--Yes, I remember, and you shall hear all about it before I describe an
evening at the Settlement, but it don't amount to much.--I told you how
cross and over-bearing Tuck was at the Astoria tower, and of the mean
way in which he restricted my observations. Well, of all the people in
the grove that day there was only one whom I could see without being
criticized, and he sat all alone and facing me, just behind Tuck's back.
Some green leaves hung between us, and whenever I moved my head to note
what he was doing he moved his, too, to look at me. He seemed so lonely
that I was sorry for him, but his atmosphere showed him to be neither
sullen nor Uranian, and I could not help it if I was just a little bit
responsive. Besides, Tuck, once on the subject of his opera, grew so
self-engrossed and dominant that one had either to assert one's own
mentality or become subjective.
--No, dear, that is not the _only_ reason. There may be such a thing as
an isolated reason, but I have never met one--they always go in packs. I
confess to a feeling of interest in the stranger. Nobody can look at you
with round blue eyes for half an hour steadily without exercising some
attraction, either positive or negative, and I felt, too, that he was
trying to tell me something which would have been a great deal more
interesting than Tuck's opera, and I believe had I remained a little
longer we could have understood each other between the trees just as you
and I can understand each other across the intervals of space. But then
it is so easy to be mistaken.--I had to pass quite close to him in going
out, and I am not sure I did not drop a rose.
--There may be just a weenie little bit more about the Astorian, but
that will come in its proper place. Now I must get on to the
evening.--It was not much of an occasion, merely the usual gathering of
our crowd, or rather of those of us who have no special assignment for
the time in the large Council Room I have described to you.
The President of the Board of Control at present is Marlow, Marlow the
Great, as he is called, the painter whose pictures did so much to
elevate the Patagonians.--No, dear, I never heard of Patagonia before,
but I'm almost sure it's not a planet.--With Marlow came a Mrs. Mopes,
who is engaged in creating schools of fiction by writing stories under
different names and then reviewing them in her own seven magazines.
Next, taking the guests at random, was Baxter, a deadly person in his
human incarnation, whose business it is to make stocks fly up or tumble
down.--I don't know what stocks are, but they must be something very
easily frightened.--Then there was a Mr. Waller, nicknamed the Reverend,
whom the Council allows to speak the truth occasionally, while the rest
of the time he tells people anything they want to hear to win their
confidence. And the two Miss Dooleys who sing so badly that thousands
who can not sing at all leave off singing altogether when they once hear
them. And Mr. Flick, who misbehaves at funerals to distract mourners
from their grief, and a Mr. O'Brien, whose duty it is to fly into
violent passions in public places just to show how unbecoming temper is.
There were many others, so many I can not begin to enumerate them. Some
had written books and were known all over the planet, and some who were
not known at all had done things because there was nobody else to do
them. And some were singers and some were actors, and some were rich and
some were poor to the outside world, but in the Council Room they met
and laughed and matched experiences and made jokes; from the one who had
built a battle ship so terrible that all the other ships were burnt on
condition that his should be also, to the ordinary helpers who applaud
stupid plays till intelligent human beings become thoroughly disgusted
with bad art.
In the world, of course, they are all serious enough, and often know
each other only by secret signs, while every day and night and minute
our poor earth-brothers come a little nearer the light--pushed toward
it, pulled toward it, wheedled and trickled and bullied and coaxed, and
thinking all the while how immensely clever they are, and what a
wonderful progressive, glorious age they have brought about for
themselves.--At all events, this is the rather vague composite
impression I have received of the plans and purposes of the Board of
Directors, and doubtless it is wrong.
I suppose with a little trouble I might have recognized nearly every
one, but the fancy took me to suspend intuition just to see how Earth
girls feel, and you know when one is hearing a lot of pleasant things
one does not much care who happens to be saying them.
I fancy Marlow thought less of me when I confessed that I am here only
for the lark, and really do not care a meteor whether the planet is ever
elevated or not. But he is a charming old fellow all the same, and the
only one of the lot who has not grown the least bit smudgy.
Marlow announced that the evening would be spent in harmony with the
vibrations of Orion, and set us all at work to get in touch. I love
Orion light myself, for none other suits my aura quite so well, and I
was glad to find they had not taken up the Vega fad.--The light here? My
dear, it is not even filtered.--Some of us, no doubt for want of
practice, were rather slow about perfecting, but finally we all caught
on, and when O'Brien, no longer fat and florid, and the elder Miss
Dooley, no longer scrawny, moved out to start the dance, there was only
one who had not assumed an astral personality. Poor fellow, though I
pitied him, I did admire his spunk in holding back. It seems that as an
editor he took to telling falsehoods on his own account so often that
the Syndicate is packing him off as Special Correspondent to a tailless
comet.
Tuck never came at all; either he realizes how honest people must regard
him and his opera, or else the elementals at the Astoria are still
detaining him.
We had a lovely dance, and while we rested Marlow called on some of us
for specialties. Mrs. Mopes did a paragraph by a man named Henry James,
translated into action, which seemed quite difficult, and then a person
called Parker externalized a violin and gave the Laocoon in terms of
sound. To me his rendering of marble resembled terra-cotta until I
learned that the copy of the statue here is awfully weatherstained.
After this three pretty girls gave the Aurora Borealis by telepathic
suggestion rather well, and then I sang "Love Lives Everywhere"--just
plain so.
--I know this must all sound dreadfully flat to you, quite like
"Pastimes for the Rainy Season in Neptune," but Bloomer says she doesn't
know what would happen if we should ever give a really characteristic
jolly party.
We wound up with an Earth dance called the Virginia Reel, the quickest
means you ever saw for descending to a lower psychic plane. That's all I
have to tell, and quite enough, I'm sure you'll think.--What? The
Astorian? I have not seen him since.--But there is a little more, a very
little, if you are not tired.--This morning I received a gift of roses,
just like the one I dropped yesterday, brought me by the same small
embryonic I had seen in the flower shop. I asked the child in whose
intelligence the impulse had originated, and he replied:
"A blue-eyed feller with a mustache, but he gave me a plunk not to
tell."
I understood a plunk to be a token of confidence, and I at once
expressed displeasure at the boy's betrayal of his trust. I told him
such an act would make dark lines upon his aura which might not fade for
several days.
"Say, ain't you got some message to send back?" he asked.
"Boy!" said I, "don't forget your little aura."
"All right," he answered, "I'll tell him 'Don't forget your little
aura.' I'll bet he coughs up another plunk."
I don't know what he meant, but I am very much afraid there may be some
mistake.--Oh, yes, I am quite sure to be back in time for the
Solstice.--Or at least for the Eclipse.