But I had heard of George Simpson. A fanatic. An altruist. That was the best, undoubtedly, that you could call him. A crusader for ideals, he had thought that he could remodel the world, remake God's erring creatures so that hate and fear and jealousy and violence would be gone. And among nations—peace, amity—never a hint of war or aggression.

Nice ideals. Simpson undoubtedly was a genius. A remarkable orator; a fellow of indefatigable energy; a personality forceful, winning. For years, with fanatic fervor, he devoted his life to converting others to his own ideals. It was ironic, but inevitable, that he himself was always a storm-center. Pathetically sincere, frequently he became a lawbreaker; was in prison and out again. Until at last he was the frenzied hater of humanity—an outcast. And with a wild burst of condemnation for earth and everything on it, he had joined Blake's expedition, vowing he would never return.

"And you were on that expedition too?" I said. "And your mother—I understood Blake took only a few men."

"He would not take my mother," Tara said. "So she hid herself on board. I was born here—a few months after they landed."

The rest of the story was simple enough.

Her mother had died about a year after Tara was born. Her father had brought her up, here on little Zura; had educated her. For fourteen years, until his death a year or so ago, she had been his constant companion. George Simpson was an educated man, a scholar. He had left earth, determined never to return, so that he had taken many books with him, with which Tara had been taught. And he had found here a strange, primitive little people. There were, I believe, since it is understood now that the Zurians were a dying race, no more than a few thousands, living here in these interlacing honeycombed grottos. The forceful Simpson, when he had learned their language, had come to rule them. His intelligence, much greater than their own, and his own ideas which seemed here, at least, possible of attainment, had enabled him to make himself the Zurian ruler.

I must state now that it is far from my purpose—even if space permitted, which it does not—to sketch the life-history of the tragic little Zurian people. I am no ethnologist. Nor can I detail the effect George Simpson had upon them—the practical working of his ideal economic system. Books have been written on it in the last half century, based on what Tara was able to tell the learned men who questioned her. And as I indicated in my preface, much nonsense has been written. I think 

 Prev. P 29/40 next