CHAPTER VI
Beyond the first flutter of surprise, the Martians had shown nointerest in the abrupt termination of the year's divinations. Theymelted away, a trifle more silently perhaps than usual, when Ishattered the magic globe, but with their invariable indifference, andhaving 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 onlythe shadow of a passerby now and then to break the solitude. Whereon agreat loneliness took hold upon me, and, pacing to and fro along theancient terrace with bent head and folded arms, I bewailed my fate. Toand fro I walked, heedless and melancholy, thinking of the old world,that was so far and this near world so distant from me in everythingmaking life worth living, thinking, as I strode gloomily here andthere, how gladly I would exchange these poor puppets and the mockeryof a town they dwelt in, for a sight of my comrades and a corner in thepoorest 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 thebeauty of everything around falling on the lax senses like some sleepydraught of pleasure. Not a leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of thesky was unbroken by the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim, thesplendid country, teeming with its spring-time richness, lay in rankperfection everywhere; and just as rank and sleek and passionless werethose who owned it.
Why, even I, who yesterday was strong, began to come under the spell ofit. But yesterday the spirit of the old world was still strong withinme, yet how much things were now changing. The well-strung musclesloosening, the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind drowsingoff to listlessness. Was I, too, destined to become like these? Wasthe red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid Martian sap? Wasambition and hope to desert me, and idleness itself become laborious,while life ran to seed in gilded uselessness? Little did I guess howunnecessary my fears were, or of the incredible fairy tale of adventureinto which fate was going to plunge me.
Still engrossed the next morning by these thoughts, I decided I wouldgo to Hath. Hath was a man--at least they said so--he might sympathiseeven though he could not help, and so, dressing finished, I went downtowards the innermost palace whence for an hour or two had come soundsof unwonted bustle. Asking for the way occasionally from sleepy folklolling about the corridors, waiting as it seemed for their breakfaststo come to them, and embarrassed by the new daylight, I wandered to andfro in the labyrinths of that stony ant-heap until I chanced upon acurtained doorway which admitted to a long chamber, high-roofed, amplein proportions, with colonnades on either side separated from the mainaisle by rows of flowery figures and emblematic scroll-work, meaning Iknew not what. Above those pillars ran a gallery with many windowslooking out over the ruined city. While at the further end of thechamber stood three broad steps leading to a dais. As I entered, thewhole place was full of bustling girls, their yellow garments like abed of flowers in the sunlight trickling through the casements, and allintent on the spreading of a feast on long tables ranged up and downthe hall. The morning light streamed in on the white cloths. Itglittered on the glass and the gold they were putting on the trestles,and gave resplendent depths of colour to the ribbon bands round thepillars. All were so busy no one noticed me standing in the twilightby the door, but presently, laying a hand on a worker's shoulder, Iasked who they banqueted for, and why such unwonted preparation?
"It is the marriage-feast tonight, stranger, and a marvel you did notknow it. You, too, are to be wed."
"I had not heard of it, damsel; a paternal forethought of yourGovernment, I suppose? Have you any idea who the lady is?"
"How should I know?" she answered laughingly. "That is the secret ofthe urn. Meanwhile, we have set you a place at the table-head nearPrincess Heru, and tonight you dip and have your chance like all ofthem; 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 sovereignwith whom your people have a little difference, and shares unbidden inthe free distribution of brides to-night. This promises to beinteresting; depend on it I will come; if you will keep me a placewhere I can hear the speeches, and not forget me when the turtle soupgoes round, I shall be more than grateful. Now to another matter. Iwant to get a few minutes with your President, Prince Hath. Heconcentrates the fluid intelligence of this sphere, I am told. Wherecan I find him?"
"He is drunk, in the library, sir!"
"My word! It is early in the day for that, and a singular conjunctionof place and circumstance."
"Where," said the girl, "could he safer be? We can always fetch him ifwe want him, and sunk in blue oblivion he will not come to harm."
"A cheerful view, Miss, which is worthy of the attention of ourreformers. Nevertheless, I will go to him. I have known men tell moretruth in that state than in any other."
The servitor directed me to the library, and after desolate wanderingsup crumbling steps and down mouldering corridors, sunny and lovely indecay, I came to the immense lumber-shed of knowledge they had told meof, a city of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored withforgotten learning. At a table sat Hath the purposeless, enthroned inleather and vellum, snoring in divine content amongst all that wastedlabour, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him intosemblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he shouldhave come to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of anoble library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor,amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and gold, and ivory, myeye lit upon a volume propped up curiously on end, and going to itthrough the confusion I saw by the dried fruit rind upon the stickssupporting it, that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch amouse! It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound as aking might bind his choicest treasure, the sweet-scented leather on itwas no doubt frayed; the golden arabesques upon the covers had longsince shed their eyes of inset gems, the jewelled clasp locking itslearning up from vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordlytome with an odour of sanctity about it, and lifting it withdifficulty, I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood. Thosewho 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. Andwhile I stood guessing at what the book might hold within, Heru, theprincess, came tripping in to me, and with the abrupt familiarity ofher kind, laid a velvet hand upon my wrist, conned the title over toherself.
"What does it say, sweet girl?" I asked. "The matter is learned, byits feel," and that maid, pursing up her pretty lips, read the title tome--"The Secret of the Gods."
"The Secret of the Gods," I murmured. "Was it possible other worldshad struggled hopelessly to come within the barest ken of that greatknowledge, while here the same was set to catch a mouse with?"
I said, "Silver-footed, sit down and read me a passage or two," andpropping the mighty volume upon a table drew a bench before it andpulled her down beside me.
"Oh! a horrid, dry old book for certain," cried that lady, her pinkfingertips falling as lightly on the musty leaves as almond petals onMarch dust. "Where shall I begin? It is all equally dull."
"Dip in," was my answer. "'Tis no great matter where, but near thebeginning. What says the writer of his intention? What sets he out toprove?"
"He says that is the Secret of the First Great Truth, descendedstraight to him--"
"Many have said so much, yet have lied."
"He says that which is written in his book is through him but not ofhim, past criticism and beyond cavil. 'Tis all in ancient and crabbedcharacters going back to the threshold of my learning, but here uponthis 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 aninkling of the book already."
"'Tis poor, silly stuff," said the girl, slipping a hand covertly intomy own. "Why will you make me read it? I have a book on pomatumsworth 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 themutterings of the priest who draws back the curtains of the shrine--andhere, after the scribe has left these two yellow pages blank as thoughto set a space of reverence between himself and what comes next--herespeaks 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 blushingcheek was near to my shoulder and the incense of her breath upon me."Oh! Gulliver Jones," she said. "Make me read no more; my soulrevolts from the task, the crazy brown letters swim before my eyes. Isthere no learning near at hand that would be pleasanter reading thanthis silly book of yours? What, after all," she said, growing bolder atthe sound of her own voice, "what, after all, is the musty reticence ofgods to the whispered secret of a maid? Jones, splendid stranger forwhom all men stand aside and women look over shoulders, oh, let me beyour book!" she whispered, slipping on to my knee and winding her armsround my neck till, through the white glimmer of her single vest, Icould feel her heart beating against mine. "Newest and dearest offriends, put by this dreary learning and look in my eyes; is therenothing to be spelt out there?"
And I was constrained to do as she bid me, for she was as fresh as analmond blossom touched by the sun, and looking down into two swimmingblue lakes where shyness and passion were contending--books easyenough, in truth, to be read, I saw that she loved me, with theunconventional ardour of her nature.
It was a pleasant discovery, if its abruptness was embarrassing, forshe was a maid in a thousand; and half ashamed and half laughing I lether escalade me, throwing now and then a rueful look at the Secret ofthe Gods, and all that priceless knowledge treated so unworthily.
What else could I do? Besides, I loved her myself! And if there was amomentary chagrin at having yonder golden knowledge put off by thislovely interruption, yet I was flesh and blood, the gods couldwait--they had to wait long and often before, and when this sweetinterpreter was comforted we would have another try. So it happened Itook 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, mymind revolving between wonder and admiration of the neglected knowledgeall about, and the stirrings of a new love, while Heru herself, lapsedagain into Martian calm, lay half sleeping on my shoulder, butpresently, 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 thislordly litter, I can think of nothing else." Again I bid her turn thepages, noting as she did so how each chapter was headed by the colouredconfiguration of a world. Page by page we turned of cracklingparchment, until by chance, at the top of one, my eye caught a colouredround I could not fail to recognise--'twas the spinning button on theblue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday I inhabited. "Readhere," I cried, clapping my finger upon the page midway down, wherethere were some signs looking like Egyptian writing. "Says this quaintdabbler 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 wentawandering till at a spot of knotted signs they stopped. "Why, here issomething about thy Isis," exclaimed Heru, as though amused at myperspicuity. "Here, halfway down this chapter of earth-history, itsays," and putting one pink knee across the other to better prop thebook she read:
"And the priests of Thebes were gone; the sand stood untrampled on thetemple steps a thousand years; the wild bees sang the song ofdesolation in the ears of Isis; the wild cats littered in the stony lapof Ammon; ay, another thousand years went by, and earth was tilled ofunseen hands and sown with yellow grain from Paradise, and the thinveil that separates the known from the unknown was rent, and men walkedto and fro."
"Go on," I said.
"Nay," laughed the other, "the little mice in their eagerness have beenbefore you--see, all this corner is gnawed away."
"Read on again," I said, "where the page is whole; those sips ofknowledge you have given make me thirsty for more. There, begin wherethis blazonry of initialed red and gold looks so like the carpet spreadby 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, halfwondering as she gazed on those magic letters, let her eyes run downthe page, then began:
"And it was the Beginning, and in the centre void presently there camea nucleus of light: and the light brightened in the grey primevalmorning and became definite and articulate. And from the midst of thatnatal splendour, behind which was the Unknowable, the life camehitherward; from the midst of that nucleus undescribed, undescribable,there issued presently the primeval sigh that breathed the breath oflife into all things. And that sigh thrilled through the empty spacesof the illimitable: it breathed the breath of promise over the frozenhills of the outside planets where the night-frost had lasted withoutbeginning: and the waters of ten thousand nameless oceans, girdingnameless planets, were stirred, trembling into their depth. It crossedthe illimitable spaces where the herding aerolites swirl foreverthrough space in the wake of careering world, and all their whistlingwings answered to it. It reverberated through the grey wastes ofvacuity, and crossed the dark oceans of the Outside, even to the blackshores of the eternal night beyond.
"And hardly had echo of that breath died away in the hollow of theheavens and the empty wombs of a million barren worlds, when the lightbrightened again, and drawing in upon itself became definite and tookform, and therefrom, at the moment of primitive conception, therecame--"
And just then, as she had read so far as that, when all my facultieswere aching to know what came next--whether this were but the idlescribbling of a vacuous fool, or something else--there rose the soundof soft flutes and tinkling bells in the corridors, as seneschalswandered piping round the palace to call folk to meals, a smell ofroast meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the curtainsbetween the halls, and--
"Dinner!" shouted my sweet Martian, slapping the covers of The Secretof the Gods together and pushing the stately tome headlong from thetable. "Dinner! 'Tis worth a hundred thousand planets to the hungry!"
Nothing I could say would keep her, and, scarcely knowing whether tolaugh or to be angry at so unseemly an interruption, but both beingpurposeless I dug my hands into my pockets, and somewhat sulkilyrefusing Heru's invitation to luncheon in the corridor (Navy rationshad not fitted my stomach for these constant debauches of gossamerfood), strolled into the town again in no very pleasant frame of mind.
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