Chapter XVI. Visions of the Past
She led us to the back of the statue and pointed to each of us wherewe should remain. Then she took her place at right angles to us, as ashowman might do, and for a while stood immovable. Watching her face,once more I saw it, and indeed all her body, informed with that strangeair of power, and noted that her eyes flashed and that her hair greweven more brilliant than was common, as though some abnormal strengthwere flowing through it and her. Presently she spoke, saying:
"I shall show you first our people in the day of their glory. Look infront of you."
We looked and by degrees the vast space of the apse before us becamealive with forms. At first these were vague and shadowy, not to beseparated or distinguished. Then they became so real that until he wasreproved by a kick, Tommy growled at them and threatened to break outinto one of his peals of barking.
A wonderful scene appeared. There was a palace of white marble and infront of it a great courtyard upon which the sun beat vividly. At thefoot of the steps of the palace, beneath a silken awning, sat a kingenthroned, a crown upon his head and wearing glorious robes. In his handwas a jewelled sceptre. He was a noble-looking man of middle age andabout him were gathered the glittering officers of his court. Fair womenfanned him and to right and left, but a little behind, sat other fairand jewelled women who, I suppose, were his wives or daughters.
"One of the Kings of the Children of Wisdom new-crowned, receives thehomage of the world," said Yva.
As she spoke there appeared, walking in front of the throne one by one,other kings, for all were crowned and bore sceptres. At the foot of thethrone each of them kneeled and kissed the foot of him who sat thereon,as he did so laying down his sceptre which at a sign he lifted again andpassed away. Of these kings there must have been quite fifty, men of allcolours and of various types, white men, black men, yellow men, red men.
Then came their ministers bearing gifts, apparently of gold and jewels,which were piled on trays in front of the throne. I remember noting anincident. An old fellow with a lame leg stumbled and upset his tray,so that the contents rolled hither and thither. His attempts to recoverthem were ludicrous and caused the monarch on the throne to relax fromhis dignity and smile. I mention this to show that what we witnessed wasno set scene but apparently a living piece of the past. Had it been sothe absurdity of the bedizened old man tumbling down in the midst of thegorgeous pageant would certainly have been omitted.
No, it must be life, real life, something that had happened, and thesame may be said of what followed. For instance, there was what we calla review. Infantry marched, some of them armed with swords and spears,though these I took to be an ornamental bodyguard, and others with tubeslike savage blowpipes of which I could not guess the use. There were nocannon, but carriages came by loaded with bags that had spouts tothem. Probably these were charged with poisonous gases. There were somecavalry also, mounted on a different stamp of horse from ours, thickerset and nearer the ground, but with arched necks and fiery eyes and, Ishould say, very strong. These again, I take it, were ornamental. Thencame other men upon a long machine, slung in pairs in armoured sacks,out of which only their heads and arms projected. This machine, whichresembled an elongated bicycle, went by at a tremendous rate, thoughwhence its motive power came did not appear. It carried twenty pairsof men, each of whom held in his hand some small but doubtless deadlyweapon, that in appearance resembled an orange. Other similar machineswhich followed carried from forty to a hundred pairs of men.
The marvel of the piece, however, were the aircraft. These came by ingreat numbers. Sometimes they flew in flocks like wild geese, sometimessingly, sometimes in line and sometimes in ordered squadrons, withoutpost and officer ships and an exact distance kept between craft andcraft. None of them seemed to be very large or to carry more thanfour or five men, but they were extraordinarily swift and as agile asswallows. Moreover they flew as birds do by beating their wings, butagain we could not guess whence came their motive power.
The review vanished, and next appeared a scene of festivity in a huge,illuminated hall. The Great King sat upon a dais and behind him was thatstatue of Fate, or one very similar to it, beneath which we stood. Belowhim in the hall were the feasters seated at long tables, clad in thevarious costumes of their countries. He rose and, turning, knelt beforethe statue of Fate. Indeed he prostrated himself thrice in prayer. Thentaking his seat again, he lifted a cup of wine and pledged that vastcompany. They drank back to him and prostrated themselves before him ashe had done before the image of Fate. Only I noted that certain men cladin sacerdotal garments not at all unlike those which are worn in theGreek Church to-day, remained standing.
Now all this exhibition of terrestrial pomp faded. The next scene wassimple, that of the death-bed of this same king--we knew him by hiswizened features. There he lay, terribly old and dying. Physicians,women, courtiers, all were there watching the end. The tableau vanishedand in place of it appeared that of the youthful successor amidstcheering crowds, with joy breaking through the clouds of simulated griefupon his face. It vanished also.
"Thus did great king succeed great king for ages upon ages," said Yva."There were eighty of them and the average of their reigns was 700years. They ruled the earth as it was in those days. They gathered uplearning, they wielded power, their wealth was boundless. They nurturedthe arts, they discovered secrets. They had intercourse with the stars;they were as gods. But like the gods they grew jealous. They and theircouncillors became a race apart who alone had the secret of long life.The rest of the world and the commonplace people about them suffered anddied. They of the Household of Wisdom lived on in pomp for generationstill the earth was mad with envy of them.
"Fewer and fewer grew the divine race of the Sons of Wisdom sincechildren are not given to the aged and to those of an ancient, outwornblood. Then the World said:
"'They are great but they are not many; let us make an end of them bynumbers and take their place and power and drink of their Life-water,that they will not give to us. If myriads of us perish by their arts,what does it matter, since we are countless?' So the World made war uponthe Sons of Wisdom. See!"
Again a picture formed. The sky was full of aircraft which rained downfire like flashes of lightning upon cities beneath. From these citiesleapt up other fires that destroyed the swift-travelling things above,so that they fell in numbers like gnats burned by a lamp. Still moreand more of them came till the cities crumbled away and the flashes thatdarted from them ceased to rush upwards. The Sons of Wisdom were drivenfrom the face of the earth.
Again the scene changed. Now it showed this subterranean hall in whichwe stood. There was pomp here, yet it was but a shadow of that whichhad been in the earlier days upon the face of the earth. Courtiers movedabout the palace and there were people in the radiant streets and thehouses, for most of them were occupied, but rarely did the vision showchildren coming through their gates.
Of a sudden this scene shifted. Now we saw that same hall in which wehad visited Oro not an hour before. There he sat, yes, Oro himself,upon the dais beneath the overhanging marble shell. Round him were someancient councillors. In the body of the hall on either side of thedais were men in military array, guards without doubt though their onlyweapon was a black rod not unlike a ruler, if indeed it were a weaponand not a badge of office.
Yva, whose face had suddenly grown strange and fixed, began to detailto us what was passing in this scene, in a curious monotone such as aperson might use who was repeating something learned by heart. This wasthe substance of what she said:
"The case of the Sons of Wisdom is desperate. But few of them are left.Like other men they need food which is hard to come by, since the foeholds the upper earth and that which their doctors can make here in theShades does not satisfy them, even though they drink the Life-water.They die and die. There comes an embassy from the High King of theconfederated Nations to talk of terms of peace. See, it enters."
As she spoke, up the hall advanced the embas
sy. At the head of it walkeda young man, tall, dark, handsome and commanding, whose aspect seemed insome way to be familiar to me. He was richly clothed in a purple cloakand wore upon his head a golden circlet that suggested royal rank.Those who followed him were mostly old men who had the astute facesof diplomatists, but a few seemed to be generals. Yva continued in hermonotonous voice:
"Comes the son of the King of the confederated Nations, the Prince whowill be king. He bows before the Lord Oro. He says 'Great and AncientMonarch of the divine blood, Heaven-born One, your strait, and that ofthose who remain to you, is sore. Yet on behalf of the Nations I am sentto offer terms of peace, but this I may only do in the presence of yourchild who is your heiress and the Queen-to-be of the Sons of Wisdom.'"
Here, in the picture, Oro waved his hand and from behind the marbleshell appeared Yva herself, gloriously apparelled, wearing royalornaments and with her train held by waiting ladies. She bowed to thePrince and his company and they bowed back to her. More, we saw a glanceof recognition pass between her and the Prince.
Now the real Yva by our side pointed to the shadow Yva of the vision orthe picture, whichever it might be called, a strange thing to see herdo, and went on:
"The daughter of the Lord Oro comes. The Prince of the Nations salutesher. He says that the great war has endured for hundreds of yearsbetween the Children of Wisdom fighting for absolute rule and the commonpeople of the earth fighting for liberty. In that war many millions ofthe Sons of the Nations had perished, brought to their death by fearfularts, by wizardries and by plagues sown among them by the Sons ofWisdom. Yet they were winning, for the glorious cities of the Sons ofWisdom were destroyed and those who remained of them were driven todwell in the caves of the earth where with all their strength and magicthey could not increase, but faded like flowers in the dark.
"The Lord Oro asks what are the terms of peace proposed by the Nations.The Prince answers that they are these: That the Sons of Wisdom shallteach all their wisdom to the wise men among the Nations. That theyshall give them to drink of the Life-water, so that their length of daysalso may be increased. That they shall cease to destroy them by sicknessand their mastery of the forces which are hid in the womb of the world.If they will do these things, then the Nations on their part will ceasefrom war, will rebuild the cities they have destroyed by means of theirflying ships that rain down death, and will agree that the Lord Oro andhis seed shall rule them for ever as the King of kings.
"The Lord Oro asks if that be all. The Prince answers that it is notall. He says that when he dwelt a hostage at the court of the Sons ofWisdom he and the divine Lady, the daughter of the Lord Oro, and hisonly living child, learned to love each other. He demands, and theNations demand, that she shall be given to him to wife, that in a day tocome he may rule with her and their children after them.
"See!" went on Yva in her chanting, dreamy voice, "the Lord Oro asks hisdaughter if this be true. She says," here the real Yva at my side turnedand looked me straight in the eyes, "that it is true; that she loves thePrince of the Nations and that if she lives a million years she will wedno other man, since she who is her father's slave in all else isstill the mistress of herself, as has ever been the right of her royalmothers.
"See again! The Lord Oro, the divine King, the Ancient, grows wroth. Hesays that it is enough and more than enough that the Barbariansshould ask to eat of the bread of hidden learning and to drink of theLife-water of the Sons of Wisdom, gifts that were given to them of oldby Heaven whence they sprang in the beginning. But that one of them,however highly placed, should dare to ask to mix his blood with that ofthe divine Lady, the Heiress, the Queen of the Earth to be, and claim toshare her imperial throne that had been held by her pure race from ageto age, was an insult that could only be purged by death. Sooner wouldhe give his daughter in marriage to an ape than to a child of theBarbarians who had worked on them so many woes and striven to break thegolden fetters of their rule.
"Look again!" continued Yva. "The Lord Oro, the divine, grows angrierstill" (which in truth he did, for never did I see such dreadful rageas that which the picture revealed in him). "He warns, he threatens.He says that hitherto out of gentle love and pity he has held hishand; that he has strength at his command which will slay them, not bymillions in slow war, but by tens of millions at one blow; that willblot them and their peoples from the face of earth and that will causethe deep seas to roll where now their pleasant lands are fruitful in thesun. They shrink before his fury; behold, their knees tremble becausethey know that he has this power. He mocks them, does the Lord Oro.He asks for their submission here and now, and that in the name ofthe Nations they should take the great oath which may not be broken,swearing to cease from war upon the Sons of Wisdom and to obey themin all things to the ends of the earth. Some of the ambassadors wouldyield. They look about them like wild things that are trapped. Butmadness takes the Prince. He cries that the oath of an ape is of noaccount, but that he will tear up the Children of Wisdom as an ape tearsleaves, and afterwards take the divine Lady to be his wife.
"Look on the Lord Oro!" continued the living Yva, "his wrath leaves him.He grows cold and smiles. His daughter throws herself upon her knees andpleads with him. He thrusts her away. She would spring to the side ofthe Prince; he commands his councillors to hold her. She cries to thePrince that she loves him and him only, and that in a day to come himshe will wed and no other. He thanks her, saying that as it is with her,so it is with him, and that because of his love he fears nothing. Sheswoons. The Lord Oro motions with his hand to the guard. They lift theirdeath-rods. Fire leaps from them. The Prince and his companions, allsave those who were afraid and would have sworn the oath, twist andwrithe. They turn black; they die. The Lord Oro commands those who areleft to enter their flying ships and bear to the Nations of the Earthtidings of what befalls those who dare to defy and insult him; to warnthem also to eat and drink and be merry while they may, since for theirwickedness they are about to perish."
The scene faded and there followed another which really I cannotdescribe. It represented some vast underground place and what appearedto be a huge mountain of iron clothed in light, literally a thinglike an alp, rocking and spinning down a declivity, which farther onseparated into two branches because of a huge razor-edge precipice thatrose between. There in the middle of this vast space with the dazzlingmountain whirling towards him, stood Oro encased in some transparentarmour, as though to keep off heat, and with him his daughter who underhis direction was handling something in the rock behind her. Then therewas a blinding flash and everything vanished. All of this picturepassed so swiftly that we could not grasp its details; only a generalimpression remained.
"The Lord Oro, using the strength that is in the world whereof he alonehas the secret, changes the world's balance causing that which was landto become sea and that which was sea to become land," said Yva in herchanting, unnatural voice.
Another scene of stupendous and changing awfulness. Countries weresinking, cities crashing down, volcanoes were spouting fire; the end ofthe earth seemed to be at hand. We could see human beings running to andfro in thousands like ants. Then in huge waves hundreds and hundreds offeet high, the ocean flowed in and all was troubled, yeasty sea.
"Oro carries out his threat to destroy the Nations who had rebelledagainst him," said Yva. "Much of the world sinks beneath the waves, butin place of it other lands arise above the waves, to be inhabited by theseed of those who remain living in those portions of the Earth that thedeluge spared."
This horrible vision passed and was succeeded by one more, that of Orostanding in the sepulchre of the cave by the side of the crystal coffinwhich contained what appeared to be the body of his daughter. He gazedat her, then drank some potion and laid himself down in the companioncoffin, that in which we had found him.
All vanished away and Yva, appearing to wake from some kind of trance,smiled, and in her natural voice asked if we had seen enough.
"Quite," I answered in a tone that caused her to
say:
"I wonder what you have seen, Humphrey. Myself I do not know, since itis through me that you see at all and when you see I am in you who see."
"Indeed," I replied. "Well, I will tell you about it later."
"Thank you so much," exclaimed Bastin, recovering suddenly from hisamazement. "I have heard a great deal of these moving-picture showswhich are becoming so popular, but have always avoided attending thembecause their influence on the young is supposed to be doubtful, and apriest must set a good example to his congregation. Now I see that theycan have a distinct educational value, even if it is presented in theform of romance."
"How is it done?" asked Bickley, almost fiercely.
"I do not altogether know," she answered. "This I do know, however, thateverything which has happened on this world can be seen from moment tomoment at some point in the depths of space, for thither the sun's lighttakes it. There, too, it can be caught and thence in an instant returnedto earth again, to be reflected in the mirror of the present by thosewho know how that mirror should be held. Ask me no more; one so wise asyou, O Bickley, can solve such problems for himself."
"If you don't mind, Lady Yva," said Bastin, "I think I should like toget out of this place, interesting as it is. I have food to cook upabove and lots of things to attend to, especially as I understand I amto come back here tomorrow. Would you mind showing me the way to thatlift or moving staircase?"
"Come," she said, smiling.
So we went past the image of Fate, out of the temple, down the vast andlonely streets so unnaturally illuminated, to the place where we hadfirst found ourselves on arrival in the depths. There we stood.
A moment later and we were whirling up as we had whirled down. I supposethat Yva came with us though I never saw her do so, and the odd thingwas that when we arrived in the sepulchre, she seemed already to bestanding there waiting to direct us.
"Really," remarked Bastin, "this is exactly like Maskelyne and Cook. Didyou ever see their performance, Bickley? If so, it must have given youlots to explain for quite a long while."
"Jugglery never appealed to me, whether in London or in Orofena,"replied Bickley in a sour voice as he extracted from his pocket an endof candle to which he set light.
"What is jugglery?" asked Bastin, and they departed arguing, leaving mealone with Yva in the sepulchre.
"What have I seen?" I asked her.
"I do not know, Humphrey. Everyone sees different things, but perhapssomething of the truth."
"I hope not, Yva, for amongst other things I seemed to see you swearyourself to a man for ever."
"Yes, and this I did. What of it?"
"Only that it might be hard for another man."
"Yes, for another man it might be hard. You were once married, were younot, Humphrey, to a wife who died?"
"Yes, I was married."
"And did you not swear to that wife that you would never look in loveupon another woman?"
"I did," I answered in a shamed voice. "But how do you know? I nevertold you so."
"Oh! I know you and therefore guessed."
"Well, what of it, Yva?"
"Nothing, except that you must find your wife before you love again, andbefore I love again I must find him whom I wish to be my husband."
"How can that happen," I asked, "when both are dead?"
"How did all that you have seen to-day in Nyo happen?" she replied,laughing softly. "Perhaps you are very blind, Humphrey, or perhaps weboth are blind. If so, mayhap light will come to us. Meanwhile do notbe sad. Tomorrow I will meet you and you shall teach me--your Englishtongue, Humphrey, and other things."
"Then let it be in the sunlight, Yva. I do not love those darksome hallsof Nyo that glow like something dead."
"It is fitting, for are they not dead?" she answered, with a littlelaugh. "So be it. Bastin shall teach my father down below, since sun andshade are the same to him who only thinks of his religion, and you shallteach me up above."
"I am not so certain about Bastin and of what he thinks," I saiddoubtfully. "Also will the Lord Oro permit you to come?"
"Yes, for in such matters I rule myself. Also," she added meaningly,"he remembers my oath that I will wed no man--save one who is dead.Now farewell a while and bid Bastin be here when the sun is three hourshigh, not before or after."
Then I left her.
When the World Shook Page 16
