because it is the sum of the integers one through four—which
can be arranged as dots in a triangle of four rows. Following circular
paths, Earth, the sun, the moon, the starry dome, and the five
visible planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—orbit a
great Central Fire (not the sun, but another source of power). That
adds up to nine orbiting bodies, with Earth on par with the others.
To complete the set of ten objects, as required by their
numerological beliefs, the Pythagoreans posited a “counter-Earth”
that could never be seen because it was always on the far side of
the Central Fire.
Another ancient Greek philosopher, Empedocles, argued, in
contrast, that nature’s fundamental ingredients are air, water, earth,
and fire. These are mixed together in various combinations through
the attractive force of “love,” and separated into purer forms by
means of the repulsive agent, “strife.” The actions of mixing and
separation, in which love and strife alternately reign, result in grand
cosmic cycles of creation and destruction.
Today we think of atoms constituting the most fundamental
ingredients of ordinary matter, combining to form innumerable types
of molecules—from the sodium and chlorine atoms in salt molecules,
to the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus in DNA.
Before the modern concept, however, was an ancient Greek term:
atomos, meaning indivisible. As the philosopher Democritus
described such entities, if you cut anything into its smallest pieces,
those would be its atoms. Atoms’ main differences, he argued, are
their shapes, which would differ between those making up sharp
objects such as knives, smooth objects such as flowing water, and so
forth.
 Image 1. English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton, who
developed the laws of motion that govern classical physics. Credit: AIP
Emilio Segre Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection.

It was more than two millennia later, in the seventeenth,

eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries CE, when the scientific insights
of thinkers such as Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and John
Dalton established the true nature of material things, including their
Exploring the Variety of Random
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been called calculating and cold-blooded save that underneath it there lay a
current which ran more deep and more powerful than any emotion they had
known on that sultry afternoon in the Babylon Arms. It was all changed
now. They were older, and wiser, and in some ways more understanding.
And the world about them had changed ... the shabby little flat had given
way to the old, beautiful, glowing room. This calm, grave Richard was far
more dangerous than the young and ardent one had been. It was more
perilous now, for she was assailed through all her senses, and time was
rushing on and on, past her....
She did not answer him, and presently in the same low voice he
continued. “You are a woman of the world now,” he said, “so you are not
likely to believe what you believed then. I do not make excuses for myself.
I did not love Sabine. I have never loved her. It was an arranged, a proper
marriage like thousands of others, but it turned out badly.... I could not
make myself love. No one can do that.” He paused for a moment. “And she
could not save herself....”
This last speech he made with such a sad humility that there was no air
of conceit in it. Besides Ellen knew its truth; she had seen Sabine with her
own eyes, weeping, suffering in a fashion she had once believed impossible,
and pretending all the while that such suffering had been caused by a sick
kitten. Yet it was this which somehow frightened her; she was afraid lest
one day she herself might be humbled in the same fashion.
“My mother,” he was saying, “is as you know, a Greek, and there is a
great deal of the Greek in me. Sometimes I fancy I am Oriental ... utterly,
completely. An eastern man admires a woman of beauty and of spirit. He
wants such a woman for the mother of his children.” He unclasped his
hands and took her hand in his. “But don’t fancy that I love you in that way
only. Sabine was a fine match in a worldly sense. She was rich. She was
fashionable. But I too am that, so what could it mean to me? It was more
than that which I wanted. I still want it. I want you to marry me as soon as it
is possible.”
She did not free her hand, though the touch made her faint as it had done
so many years before. She was conscious suddenly that the old sense of
conflict was gone, the old feeling of a hidden antagonism between them.
Could it be that it was because he was humble now, asking something of her
rather than coming boldly to her to claim it?
 “And still,” she heard herself saying, “I am not certain that it would
work out. I don’t know.... You must give me time.”
Then he had kissed her hand and murmured, “We have not so much time
as we once had.... Perhaps I have even less than I know now.”
To this she had chosen to make no answer. Instead, she had played for
him until Fergus blundered in upon them.

It was in the midst of these thoughts that she heard Callendar say, as he
stood balancing himself before the fire, “We could go to the south to-
morrow, if you like. I could arrange to have my permission extended. De
Cyon could do it for me. We could have a week together there.”
He must have known that it was too late now to ask such a thing. An
hour earlier, before Fergus had intruded upon them, he might have
succeeded. But everything was changed now. For an instant, during the time
Fergus had been there, she had caught a glimpse of the old, familiar
Richard, the mocking one; and the sense of conflict had risen once more
sharply between them.
“How could I do that?” she asked, and after a moment’s silence, “I can’t
do that sort of thing. It is impossible for me....”
He smiled. “But the world believes it of you already. The world will not
care. The world expects it of you. It can make no difference ... and when the
divorce is finished we will be married.”
Her answer was colored with a sudden bitterness. “You would not have
said such a thing to me once.”
It was true. There was a difference now, of a kind she had not thought of
before. It was a difference which had to do with age and all the slow
hardening which had come with each year that stood between them and the
hot afternoon in the Babylon Arms. Something had gone from them both ...
the warmth, the gallantry, the glow that had made him then so reckless, so
willing to marry her, a poor nobody, in the face of all his world. It was gone
from her too.... She knew exactly what it was now. It was the thing which
she had felt slip from her as a cloak on the night she sat talking with
Thérèse in the dark library on Murray Hill. They were no longer young.
They weighed chances now, cynically looking upon their problem without
regard for honor. The tragedy was that they could never go back. What was
gone was gone forever. And in the memory of the fierce, youthful passion,
so fresh and turbulent, this new love seemed to her an obscene and middle-
aged emotion.
“No,” she repeated. “I can’t do that. It is to myself that it matters.... What
the world thinks does not interest me.”

Long after midnight Callendar at last stirred himself and bade her good
night. They had talked, long and passionately, over the same ground again
and again, seeing it now in this light, now in that, arriving in the end
nowhere at all; and through it all, Ellen must have caught once more the
awful sense of his patience. He could wait; in the end he would have what
he desired. And this she knew with an understanding that lay deeper than
the mere surface of her consciousness.
Only it was all different now, even the significance of his patience,
because time was rushing on and on past her. She was no longer a young
girl; she was, as he had said, a woman of the world and therefore, perhaps,
all the more desirable in her unchallenged, unbroken spirit.
“It is very late,” said Callendar gently, as the black dog stirred himself
and, yawning, rubbed his head against Ellen’s hand. “And to-morrow....”
But she did not permit him to say, “And to-morrow I shall be back at the
front.” She was afraid of his saying it, because all the evening she had been
fighting just this thought. She understood that it was his strongest weapon,
the one thing which might demolish the wall of her resistance. It was not a
fair weapon, but he would not hesitate to use it where his own desire was
concerned.
“It’s not late,” she said, “not late for me....” Yet she wanted him to go
because she was afraid. She wanted to be alone, to feel her old strength
return to her.
The dog followed them as they moved through the big room and up the
stairs. The last of the sounds had died away—the terrifying screech of the
sirens, the faint popping of the guns and the ominous shattering crash of the
falling bombs. The house and the city beyond it lay in silence now, dark
once more save for the showers of blue light from the street lamps.
At the top of the stairs, which lay too in darkness, he put on his greatcoat
in silence, took up his cap and then faced her. He said nothing; he simply
looked at her, and after a moment she murmured in a voice that was
scarcely audible, “No, I cannot do it. The things which stand in the way are
much stronger than we are.” And bending her head, as if she had in some
way been accused, she added, “I will write you.”
He did not speak. Instead he simply placed his arms about her and in
silence kissed her. In the same fashion, her white hand grew tense once
more, just as it had done when Fergus came upon her unaware, to
understand all that was happening.
As he stepped into the street, she lingered in the doorway until, in the
direction of the Café des Tourelles, the darkness swallowed him. She was
alone again, and when she had closed the door she did not return to the
drawing-room but sat down weakly on the top step of the long stairs and
presently, overcome by the terrible sense of loneliness, she began to weep
in silence. She was (she thought scornfully) in spite of everything, only a
poor, weak, feminine creature.
Hansi flung his heavy body against her and, whimpering a little, put his
black head affectionately on her knee.

She was sitting thus when the dog leapt to his feet and barked savagely
at the sound of a sharp, sudden knock upon the door. It was the knock of
some one in haste. The sound, shattering the dead stillness, grew terrifying,
as if the one who knocked desired in some way to communicate his terror to
those inside the house.
Ellen sprang up. “Je viens! Je viens!” she cried, and to the dog, “Tais toi!
Hansi.” She cried “Je viens!” as if by arresting the efforts of the knocker
she might also destroy the foreboding in her heart.
Opening the door, she discerned dimly in the darkness the figure of a fat,
bent little old man with white mustaches that caught the faint light emerging
from the staircase. “Yes,” she said, in French. “What is it you want?”
A voice which trembled a little with fright and carried the ring of an
accent from the Midi answered her. “You are Mees Tolliver. I come from
your brother. I am sent by him to fetch you.”
For a moment she stood without speaking to the queer, bent figure,
regarding him with the air of utter incredulity. He could not be quite real ...
this gnome with the enormous white mustaches. And unaccountably there
flashed through her mind a fragment of the letter Lily had written her long
ago—And then he rode away into the darkness. I am certain that he is dead.
 “He is hurt,” said Ellen. “Something has happened to him!”
The old man answered simply. “Yes. There was an accident. He is
wounded.”
Without questioning him further, she wrapped herself in a fur coat and
holding to the collar of Hansi she went out, after locking the door on the
silent house, to follow the old man.
As they walked there were times when the darkness was so profound
that she could not see him at all and was forced to call out for guidance. It
was Hansi who aided her. He kept close to the heels of the old man.
She had a sense of passing through the Place Passy into the Rue
Franklin.
“Who are you, mon vieux?” she asked.
The old man coughed. He went rapidly for one so old, but she fancied it
was terror that gave speed to his fat legs, terror that the Gothas might
return.
“I am the concierge of the building where Madame Nozières has an
apartment. It was she who sent me. It is close at hand ... in the Avenue
Kléber.”
Vaguely in the darkness, black against the deep blue of the sky, the ugly
towers of the Trocadéro appeared a little on the right. “What is it that
happened? Is he wounded ... gravely, seriously, ... my brother?”
The old man grunted. “I don’t know. I know nothing. There was a bomb
fell in the Avenue Kléber.” He raised his head and sniffed like a shaggy old
dog. “Smell,” he commanded. “You can smell the bomb.”
It was true. The faint odor of picric acid filled the damp night air. As
they walked the odor grew more and more intense. In the darkness Ellen’s
guide pointed to the left.
“The bomb fell over there,” he observed, “full in the street.”
“Who is this Madame Nozières?” asked Ellen.
“I don’t know,” her companion repeated. “I know nothing. She has an
apartment. She comes there sometimes. She is rich. She is generous. She
does not live there always. She only comes now and then ... when Monsieur
has permission from the front.”
“Monsieur Nozières?”
 In the darkness, the old man was silent for a time. He was breathless
from the effort of their haste. “No,” he replied. “Monsieur ... your brother.”
This then was the rendezvous for which Fergus had left the house in the
Rue Raynouard. There was some one then—some woman—who had the
power of taking him from her on the very night he had returned after so
many years. It must have been strong, this force, stronger than the power
which Callendar himself exerted. She understood his persistence. Against
such a power, she was, of course, helpless.
“It is here,” said her guide abruptly. “Follow me.”
He led the way through a corridor into an open court filled with summer
furniture, stacked now in the corners against the empty stone urns. In the
dim light that filtered through the shutters on the far side, she was able to
discern the outlines of chairs and tables, piled helter-skelter, as if they too
had felt the force of a bomb that hurled them into a corner.
The old man knocked on a door that led into the apartment from which
the light showed itself. From inside the murmur of voices came to them,
distantly. And at last the door opened.
Against the dim light, Ellen was able to discern the figure of a small
woman, dressed in a trim dark suit. She wore no hat and her blonde hair, cut
short, stood about her head in a halo of ringlets which caught and reflected
the glow behind her. She had been weeping. Even in the emotion of the
moment, Ellen saw with a feminine instinct that she had chic, and when she
spoke she divined also that “Madame Nozières” was not a cocotte but a
lady. She had been weeping and something of the grief carried over into her
voice.
“You are Mees Tolliver,” she said. “I am Madame Nozières. I have heard
you play ... many times, but I did not know until to-night that you were his
sister. You do not know me, of course.”
There was a quality almost comic in the formality with which the
stranger went about the business of introductions. In the hallway, she
continued in a low voice, “I have known your brother for a long time. We
are very good friends.” And then she began to weep again. As Lily had
done in the letter written after César’s death, the woman made no pretenses,
thinking perhaps as Lily had thought, that at such a time there was place
only for the truth.
 To Ellen the whole affair was shot through with the light of unreality.
Standing in the dark hallway, with this strange woman weeping beside her
—a woman who in some vague way had been brought close to her because
she too loved Fergus—she leaned back against the wall for a moment trying
frantically to bring her mind back to the truth. This could not be.... It was
unreal, fantastic....
The door opened and she saw, with a clarity that stamped the scene
forever on her brain, a big room furnished with luxury, and in the midst of
all the feminine softness—the pillows, the gilt chairs, the mirrors and the
satin—Fergus lying very white and very still upon a bed of white and gilt
with gilded swans on each of its four posts. At the side of the bed stood a
tall, grave man with a black beard who wore the uniform of an army
surgeon. He bowed to her and Madame Nozières murmured, “Doctor
Chausson.”
The name struck some chord of memory in Ellen’s brain, but before she
could trace it to its source, Fergus opened his eyes, and grinning a little,
said in a low voice, “Well, this is a pretty mess!” (This was the old Fergus.
She knew it at once. All the strangeness had gone....)
She asked no questions because from the look of the doctor and the tears
of Madame Nozières she understood that there was only one answer. She
wanted suddenly to weep, to beat her head against the wall, to cry out. But
she was silent. She approached the bed and pressed his hand.
They had taken off the blue tunic with the silver wings and he lay now in
his white shirt and the blue trousers with the silver braid along the seam.
Around his waist he wore a woolen ceinture of brilliant yellow. The shirt
was open and on his breast where the silver wings had been there was a
little spot of red ... a tiny spot, scarcely as large as a strawberry.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “But you see I couldn’t come to-morrow ... as
I promised.”
She could find nothing to say. She could only press his hand more and
more tightly.
“I’m glad you brought the dog,” he continued. “It will be less lonely for
you.” And then he beckoned to the doctor and asked him and Madame
Nozières to leave the room for a moment. When they had gone, he drew
Ellen nearer to him and said, “You must not be hard with her. She is a lady.
Madame Nozières is not her name. It is I who am to blame if any one. I
wanted to marry her.... I’m not talking rot. We had planned it.” And then for
a time he was silent as if too weak to go on.
Pressing his hand more tightly, she whispered, “How could I be hard?
Nothing matters ... only one thing.”
He coughed and continued. “She has done everything. She has risked the
rest of her life to save me. Chausson is the great Chausson ... the surgeon
from Neuilly. She knows him and he knows her husband. They are old
friends. That was why he came. He is a busy man and a great surgeon. You
see, she risked everything ... her reputation, her future ... everything. She
did not hesitate to send for him.”
She knew now why the name had been familiar. She had heard it
everywhere in the journals, from her friends in Paris. If the great Chausson
believed there was no hope....
“She is a good woman ... a charming woman, Ellen. Madame Nozières is
not her name. If she chooses to tell you who she is, be good to her, because
I loved her.”
“I will do what you wish.”
He grinned again suddenly. “Think of it ... to get it now, after three years
... to get it now on the asphalt a block from the Trocadéro!” And then his
face grew bitter. “It’s a joke ... that is!” And then, dimly, sleepily, he
murmured, “We must hurry ... we must hurry.”
Ellen, still silent, found that she was praying idiotically for a thing which
could never be. She knew now, sharply and cruelly, what the war, that grand
parade, had been. Fergus who had loved life so passionately, who found
pleasure and excitement everywhere! Fergus whom they had all loved so
that they had spoiled him! Fergus lying there with his blond, curly head
against the white pillows under the flying gilt swans! Those voluptuous,
sensual swans! Eagles they should have been!
She could do nothing but wait. The minutes rushed past her, furiously.
(We must hurry, he had said.) On the gilt dressing table one of the candles
had begun to gutter and fade.
“Call them back,” he said faintly. And she rose and opened the door.
Outside Doctor Chausson had taken both Madame Nozières’ small,
exquisite hands and was talking to her, in a soft low voice, warm with a sort
of understanding that moved Ellen queerly. They were so absorbed that they
did not even notice her as she opened the door.
 “Madame Nozières,” she said softly, and the woman turned toward her.
She was beautiful, more beautiful than Ellen had supposed, even with the
tears swimming in her blue eyes. She was small and beautiful and exquisite
like a bit of Dresden china. She understood the whole thing clearly; she
understood perhaps even the profundity of the love which Madame
Nozières had for Fergus.
Doctor Chausson refused to come in with them. “I will stay here....
There is nothing I can do.” And so they left him, pale and hollow-eyed from
work and want of sleep, to wait in the dark hallway.
Inside the room the one candle had gone out and the only light came
from the single flame before the tall mirror. Fergus had closed his eyes once
more, and the lids showed against the dead whiteness of the skin in a faint
shade of purple. The two women sat one on each side of the gilded bed,
watching in silence. Presently he opened his eyes and looking at Ellen said
in English:
“This man....” He had grown weaker now and spoke with difficulty.
“This man ... Callendar. Are you going to marry him?”
“I don’t know.”
He smiled. “I saw you when I came in.... That’s how I knew. I saw your
hand.” And after a pause. “It’s funny ... I knew this was coming ... I knew it
as I stood outside your door.”
Then he closed his eyes once more and when he spoke again it was to
say weakly, “You must tell Ma.... It will be hard.... And you must not.... You
must not tell her the truth.... She could never face the truth. She has never
faced it.”
He reached out weakly and took the hand, on one side of Ellen and on
the other of Madame Nozières. Raising himself, he grinned again and
murmured in French this time, “My life.... It’s running away ... inside me.
You can hear it.... I hear it ... now.” And then for a moment there was an
echo of triumph, a sudden flash of Gramp whom Fergus himself had named
The Everlasting. He grinned again and said, “It was a good life.... I missed
nothing ... nothing at all.”
And again slowly ... “This man Callendar ... this man....”
But he never finished the sentence. He sighed and slipped back into the
pillows of the bed surmounted by the four gilded swans. Madame Nozières
began to weep wildly and flung herself upon him, kissing him again and
again. For Ellen there was no such relief. She sat now, stark upright and
tragic, bound by all the years in which she had shown a proud and scornful
face to the world. No, there was no such relief for her. She knew it. She
could only sit there, quietly cold and white, and all the time she wanted to
scream, to cry out, to beat her head against the stone floor of the corridor
where Doctor Chausson stood waiting gravely. She could only sit and watch
while Madame Nozières wept out her heart.

It was the sound of weeping, wild and passionate, that summoned Doctor
Chausson. The two women had forgotten him, but the good man knew well
enough what the sound signified. Softly he opened the door and came into
the frivolous room. There beside the gilded bed he saw the sister, a strange,
silent, handsome woman, dressed in black with her fur coat slipped to the
floor at her feet, a woman (he thought) bien Anglaise, who could not weep.
He knew that she suffered more than the other, more than Colette who had
flung herself on the boy to weep hysterically. Colette, the charming, the
fastidious, the beautiful, flung down in utter disarray, her eyes red and
swollen with weeping, her golden hair all disheveled.... Colette whom he
had seen but two nights before flushed and radiant at the Princesse de
Guermantes’. He understood now why she had been so beautiful and so
happy. But the boy could not see her now, and so nothing mattered.
He stood for a moment in silence, as if in respect for the grief of the two
women. All this he had seen before, many times, ... a young man, a boy,
who had loved life as this one had loved it, who could jest, as this one had
jested, with his very last breath. A boy whom women loved as these two
women, the one so wildly, the other so profoundly, with such an intense,
secret flame. It was cruel ... hideous....
He moved forward and touched Madame Nozières on her slim shoulder.
And all the while he was conscious that the eyes of the other woman were
watching him, stony and cold and tragic.
“Colette,” he said softly. “Colette.... You must not.... You must be quiet.”
With a gentle strength he lifted her from the bed. “Colette, it is nearly
dawn.... You must be discreet. There will be questions asked.”
But she paid no heed. She was sobbing now, bitterly and without shame.
“You must be discreet,” he repeated.
 “What difference does that make now?... It is nothing ... less than
nothing....” And she fell to weeping once more.
He mixed for her a powder and forced her to drink it, saying, “There is
the necessary business. You must not be seen here ... like this.”
But she would not go. It was Ellen who at last stirred herself and
succeeded in quieting Madame Nozières. “I will take him to my house,” she
said, quietly. “You may come there.... You may stay there if you like. It is a
big house ... in the Rue Raynouard.... No one will ever know.”
She drew Doctor Chausson aside and gave him the address. “I will take
care of things,” she said. “I will stay here if you will arrange for the rest. I
would like to stay ... alone. It was good of you.... There is nothing I can
say.”
So at last, in care of the great Doctor Chausson, Madame Nozières, pale
and with swollen eyes and disheveled hair, was led away, across the stone
courtyard, gray now with the faint rising light of dawn, into the big gray
motor that had followed him from Neuilly to the Avenue Kléber. Ellen
watched them as they crossed the yard between the empty stone urns and
summer chairs piled high in the corners.

When they had gone, she returned to the room and, locking the door, sat
down to wait. Slowly, in the gray solitude, the relief of tears came to her.
She wept silently. She understood now her fear of returning too late, that
vague, nameless fear for which there had been no explanation until now.
She had come so near to being late ... only a matter of a few hours, of a
single night. For he had escaped them all now, forever. They would never
possess him again....
She looked at him, lying here white and still in the gay blue trousers with
the silver braid and the yellow sash, and she understood why it was that he
had seemed so young. It was because he had never really belonged to any of
them. He had not even had a country of his own. He had gone out into a war
which was none of his concern. There was nothing which tied him down,
not even the nonsense which people talked of “la gloire” and “la patrie.”
For she, in her aloofness, had known it for the nonsense it was, just as he in
his good-nature and love for all the world had known it. She remembered
what he had once written her.... “A man of our generation who has missed
the war will not have lived at all.... He will be a poor thing compared to the
others. It is a game in which one must take a chance. It is better to die than
to have missed it.”
He had believed that to the very end. Perhaps this was the secret of Old
Gramp who had roamed the world and lived in this very Paris under the
Second Empire. He had lived. He had done everything, and now in his old
age he had a stock of memories that would last forever, a life which none of
the others ever knew. He had been certain of only one life and he had made
the most of it, so that he was ready when his time came to die with
satisfaction, to take his chance on what lay beyond.
And as she sat there with the black dog by her side, in the slow, gray
light, it occurred to her that perhaps the end of Fergus had not been after all
so tragic. He had died in the very midst of life with the woman he loved at
his side. If he had lived.... Who could tell? There was small place in the
world for men like him. He never had the strength, the fierce aloofness of
Old Gramp, the savage contempt of the old man for the drones and grubbers
of life.
It was all a strange business, surely. Strange and confused and without
sense. In the beginning, when she had first come into this frivolous room
(so cold and dead now in the gray light) she had been angry and jealous at
his deception, and bitter at Madame Nozières for having caused his death.
She had thought, “If he had not been going to meet her, he would not have
been killed.”
But she knew better now. She had been a fool. It was absurd and
monstrous that any one, even herself, should fancy he could bend fate to his
own ends. It was too imbecile, too senseless. No, she was wiser now. She
was not the headlong fool she had once been. In the face of all that had
happened in this one terrible night, she was utterly humbled. Who was she
to question the behavior of this brother who lay dead under the gilded
swans? Who was she, a cold, hard woman, to question a love of which she
knew nothing? And what did it matter now? She was glad suddenly, with a
strange, wild happiness, that he had known this Madame Nozières. Her
blondeness, her beauty, her fine clothes, her spirit ... all these things had
made him happy, on how many leaves in Paris?
What did it matter now? One lived but an instant, frantically, and time
rushed on and on....
But he was right. Their mother must never know the truth.
 She thought too of Callendar, for he was with her all the time, almost as
if he had never gone away. The old foreboding returned to her—that phrase
out of Lily’s letter—And then he rode away into the darkness. I am certain
he is dead. He had gone away and she did not know where. Perhaps she had
been wrong to refuse him, cruel to have denied him the happiness that
Madame Nozières had given to Fergus. Things mattered so little now. It
seemed to her that she stood somewhere on a lofty pinnacle, looking down
on the spectacle ... a pitiful spectacle, so full of “sound and fury, signifying
nothing.” The old quotation came back to her out of the dim memories of
the past when she had hated Shakespeare with an intense passion. “Sound
and fury, signifying nothing.” That was it. It was far better to be like her
mother, the invincible Hattie, who never mounted to the heights but kept
her eyes always on the ground, frantically occupied with a thousand tiny
things, never willing, as Fergus had said, to face the truth. And now that he
was gone, her favorite of them all, what would she do? There remained
nothing now except the one truth which none could in the end escape.
It was daylight and the ghastly smell of picric acid had died away before
she stirred herself. The morning sun, pouring in at the window, seemed to
say, “This is another day. We must all go on. This is not the end of
everything.”
(The sun, she thought bitterly, which Fergus had always loved even as a
baby.)
So she had stirred herself wearily and gone over to the little escritoire
which stood in one corner of the room. There, with the pen of gold and
mother-of-pearl that belonged to Madame Nozières, she seated herself and
wrote, one letter to Callendar and one to her mother. To Callendar she wrote
that she would marry him as soon as it was possible. To her mother she
wrote a lie. She wrote that Fergus had died in the house in the Rue
Raynouard, alone with herself and Doctor Chausson who was a great doctor
and came only because he was a friend of hers. Everything had been done
which could be done. He would be buried not in a grave at the front nor in a
lonely Paris graveyard but at Trilport, in the friendly cemetery where
Madame Gigon lay, a little way off from Germigny l’Evec where Lily went
in the summer.
 And in the end she added another lie, because she knew it was the one
thing above all else that Hattie Tolliver would want to hear. She even
framed the sentence shrewdly, sentimentally, though it was false to her very
nature. She wrote, “He died thinking of you. Your name was the last word
he said.”
For Hattie had at last to face the truth, and one must make it as easy as
possible for her.
Almost the last word he had said was, “Callendar.... This man ...
Callendar.” ... And she would never know now what it was that he had
meant to say.
There was a knock at the door. She knew what it was ... the men sent by
Doctor Chausson.
Ignoring it, she knelt beside the bed and pressed her cheek close to the
cold face of her brother. She was alone now, more alone than she had ever
been in all her life, where none could see her. Then as she stood, looking
down at him, it occurred to her that this death had been in a strange way a
perfect thing.... He had escaped in the midst of life, happier than he had
ever been before.... There were worse things than death. It was only to those
who remained that death was cruel.... It was cruel to understand, in that
frivolous room with the bright spring sun streaming in at the window, that
she had come to know him only when he was dead. There had never been
time before.... There had been only the business of fame and glory and
success.
When at last she opened the door, the men sent by Doctor Chausson saw
a handsome woman hard and cold, without sympathy, who stood holding by
his collar a great black dog who growled at them savagely.

In the days that followed Madame Nozières came twice to the Rue
Raynouard, once on foot and once in a taxicab though it was quite clear that
she was far more used to a motor of her own—a small, very expensive
motor like that of Sabine. She it was who had candles placed in the room
with Fergus and had masses said for him. And to all this, which old Jacob
Barr would have called “popery” and denounced as rubbish, Ellen offered
no resistance; for, not being sure any longer that she herself believed in
anything, she saw no harm so long as it gave comfort to others. Fergus
himself, she knew, would have smiled and allowed it.
 Madame Nozières wept and thanked Ellen and made her ill at ease and
miserable, but she did not say who she was or whence she came. Indeed,
Ellen learned no more of her identity than she had discovered from Fergus
himself, as he lay dying. She was a lady, a femme du monde, a creature of
charm and (despite her grief) of gaiety. She came out of mystery and
returned to it. “Madame Nozières” was a label, perhaps as good as any
other. Twice, long afterward, Ellen fancied that she saw her,—once walking
in the Bois and talking earnestly with Doctor Chausson and once in the
establishment of Reboux, but she could not be certain because each time
she turned quickly away lest Madame Nozières should recognize her. She
respected the mystery; she was afraid to intrude upon it. In some way it
seemed better to leave the tragedy with its proper ending—in that frivolous
room by candlelight in the Avenue Kléber. It had been in its way a
complete, a perfect thing. To follow it further could lead only into triviality
and disillusionment. She had no desire to know too much of Madame
Nozières.
But the sense of mystery fascinated her and, in the lonely days in the
Rue Raynouard, it appeared to change and soften all her beliefs. She saw
now that mystery had its place in the scheme of things, that it possessed a
beauty of its own which lent fascination to all life. There were others, she
knew, besides Callendar who were never to be understood completely,
never to be pinned down and taken apart as this or that. In all her haste, she
had fancied that life was thus and so, that people were easy to fathom and
understand. She doubted now whether she would ever know any one—even
Lily or Rebecca. There was always something which escaped knowledge,
something which lay hidden deep beneath layer upon layer of caution, of
shyness, of deceit, or mockery, of a thousand things ... the something which
in the end was one’s own self, the same self she had guarded with savagery
through so many years.
For all that people might say or think, she understood that this Fergus,
the one who stood in the candlelit room in the Avenue Kléber, had been
more beautiful than any other ... as he lay there clasping with one hand his
sister and with the other Madame Nozières!
 57

I T is true that Ellen in life and even Fergus in death did not really know
their own mother. They had said that she would not be able to face the
truth; yet she had done it, bravely and with a dignity that none of them
would have recognized; for they had not seen her on the day she forced
Judge Weissman, her enemy, to aid her because her children were the ones
at stake.
So the premonition which had troubled her for so long came now to be a
reality. With Ellen in Paris, Robert joined up with his own army, and Fergus
(her beloved Fergus) dead, there remained only Gramp, cold and aloof and
ageless, in his chamber surrounded by books.
It was the grim old man who found her lying in the darkness of the tiny
living room of the flat with Ellen’s letter crushed in her hand. In his
unearthly fashion he had divined the tragedy. He saw that she did not weep;
she did not even moan. She lay quite still, unconscious that he stood there
in the shadows watching her. It is impossible to imagine what his thoughts
could have been. For a time at least the hardness which had protected him
for so long must have melted a little; for Fergus had been of all the family
his favorite. It was Fergus to whom he lent his precious books. It was
Fergus who had seemed at times the very incarnation of his own youth—so
remote now, so buried beneath all his intolerant scorn of those who were
afraid to live.
For a long time he stood there watching his daughter-in-law, silently and
with an intense concentration as if he were obsessed by a desire to study her
sorrow with the passion of an anatomist. And then he had gone up to her
and quietly taken the damp, crumpled letter with a strange gentleness out of
the strong, worn hand. She did not resist; she did not even stir. She lay quite
still while he held the letter close to the light and peering at it read it
through, though he knew all the time what was in it.
When he had finished he laid it again by her side and said in a low voice,
“The boy loved life, Hattie. And for those who die, death is not hard. There
are worse things.”
In thirty years it was the first time there had passed between the two any
speech purified of anger or resentment.
 To one of Hattie’s nature there is consolation in the possession of the
dead. The grim small tasks, the polite and empty phrases of condolence, the
coming and going of those who care for the dead ... all this empty hubbub
and commerce serves in a fashion to conceal and break the anguish of loss.
But for Hattie there were not even these things. She was left alone with
Gramp in a flat which, though it had seemed empty before, now achieved a
desolation beyond all belief. She (who had lived only in her children) had
no friends about her; the very flat was not in the proper sense a home, such
as the house in Sycamore Street had been. It was a barren, inhuman cave
occupied before her by a procession of strangers which, when she left,
would again close over the brief years of her tenancy. She found herself
alone save for that ancient man her father-in-law, in a strange city, without
even the body of her son for a bitter consolation.
So this woman, who had lived her life so richly ... a life florid and
overflowing with sentiment, a life that churned and raced along in an
overwhelming current of vitality, achieved in the face of tragedy a calm and
a dignity which she had never shown before. She understood, in the
primitive depths of her nature, that this truth which she must face was the
final one, from which there was no appeal. Always before there had been
some hope ahead, some chance of turning events by a vast energy and a
crude wilfulness to her own ends. There was nothing now ... nothing save a
few old clothes, some books and the Bible she had given him on his tenth
birthday. To these she clung with the tenacity of a savage, and they were
pitiful remnants to a woman whose love demanded the very bodies of her
children.
For Hattie there were none of those shades of grief and joy which are the
lot of those more completely civilized. She had no capacity for seeing
herself, or, like Ellen, for finding in the death of Fergus an illumination
which served in a mysterious fashion to light up the long progression of her
life. In her sorrow, Hattie no longer even pitied herself; and this, of course,
may have been the secret of her dignity. Hattie, the martyr, who bore her
cross and flung herself before her family like the Pope before the Visigoths,
no longer existed. In her place there was a strong, almost grim woman, who
was silent and did not complain.
 Nor had she, like the more civilized, the pleasure of books and of
philosophic reflection. Her life since the very beginning had been far too
active for such things; and now, when at last there was time, when she had
no one to care for save the independent old man, she could not read, she
could not reflect. Books were poor pale things by comparison with the
ferocious activity of life itself. There were no stockings to darn, no one for
whom she might make meringues, no dog to place upon his mat before
locking up the house. (To the apartment there was but one door and it
locked of itself. It was, properly speaking, no real home at all.) So she came
to invent things for herself to do. She lingered over her work and took
(though she was rich now) to such pale tasks as embroidery and knitting,
only to find that the objects of her labor, having been created for no real
purpose, accumulated dismally in the drawers and cupboards.
She had letters both from Ellen and Robert which she kept in the family
Bible to read over and over again; and sometimes a shameful, bitter thought
crept into the recesses of her active mind. It was a terrible thought, which
she thrust hastily aside as impious and touched with blasphemy; but it
returned nevertheless again and again to torment her. She thought, “If only
it had been Robert instead of Fergus!” (Robert who was so steadfast and
reliable, who already was the youngest captain of his division). She was
proud of him too, but in a different way. She could not say how....
The awful thought would not die. She would have given Robert to keep
Fergus, though in the solitude of the empty flat she sometimes cried out, “It
is not true. I could not think such a horrible thing!”
The squabbling with Gramp came quietly to an end, though neither of
them ever made any allusion to the change. They lived together for the most
part in silence but the old man ceased to torment and worry her. And on her
side without ever knowing why, she came to treat him in a new way, almost
to cherish and protect him like some brittle piece of glass, as all that
remained of the old life. She even made for him little delicacies and had
him to eat at the table with her. At such times they sat, awkwardly, and
without conversation, each perhaps abashed by the weakness that lay in this
strange truce.
In the long empty days there came to Hattie a mysterious sense of having
turned a corner, of having stepped from one room into another. The door
between had, she knew, closed forever, though she did not understand why.
She had come now into the borders of Gramp’s country. She was growing
old and so she came to understand a little the old man’s vast indifference.

Before he sailed, Robert, dressed in his captain’s uniform, neat and

spotless, every button properly arranged, came to bid farewell. She could
feel certain of him. There would be no mad exploits, no wild surges of
temperament ending in disaster, no idle heroics undertaken for their own
selfish thrill. These things Robert would never understand.
As he sat talking to her (trying bravely in his solid, unspectacular way to
take the place of Fergus) he seemed square and massive and eternal as her
father, old Jacob Barr, had been. There was reassurance in the snub nose,
the solid jaw and the unruly red hair. Where Fergus had not even been able
to look out for himself, she knew that this other son would care for his men
with a detached and efficient thoroughness. There was nothing in the death
of Fergus which could be counted as a material loss, even to herself. It was
Robert who had earned money when it was most needed; it was Robert who
looked out for her and stood between her and the world. It was upon men
like Robert that the whole world rested; he was a foundation, the beginning
and end of all order and worth. And yet.... And yet.... Even while he sat
there doing his clumsy best to make up for the loss of his brother, the old
wicked thought kept tormenting her.... She wanted to tear it out by its roots,
to destroy it forever; but there it was, always with her.... If only it had been
Robert.
“You need not worry over me,” he assured her. “I will take no chances.
There’s nothing romantic about war ... at least not about this one. It’s simply
business. The side which is most efficient is bound to win. There won’t be
any nonsense. I’ll look out for myself.”
She said to him almost with indifference, “You’re all I have left, because
I don’t see much of Ellen any more. She’s too busy.”
But she was not thinking of what she said: she was thinking that war was
romantic. It must be so else it would not excite men as it excited Fergus. It
was the romance that was the bait in the trap ... romance and the
excitement. So long as these things existed, there would be wars, for there
would be men like Fergus who did not take their places efficiently but went
because (she remembered one of the phrases he had used again and again in
the face of her reproaches) “it was too big a show to be missed.” It was not
men like Robert who made war possible; it was men like Fergus. She saw it
all with a vision uncluttered by talk of economics and politics; and so in her
own fashion she came far nearer to the truth than this solid, logical son of
hers.
But he was sure of himself, Robert. You could fancy him ordering his
men about, ably and dispassionately, leading them admirably when it was
necessary, as his grandfather Barr, the Citizen, had done before him in the
Civil War. He would make a good job of it. You could see that he would
quietly and thoroughly win distinction, not as Fergus had done, without
once thinking of it, but because he had arranged it so. You could see him
being decorated with medals, as his brother had been decorated, again and
again; but not for the same reason. He would not wear them as Fergus had
done, with a swagger. He would cherish them, in neat leather cases, and
bring them out to show his children and his grandchildren, because he could
not tell them what the war was like, give them the feel of it, as Fergus could
have done ... Fergus who (if he had lived) would have lost the medals or
thrown them away long ago in disgust like his Grandfather Tolliver, who
found the Siege of Paris more romantic than Bull Run or Gettysburg. He
had, one fancied, already counted his medals. One could see that he was cut
out for a good officer.
“I will see Ellen as soon as I have leave,” he murmured and thought,
“And I will not be walking about the streets during an air raid as if I were at
a church sociable.”
Yet he was not bitter because Fergus was the better loved; that fact he
had come long since to accept. He was scornful only because it seemed to
him an idiotic thing to be wandering carelessly into the midst of danger.
There could be no reason for it ... none on earth.
Before he left, Hattie burdened him with a great bundle of sweaters and
socks, all admirably made in the hours when she had been distracted by her
terror of idleness.
“You must wear them all yourself,” she said. “You’ll need them in time.
They’ll wear out and you’ll lose them. I’ll send you others from time to
time. It’s all I have to do nowadays.”
And on the way past the cell occupied by The Everlasting he must have
heard the squeaking of his grandfather’s chair as the old man rocked and
rocked, lost again in a torrent of memories; but he did not stop.
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