DARE I say it? Dare I
say that I, a plain, prosaic lieutenant in the republican service have done the
incredible things here set out for the love of a woman--for a chimera in female
shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness? At times I tell myself I
dare not: that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator; and then
again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I must write
it--the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and lost is ever
before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult of the struggle into which
that vision led me still throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the
planet I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction which followed
me back from the quest drowns all other sounds in my ears! I must and will
write--it relieves me; read and believe as you list.
At the moment this
story commences I was thinking of grilled steak and tomatoes--steak crisp and brown
on both sides, and tomatoes red as a setting sun!
Much else though I have
forgotten, that fact remains as clear as the last sight of a well-remembered
shore in the mind of some wave-tossed traveller. And the occasion which
produced that prosaic thought was a night well calculated to make one think of
supper and fireside, though the one might be frugal and the other lonely, and
as I, Gulliver Jones, the poor foresaid Navy lieutenant, with the honoured
stars of our Republic on my collar, and an undeserved snub from those in
authority rankling in my heart, picked my way homeward by a short cut through
the dismalness of a New York slum I longed for steak and stout, slippers and a
pipe, with all the pathetic keenness of a troubled soul.
It was a wild, black
kind of night, and the weirdness of it showed up as I passed from light to
light or crossed the mouths of dim alleys leading Heaven knows to what infernal
dens of mystery and crime even in this latter-day city of ours. The moon was up
as far as the church steeples; large vapoury clouds scudding across the sky
between us and her, and a strong, gusty wind, laden with big raindrops snarled
angrily round corners and sighed in the parapets like strange voices talking
about things not of human interest.
It made no difference
to me, of course. New York in this year of grace is not the place for the
supernatural be the time never so fit for witch-riding and the night wind in
the chimney-stacks sound never so much like the last gurgling cries of
throttled men. No! the world was very matter-of-fact, and particularly so to
me, a poor younger son with five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a
packet of unpaid bills in my breastpocket, and round my neck a locket with a
portrait therein of that dear buxom, freckled, stub-nosed girl away in a little
southern seaport town whom I thought I loved with a magnificent affection.
Gods! I had not even touched the fringe of that affliction.
Thus sauntering along
moodily, my chin on my chest and much too absorbed in reflection to have any
nice appreciation of what was happening about me, I was crossing in front of a
dilapidated block of houses, dating back nearly to the time of the Pilgrim
Fathers, when I had a vague consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping
by me-- a thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing could be,
and the next instant there was a thud and a bump, a bump again, a half-stifled
cry, and then a hurried vision of some black carpeting that flapped and shook
as though all the winds of Eblis were in its folds, and then apparently
disgorged from its inmost recesses a little man.
Before my first start
of half-amused surprise was over I saw him by the flickering lamp-light clutch
at space as he tried to steady himself, stumble on the slippery curb, and the
next moment go down on the back of his head with a most ugly thud.
Now I was not destitute
of feeling, though it had been my lot to see men die in many ways, and I ran
over to that motionless form without an idea that anything but an ordinary
accident had occurred. There he lay, silent and, as it turned out afterwards,
dead as a door-nail, the strangest old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in
shabby sorrel-coloured clothes of antique cut, with a long grey beard upon his
chin, pent-roof eyebrows, and a wizened complexion so puckered and tanned by
exposure to Heaven only knew what weathers that it was impossible to guess his
nationality.
I lifted him up out of
the puddle of black blood in which he was lying, and his head dropped back over
my arm as though it had been fixed to his body with string alone. There was
neither heart-beat nor breath in him, and the last flicker of life faded out of
that gaunt face even as I watched. It was not altogether a pleasant situation,
and the only thing to do appeared to be to get the dead man into proper care
(though little good it could do him now!) as speedily as possible. So, sending
a chance passer-by into the main street for a cab, I placed him into it as soon
as it came, and there being nobody else to go, got in with him myself, telling
the driver at the same time to take us to the nearest hospital.
"Is this your rug,
captain?" asked a bystander just as we were driving off.
"Not mine," I
answered somewhat roughly. "You don’t suppose I go about at this time of
night with Turkey carpets under my arm, do you? It belongs to this old chap
here who has just dropped out of the skies on to his head; chuck it on top and
shut the door!" And that rug, the very mainspring of the startling things which
followed, was thus carelessly thrown on to the carriage, and off we went.
Well, to be brief, I
handed in that stark old traveller from nowhere at the hospital, and as a
matter of curiosity sat in the waiting-room while they examined him. In five
minutes the house-surgeon on duty came in to see me, and with a shake of his
head said briefly--
"Gone, sir--clean
gone! Broke his neck like a pipe-stem. Most strange-looking man, and none of us
can even guess at his age. Not a friend of yours, I suppose?"
"Nothing whatever
to do with me, sir. He slipped on the pavement and fell in front of me just
now, and as a matter of common charity I brought him in here. Were there any
means of identification on him?"
"None
whatever," answered the doctor, taking out his notebook and, as a matter
of form, writing down my name and address and a few brief particulars,
"nothing whatever except this curious-looking bead hung round his neck by
a blackened thong of leather," and he handed me a thing about as big as a filbert
nut with a loop for suspension and apparently of rock crystal, though so
begrimed and dull its nature was difficult to speak of with certainty. The bead
was of no seeming value and slipped unintentionally into my waistcoat pocket as
I chatted for a few minutes more with the doctor, and then, shaking hands, I
said goodbye, and went back to the cab which was still waiting outside.
It was only on reaching
home I noticed the hospital porters had omitted to take the dead man’s carpet
from the roof of the cab when they carried him in, and as the cabman did not
care about driving back to the hospital with it, and it could not well be left
in the street, I somewhat reluctantly carried it indoors with me.
Once in the shine of my
own lamp and a cigar in my mouth I had a closer look at that ancient piece of
art work from heaven, or the other place, only knows what ancient loom.
A big, strong rug of
faded Oriental colouring, it covered half the floor of my sitting-room, the
substance being of a material more like camel’s hair than anything else, and
running across, when examined closely, were some dark fibres so long and fine
that surely they must have come from the tail of Solomon’s favourite black
stallion itself. But the strangest thing about that carpet was its pattern. It
was threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design still lived
in solemn, age-wasted hues, and, as I dragged it to my stove-front and spread
it out, it seemed to me that it was as much like a star map done by a scribe
who had lately recovered from delirium tremens as anything else. In the centre
appeared a round such as might be taken for the sun, while here and there,
"in the field," as heralds say, were lesser orbs which from their
size and position could represent smaller worlds circling about it. Between
these orbs were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest form pointing in all
directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven
characters half-way in appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit. Round the
borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle of an alphabet
through which none but a wizard could have forced a way in search of meaning.
Altogether, I thought
as I kicked it out straight upon my floor, it was a strange and not unhandsome
article of furniture--it would do nicely for the mess-room on the Carolina, and
if any representatives of yonder poor old fellow turned up tomorrow, why, I
would give them a couple of dollars for it. Little did I guess how dear it
would be at any price!
Meanwhile that steak
was late, and now that the temporary excitement of the evening was wearing off
I fell dull again. What a dark, sodden world it was that frowned in on me as I
moved over to the window and opened it for the benefit of the cool air, and how
the wind howled about the roof tops. How lonely I was! What a fool I had been
to ask for long leave and come ashore like this, to curry favour with a set of
stubborn dunderheads who cared nothing for me--or Polly, and could not or would
not understand how important it was to the best interests of the Service that I
should get that promotion which alone would send me back to her an eligible
wooer! What a fool I was not to have volunteered for some desperate service
instead of wasting time like this! Then at least life would have been
interesting; now it was dull as ditch-water, with wretched vistas of stagnant
waiting between now and that joyful day when I could claim that dear,
rosy-checked girl for my own. What a fool I had been!
"I wish, I
wish," I exclaimed, walking round the little room, "I wish I
were--"
While these unfinished
exclamations were actually passing my lips I chanced to cross that infernal
mat, and it is no more startling than true, but at my word a quiver of
expectation ran through that gaunt web--a rustle of anticipation filled its
ancient fabric, and one frayed corner surged up, and as I passed off its
surface in my stride, the sentence still unfinished on my lips, wrapped itself
about my left leg with extraordinary swiftness and so effectively that I nearly
fell into the arms of my landlady, who opened the door at the moment and came
in with a tray and the steak and tomatoes mentioned more than once already.
It was the draught
caused by the opening door, of course, that had made the dead man’s rug lift so
strangely-- what else could it have been? I made this apology to the good
woman, and when she had set the table and closed the door took another turn or
two about my den, continuing as I did so my angry thoughts.
"Yes, yes," I
said at last, returning to the stove and taking my stand, hands in pockets, in
front of it, "anything were better than this, any enterprise however wild,
any adventure however desperate. Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here, anywhere
out of this redtape-ridden world of ours! I wish I were in the planet
Mars!"
How can I describe what
followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered
responsively under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe as
though a sudden wind were shaking it. It humped up in the middle so abruptly
that I came down sitting with a shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw
me on my back and billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a
stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it lapped a corner over and rolled me in
its folds like a chrysalis in a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made one frantic
struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength of a giant and the
swiftness of an accomplished cigar- roller covering a "core" with
leaf, it swamped my efforts, straightened my limbs, rolled me over, lapped me
in fold after fold till head and feet and everything were gone-- crushed life
and breath back into my innermost being, and then, with the last particle of
consciousness, I felt myself lifted from the floor, pass once round the room,
and finally shoot out, point foremost, into space through the open window, and
go up and up and up with a sound of rending atmospheres that seemed to tear
like riven silk in one prolonged shriek under my head, and to close up in
thunder astern until my reeling senses could stand it no longer. and time and
space and circumstances all lost their meaning to me.
HOW LONG that wild rush
lasted I have no means of judging. It may have been an hour, a day, or many
days, for I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but presently my
senses began to return and with them a sensation of lessening speed, a grateful
relief to a heavy pressure which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without
destroying it completely. It was just that sort of sensation though more keen
which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when he is aware, without special
perception, harbour is reached and a voyage comes to an end. But in my case the
slowing down was for a long time comparative. Yet the sensation served to
revive my scattered senses, and just as I was awakening to a lively sense of
amazement, an incredible doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire to know
what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once or twice, undulated
lightly up and down, like a woodpecker flying from tree to tree, and then
grounded, bows first, rolled over several times, then steadied again, and,
coming at last to rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quivering along
all its borders in its peculiar way, and humping up in the middle shot me five
feet into the air like a cat tossed from a schoolboy’s blanket.
As I turned over I had
a dim vision of a clear light like the shine of dawn, and solid ground sloping
away below me. Upon that slope was ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a
staid-looking individual with his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I
found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the
inherent properties of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was
directly in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy
with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my
impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him
sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the
thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came
to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When
we had done the mass disentangled itself and I was able to raise my head from
the shoulder of someone on whom I had fallen, lifting him, or her--which was
it?--into a sitting posture alongside of me at the same time, while the others
rose about us like wheat-stalks after a storm, and edged shyly off, as well as
they might.
Such a sleek, slim
youth it was who sat up facing me, with a flush of gentle surprise on his face,
and dapper hands that felt cautiously about his anatomy for injured places. He
looked so quaintly rueful yet withal so good-tempered that I could not help bursting
into laughter in spite of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate,
musical chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, pointing at the same time
to a cut upon my finger that was bleeding a little. I shook my head, meaning
thereby that it was nothing, but the stranger with graceful solicitude took my
hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately tore a strip of cloth from a
bright yellow toga-like garment he was wearing and bound the place up with a
woman’s tenderness.
Meanwhile, as he
ministered, there was time to look about me. Where was I? It was not the
Broadway; it was not Staten Island on a Saturday afternoon. The night was just
over, and the sun on the point of rising. Yet it was still shadowy all about,
the air being marvellously tepid and pleasant to the senses. Quaint, soft
aromas like the breath of a new world--the fragrance of unknown flowers, and
the dewy scent of never-trodden fields drifted to my nostrils; and to my ears
came a sound of laughter scarcely more human than the murmur of the wind in the
trees, and a pretty undulating whisper as though a great concourse of people
were talking softly in their sleep. I gazed about scarcely knowing how much of
my senses or surroundings were real and how much fanciful, until I presently
became aware the rosy twilight was broadening into day, and under the
increasing shine a strange scene was fashioning itself.
At first it was an opal
sea I looked on of mist, shot along its upper surface with the rosy gold and
pinks of dawn. Then, as that soft, translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came
through it, black and crimson, and as they seemed to mount into the air other
lower hills showed through the veil with rounded forest knobs till at last the
brightening day dispelled the mist, and as the rosy-coloured gauzy fragments
went slowly floating away a wonderfully fair country lay at my feet, with a
broad sea glimmering in many arms and bays in the distance beyond. It was all
dim and unreal at first, the mountains shadowy, the ocean unreal, the flowery
fields between it and me vacant and shadowy.
Yet were they vacant?
As my eyes cleared and day brightened still more, and I turned my head this way
and that, it presently dawned upon me all the meadow coppices and terraces
northwards of where I lay, all that blue and spacious ground I had thought to
be bare and vacant, were alive with a teeming city of booths and tents; now I
came to look more closely there was a whole town upon the slope, built as might
be in a night of boughs and branches still unwithered, the streets and ways of
that city in the shadows thronged with expectant people moving in groups and
shifting to and fro in lively streams--chatting at the stalls and clustering
round the tent doors in soft, gauzy, parti-coloured crowds in a way both
fascinating and perplexing.
I stared about me like
a child at its first pantomime, dimly understanding all I saw was novel, but
more allured to the colour and life of the picture than concerned with its
exact meaning; and while I stared and turned my finger was bandaged, and my new
friend had been lisping away to me without getting anything in turn but a shake
of the head. This made him thoughtful, and thereon followed a curious incident
which I cannot explain. I doubt even whether you will believe it; but what am I
to do in that case? You have already accepted the episode of my coming, or you
would have shut the covers before arriving at this page of my modest narrative,
and this emboldens me. I may strengthen my claim on your credulity by pointing
out the extraordinary marvels which science is teaching you even on our own
little world. To quote a single instance: If any one had declared ten years ago
that it would shortly be practicable and easy for two persons to converse from
shore to shore across the Atlantic without any intervening medium, he would
have been laughed at as a possibly amusing but certainly extravagant romancer.
Yet that picturesque lie of yesterday is amongst the accomplished facts of
today! Therefore I am encouraged to ask your indulgence, in the name of your
previous errors, for the following and any other instances in which I may
appear to trifle with strict veracity. There is no such thing as the impossible
in our universe!
When my friendly
companion found I could not understand him, he looked serious for a minute or
two, then shortened his brilliant yellow toga, as though he had arrived at some
resolve, and knelt down directly in front of me. He next took my face between
his hands, and putting his nose within an inch of mine, stared into my eyes
with all his might. At first I was inclined to laugh, but before long the most
curious sensations took hold of me. They commenced with a thrill which passed
all up my body, and next all feeling save the consciousness of the loud beating
of my heart ceased. Then it seemed that boy’s eyes were inside my head and not
outside, while along with them an intangible something pervaded my brain. The
sensation at first was like the application of ether to the skin--a cool,
numbing emotion. It was followed by a curious tingling feeling, as some dormant
cells in my mind answered to the thought-transfer, and were filled and
fertilised! My other brain-cells most distinctly felt the vitalising of their
companions, and for about a minute I experienced extreme nausea and a headache
such as comes from over-study, though both passed swiftly off. I presume that
in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in this way. The Professors of a
later day will perhaps keep shops for the sale of miscellaneous information,
and we shall drop in and be inflated with learning just as the bicyclist gets
his tire pumped up, or the motorist is recharged with electricity at so much
per unit. Examinations will then become matters of capacity in the real meaning
of that word, and we shall be tempted to invest our pocket-money by
advertisements of "A cheap line in Astrology," "Try our
double-strength, two-minute course of Classics," "This is remnant day
for Trigonometry and Metaphysics," and so on.
My friend did not get
as far as that. With him the process did not take more than a minute, but it
was startling in its results, and reduced me to an extraordinary state of
hypnotic receptibility. When it was over my instructor tapped with a finger on
my lips, uttering aloud as he did so the words--
"Know none; know
some; know little; know morel" again and again; and the strangest part of
it is that as he spoke I did know at first a little, then more, and still more,
by swift accumulation, of his speech and meaning. In fact, when presently he
suddenly laid a hand over my eyes and then let go of my head with a pleasantly
put question as to how I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in
his own tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a hair-dresser’s
chair, with a vague idea of looking round for my hat and offering him his fee.
"My word,
sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled down my cuffs and put my
cravat straight, "that was a quick process. I once heard of a man who
learnt a language in the moments he gave each day to having his boots blacked;
but this beats all. I trust I was a docile pupil?"
"Oh, fairly,
sir," answered the soft, musical voice of the strange being by me;
"but your head is thick and your brain tough. I could have taught another
in half the time."
"Curiously
enough," was my response, "those are almost the very words with which
my dear old tutor dismissed me the morning I left college. Never mind, the
thing is done. Shall I pay you anything?"
"I do not
understand."
"Any honorarium,
then? Some people understand one word and not the other." But the boy only
shook his head in answer.
Strangely enough, I was
not greatly surprised all this time either at the novelty of my whereabouts or
at the hypnotic instruction in a new language just received. Perhaps it was
because my head still spun too giddily with that flight in the old rug for much
thought; perhaps because I did not yet fully realise the thing that had
happened. But, anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others in my narrative,
must, alas! remain unexplained for the moment. The rug, by the way, had
completely disappeared, my friend comforting me on this score, however, by
saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one whom he knew.
"We are very tidy
people here, stranger," he said, "and everything found Lying about
goes back to the Palace storerooms. You will laugh to see the lumber there, for
few of us ever take the trouble to reclaim our property."
Heaven knows I was in
no laughing mood when I saw that enchanted web again!
When I had lain and
watched the brightening scene for a time, I got up, and having stretched and
shaken my clothes into some sort of order, we strolled down the hill and joined
the light-hearted crowds that twined across the plain and through the streets
of their city of booths. They were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes
looked upon, well-formed and like to us as could be in the main, but slender
and willowy, so dainty and light, both the men and the women, so pretty of
cheek and hair, so mild of aspect, I felt, as I strode amongst them, I could
have plucked them like flowers and bound them up in bunches with my belt. And
yet somehow I liked them from the first minute; such a happy, careless,
light-hearted race, again I say, never was seen before. There was not a stain
of thought or care on a single one of those white foreheads that eddied round
me under their peaked, blossom-like caps, the perpetual smile their faces wore
never suffered rebuke anywhere; their very movements were graceful and slow,
their laughter was low and musical, there was an odour of friendly, slothful
happiness about them that made me admire whether I would or no.
Unfortunately I was not
able to live on laughter, as they appeared to be, so presently turning to my
acquaintance, who had told me his name was the plain monosyllabic An, and
clapping my hand on his shoulder as he stood lost in sleepy reflection, said,
in a good, hearty way, "Hullo, friend Yellow-jerkin! If a stranger might
set himself athwart the cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one
ask how far ’tis to the nearest wine-shop or a booth where a thirsty man may
get a mug of ale at a moderate reckoning?"
That gilded youth
staggered under my friendly blow as though the hammer of Thor himself had
suddenly lit upon his shoulder, and ruefully rubbing his tender skin, he turned
on me mild, handsome eyes, answering after a moment, during which his native
mildness struggled with the pain I had unwittingly given him--
"If your thirst be
as emphatic as your greeting, friend Heavy-fist, it will certainly be a kindly
deed to lead you to the drinking-place. My shoulder tingles with your
good-fellowship," he added, keeping two arms’-lengths clear of me.
"Do you wish," he said, "merely to cleanse a dusty throat, or
for blue or pink oblivion?"
"Why," I
answered laughingly, "I have come a longish journey since yesterday
night--a journey out of count of all reasonable mileage--and I might fairly
plead a dusty throat as excuse for a beginning; but as to the other things
mentioned, those tinted forgetfulnesses, I do not even know what you
mean."
"Undoubtedly you
are a stranger," said the friendly youth, eyeing me from top to toe with
renewed wonder, "and by your unknown garb one from afar."
"From how far no
man can say--not even I--but from very far, in truth. Let that stay your
curiosity for the time. And now to bench and ale-mug, on good fellow!--the
shortest way. I was never so thirsty as this since our water-butts went
overboard when I sailed the southern seas as a tramp apprentice, and for three
days we had to damp our black tongues with the puddles the night-dews left in
the lift of our mainsail."
Without more words,
being a little awed of me, I thought, the boy led me through the good-humoured
crowd to where, facing the main road to the town, but a little sheltered by a
thicket of trees covered with gigantic pink blossoms, stood a drinking-place--a
cluster of tables set round an open grass-plot. Here he brought me a platter of
some light inefficient cakes which merely served to make hunger more
self-conscious, and some fine aromatic wine contained in a triple-bodied flask,
each division containing vintage of a separate hue. We broke our biscuits,
sipped that mysterious wine, and talked of many things until at last something
set us on the subject of astronomy, a study I found my dapper gallant had some
knowledge of-- which was not to be wondered at seeing he dwelt under skies each
night set thick above his curly head with tawny planets, and glittering
constellations sprinkled through space like flowers in May meadows. He knew
what worlds went round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I began to
question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind and, you will remember, so
far had no certain knowledge of where I was, only a dim, restless suspicion
that I had come beyond the ken of all men’s knowledge.
Therefore, sweeping
clear the board with my sleeve, and breaking the wafer cake I was eating, I set
down one central piece for the sun, and, "See here!" I said,
"good fellow! This morsel shall stand for that sun you have just been
welcoming back with quaint ritual. Now stretch your starry knowledge to the
utmost, and put down that tankard for a moment. If this be yonder sun and this
lesser crumb be the outermost one of our revolving system, and this the next
within, and this the next, and so on; now if this be so tell me which of these
fragmentary orbs is ours--which of all these crumbs from the hand of the
primordial would be that we stand upon?" And I waited with an anxiety a
light manner thinly hid, to hear his answer.
It came at once.
Laughing as though the question were too trivial, and more to humour my wayward
fancy than aught else, that boy circled his rosy thumb about a minute and
brought it down on the planet Mars!
I started and stared at
him; then all of a tremble cried, "You trifle with me! Choose
again--there, see, I will set the symbols and name them to you anew. There now,
on your soul tell me truly which this planet is, the one here at our
feet?" And again the boy shook his head, wondering at my eagerness, and
pointed to Mars, saying gently as he did so the fact was certain as the day
above us, nothing was marvellous but my questioning.
Mars! oh, dreadful,
tremendous, unexpected! With a cry of affright, and bringing my fist down on
the table till all the cups upon it leapt, I told him he lied--lied like a
simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten as his wit-- smote the table and
scowled at him for a spell, then turned away and let my chin fall upon my
breast and my hands upon my lap.
And yet, and yet, it
might be so! Everything about me was new and strange, the crisp, thin air I
breathed was new; the lukewarm sunshine new; the sleek, long, ivory faces of
the people new! Yesterday--was it yesterday?--I was back there--away in a world
that pines to know of other worlds, and one fantastic wish of mine, backed by a
hideous, infernal chance, had swung back the doors of space and shot me--if
that boy spoke true--into the outer void where never living man had been
before: all my wits about me, all the horrible bathos of my earthly clothing on
me, all my terrestrial hungers in my veins!
I sprang to my feet and
swept my hands across my eyes. Was that a dream, or this? No, no, both were too
real. The hum of my faraway city still rang in my ears: a swift vision of the
girl I had loved; of the men I had hated; of the things I had hoped for rose
before me, still dazing my inner eye. And these about me were real people, too;
it was real earth; real skies, trees, and rocks--had the infernal gods indeed
heard, I asked myself, the foolish wish that started from my lips in a moment
of fierce discontent, and swept me into another sphere, another existence? I
looked at the boy as though he could answer that question, but there was
nothing in his face but vacuous wonder; I clapped my hands together and beat my
breast; it was true; my soul within me said it was true; the boy had not lied;
the djins had heard; I was just in the flesh I had; my common human hungers
still unsatisfied where never mortal man had hungered before; and scarcely
knowing whether I feared or not, whether to laugh or cry, but with all the
wonder and terror of that great remove sweeping suddenly upon me I staggered
back to my seat, and dropping my arms upon the table, leant my head heavily
upon them and strove to choke back the passion which beset me.
IT WAS THE light touch
of the boy An upon my shoulder which roused me. He was bending down, his pretty
face full of concernful sympathy, and in a minute said--knowing nothing of my
thoughts, of course,
"It is the wine,
stranger, the pink oblivion, it sometimes makes one feel like that until enough
is taken; you stopped just short of what you should have had, and the next cup
would have been delight--I should have told you."
"Ay," I
answered, glad he should think so, "it was the wine, no doubt; your quaint
drink, sir, tangled up my senses for the moment, but they are clearer now, and
I am eager past expression to learn a little more of this strange country I
have wandered into."
"I would
rather," said the boy, relapsing again into his state of kindly lethargy,
"that you learnt things as you went, for talking is work, and work we
hate, but today we are all new and fresh, and if ever you are to ask questions
now is certainly the time. Come with me to the city yonder, and as we go I will
answer the things you wish to know;" and I went with him, for I was humble
and amazed, and, in truth, at that moment, had not a word to say for myself.
All the way from the
plain where I had awoke to the walls of the city stood booths, drinking-places,
and gardens divided by labyrinths of canals, and embowered in shrubberies that
seemed coming into leaf and flower as we looked, so swift was the process of
their growth. These waterways were covered with skiffs being pushed and rowed
in every direction; the cheerful rowers calling to each other through the leafy
screens separating one lane from another till the place was full of their happy
chirruping. Every booth and way-side halting-place was thronged with these
delicate and sprightly people, so friendly, so gracious, and withal so
purposeless.
I began to think we
should never reach the town itself, for first my guide would sit down on a
green stream-bank, his feet a-dangle in the clear water, and bandy wit with a
passing boat as though there were nothing else in the world to think of. And
when I dragged him out of that, whispering in his ear, "The town, my dear
boy! the town! I am all agape to see it," he would saunter reluctantly to
a booth a hundred yards further on and fall to eating strange confections or sipping
coloured wines with chance acquaintances, till again I plucked him by the
sleeve and said: "Seth, good comrade--was it not so you called your city
just now?--take me to the gates, and I will be grateful to you," then on
again down a flowery lane, aimless and happy, wasting my time and his, with
placid civility I was led by that simple guide.
Wherever we went the
people stared at me, as well they might, as I walked through them overtopping
the tallest by a head or more. The drinking-cups paused half-way to their
mouths; the jests died away upon their lips; and the blinking eyes of the
drinkers shone with a momentary sparkle of wonder as their minds reeled down
those many-tinted floods to the realms of oblivion they loved.
I heard men whisper one
to another, "Who is he?"; "Whence does he come?"; "Is
he a tribute-taker?" as I strolled amongst them, my mind still so thrilled
with doubt and wonder that to me they seemed hardly more than painted puppets,
the vistas of their lovely glades and the ivory town beyond only the fancy of a
dream, and their talk as incontinent as the babble of a stream.
Then happily, as I
walked along with bent head brooding over the incredible thing that had
happened, my companion’s shapely legs gave out, and with a sigh of fatigue he
suggested we should take a skiff amongst the many lying about upon the margins
and sail towards the town, "For," said he, "the breeze blows
thitherward, and ’tis a shame to use one’s limbs when Nature will carry us for
nothing!"
"But have you a
boat of your own hereabouts?" I queried; "for to tell the truth I
came from home myself somewhat poorly provided with means to buy or barter, and
if your purse be not heavier than mine we must still do as poor men do."
"Oh!" said
An, "there is no need to think of that, no one here to hire or hire of; we
will just take the first skiff we see that suits us."
"And what if the
owner should come along and find his boat gone?"
"Why, what should
he do but take the next along the bank, and the master of that the next again--how
else could it be?" said the Martian, and shrugging my shoulders, for I was
in no great mood to argue, we went down to the waterway, through a thicket of
budding trees underlaid with a carpet of small red flowers filling the air with
a scent of honey, and soon found a diminutive craft pulled up on the bank.
There were some dainty cloaks and wraps in it which An took out and laid under
a tree. But first he felt in the pouch of one for a sweetmeat which his fine
nostrils, acute as a squirrel’s, told him was there, and taking the lump out
bit a piece from it, afterwards replacing it in the owner’s pocket with the
frankest simplicity.
Then we pushed off,
hoisted the slender mast, set the smallest lug-sail that ever a sailor smiled
at, and, myself at the helm, and that golden youth amidships, away we drifted
under thickets of drooping canes tasselled with yellow catkin-flowers, up the
blue alley of the water into the broader open river beyond with its rapid flow
and crowding boats, the white city front now towering clear before us.
The air was full of
sunshine and merry voices; birds were singing, trees were budding; only my
heart was heavy, my mind confused. Yet why should I be sad, I said to myself
presently? Life beat in my pulses; what had I to fear? This world I had tumbled
into was new and strange, no doubt, but tomorrow it would be old and familiar;
it discredited my manhood to sit brow-bent like that, so with an effort I
roused myself.
"Old chap!" I
said to my companion, as he sat astride of a thwart slowly chewing something
sticky and eyeing me out of the corner of his eyes with vapid wonder,
"tell me something of this land of yours, or something about
yourself--which reminds me I have a question to ask. It is a bit delicate, but
you look a sensible sort of fellow, and will take no offence. The fact is, I
have noticed as we came along half your population dresses in all the colours
of the rainbow--’fancy suitings’ our tailors could call it at home--and this
half of the census are undoubtedly men and women. The rub is that the other
half, to which you belong, all dress alike in yellow, and I will be fired from
the biggest gun on the Carolina’s main deck if I can tell what sex you belong
to! I took you for a boy in the beginning, and the way you closed with the idea
of having a drink with me seemed to show I was dead on the right course. Then a
little later on I heard you and a friend abusing our sex from an outside point
of view in a way which was very disconcerting. This, and some other things, have
set me all abroad again, and as fate seems determined to make us chums for this
voyage--why--well, frankly, I should be glad to know if you be boy or girl? If
you are as I am, no more nor less then--for I like you--there’s my hand in
comradeship. If you are otherwise, as those sleek outlines seem to
promise--why, here’s my hand again! But man or woman you must be--come, which
is it?"
If I had been perplexed
before, to watch that boy now was more curious than ever. He drew back from me
with a show of wounded dignity, then bit his lips, and sighed, and stared, and
frowned. "Come," I said laughingly, "speak! it engenders
ambiguity to be so ambiguous of gender! ’Tis no great matter, yes or no, a
plain answer will set us fairly in our friendship; if it is comrade, then
comrade let it be; if maid, why, I shall not quarrel with that, though it cost
me a likely messmate."
"You mock
me."
"Not I, I never
mocked any one."
"And does my robe
tell you nothing?"
"Nothing so much;
a yellow tunic and becoming enough, but nothing about it to hang a deduction
on. Come! Are you a girl, after all?"
"I do not count
myself a girl."
"Why, then, you
are the most blooming boy that ever eyes were set upon; and though ’tis with
some tinge of regret, yet cheerfully I welcome you into the ranks of
manhood."
"I hate your
manhood, send it after the maidhood; it fits me just as badly."
"But An, be
reasonable; man or maid you must be."
"Must be;
why?"
"Why?" Was
ever such a question put to a sane mortal before? I stared at that ambiguous
thing before me, and then, a little wroth to be played with, growled out
something about Martians being all drunk or mad.
"’Tis you yourself
are one or other," said that individual, by this time pink with anger,
"and if you think because I am what I am you can safely taunt me, you are
wrong. See! I have a sting," and like a thwarted child my companion half
drew from the folds of the yellow tunic-dress the daintiest, most
harmless-looking little dagger that was ever seen.
"Oh, if it comes
to that," I answered, touching the Navy scabbard still at my hip, and
regaining my temper at the sight of hers, "why, I have a sting also--and
twice as long as yours! But in truth, An, let us not talk of these things; if
something in what I have said has offended nice Martian scruples I am sorry,
and will question no more, leaving my wonder for time to settle."
"No," said
the other, "it was my fault to be hasty of offence; I am not so angered
once a year. But in truth your question moves us yellow robes deeply. Did you
not really know that we who wear this saffron tunic are slaves,-- a race apart,
despised by all."
"’Slaves,’ no; how
should I know it?"
"I thought you
must understand a thing so fundamental, and it was that thought which made your
questions seem unkind. But if indeed you have come so far as not to understand
even this, then let me tell you once we of this garb were women--priestesses of
the immaculate conceptions of humanity; guardians of those great hopes and
longings which die so easily. And because we forgot our high station and took
to aping another sex the gods deserted and men despised us, giving us, in the
fierceness of their contempt, what we asked for. We are the slave ants of the
nest, the work-bees of the hive, come, in truth, of those here who still be men
and women of a sort, but toilers only; unknown in love, unregretted in
death--those who dangle all children but their own--slaves cursed with the
accomplishment of their own ambition."
There was no doubt poor
An believed what she said, for her attitude was one of extreme dejection while
she spoke, and to cheer her I laughed.
"Oh! come, it can’t
be as bad as that. Surely sometimes some of you win back to womanhood? You
yourself do not look so far gone but what some deed of abnegation, some strong
love if you could but conceive it would set you right again. Surely you of the
primrose robes can sometimes love?"
Whereat unwittingly I
troubled the waters in the placid soul of that outcast Martian! I cannot
exactly describe how it was, but she bent her head silently for a moment or
two, and then, with a sigh, lifting her eyes suddenly to mine, said quietly,
"Yes, sometimes; sometimes--but very seldom," while for an instant
across her face there flashed the summer lightning of a new hope, a single
transient glance of wistful, timid entreaty; of wonder and delight that dared
not even yet acknowledge itself.
Then it was my turn to
sit silent, and the pause was so awkward that in a minute, to break it, I
exclaimed--
"Let’s drop
personalities, old chap--I mean my dear Miss An. Tell me something about your
people, and let us begin properly at the top: have you got a king, for
instance?"
To this the girl, pulling
herself out of the pleasant slough of her listlessness, and falling into my
vein, answered--
"Both yes and no,
sir traveller from afar--no chiefly, and yet perhaps yes. If it were no then it
were so, and if yes then Hath were our king."
"A mild king I
should judge by your uncertainty. In the place where I came from kings press
their individualities somewhat more clearly on their subjects’ minds. Is Hath
here in the city? Does he come to your feasts today?"
An nodded. Hath was on
the river, he had been to see the sunrise; even now she thought the laughter
and singing down behind the bend might be the king’s barge coming up citywards.
"He will not be late," said my companion, "because the
marriage-feast is set for tomorrow in the palace."
I became interested.
Kings, palaces, marriage-feasts--why, here was something substantial to go
upon; after all these gauzy folk might turn out good fellows, jolly comrades to
sojourn amongst--and marriage-feasts reminded me again I was hungry.
"Who is it,"
I asked, with more interest in my tone, "who gets married?--is it your
ambiguous king himself?"
Whereat An’s purple
eyes broadened with wonder: then as though she would not be uncivil she checked
herself, and answered with smothered pity for my ignorance, "Not only Hath
himself, but every one, stranger, they are all married tomorrow; you would not
have them married one at a time, would you?"--this with inexpressible
derision.
I said, with humility,
something like that happened in the place I came from, asking her how it
chanced the convenience of so many came to one climax at the same moment.
"Surely, An, this is a marvel of arrangement. Where I dwelt wooings would
sometimes be long or sometimes short, and all maids were not complacent by such
universal agreement."
The girl was clearly
perplexed. She stared at me a space, then said, "What have wooings long or
short to do with weddings? You talk as if you did your wooing first and then
came to marriage--we get married first and woo afterwards!"
"’Tis not a bad
idea, and I can see it might lend an ease and certainty to the pastime which
our method lacks. But if the woman is got first and sued subsequently, who
brings you together? Who sees to the essential preliminaries of
assortment?"
An, looking at my shoes
as though she speculated on the remoteness of the journey I had come if it were
measured by my ignorance, replied, "The urn, stranger, the urn does
that--what else? How it may be in that out-fashioned region you have come from
I cannot tell, but here--’tis so commonplace I should have thought you must
have known it--we put each new year the names of all womenkind into an urn and
the men draw for them, each town, each village by itself, and those they draw
are theirs; is it conceivable your race has other methods?"
I told her it was
so--we picked and chose for ourselves, beseeching the damsels, fighting for
them, and holding the sun of romance was at its setting just where the Martians
held it to rise. Whereat An burst out laughing--a clear, ringing laugh that set
all the light-hearted folk in the nearest boats laughing in sympathy. But when
the grotesqueness of the idea had somewhat worn off, she turned grave and asked
me if such a fancy did not lead to spite, envy, and bickerings. "Why, it
seems to me," she said, shaking her curly head, "such a plan might
fire cities, desolate plains, and empty palaces--"
"Such things have
been."
"Ah! our way is
much the better. See!" quoth that gentle philosopher. "’Here,’ one of
our women would say, ’am I to-day, unwed, as free of thought as yonder bird
chasing the catkin down; tomorrow I shall be married, with a whole summer to
make love in, relieved at one bound of all those uncertainties you acknowledge
to, with nothing to do but lie about on sunny banks with him whom chance sends
me, come to the goal of love without any travelling to get there.’ Why, you
must acknowledge this is the perfection of ease."
"But
supposing," I said, "chance dealt unkindly to you from your nuptial
urn, supposing the man was not to your liking, or another coveted him?" To
which An answered, with some shrewdness--
"In the first case
we should do what we might, being no worse off than those in your land who had
played ill providence to themselves. In the second, no maid would covet him whom
fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing, or if such a thing did
happen, then one of them would waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born
was worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to barter and change a little."
All this was strange enough.
I could not but laugh, while An laughed at the lightest invitation, and thus
chatting and deriding each other’s social arrangements we floated idly
townwards and presently came out into the main waterway perhaps a mile wide and
flowing rapidly, as streams will on the threshold of the spring, with brash or
waste of distant beaches riding down it, and every now and then a broken branch
or tree-stem glancing through waves whose crests a fresh wind lifted and sowed
in golden showers in the intervening furrows. The Martians seemed expert upon
the water, steering nimbly between these floating dangers when they met them,
but for the most part hugging the shore where a more placid stream better
suited their fancies, and for a time all went well.
An, as we went along,
was telling me more of her strange country, pointing out birds or flowers and
naming them to me. "Now that," she said, pointing to a small grey owl
who sat reflective on a floating log we were approaching-- "that is a bird
of omen; cover your face and look away, for it is not well to watch it."
Whereat I laughed.
"Oh!" I answered, "so those ancient follies have come as far as
this, have they? But it is no bird grey or black or white that can frighten
folk where I come from; see, I will ruffle his philosophy for him," and
suiting the action to the words I lifted a pebble that happened to lie at the
bottom of the boat and flung it at that creature with the melancholy eyes. Away
went the owl, dipping his wings into the water at every stroke, and as he went
wailing out a ghostly cry, which even amongst sunshine and glitter made one’s
flesh creep.
An shook her head.
"You should not have done that," she said; "our dead whom we
send down over the falls come back in the body of yonder little bird. But he
has gone now," she added, with relief; "see, he settles far up stream
upon the point of yonder rotten bough; I would not disturb him again if I were
you--"
Whatever more An would
have said was lost, for amidst a sound of flutes and singing round the bend of
the river below came a crowd of boats decked with flowers and garlands, all
clustering round a barge barely able to move, so thick those lesser skiffs
pressed upon it. So close those wherries hung about that the garlanded rowers
who sat at the oars could scarcely pull, but, here as everywhere, it was the
same good temper, the same carelessness of order, as like a flowery island in
the dancing blue water the motley fleet came up.
I steered our skiff a
space out from the bank to get a better view, while An clapped her hands
together and laughed. "It is Hath--he himself and those of the palace with
him. Steer a little nearer still, friend--so! between yon floating rubbish
flats, for those with Hath are good to look at."
Nothing loth I made out
into mid-stream to see that strange prince go by, little thinking in a few
minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd
came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a
front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in
royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He
did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow
was sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which was
a mass of flowers, not bunched together as they would have been with us, but so
cunningly arranged that they rose from the footstool to the pinnacle in a
rhythm of colour, a poem in bud and petals the like of which for harmonious
beauty I could not have imagined possible. And in this fairy den was a thin,
gaunt young man, dressed in some sort of black stuff so nondescript that it
amounted to little more than a shadow. I took it for granted that a substance
of bone and muscle was covered by that gloomy suit, but it was the face above
that alone riveted my gaze and made me return the stare he gave me as we came
up with redoubled interest. It was not an unhandsome face, but ashy grey in
colour and amongst the insipid countenances of the Martians about him
marvellously thoughtful. I do not know whether those who had killed themselves
by learning ever leave ghosts behind, but if so this was the very ideal for
such a one. At his feet I noticed, when I unhooked my eyes from his at last,
sat a girl in a loose coral pink gown who was his very antipode. Princess Heru,
for so she was called, was resting one arm upon his knee at our approach and
pulling a blue convolvulous bud to pieces--a charming picture of dainty
idleness. Anything so soft, so silken as that little lady was never seen
before. Who am I, a poor quarter-deck loafer, that I should attempt to describe
what poet and painter alike would have failed to realise? I know, of course,
your stock descriptives: the melting eye, the coral lip, the peachy cheek, the
raven tress; but these were coined for mortal woman--and this was not one of
them. I will not attempt to describe the glorious tenderness of those eyes she
turned upon me presently; the glowing radiance of her skin; the infinite grace
of every action; the incredible soul-searching harmony of her voice, when later
on I heard it--you must gather something of these things as I go--suffice it to
say that when I saw her there for the first time in the plenitude of her beauty
I fell desperately, wildly in love with her.
Meanwhile, even the
most infatuated of mortals cannot stare for ever without saying something. The
grating of our prow against the garlanded side of the royal barge roused me
from my reverie, and nodding to An, to imply I would be back presently, I
lightly jumped on to Hath’s vessel, and, with the assurance of a free and
independent American voter, approached that individual, holding out my palm,
and saying as I did so,
"Shake hands, Mr.
President!"
The prince came forward
at my bidding and extending his hand for mine. He bowed slow and sedately, in
that peculiar way the Martians have, a ripple of gratified civility passing up
his flesh; lower and lower he bowed, until his face was over our clasped hands,
and then, with simple courtesy, he kissed my finger-tips! This was somewhat
embarrassing. It was not like the procedure followed in Courts nearer to
Washington than this one, as far as my reading went, and, withdrawing my
fingers hastily, I turned to the princess, who had risen, and was eyeing her
somewhat awkwardly, the while wondering what kind of salutation would be
suitable in her case when a startling incident happened. The river, as said,
was full of floating rubbish brought down from some far-away uplands by a
spring freshet while the royal convoy was making slow progress upstream and
thus met it all bow on. Some of this stuff was heavy timber, and when a sudden
warning cry went up from the leading boats it did not take my sailor instinct
long to guess what was amiss. Those in front shot side to side, those behind
tried to drop back as, bearing straight down on the royal barge, there came a
log of black wood twenty feet long and as thick as the mainmast of an old
three-decker.
Hath’s boat could no
more escape than if it had been planted on a rocky pedestal, garlands and
curtains trailing in the water hung so heavy on it. The gilded paddles of the
slender rowers were so feeble--they had but made a half-turn from that great
javelin’s road when down it came upon them, knocking the first few pretty
oarsmen head over heels and crackling through their oars like a bull through
dry maize stalks. I sprang forward, and snatching a pole from a half-hearted
slave, jammed the end into the head of the log and bore with all my weight upon
it, diverting it a little, and thereby perhaps saving the ship herself, but not
enough. As it flashed by a branch caught upon the trailing tapestry, hurling me
to the deck, ,and tearing away with it all that finery. Then the great spar, tossing
half its dripping length into the air, went plunging downstream with shreds of
silk and flowers trailing from it, and white water bubbling in its rear.
When I scrambled to my
feet all was ludicrous confusion on board. Hath still stood by his throne--an
island in a sea of disorder--staring at me; all else was chaos. The rowers and
courtiers were kicking and wallowing in the "waist" of the ship like
fish newly shot out of a trawl net, but the princess was gone. Where was she? I
brushed the spray from my eyes, and stared overboard. She was not in the
bubbling blue water alongside. Then I glanced aft to where the log, now fifteen
yards away, was splashing through the sunshine, and, as I looked, a fair arm
came up from underneath and white fingers clutched convulsively at the sky.
What man could need more? Down the barge I rushed, and dropping only my
swordbelt, leapt in to her rescue. The gentle Martians were too numb to raise a
hand in help; but it was not necessary. I had the tide with me, and gained at
every stroke. Meanwhile that accursed tree, with poor Heru’s skirts caught on a
branch, was drowning her at its leisure; lifting her up as it rose upon the
crests, a fair, helpless bundle, and then sousing her in its fall into the
nether water, where I could see her gleam now and again like pink coral.
I redoubled my efforts
and got alongside, clutching the rind of that old stump, and swimming and
scrambling, at last was within reach of the princess. Thereon the log lifted
her playfully to my arms, and when I had laid hold came down, a crushing
weight, and forced us far into the clammy bosom of Martian sea. Again we came
up, coughing and choking--I tugging furiously at that tangled raiment, and the
lady, a mere lump of sweetness in my other arm-- then down again with that log
upon me and all the noises of Eblis in my ears. Up and down we went, over and
over, till strength was spent and my ribs seemed breaking; then, with a last
desperate effort, I got a knee against the stem, and by sheer strength freed my
princess--the spiteful timber made a last ugly thrust at us as it rolled
away--and we were free!
I turned upon my back,
and, sure of rescue now, took the lady’s head upon my chest, holding her sweet,
white fists in mine the while, and, floating, waited for help.
It came only too
quickly. The gallant Martians, when they saw the princess saved, came swiftly
down upon us. Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh-like
cries of admiration and surprise, the rattle of spray on the canoe sides
mingled with the splash of oars, the flitting shadows of their prows were all
about us, and in less time than it takes to write we were hauled aboard,
revived, and taken to Hath’s barge. Again the prince’s lips were on my
fingertips; again the flutes and music struck up; and as I squeezed the water
out of my hair, and tried to keep my eyes off the outline of Heru, whose
loveliness shone through her damp, clinging, pink robe, as if that robe were
but a gauzy fancy, I vaguely heard Hath saying wondrous things of my gallantry,
and, what was more to the purpose, asking me to come with him and stay that
night at the palace.
THEY LODGED ME like a
prince in a tributary country that first night. I was tired. ’Twas a stiff
stage I had come the day before, and they gave me a couch whose ethereal
softness seemed to close like the wings of a bird as I plunged at its touch
into fathomless slumbers. But the next day had hardly broken when I was awake,
and, stretching my limbs upon the piled silk of a legless bed upon the floor,
found myself in a great chamber with a purple tapestry across the entrance, and
a square arch leading to a flat terrace outside.
It was a glorious
daybreak, making my heart light within me, the air like new milk, and the
colours of the sunrise lay purple and yellow in bars across my room. I yawned
and stretched, then rising, wrapped a silken quilt about me and went out into
the flat terrace top, wherefrom all the city could be seen stretched in an
ivory and emerald patchwork, with open, blue water on one side, and the Martian
plain trending away in illimitable distance upon the other.
Directly underneath in
the great square at the bottom of Hath’s palace steps were gathered a concourse
of people, brilliant in many-coloured dresses. They were sitting or lying about
just as they might for all I knew have done through the warm night, without
much order, save that where the black streaks of inlaid stone marked a
carriage-way across the square none were stationed. While I wondered what would
bring so many together thus early, there came a sound of flutes--for these
people can do nothing without piping like finches in a thicket in May--and from
the storehouses half-way over to the harbour there streamed a line of carts
piled high with provender. Down came the teams attended by their slaves,
circling and wheeling into the open place, and as they passed each group those
lazy, lolling beggars crowded round and took the dole they were too thriftless
to earn themselves. It was strange to see how listless they were about the
meal, even though Providence itself put it into their hands; to note how the
yellow-girted slaves scudded amongst them, serving out the loaves, themselves
had grown, harvested, and baked; slipping from group to group, rousing,
exhorting, administering to a helpless throng that took their efforts without
thought or thanks.
I stood there a long
time, one foot upon the coping and my chin upon my hand, noting the beauty of
the ruined town and wondering how such a feeble race as that which lay about,
breakfasting in the limpid sunshine, could have come by a city like this, or
kept even the ruins of its walls and buildings from the covetousness of others,
until presently there was a rustle of primrose garments and my friend of the
day before stood by me.
"Are you rested,
traveller?" she questioned in that pretty voice of hers.
"Rested
ambrosially, An."
"It is well; I
will tell the Government and it will come up to wash and dress you, afterwards
giving you breakfast."
"For the
breakfast, damsel, I shall be grateful, but as for the washing and dressing I
will defend myself to the last gasp sooner than submit to such
administration."
"How strange! Do
you never wash in your country?"
"Yes, but it is a
matter left largely to our own discretion; so, my dear girl, if you will leave
me for a minute or two in quest of that meal you have mentioned, I will
guarantee to be ready when it comes."
Away she slipped, with
a shrug of her rosy shoulders, to return presently, carrying a tray covered
with a white cloth, whereon were half a dozen glittering covers whence came
most fragrant odours of cooked things.
"Why,
comrade," I said, sitting down and lifting lid by lid, for the cold, sweet
air outside had made me hungry, "this is better than was hoped for; I
thought from what I saw down yonder I should have to trot behind a tumbril for
my breakfast, and eat it on my heels amongst your sleepy friends below."
An replied, "The
stranger is a prince, we take it, in his own country, and princes fare not
quite like common people, even here."
"So," I said,
my mouth full of a strange, unknown fish, and a cake soft as milk and white as
cotton in the pod. "Now that makes me feel at home!"
"Would you have
had it otherwise with us?"
"No! now I come to
think of it, it is most natural things should be much alike in all the corners
of the universe; the splendid simplicity that rules the spheres, works much the
same, no doubt, upon one side of the sun as upon the other. Yet, somehow--you
can hardly wonder at it-- yesterday I looked to find your world, when I
realised where I had tumbled to, a world of djin and giants; of mad
possibilities over realised, and here I see you dwellers by the utterly remote
little more marvellous than if I had come amongst you on the introduction of a
cheap tourist ticket, and round some neglected corner of my own distant
world!"
"I hardly follow
your meaning, sir."
"No, no, of course
you cannot. I was forgetting you did not know! There, pass me the stuff on
yonder platter that looks like caked mud from an anchor fluke, and swells like
breath of paradise, and let me question you;" and while I sat and drank
with that yellow servitor sitting in front of me, I plied her with questions,
just as a baby might who had come into the world with a full-blown gift of
speech. But though she was ready and willing enough to answer, and laughed
gaily at my quaint ignorance of simple things, yet there was little water in
the well.
"Had they any kind
of crafts or science; any cult of stars or figures?" But again she shook
her head, and said, "Hath might know, Hath understood most things, but
herself knew little of either." "Armies or navies?" and again
the Martian shrugged her shoulders, questioning in turn--
"What for?"
"What for!" I
cried, a little angry with her engaging dulness, "Why, to keep that which
the strong hand got, and to get more for those who come next; navies to sweep
yonder blue seas, and armies to ward what they should bring home, or guard the
city walls against all enemies,--for I suppose, An," I said, putting down
my knife as the cheering thought came on me,--"I suppose, An, you have
some enemies? It is not like Providence to give such riches as you possess,
such lands, such cities, and not to supply the antidote in some one poor enough
to covet them."
At once the girl’s face
clouded over, and it was obvious a tender subject had been chanced upon. She
waved her hand impatiently as though to change the subject, but I would not be
put off.
"Come," I
said, "this is better than breakfast. It was the one thing--this unknown
enemy of yours--wanting to lever the dull mass of your too peacefulness. What
is he like? How strong? How stands the quarrel between you? I was a soldier
myself before the sea allured me, and love horse and sword best of all
things."
"You would not
jest if you knew our enemy!"
"That is as it may
be. I have laughed in the face of many a stronger foe than yours is like to
prove; but anyhow, give me a chance to judge. Come, who is it that frightens
all the blood out of your cheeks by a bare mention and may not be laughed at
even behind these substantial walls?"
"First, then, you
know, of course, that long ago this land of ours was harried from the
West."
"Not I."
"No!" said
An, with a little warmth. "If it comes to that, you know nothing."
Whereat I laughed, and,
saying the reply was just, vowed I would not interrupt again; so she wont on
saying how Hath--that interminable Hath!--would know it all better than she
did, but long ago the land was overrun by a people from beyond the broad, blue
waters outside; a people huge of person, hairy and savage, uncouth, unlettered,
and poor An’s voice trembled even to describe them; a people without mercy or
compunction, dwellers in woods, eaters of flesh, who burnt, plundered, and
destroyed all before them, and had toppled over this city along with many
others in an ancient foray, the horrors of which, still burnt lurid in her people’s
minds.
"Ever since
then," went on the girl, "these odious terrors of the outer land have
been a nightmare to us, making hectic our pleasures, and filling our peace with
horrid thoughts of what might be, should they chance to come again."
"’Tis unfortunate,
no doubt, lady," I answered. "Yet it was long ago, and the plunderers
are far away. Why not rise and raid them in turn? To live under such a
nightmare is miserable, and a poet on my side of the ether has said--
"’He either fears
his fate too much,
Or his deserts are
small,
Who will not put it to
the touch,
To win or lose it all.’
It seems to me you must
either bustle and fight again, or sit tamely down, and by paying the coward’s
fee for peace, buy at heavy price, indulgence from the victor."
"We," said An
simply, and with no show of shame, "would rather die than fight, and so we
take the easier way, though a heavy one it is. Look!" she said, drawing me
to the broad window whence we could get a glimpse of the westward town and the
harbour out beyond the walls. "Look! see yonder long row of boats with
brown sails hanging loose reefed from every yard ranged all along the quay.
Even from here you can make out the thin stream of porter slaves passing to and
fro between them and the granaries like ants on a sunny path. Those are our
tax-men’s ships, they came yesterday from far out across the sea, as punctual
as fate with the first day of spring, and two or three nights hence we trust
will go again: and glad shall we be to see them start, although they leave
scupper deep with our cloth, our corn, and gold."
"Is that what they
take for tribute?"
"That and one
girl--the fairest they can find."
"One--only one! ’Tis
very moderate, all things considered."
"She is for the
thither king, Ar-hap, and though only one as you say, stranger, yet he who
loses her is apt sometimes to think her one too many lost."
"By Jupiter
himself it is well said! If I were that man I would stir up heaven and hell
until I got her back; neither man, nor beast, nor devil should stay me in my
quest!" As I spoke I thought for a minute An’s fingers trembled a little
as she fixed a flower upon my coat, while there was something like a sigh in
her voice as she said--
"The maids of this
country are not accustomed, sir, to be so strongly loved."
By this time,
breakfasted and rehabilitated, I was ready to go forth. The girl swung back the
heavy curtain that served in place of door across the entrance of my chamber,
and leading the way by a corridor and marble steps while I followed, and
whether it was the Martian air or the meal I know not, but thinking mighty well
of myself until we came presently onto the main palace stairs, which led by
stately flights from the upper galleries to the wide square below.
As we passed into the
full sunshine--and no sunshine is so crisply golden as the Martian--amongst
twined flowers and shrubs and gay, quaint birds building in the cornices, a
sleek youth rose slowly from where he had spread his cloak as couch upon a step
and approaching asked--
"You are the
stranger of yesterday?"
"Yes," I
answered.
"Then I bring a
message from Prince Hath, saying it would pleasure him greatly if you would eat
the morning meal with him."
"Why," I
answered, "it is very civil indeed, but I have breakfasted already."
"And so has
Hath," said the boy, gently yawning. "You see I came here early this
morning, but knowing you would pass sooner or later I thought it would save me
the trouble if I lay down till you came--those quaint people who built these
places were so prodigal of steps," and smiling apologetically he sank back
on his couch and began toying with a leaf.
"Sweet
fellow," I said, and you will note how I was getting into their style of
conversation, "get back to Hath when you have rested, give him my most
gracious thanks for the intended courtesy, but tell him the invitation should
have started a week earlier; tell him from me, you nimble-footed messenger,
that I will post-date his kindness and come tomorrow; say that meanwhile I pray
him to send any ill news he has for me by you. Is the message too bulky for
your slender shoulders?"
"No," said
the boy, rousing himself slowly, "I will take it," and then he
prepared to go. He turned again and said, without a trace of incivility,
"But indeed, stranger, I wish you would take the message yourself. This is
the third flight of stairs I have been up today."
Everywhere it was the
same friendly indolence. Half the breakfasters were lying on coloured shawls in
groups about the square; the other half were strolling off--all in one
direction, I noticed--as slowly as could be towards the open fields beyond; no
one was active or had anything to do save the yellow folk who flitted to and
fro fostering the others, and doing the city work as though it were their only
thought in life. There were no shops in that strange city, for there were no
needs; some booths I saw indeed, and temple-like places, but hollow, and used
for birds and beasts--things these lazy Martians love. There was no tramp of
busy feet, for no one was busy; no clank of swords or armour in those peaceful
streets, for no one was warlike; no hustle, for no one hurried; no wide-packed
asses nodding down the lanes, for there was nothing to fill their packs with,
and though a cart sometimes came by with a load of lolling men and maids, or a
small horse, for horses they had, paced along, itself nearly as lazy as the
master he bore, with trappings sewed over bits of coloured shell and coral, yet
somehow it was all extraordinarily unreal. It was a city full of the ghosts of
the life which once pulsed through its ways. The streets were peopled, the
chatter of voices everywhere, the singing boys and laughing girls wandering,
arms linked together, down the ways filled every echo with their merriment, yet
somehow it was all so shallow that again and again I rubbed my eyes, wondering
if I were indeed awake, or whether it were not a prolonged sleep of which the
tomorrow were still to come.
"What strikes me
as strangest of all, good comrade," I observed pleasantly to the tripping
presence at my elbow, "is that these countrymen of yours who shirk to
climb a flight of steps, and have palms as soft as rose petals, these wide ways
paved with stones as hard as a usurer’s heart."
An laughed. "The
stones were still in their native quarries had it been left to us to seek them;
we are like the conies in the ruins, sir, the inheritors of what other hands
have done."
"Ay, and undone, I
think, as well, for coming along I have noted axe chippings upon the walls,
smudges of ancient fire and smoke upon the cornices."
An winced a little and
stared uneasily at the walls, muttering below her breath something about trying
to hide with flower garlands the marks they could not banish, but it was plain
the conversation was not pleasing to her. So unpleasant was talk or sight of
woodmen (Thither-folk, as she called them, in contradiction to the Hither
people about us here), that the girl was clearly relieved when we were free of
the town and out into the open playground of the people. The whole place down
there was a gay, shifting crowd. The booths of yesterday, the arcades, the
archways, were still standing, and during the night unknown hands had redecked
them with flowers, while another day’s sunshine had opened the coppice buds so
that the whole place was brilliant past expression. And here the Hither folk
were varying their idleness by a general holiday. They were standing about in
groups, or lying ranked like new-plucked flowers on the banks, piping to each
other through reeds as soft and melodious as running water. They were playing
inconsequent games and breaking off in the middle of them like children looking
for new pleasures. They were idling about the drinking booths, delicately
stupid with quaint, thin wines, dealt out to all who asked; the maids were
ready to chevy or be chevied through the blossoming thickets by anyone who
chanced upon them, the men slipped their arms round slender waists and wandered
down the paths, scarce seeming to care even whose waist it was they circled or
into whose ear they whispered the remainder of the love-tale they had begun to
some one else. And everywhere it was "Hi," and "Ha," and
"So," and "See," as these quaint people called to one
another, knowing each other as familiarly as ants of a nest, and by the same
magic it seemed to me.
"An," I said
presently, when we had wandered an hour or so through the drifting throng,
"have these good countrymen of yours no other names but monosyllabic,
nothing to designate them but these chirruping syllables?"
"Is it not
enough?" answered my companion. "Once indeed I think we had longer
names, but," she added, smiling, "how much trouble it saves to limit
each one to a single sound. It is uncivil to one’s neighbours to burden their
tongues with double duty when half would do."
"But have you no
patronymics--nothing to show the child comes of the same source as his father
came?"
"We have no
fathers."
"What! no
fathers?" I said, starting and staring at her.
"No, nor mothers
either, or at least none that we remember, for again, why should we? Mayhap in
that strange district you come from you keep count of these things, but what
have we to do with either when their initial duty is done. Look at that painted
butterfly swinging on the honey-laden catkin there. What knows she of the
mother who shed her life into a flowercup and forgot which flower it was the
minute afterwards. We, too, are insects, stranger."
"And do you mean
to say of this great concourse here, that every atom is solitary, individual,
and can claim no kindred with another save the loose bonds of a general
fraternity--a specious idea, horrible, impracticable!"
Whereat An laughed.
"Ask the grasshoppers if it is impracticable; ask the little buzzing
things of grass and leaves who drift hither and thither upon each breath of
wind, finding kinsmen never but comrades everywhere--ask them if it is
horrible."
This made me
melancholy, and somehow set me thinking of the friends immeasurably distant I
had left but yesterday.
What were they doing?
Did they miss me? I was to have called for my pay this afternoon, and tomorrow
was to have run down South to see that freckled lady of mine. What would she
think of my absence? What would she think if she knew where I was? Gods, it was
too mad, too absurd! I thrust my hands into my pockets in fierce desperation,
and there they clutched an old dance programme and an out-of-date check for a
New York ferry-boat. I scowled about on that sunny, helpless people, and laying
my hand bitterly upon my heart felt in the breast-pocket beneath a packet of
unpaid Boston tailors’ bills and a note from my landlady asking if I would let
her aunt do my washing while I was on shore. Oh! what would they all think of
me? Would they brand me as a deserter, a paltroon, and a thief, letting my name
presently sink down in shame and mystery in the shadowy realm of the forgotten?
Dreadful thoughts! I would think no more.
Maybe An had marked my
melancholy, for presently she led me to a stall where in fantastic vases wines
of sorts I have described before were put out for all who came to try them.
There was medicine here for every kind of dulness--not the gross cure which
earthly wine effects, but so nicely proportioned to each specific need that one
could regulate one’s debauch to a hairbreadth, rising through all the gamut of
satisfaction, from the staid contentment coming of that flask there to the wild
extravagances of the furthermost vase. So my stripling told me, running her
finger down the line of beakers carved with strange figures and cased in
silver, each in its cluster of little attendant drinking-cups, like-coloured,
and waiting round on the white napkins as the shore boats wait to unload a
cargo round the sides of a merchant vessel.
"And what," I
said, after curiously examining each liquor in turn, "what is that which
stands alone there in the humble earthen jar, as though unworthy of the company
of the others."
"Oh, that,"
said my friend, "is the most essential of them all--that is the wine of
recovery, without which all the others were deadly poisons."
"The which, lady,
looks as if it had a moral attaching to it."
"It may have;
indeed I think it has, but I have forgotten. Prince Hath would know! Meanwhile
let me give you to drink, great stranger, let me get you something."
"Well, then,"
I laughed, "reach me down an antidote to fate, a specific for an absent
mistress, and forgetful friends."
"What was she
like?" said An, hesitating a little and frowning.
"Nay, good
friend," was my answer, "what can that matter to you?"
"Oh, nothing, of
course," answered that Martian, and while she took from the table a cup
and filled it with fluid I felt in the pouch of my sword-belt to see if by
chance a bit of money was Iying there, but there was none, only the pips of an
orange poor Polly had sucked and laughingly thrown at me.
However, it did not
matter. The girl handed me the cup, and I put my lips to it. The first taste
was bitter and acrid, like the liquor of long-steeped wood. At the second taste
a shiver of pleasure ran through me, and I opened my eyes and stared hard. The
third taste grossness and heaviness and chagrin dropped from my heart; all the
complexion of Providence altered in a flash, and a stupid irresistible joy,
unreasoning, uncontrollable took possession of my fibre. I sank upon a mossy
bank and, lolling my head, beamed idiotically on the lolling Martians all about
me. How long I was like that I cannot say. The heavy minutes of sodden
contentment slipped by unnoticed, unnumbered, till presently I felt the touch
of a wine-cup at my lips again, and drinking of another liquor dulness vanished
from my mind, my eyes cleared, my heart throbbed; a fantastic gaiety seized
upon my limbs; I bounded to my feet, and seizing An’s two hands in mine, swung
that damsel round in a giddy dance, capering as never dancer danced before,
till spent and weary I sank down again from sheer lack of breath, and only knew
thereafter that An was sitting by me saying, "Drink! drink stranger, drink
and forget!" and as a third time a cup was pressed to my lips, aches and
pleasures, stupidness and joy, life itself, seemed slipping away into a
splendid golden vacuity, a hazy episode of unconscious Elysium, indefinite, and
unfathomable.
WHEN I WOKE, feeling as
refreshed as though I had been dreaming through a long night, An, seeing me
open-eyed, helped me to my feet, and when I had recovered my senses a little,
asked if we should go on. I was myself again by this time, so willingly took
her hand, and soon came out of the tangle into the open spaces. I must have
been under the spell of the Martian wines longer than it seemed, for already it
was late in the afternoon, the shadows of trees were lying deep and
far-reaching over the motley crowds of people. Out here as the day waned they
had developed some sort of method in their sports. In front of us was a broad,
grassy course marked off with garlanded finger-posts, and in this space rallies
of workfolk were taking part in all manner of games under the eyes of a great
concourse of spectators, doing the Martians’ pleasures for them as they did
their labours. An led me gently on, leaning on my arm heavier, I thought, than
she had done in the morning, and ever and anon turning her gazelle-like eyes
upon me with a look I could not understand. As we sauntered forward I noticed
all about lesser circles where the yellow-girted ones were drawing delighted
laughter from good-tempered crowds by tricks of sleight-of-hand, and posturing,
or tossing gilded cups and balls as though they were catering, as indeed they
were, for outgrown children. Others fluted or sang songs in chorus to the slow
clapping of hands, while others were doing I knew not what, sitting silent
amongst silent spectators who every now and then burst out laughing for no
cause that I could see. But An would not let me stop, and so we pushed on
through the crowd till we came to the main enclosures where a dozen slaves had
run a race for the amusement of those too lazy to race themselves, and were
sitting panting on the grass.
To give them time to
get their breath, perhaps, a man stepped out of the crowd dressed in a dark
blue tunic, a strange vacuous-looking fellow, and throwing down a sheaf of
javelins marched off a dozen paces, then, facing round, called out loudly he
would give sixteen suits of "summer cloth" to any one who could prick
him with a javelin from the heap.
"Why," I said
in amazement, "this is the best of fools-- no one could miss from such a
distance."
"Ay but,"
replied my guide, "he is a gifted one, versed in mystics."
I was just going to say
a good javelin, shod with iron, was a stronger argument than any mystic I had
ever heard of could stand, when out of the crowd stepped a youth, and amid the
derisive cheers of his friends chose a reed from the bundle. He poised it in
his hand a minute to get the middle, then turned on the living target. Whatever
else they might be, these Martians were certainly beautiful as the day-time.
Never had I seen such a perfect embodiment of grace and elegance as that boy as
he stood there for a moment poised to the throw; the afternoon sunshine warm
and strong on his bunched brown hair, a girlish flush of shyness on his
handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs, clear cut against the
dusky background beyond. And now the javelin was going. Surely the mystic would
think better of it at the last moment! No! the initiate held his ground with
tight-shut lips and retrospective eyes, and even as I looked the weapon flew
upon its errand.
"There goes the
soul of a fool!" I exclaimed, and as the words were uttered the spear
struck, or seemed to, between the neck and shoulder, but instead of piercing
rose high into the air, quivering and flashing, and presently turning over,
fell back, and plunged
deep into the turf, while a low murmur of indifferent pleasure went round
amongst the onlookers.
Thereat An, yawning
gently, looked to me and said, "A strong-willed fellow, isn’t he,
friend?"
I hesitated a minute
and then asked, "Was it will which turned that shaft?"
She answered with
simplicity, "Why, of course--what else?"
By this time another
boy had stepped out, and having chosen a javelin, tested it with hand and foot,
then retiring a pace or two rushed up to the throwing mark and flung it
straight and true into the bared bosom of the man. And as though it had struck
a wall of brass, the shaft leapt back falling quivering at the thrower’s feet.
Another and another tried unsuccessfully, until at last, vexed at their
futility, I said, "I have a somewhat scanty wardrobe that would be all the
better for that fellow’s summer suiting, by your leave I will venture a throw
against him."
"It is
useless," answered An; "none but one who knows more magic than he, or
is especially befriended by the Fates can touch him through the envelope he has
put on."
"Still, I think I
will try."
"It is hopeless, I
would not willingly see you fail," whispered the girl, with a sudden show
of friendship.
"And what," I
said, bending down, "would you give me if I succeeded?" Whereat An
laughed a little uneasily, and, withdrawing her hand from mine, half turned
away. So I pushed through the spectators and stepped into the ring. I went
straight up to the pile of weapons, and having chosen one went over to the
mystic. "Good fellow," I cried out ostentatiously, trying the
sharpness of the javelin-point with my finger, "where are all of those sixteen
summer suits of yours lying hid?"
"It matters
nothing," said the man, as if he were asleep.
"Ay, but by the
stars it does, for it will vex the quiet repose of your soul tomorrow if your
heirs should swear they could not find them."
"It matters
nothing," muttered the will-wrapped visionary.
"It will matter
something if I take you at your word. Come, friend Purple-jerkin, will you take
the council with your legs and run while there is yet time, or stand up to be
thrown at?"
"I stand here
immoveable in the confidence of my initiation."
"Then, by thunder,
I will initiate you into the mysteries of a javelin-end, and your blood be on
your head."
The Martians were all
craning their necks in hushed eagerness as I turned to the casting-place, and,
poising the javelin, faced the magician. Would he run at the last moment? I
half hoped so; for a minute I gave him the chance, then, as he showed no sign
of wavering, I drew my hand back, shook the javelin back till it bent like a
reed, and hurled it at him.
The Martians’ heads
turned as though all on one pivot as the spear sped through the air, expecting
no doubt to see it recoil as others had done. But it took him full in the
centre of his chest, and with a wild wave of arms and a flutter of purple
raiment sent him backwards, and down, and over and over in a shapeless heap of
limbs and flying raiment, while a low murmur of awed surprise rose from the
spectators. They crowded round him in a dense ring, as An came flitting to me
with a startled face.
"Oh,
stranger," she burst out, "you have surely killed him!" but more
astounded I had broken down his guard than grieved at his injury.
"No," I
answered smilingly; "a sore chest he may have tomorrow, but dead he is
not, for I turned the lance-point back as I spun it, and it was the butt-end I
threw at him!"
"It was none the
less wonderful; I thought you were a common man, a prince mayhap, come but from
over the hills, but now something tells me you are more than that," and
she lapsed into thoughtful silence for a time.
Neither of us were
wishful to go back amongst those who were raising the bruised magician to his
legs, but wandered away instead through the deepening twilight towards the city
over meadows whose damp, soft fragrance loaded the air with sleepy pleasure,
neither of us saying a word till the dusk deepened and the quick night
descended, while we came amongst the gardened houses, the thousand lights of an
unreal city rising like a jewelled bank before us, and there An said she would
leave me for a time, meeting me again in the palace square later on, "To
see Princess Heru read the destinies of the year."
"What!" I
exclaimed, "more magic? I have been brought up on more substantial mental
stuff than this."
"Nevertheless, I would
advise you to come to the square," persisted my companion. "It
affects us all, and--who knows? --may affect you more than any."
Therein poor An was
unconsciously wearing the cloak of prophesy herself, and, shrugging my
shoulders good-humouredly, I kissed her chin, little realising, as I let her
fingers slip from mine, that I should see her no more.
Turning back alone,
through the city, through ways twinkling with myriad lights as little lamps
began to blink out amongst garlands and flower-decked booths on every hand, I
walked on, lost in varying thoughts, until, fairly tired and hungry, I found
myself outside a stall where many Martians stood eating and drinking to their
hearts’ content. I was known to none of them, and, forgetting past experience, was
looking on rather enviously, when there came a touch upon my arm, and--
"Are you hungry,
sir?" asked a bystander.
"Ay," I said,
"hungry, good friend, and with all the zest which an empty purse lends to
that condition."
"Then here is what
you need, sir, even from here the wine smells good, and the fried fruit would
make a mouse’s eye twinkle. Why do you wait?"
"Why wait? Why,
because though the rich man’s dinner goes in at his mouth, the poor man must
often be content to dine through his nose. I tell you I have nothing to get me
a meal with."
The stranger seemed to
speculate on this for a time, and then he said, "I cannot fathom your
meaning, sir. Buying and selling, gold and money, all these have no meaning to
me. Surely the twin blessings of an appetite and food abundant ready and free
before you are enough."
"What! free is
it--free like the breakfast served out this morning?"
"Why, of
course," said the youth, with mild depreciation; "everything here is
free. Everything is his who will take it, without exception. What else is the
good of a coherent society and a Government if it cannot provide you with so
rudimentary a thing as a meal?"
Whereat joyfully I
undid my belt, and, without nicely examining the argument, marched into the
booth, and there put Martian hospitality to the test, eating and drinking, but
this time with growing wisdom, till I was a new man, and then, paying my
leaving with a wave of the hand to the yellow-girted one who dispensed the
common provender, I sauntered on again, caring little or nothing which way the
road went, and soon across the current of my meditations a peal of laughter
broke, accompanied by the piping of a flute somewhere close at hand, and the
next minute I found myself amid a ring of light-hearted roisterers who were
linking hands for a dance to the music a curly-headed fellow was making close
by.
They made me join them!
One rosey-faced damsel at the hither end of the chain drew up to me, and,
without a word, slipped her soft, baby fingers into my hand; on the other side
another came with melting eyes, breath like a bed of violets, and banked-up fun
puckering her dainty mouth. What could I do but give her a hand as well? The
flute began to gurgle anew, like a drinking spout in springtime, and away we went,
faster and faster each minute, the boys and girls swinging themselves in time
to the tune, and capering presently till their tender feet were twinkling over
the ground in gay confusion. Faster and faster till, as the infection of the
dance spread even to the outside groups, I capered too. My word! if they could
have seen me that night from the deck of the old Carolina, how they would have
laughed--sword swinging, coat-tails flying-- faster and faster, round and round
we went, till limbs could stand no more; the gasping piper blew himself quite
out, and the dance ended as abruptly as it commenced, the dancers melting away
to join others or casting themselves panting on the turf.
Certainly these Martian
girls were blessed with an ingratiating simplicity. My new friend of the
violet-scented breath hung back a little, then after looking at me demurely for
a minute or two, like a child that chooses a new playmate, came softly up, and,
standing on tiptoe, kissed me on the cheek. It was not unpleasant, so I turned
the other, whereon, guessing my meaning, without the smallest hesitation, she
reached up again, and pressed her pretty mouth to my bronzed skin a second
time. Then, with a little sigh of satisfaction, she ran an arm through mine,
saying, "Comrade, from what country have you come? I never saw one quite
like you before."
"From what country
had I come?" Again the frown dropped down upon my forehead. Was I
dreaming--was I mad? Where indeed had I come from? I stared back over my
shoulder, and there, as if in answer to my thought-- there, where the black
tracery of flowering shrubs waved in the soft night wind, over a gap in the
crumbling ivory ramparts, the sky was brightening. As I looked into the centre
of that glow, a planet, magnified by the wonderful air, came swinging up, pale
but splendid, and mapped by soft colours--green, violet, and red. I knew it on
the minute, Heaven only knows how, but I knew it, and a desperate thrill of
loneliness swept over me, a spasm of comprehension of the horrible void dividing
us. Never did yearning babe stretch arms more wistfully to an unattainable
mother than I at that moment to my mother earth. All her meanness and
prosaicness was forgotten, all her imperfections and shortcomings; it was home,
the one tangible thing in the glittering emptiness of the spheres. All my soul
went into my eyes, and then I sneezed violently, and turning round, found that
sweet damsel whose silky head nestled so friendly on my shoulder was tickling
my nose with a feather she had picked up.
Womanlike, she had
forgotten all about her first question, and now asked another, "Will you
come to supper with me, stranger? ’Tis nearly ready, I think."
"To be able to say
no to such an invitation, lady, is the first thing a young man should
learn," I answered lightly; but then, seeing there was nothing save the
most innocent friendliness in those hazel eyes, I went on, "but that stern
rule may admit of variance. Only, as it chances, I have just supped at the
public expense. If, instead, you would be a sailor’s sweetheart for an hour,
and take me to this show of yours--your princess’s benefit, or whatever it is--
I shall be obliged; my previous guide is hull down over the horizon, and I am
clean out of my reckoning in this crowd."
By way of reply, the little
lady, light as an elf, took me by the fingertips, and, gleefully skipping
forward, piloted me through the mazes of her city until we came out into the
great square fronting on the palace, which rose beyond it like a white chalk
cliff in the dull light. Not a taper showed anywhere round its circumference,
but a mysterious kind of radiance like sea phosphorescence beamed from the
palace porch. All was in such deathlike silence that the nails in my
"ammunition" boots made an unpleasant clanking as they struck on the
marble pavement; yet, by the uncertain starlight, I saw, to my surprise, the
whole square was thronged with Martians, all facing towards the porch, as
still, graven images, and as voiceless, for once, as though they had indeed
been marble. It was strange to see them sitting there in the twilight, waiting
for I knew not what, and my friend’s voice at my elbow almost startled me as
she said, in a whisper, "The princess knows you are in the crowd, and
desires you to go up upon the steps near where she will be."
"Who brought her
message?" I asked, gazing vaguely round, for none had spoken to us for an
hour or more.
"No one,"
said my companion, gently pushing me up an open way towards the palace steps
left clear by the sitting Martians. "It came direct from her to me this
minute."
"But how?" I
persisted.
"Nay," said
the girl, "if we stop to talk like this we shall not be placed before she
comes, and thus throw a whole year’s knowledge out."
So, bottling my
speculations, I allowed myself to be led up the first flight of worn, white
steps to where, on the terrace between them and the next flight leading
directly to the palace portico, was a flat, having a circle about twenty feet
across, inlaid upon the marble with darker coloured blocks. Inside that circle,
as I sat down close by it in the twilight, showed another circle, and then a
final one in whose inmost middle stood a tall iron tripod and something atop of
it covered by a cloth. And all round the outer circle were magic symbols--I
started as I recognised the meaning of some of them--within these again the
inner circle held what looked like the representations of planets, ending, as I
have said, in that dished hollow made by countless dancers’ feet, and its
solitary tripod. Back again, I glanced towards the square where the great
concourse-- ten thousand of them, perhaps--were sitting mute and silent in the
deepening shadows, then back to the magic circles, till the silence and
expectancy of a strange scene began to possess me.
Shadow down below,
star-dusted heaven above, and not a figure moving; when suddenly something like
a long-drawn sigh came from the lips of the expectant multitude, and I was
aware every eye had suddenly turned back to the palace porch, where, as we
looked, a figure, wrapped in pale blue robes, appeared and stood for a minute,
then stole down the steps with an eagerness in every movement holding us
spellbound. I have seen many splendid pageants and many sights, each of which
might be the talk of a lifetime, but somehow nothing ever so engrossing, so
thrilling, as that ghostly figure in flowing robes stealing across the piazza
in starlight and silence--the princess of a broken kingdom, the priestess of a
forgotten faith coming to her station to perform a jugglery of which she knew
not even the meaning. It was my versatile friend Heru, and with quick, incisive
steps, her whole frame ambent for the time with the fervour of her mission, she
came swiftly down to within a dozen yards of where I stood. Heru, indeed, but
not the same princess as in the morning; an inspired priestess rather, her slim
body wrapped in blue and quivering with emotion, her face ashine with Delphic
fire, her hair loose, her feet bare, until at last when, as she stood within
the limit of the magic circle, her white hands upon her breast, her eyes
flashing like planets themselves in the star-shine she looked so ghostly and
unreal I felt for a minute I was dreaming.
Then began a strange,
weird dance amongst the imagery of the rings, over which my earth planet was
beginning
to throw a haze of
light. At first it was hardly more than a walk, a slow procession round the
twin circumferences of the centred tripod. But soon it increased to an
extraordinary graceful measure, a cadanced step without music or sound that
riveted my eyes to the dancer. Presently I saw those mystic, twinkling feet of
hers--as the dance became swifter--were performing a measured round amongst the
planet signs--spelling out something, I knew not what, with quick, light touch
amongst the zodiac figures, dancing out a soundless invocation of some kind as
a dumb man might spell a message by touching letters. Quicker and quicker, for
minute after minute, grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of the light
blue drapery as the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes, swung panting
round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city tops rose the
circumference of the earth. It seemed to me all the silent multitude were
breathing heavily as we watched that giddy dance, and whatever they felt, all
my own senses seemed to be winding up upon that revolving figure as thread
winds on a spindle.
"When will she
stop?" I whispered to my friend under my breath.
"When the
earth-star rests in the roof-niche of the temple it is climbing," she
answered back.
"And then?"
"On the tripod is
a globe of water. In it she will see the destiny of the year, and will tell us.
The whiter the water stays, the better for us; it never varies from white. But
we must not talk; see! she is stopping."
And as I looked back,
the dance was certainly ebbing now with such smoothly decreasing indulations,
that every heart began to beat calmer in response. There was a minute or two of
such slow cessation, and then to say she stopped were too gross a description.
Motion rather died away from her, and the priestess grounded as smoothly as a
ship grounds in fine weather on a sandy bank. There she was at last, crouched
behind the tripod, one corner of the cloth covering it grasped in her hand, and
her eyes fixed on the shining round just poised upon the distant run.
Keenly the girl watched
it slide into zenith, then the cloth was snatched from the tripod-top. As it
fell it uncovered a beautiful and perfect globe of clear white glass, a foot or
so in diameter, and obviously filled with the thinnest, most limpid water
imaginable. At first it seemed to me, who stood near to the priestess of Mars,
with that beaming sphere directly between us, and the newly risen world, that
its smooth and flawless face was absolutely devoid of sign or colouring. Then,
as the distant planet became stronger in the magnifying Martian air, or my eyes
better accustomed to that sudden nucleus of brilliancy, a delicate and
infinitely lovely network of colours came upon it. They were like the radiant
prisms that sometimes flush the surface of a bubble more than aught else for a
time. But as I watched that mosaic of yellow and purple creep softly to and fro
upon the globe it seemed they slowly took form and meaning. Another minute or
two and they had certainly congealed into a settled plan, and then, as I stared
and wondered, it burst upon me in a minute that I was looking upon a picture,
faithful in every detail, of the world I stood on; all its ruddy forests, its
sapphire sea, both broad and narrow ones, its white peaked mountains, and
unnumbered islands being mapped out with startling clearness for a spell upon
that beaming orb.
Then a strange thing
happened. Heru, who had been crouching in a tremulous heap by the tripod, rose
stealthily and passed her hands a few times across the sphere. Colour and
picture vanished at her touch like breath from a mirror. Again all was clear
and pellucid.
"Now," said
my companion, "now listen! For Heru reads the destiny; the whiter the
globe stays the better for us--" and then I felt her hand tighten on mine
with a startled grasp as the words died away upon her lips.
Even as the girl spoke,
the sphere, which had been beaming in the centre of the silent square like a
mighty white jewel, began to flush with angry red. Redder and redder grew the
gleam--a fiery glow which seemed curdling in the interior of the round as
though it were filled with flame; redder and redder, until the princess,
staring into it, seemed turned against the jet-black night behind, into a form
of molten metal. A spasm of terror passed across her as she stared; her limbs
stiffened; her frightened hands were clutched in front, and she stood cowering
under that great crimson nucleus like one bereft of power and life, and lost to
every sense but that of agony. Not a syllable came from her lips, not a
movement stirred her body, only that dumb, stupid stare of horror, at the
something she saw in the globe. What could I do? I could not sit and see her
soul come out at her frightened eyes, and not a Martian moved a finger to her
rescue; the red shine gleamed on empty faces, tier above tier, and flung its
broad flush over the endless rank of open-mouthed spectators, then back I
looked to Heru--that winsome little lady for whom, you will remember, I had
already more than a passing fancy--and saw with a thrill of emotion that while
she still kept her eyes on the flaming globe like one in a horrible dream her
hands were slowly, very slowly, rising in supplication to me! It was not
vanity. There was no mistaking the direction of that silent, imploring appeal.
Not a man of her
countrymen moved, not even black Hath! There was not a sound in the world, it
seemed, but the noisy clatter of my own shoenails on the marble flags. In the
great red eye of that unholy globe the Martians glimmered like a picture
multitude under the red cliff of their ruined palace. I glared round at them
with contempt for a minute, then sprang forward and snatched the princess up. It
was like pulling a flower up by the roots. She was stiff and stark when I lay
hold of her, but when I tore her from the magic ground she suddenly gave a
piercing shriek, and fainted in my arms.
Then as I turned upon
my heels with her upon my breast my foot caught upon the cloths still wound
about the tripod of the sphere. Over went that implement of a thousand years of
sorcery, and out went the red fire. But little I cared--the princess was safe!
And up the palace steps, amidst a low, wailing hum of consternation from the
recovering Martians, I bore that bundle of limp and senseless loveliness up
into the pale shine of her own porch, and there, laying her down upon a couch,
watched her recover presently amongst her women with a varied assortment of
emotions tingling in my veins.
BEYOND THE FIRST
flutter of surprise, the Martians had shown no interest in the abrupt
termination of the year’s divinations. They melted away, a trifle more silently
perhaps than usual, when I shattered the magic globe, but with their invariable
indifference, and having handed the reviving Heru over to some women who led
her away, apparently already half forgetful of the things that had just
happened, I was left alone on the palace steps, not even An beside me, and only
the shadow of a passerby now and then to break the solitude. Whereon a great
loneliness took hold upon me, and, pacing to and fro along the ancient terrace
with bent head and folded arms, I bewailed my fate. To and fro I walked,
heedless and melancholy, thinking of the old world, that was so far and this
near world so distant from me in everything making life worth living, thinking,
as I strode gloomily here and there, how gladly I would exchange these poor
puppets and the mockery of a town they dwelt in, for a sight of my comrades and
a corner in the poorest wine-shop salon in New York or ’Frisco; idly
speculating why, and how, I came here, as I sauntered down amongst the
glistening, shell-like fragments of the shattered globe, and finding no answer.
How could I? It was too fair, I thought, standing there in the open; there was
a fatal sweetness in the air, a deadly sufficiency in the beauty of everything
around falling on the lax senses like some sleepy draught of pleasure. Not a
leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of the sky was unbroken by the healthy
promise of a cloud from rim to rim, the splendid country, teeming with its
spring-time richness, lay in rank perfection everywhere; and just as rank and
sleek and passionless were those who owned it.
Why, even I, who
yesterday was strong, began to come under the spell of it. But yesterday the
spirit of the old world was still strong within me, yet how much things were
now changing. The well-strung muscles loosening, the heart beating a slower
measure, the busy mind drowsing off to listlessness. Was I, too, destined to
become like these? Was the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid
Martian sap? Was ambition and hope to desert me, and idleness itself become
laborious, while life ran to seed in gilded uselessness? Little did I guess how
unnecessary my fears were, or of the incredible fairy tale of adventure into
which fate was going to plunge me.
Still engrossed the
next morning by these thoughts, I decided I would go to Hath. Hath was a man--at
least they said so--he might sympathise even though he could not help, and so,
dressing finished, I went down towards the innermost palace whence for an hour
or two had come sounds of unwonted bustle. Asking for the way occasionally from
sleepy folk lolling about the corridors, waiting as it seemed for their
breakfasts to come to them, and embarrassed by the new daylight, I wandered to
and fro in the labyrinths of that stony ant-heap until I chanced upon a
curtained doorway which admitted to a long chamber, high-roofed, ample in
proportions, with colonnades on either side separated from the main aisle by
rows of flowery figures and emblematic scroll-work, meaning I knew not what.
Above those pillars ran a gallery with many windows looking out over the ruined
city. While at the further end of the chamber stood three broad steps leading
to a dais. As I entered, the whole place was full of bustling girls, their
yellow garments like a bed of flowers in the sunlight trickling through the
casements, and all intent on the spreading of a feast on long tables ranged up
and down the hall. The morning light streamed in on the white cloths. It
glittered on the glass and the gold they were putting on the trestles, and gave
resplendent depths of colour to the ribbon bands round the pillars. All were so
busy no one noticed me standing in the twilight by the door, but presently,
laying a hand on a worker’s shoulder, I asked who they banqueted for, and why
such unwonted preparation?
"It is the
marriage-feast tonight, stranger, and a marvel you did not know it. You, too,
are to be wed."
"I had not heard
of it, damsel; a paternal forethought of your Government, I suppose? Have you
any idea who the lady is?"
"How should I
know?" she answered laughingly. "That is the secret of the urn.
Meanwhile, we have set you a place at the table-head near Princess Heru, and
tonight you dip and have your chance like all of them; may luck send you a rosy
bride, and save her from Ar-hap."
"Ay, now I
remember; An told me of this before; Ar-hap is the sovereign with whom your
people have a little difference, and shares unbidden in the free distribution
of brides to-night. This promises to be interesting; depend on it I will come;
if you will keep me a place where I can hear the speeches, and not forget me
when the turtle soup goes round, I shall be more than grateful. Now to another
matter. I want to get a few minutes with your President, Prince Hath. He
concentrates the fluid intelligence of this sphere, I am told. Where can I find
him?"
"He is drunk, in
the library, sir!"
"My word! It is
early in the day for that, and a singular conjunction of place and
circumstance."
"Where," said
the girl, "could he safer be? We can always fetch him if we want him, and
sunk in blue oblivion he will not come to harm."
"A cheerful view,
Miss, which is worthy of the attention of our reformers. Nevertheless, I will
go to him. I have known men tell more truth in that state than in any
other."
The servitor directed
me to the library, and after desolate wanderings up crumbling steps and down
mouldering corridors, sunny and lovely in decay, I came to the immense
lumber-shed of knowledge they had told me of, a city of dead books, a place of
dusty cathedral aisles stored with forgotten learning. At a table sat Hath the
purposeless, enthroned in leather and vellum, snoring in divine content amongst
all that wasted labour, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him into
semblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he should have come
to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of a noble library,
presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor, amongst those lordly tomes
in tattered green and gold, and ivory, my eye lit upon a volume propped up
curiously on end, and going to it through the confusion I saw by the dried
fruit rind upon the sticks supporting it, that the grave and reverend tome was
set to catch a mouse! It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound
as a king might bind his choicest treasure, the sweet-scented leather on it was
no doubt frayed; the golden arabesques upon the covers had long since shed
their eyes of inset gems, the jewelled clasp locking its learning up from
vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordly tome with an odour of
sanctity about it, and lifting it with difficulty, I noticed on its cover a red
stain of mouse’s blood. Those who put it to this quaint use of mouse-trap had
already had some sport, but surely never was a mouse crushed before under so
much learning. And while I stood guessing at what the book might hold within,
Heru, the princess, came tripping in to me, and with the abrupt familiarity of
her kind, laid a velvet hand upon my wrist, conned the title over to herself.
"What does it say,
sweet girl?" I asked. "The matter is learned, by its feel," and
that maid, pursing up her pretty lips, read the title to me--"The Secret
of the Gods."
"The Secret of the
Gods," I murmured. "Was it possible other worlds had struggled
hopelessly to come within the barest ken of that great knowledge, while here
the same was set to catch a mouse with?"
I said,
"Silver-footed, sit down and read me a passage or two," and propping
the mighty volume upon a table drew a bench before it and pulled her down
beside me.
"Oh! a horrid, dry
old book for certain," cried that lady, her pink fingertips falling as
lightly on the musty leaves as almond petals on March dust. "Where shall I
begin? It is all equally dull."
"Dip in," was
my answer. " ’Tis no great matter where, but near the beginning. What says
the writer of his intention? What sets he out to prove?"
"He says that is
the Secret of the First Great Truth, descended straight to him--"
"Many have said so
much, yet have lied."
"He says that
which is written in his book is through him but not of him, past criticism and
beyond cavil. ’Tis all in ancient and crabbed characters going back to the
threshold of my learning, but here upon this passage-top where they are writ
large I make them out to say, ’ONLY THE MAN WHO HAS DIED MANY TIMES BEGINS TO
LIVE."
"A pregnant
passage! Turn another page, and try again; I have an inkling of the book
already."
"’Tis poor, silly
stuff," said the girl, slipping a hand covertly into my own. "Why will
you make me read it? I have a book on pomatums worth twice as much as
this."
"Nevertheless, dip
in again, dear lady. What says the next heading?" And with a little sigh
at the heaviness of her task, Heru read out: "SOMETIMES THE GODS
THEMSELVES FORGET THE ANSWERS TO THEIR OWN RIDDLES."
"Lady, I knew it!
"All this is still
preliminary to the great matter of the book, but the mutterings of the priest
who draws back the curtains of the shrine--and here, after the scribe has left
these two yellow pages blank as though to set a space of reverence between
himself and what comes next--here speaks the truth, the voice, the fact of all
life." But "Oh! Jones," she said, turning from the dusty pages
and clasping her young, milk-warm hands over mine and leaning towards me until
her blushing cheek was near to my shoulder and the incense of her breath upon
me. "Oh! Gulliver Jones," she said. "Make me read no more; my
soul revolts from the task, the crazy brown letters swim before my eyes. Is
there no learning near at hand that would be pleasanter reading than this silly
book of yours? What, after all," she said, growing bolder at the sound of
her own voice, "what, after all, is the musty reticence of gods to the
whispered secret of a maid? Jones, splendid stranger for whom all men stand
aside and women look over shoulders, oh, let me be your book!" she
whispered, slipping on to my knee and winding her arms round my neck till,
through the white glimmer of her single vest, I could feel her heart beating
against mine. "Newest and dearest of friends, put by this dreary learning
and look in my eyes; is there nothing to be spelt out there?"
And I was constrained
to do as she bid me, for she was as fresh as an almond blossom touched by the
sun, and looking down into two swimming blue lakes where shyness and passion
were contending--books easy enough, in truth, to be read, I saw that she loved
me, with the unconventional ardour of her nature.
It was a pleasant
discovery, if its abruptness was embarrassing, for she was a maid in a
thousand; and half ashamed and half laughing I let her escalade me, throwing
now and then a rueful look at the Secret of the Gods, and all that priceless
knowledge treated so unworthily.
What else could I do?
Besides, I loved her myself! And if there was a momentary chagrin at having
yonder golden knowledge put off by this lovely interruption, yet I was flesh
and blood, the gods could wait--they had to wait long and often before, and
when this sweet interpreter was comforted we would have another try. So it
happened I took her into my heart and gave her the answer she asked for.
For a long time we sat
in the dusky grandeur of the royal library, my mind revolving between wonder
and admiration of the neglected knowledge all about, and the stirrings of a new
love, while Heru herself, lapsed again into Martian calm, lay half sleeping on
my shoulder, but presently, unwinding her arms, I put her down.
"There,
sweetheart," I whispered, "enough of this for the moment; tonight,
perhaps, some more, but while we are here amongst all this lordly litter, I can
think of nothing else." Again I bid her turn the pages, noting as she did
so how each chapter was headed by the coloured configuration of a world. Page
by page we turned of crackling parchment, until by chance, at the top of one,
my eye caught a coloured round I could not fail to recognise--’twas the
spinning button on the blue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday I
inhabited. "Read here," I cried, clapping my finger upon the page
midway down, where there were some signs looking like Egyptian writing.
"Says this quaint dabbler in all knowledge anything of Isis, anything of
Phra, of Ammon, of Ammon Top?"
"And who was Isis?
who Ammon Top?" asked the lady.
"Nay, read,"
I answered, and down the page her slender fingers went awandering till at a
spot of knotted signs they stopped. "Why, here is something about thy
Isis," exclaimed Heru, as though amused at my perspicuity. "Here,
halfway down this chapter of earth-history, it says," and putting one pink
knee across the other to better prop the book she read:
"And the priests
of Thebes were gone; the sand stood untrampled on the temple steps a thousand
years; the wild bees sang the song of desolation in the ears of Isis; the wild
cats littered in the stony lap of Ammon; ay, another thousand years went by,
and earth was tilled of unseen hands and sown with yellow grain from Paradise,
and the thin veil that separates the known from the unknown was rent, and men
walked to and fro."
"Go on," I
said.
"Nay,"
laughed the other, "the little mice in their eagerness have been before
you--see, all this corner is gnawed away."
"Read on
again," I said, "where the page is whole; those sips of knowledge you
have given make me thirsty for more. There, begin where this blazonry of
initialed red and gold looks so like the carpet spread by the scribe for the
feet of a sovereign truth--what says he here?" And she, half pouting to be
set back once more to that task, half wondering as she gazed on those magic
letters, let her eyes run down the page, then began:
"And it was the
Beginning, and in the centre void presently there came a nucleus of light: and
the light brightened in the grey primeval morning and became definite and
articulate. And from the midst of that natal splendour, behind which was the
Unknowable, the life came hitherward; from the midst of that nucleus
undescribed, undescribable, there issued presently the primeval sigh that
breathed the breath of life into all things. And that sigh thrilled through the
empty spaces of the illimitable: it breathed the breath of promise over the
frozen hills of the outside planets where the night-frost had lasted without
beginning: and the waters of ten thousand nameless oceans, girding nameless
planets, were stirred, trembling into their depth. It crossed the illimitable
spaces where the herding aerolites swirl forever through space in the wake of
careering world, and all their whistling wings answered to it. It reverberated
through the grey wastes of vacuity, and crossed the dark oceans of the Outside,
even to the black shores of the eternal night beyond.
"And hardly had
echo of that breath died away in the hollow of the heavens and the empty wombs
of a million barren worlds, when the light brightened again, and drawing in
upon itself became definite and took form, and therefrom, at the moment of
primitive conception, there came--"
And just then, as she
had read so far as that, when all my faculties were aching to know what came
next-- whether this were but the idle scribbling of a vacuous fool, or
something else--there rose the sound of soft flutes and tinkling bells in the
corridors, as seneschals wandered piping round the palace to call folk to
meals, a smell of roast meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the
curtains between the halls, and--
"Dinner!"
shouted my sweet Martian, slapping the covers of The Secret of the Gods
together and pushing the stately tome headlong from the table. "Dinner! ’Tis
worth a hundred thousand planets to the hungry!"
Nothing I could say
would keep her, and, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or to be angry at so
unseemly an interruption, but both being purposeless I dug my hands into my
pockets, and somewhat sulkily refusing Heru’s invitation to luncheon in the
corridor (Navy rations had not fitted my stomach for these constant debauches
of gossamer food), strolled into the town again in no very pleasant frame of
mind.
IT WAS ONLY at moments
like these I had any time to reflect on my circumstances or that giddy chance
which had shot me into space in this fashion, and, frankly, the opportunities,
when they did come, brought such an extraordinary depressing train of thought,
I by no means invited them. Even with the time available the occasion was
always awry for such reflection. These dainty triflers made sulking as
impossible amongst them as philosophy in a ballroom. When I stalked out like
that from the library in fine mood to moralise and apostrophise heaven in a way
that would no doubt have looked fine upon these pages, one sprightly damsel,
just as the gloomy rhetoric was bursting from my lips, thrust a flower under my
nose whose scent brought on a violent attack of sneezing, her companions
joining hands and dancing round me while they imitated my agony. Then, when I
burst away from them and rushed down a narrow arcade of crumbling