"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 spring-time, 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 starshine 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 cadenced 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 undulations, 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.
CHAPTER VI
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.
CHAPTER VII
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 mansions,
another stopped me in mid-career, and taking the honey-stick she was
sucking from her lips, put it to mine, like a pretty, playful child.
Another asked me to dance, another to drink pink oblivion with her, and
so on. How could one lament amongst all this irritating cheerfulness?
An might have helped me, for poor An was intelligent for a Martian, but
she had disappeared, and the terrible vacuity of life in the planet was
forced upon me when I realised that possessing no cognomen, no fixed
address, or rating, it would be the merest chance if I ever came across
her again.
Looking for my friendly guide and getting more and more at sea amongst
a maze of comely but similar faces, I made chance acquaintance with
another of her kind who cheerfully drank my health at the Government's
expense, and chatted on things Martian. She took me to see a funeral
by way of amusement, and I found these people floated their dead off on
flower-decked rafts instead of burying them, the send-offs all taking
place upon a certain swift-flowing stream, which carried the dead away
into the vast region of northern ice, but more exactly whither my
informant seemed to have no idea. The voyager on this occasion was
old, and this brought to my mind the curious fact that I had observed
few children in the city, and no elders, all, except perhaps Hath,
being in a state of sleek youthfulness. My new friend explained the
peculiarity by declaring Martians ripened with extraordinary rapidity
from infancy to the equivalent of about twenty-five years of age, with
us, and then remained at that period however long they might live; Only
when they died did their accumulated seasons come upon them; the girl
turning pale, and wringing her pretty hands in sympathetic concern when
I told her there was a land where decrepitude was not so happily
postponed. The Martians, she said, arranged their calendar by the
varying colours of the seasons, and loved blue as an antidote to the
generally red and rusty character of their soil.
Discussing such things as these we lightly squandered the day away, and
I know of nothing more to note until the evening was come again: that
wonderful purple evening which creeps over the outer worlds at sunset,
a seductive darkness gemmed with ten thousand stars riding so low in
the heaven they seem scarcely more than mast high. When that hour was
come my friend tiptoed again to my cheek, and then, pointing to the
palace and laughingly hoping fate would send me a bride "as soft as
catkin and as sweet as honey," slipped away into the darkness.
Then I remembered all on a sudden this was the connubial evening of my
sprightly friends--the occasion when, as An had told me, the Government
constituted itself into a gigantic matrimonial agency, and, with the
cheerful carelessness of the place, shuffled the matrimonial pack anew,
and dealt a fresh hand to all the players. Now I had no wish to avail
myself of a sailor's privilege of a bride in every port, but surely
this game would be interesting enough to see, even if I were but a
disinterested spectator. As a matter of fact I was something more than
that, and had been thinking a good deal of Heru during the day. I do
not know whether I actually aspired to her hand--that were a large
order, even if there had been no suspicion in my mind she was already
bespoke in some vague way by the invisible Hath, most abortive of
princes. But she was undeniably a lovely girl; the more one thought of
her the more she grew upon the fancy, and then the preference she had
shown myself was very gratifying. Yes, I would certainly see this
quaint ceremonial, even if I took no leading part in it.
The great centre hall of the palace was full of a radiant light
bringing up its ruined columns and intruding creepers to the best
effect when I entered. Dinner also was just being served, as they
would say in another, and alas! very distant place, and the whole
building thronged with folk. Down the centre low tables with room for
four hundred people were ranged, but they looked quaint enough since
but two hundred were sitting there, all brand-new bachelors about to be
turned into brand new Benedicts, and taking it mightily calmly it
seemed. Across the hall-top was a raised table similarly arranged and
ornamented; and entering into the spirit of the thing, and little
guessing how stern a reality was to come from the evening, I sat down
in a vacant place near to the dais, and only a few paces from where the
pale, ghost-eyed Hath was already seated.
Almost immediately afterwards music began to buzz all about the
hall--music of the kind the people loved which always seemed to me as
though it were exuding from the tables and benches, so disembodied and
difficult it was to locate; all the sleepy gallants raised their
flower-encircled heads at the same time, seizing their wine-cups,
already filled to the brim, and the door at the bottom of the hall
opening, the ladies, preceded by one carrying a mysterious vase covered
with a glittering cloth, came in.
Now, being somewhat thirsty, I had already drunk half the wine in my
beaker, and whether it was that draught, drugged as all Martian wines
are, or the sheer loveliness of the maids themselves, I cannot say, but
as the procession entered, and, dividing, circled round under the
colonnades of the hall, a sensation of extraordinary felicity came over
me--an emotion of divine contentment purged of all grossness--and I
stared and stared at the circling loveliness, gossamer-clad,
flower-girdled, tripping by me with vapid delight. Either the wine was
budding in my head, or there was little to choose from amongst them,
for had any of those ladies sat down in the vacant place beside me, I
should certainly have accepted her as a gift from heaven, without
question or cavil. But one after another they slipped by, modestly
taking their places in the shadows until at last came Princess Heru,
and at the sight of her my soul was stirred.
She came undulating over the white marble, the loveliness of her fairy
person dimmed but scarcely hidden by a robe of softest lawn in colour
like rose-petals, her eyes aglitter with excitement and a charming
blush upon her face.
She came straight up to me, and, resting a dainty hand upon my
shoulder, whispered, "Are you come as a spectator only, dear Mr. Jones,
or do you join in our custom tonight?"
"I came only as a bystander, lady, but the fascination of the
opportunity is deadly--"
"And have you any preference?"--this in the softest little voice from
somewhere in the nape of my neck. "Strangers sometimes say there are
fair women in Seth."
"None--till you came; and now, as was said a long time ago, 'All is
dross that is not Helen.' Dearest lady," I ran on, detaining her by
the fingertips and gazing up into those shy and star-like eyes, "must I
indeed put all the hopes your kindness has roused in me these last few
days to a shuffle in yonder urn, taking my chance with all these lazy
fellows? In that land whereof I was, we would not have had it so, we
loaded our dice in these matters, a strong man there might have a
willing maid though all heaven were set against him! But give me
leave, sweet lady, and I will ruffle with these fellows; give me a
glance and I will barter my life for your billet when it is drawn, but
to stand idly by and see you won by a cold chance, I cannot do it."
That lady laughed a little and said, "Men make laws, dear Jones, for
women to keep. It is the rule, and we must not break it." Then,
gently tugging at her imprisoned fingers and gathering up her skirts to
go, she added, "But it might happen that wit here were better than
sword." Then she hesitated, and freeing herself at last slipped from my
side, yet before she was quite gone half turned again and whispered so
low that no one but I could hear it, "A golden pool, and a silver fish,
and a line no thicker than a hair!" and before I could beg a meaning of
her, had passed down the hall and taken a place with the other
expectant damsels.
"A golden pool," I said to myself, "a silver fish, and a line of hair."
What could she mean? Yet that she meant something, and something
clearly of importance, I could not doubt. "A golden pool, and a silver
fish--" I buried my chin in my chest and thought deeply but without
effect while the preparations were made and the fateful urn, each maid
having slipped her name tablet within, was brought down to us, covered
in a beautiful web of rose-coloured tissue, and commenced its round,
passing slowly from hand to hand as each of those handsome, impassive,
fawn-eyed gallants lifted a corner of the web in turn and helped
themselves to fate.
"A golden pool," I muttered, "and a silver fish"--so absorbed in my own
thoughts I hardly noticed the great cup begin its journey, but when it
had gone three or four places the glitter of the lights upon it caught
my eye. It was of pure gold, round-brimmed, and circled about with a
string of the blue convolvulus, which implies delight to these people.
Ay! and each man was plunging his hand into the dark and taking in his
turn a small notch-edged mother-of-pearl billet from it that flashed
soft and silvery as he turned it in his hand to read the name engraved
in unknown characters thereon. "Why," I said, with a start, "surely
THIS might be the golden pool and these the silver fish--but the
hair-fine line?" And again I meditated deeply, with all my senses on
the watch.
Slowly the urn crept round, and as each man took a ticket from it, and
passed it, smiling, to the seneschal behind him, that official read out
the name upon it, and a blushing damsel slipped from the crowd above,
crossing over to the side of the man with whom chance had thus lightly
linked her for the brief Martian year, and putting her hands in his
they kissed before all the company, and sat down to their places at the
table as calmly as country folk might choose partners at a village fair in hay-time. |
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