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By Mary Johnston
THE WANDERERS.
THE FORTUNES OF GARIN. Illustrated.
THE WITCH. With frontispiece.
HAGAR.
THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books dealing with the war between
the States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.
CEASE FIRING. The second of two books dealing with the war between
the States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.
LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.
AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.
PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece.
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations by HOWARD PYLE, E. B.
THOMPSON, A. W. BETTS, and EMLEN MCCONNELL.
* * * * *
THE GODDESS OF REASON. _A Drama._
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE WANDERERS
[Illustration:
_The
Wanderers_
_by_
_Mary Johnston_
[Illustration]
_Boston & New York_]
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MARY JOHNSTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published September 1917_
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
CONTENTS
I. THE FOREST 1
II. THE CAVE 13
III. BIG TROUBLE 31
IV. PROPERTY 59
V. WHAT’S IN A NAME? 86
VI. THE PROPHET 114
VII. THE AMAZON 139
VIII. THE PRIESTESS OF MARDUK 157
IX. GLAUCON AND MYRINA 178
X. THE PEARL OF THE DEEP 199
XI. THE BANKS OF JUMUNA 223
XII. VALERIAN AND VALERIA 238
XIII. ALLEDA AND ALARAN 266
XIV. THE HERMITS 292
XV. THE END OF THE WORLD 313
XVI. MOONLIGHT 345
XVII. THEKLA AND EBERHARD 361
XVIII. THE RIGHT OF KINGS 389
XIX. JEAN AND ESPÉRANCE 409
THE WANDERERS
CHAPTER I
THE FOREST
Trees and trees and trees--a world of trees! Little size and middle size
and giant size, short and tall, slender and thick, broad-leafed,
narrow-leafed, rough-barked, smooth-barked, dark green, bright green,
one solid hue, or spangled or variegated with many-coloured flowers,
trees that bore nuts, trees that bore fruit, and trees starkly idle and
useless to a frugivorous folk! Trees and trees and trees--trees leaning
their heads against one another, trees pressing side to side, trees tied
together by the endless vines going looping through the world; trees and
trees and trees! Overhead, through the network, showed small pieces of
sky; big pieces of sky were seen only when you came to streams. Sunlight
struck down in flakes or darts, never as brightness formless and
unconfined. At night, looking up from the nestlike arrangements of
sticks and forest débris heaped between the forks of trees, three or
four stars might be seen at once. The host of stars was rarely seen. The
big animals, going down to the wider streams to drink, might see the
heavens, but, as a general thing, the tree-folk saw only the forest. As
a general thing. Occasionally, in their lives, the horizon inexplicably
widened or the zenith went up higher. The big animals stood and walked
so that their eyes were not of much use when it came to things on top.
The tree-folk had learned how to get about differently, and they had
hands, and they stood more or less uprightly, and they used their eyes
so that they saw things on top as well as things around them, and they
were beginning to think, and they had great curiosity.
She swung herself down from bough to bough until she touched the black
loam and the trampled plants beneath the tree. She had a young one
clinging to her neck. The tree was a bad tree. It had rocked and shaken
and made a noise all night. She was so angry with it that she turned and
struck it with her hands and feet. Then she settled the young one upon
her shoulder and went off to a thicket where grew very good fruit.
But the day had begun wrong. A lot of other folk were there, too, and
they tried to push her away, and though she got her breakfast it was a
poor one, and the crowd was a quarrelsome, scolding crowd. She went off
and sat down under a tree and looked at them. A thing happened that, in
her individual experience, had never happened before. She experienced a
distinct feeling of being outside of it all--not outside with a sense of
injury, but quite calmly outside. She criticized the tree-folk.
The young one drummed against her breast with its feet. She pulled it
down from her shoulder, and it lay upon her knees, and she smiled at it,
and it smiled at her. She was very fond of it. All the tree-folk smiled
with a kind of grimacing smile, using only the lips. But now this
morning a second thing happened. She smiled with her eyes. It gave her a
very singular feeling, a feeling that linked itself with the earlier
one.
This tree was thin-topped. Looking up, she saw quite unusual pieces of
sky. Across the largest a white cloudlet went sailing. The folk in the
fruit thicket fell into a tremendous quarrel, yelling at one another.
She scrambled to her feet and made the sound that meant, “Get on my back
and hold tight! We are going to travel.” The young one obeyed and the
two set forth.
Trees, trees, trees, trees! fighting for breathing space, shouldering
away their fellows, sucking each its hardest from the earth, striving
each its hardest, out with its arms, up with its head, up to the light!
and all tied together, tied together with endlessly looping ropes, green
and brown and grey, cupped and starred and fringed with purple and
orange and white and scarlet! Over all and from all the creepers
stretched and dangled. Trees and trees and trees! helplessly many,
chained each to the other. Sometimes she and the young one travelled in
the trees and over the stretched brown ropes, and sometimes she made her
way through the cane and fern and wild and varied growths that
overspread the fat black earth out of which had burst the trees. The
coloured birds whistled and shrieked, and now and again, in the green
gloom, she heard tree-folk calling and answering. But she avoided the
tree-folk. She was still critical.
It grew dark in the universal forest. The red and green and orange birds
ceased whistling, and the insect people whirring and chirping. The
butterflies went to their bark homes.
“Uuugh!” she said,--which meant, “Lightning will flash and thunder will
roll, trees will snap, water will come down, and the air will grow
cold!”
It all happened, just in that order. She and the young one found an
overhanging rock with a rock floor beneath. They crept into the opening
that was like the jaws of a monster, and cowered, their faces down.
Ugh! the light in sheets and the noise! There was not, this time, much
water. She hated water when it came like this, cold and stinging, just
as she loved it when it presented itself in pools when one was thirsty
and hot with racing through trees. She had not as yet worked it out that
it was lovely or hateful according to the angle from which it was
approached, that the water apparently did not plan what it should do nor
how it should come, and that it was you yourself who accomplished that
partition into qualities. If she reasoned at all, it was to the effect
that the water very actively cared, now hating and now helping. The
young one whimpered and whimpered, and it irritated her, and she beat
it. Yelling, it rolled away from her to the other end of the rock floor.
And then the bright light and the horrible noise stopped, and the water
ceased to dash against her like cold, wet leaves, and the sun came out
sudden and strong, and a snake crept over the rock, coiled and darted
its head above the young one that was lying sobbing to itself. She saw
the snake and she screeched with terror, then she leaped and caught it
with both hands just below the head that was flat and pointed like a
leaf and dragged it away from the young one. It writhed and lashed about
and struck at her, but she held it tighter and tighter, and trampled it
with her feet, and choked it until it was dead. Then she flung it from
her, over the rock, and shivered with her shoulders, and then she
gathered up the young one, and the two travelled on.
They travelled nearly all day, seeing nothing but trees and the plants
that hid the soil from sight, and the inhabitants of trees and the folk
whose feet had always to be upon the earth. The world was anything but
unpopulous. There were beings who flew and beings who climbed and
beings who crept or glided, and beings who walked four-footed, and the
tree-folk who both walked and climbed. When she came to the hot, still,
narrow streams which she crossed by means of the festooned creepers, she
saw beings who swam.
It grew late. Where was any space for the shadow of a tree to fall, it
fell. Always the world was quiet in the great heat of the middle day.
Evening was the time when all the world began to talk at once--all, that
is, but the big animals. _They_ waited for full night, and then they
roared--they roared! The tree-folk were afraid of the big animals,
dreadfully afraid.
The young one was hungry. She pulled it across her shoulder to her
breast and gave it milk, and at the next fruit tree they came to she
stopped and got her own supper. By the time this was done it was almost
night. Before her there showed an opening where grass grew. It sloped to
a stream and it supported two or three tall, creeper-clad trees. Through
the bushes about the supper tree came a curious, dancing light.
Observing this, she followed the instinct of all tree-folk and crept
forward to see what might be seen.
One of the trees had been struck by lightning, and it had fallen upon
the earth. It lay there all its length, and it was afire. She and the
young one sat beneath the bushes and watched it with awed interest. In
their history, tree-folk had met with this phenomenon often enough to
learn that you must not touch, that you must not even go very close.
When you did so, it was worse than all kinds of big animals!
The flame flickered in and out among the branches and ran along the
trunk. A light smoke curled up, and she could hear the tree talking. It
made a crackling talk. The burning mass warmed and lit the dusk. She and
the young one were so interested that they went closer and closer. It
occurred to her to find out how close you _could_ go. So she went
cautiously, cautiously, very close indeed. Up to a certain point that
was pleasant enough, but one step farther on it began to sting. She
jerked back, frightened, but fascinated. Now again it was pleasant. It
seemed that it was angry only when you came too close. Keep a little
away and it was the best of friends! She and the young one sat on the
ground and thought about it. A long, broken bough, slender and bare as a
bamboo, happened to lie there, one end touching the fiery tree, the
other close to her hand. Her hand chanced to close upon it, as it might
have closed upon creeper or young bough in the trees. Something more
happened. She lifted this stick with the fire at one end like a pennant,
lifted it and moved it to and fro, the fire making lines and circles in
the air.
Her brain worked. The stick gave her a long arm, an arm much longer than
anybody else’s, with active, bright fingers at the end of it. If you
could take it with you-- No one had ever thought of carrying the bright,
stinging thing.... The flame blew down the stick toward her and she was
horribly frightened. Dropping the bough she picked up the young one and
fled.
In the shortest of times it was dark night. Day stayed only where was
the red, stinging thing. She was in a region of cane and bush. That was
not safe--she and the young one must get back to tree-land. And then,
just as she was puckering her brows over this, she heard the big
animal.
The big animal came against her through the canes. She caught the
rustling sound they made when they were brushed aside, and she heard
breathing and she saw eyeballs in the dark. Screeching, she turned with
the young one and ran. There were no trees, no trees--no safety--only
blind, exceeding terror! The big animal was coming--the big animal was
coming--it was sending its voice before it. The young one, screeching
too, gripped her fast. She tore through the cane, back the way she had
come, and the big animal with glaring eyes rushed after her. It was
coming in bounds--closer, oh, closer! She broke through the cane, into
that open space where the tree still burned. The pursuer came after her
and the young one. It was big and hungry. She felt its hot breath. Face
over shoulder, she saw its bared teeth. She found a voice that was
human; she shrieked. Along the ground lay the brand that, a while ago,
she had lifted and waved. It was shorter than it had been, but yet it
was fit for use. She snatched it up, turned and thrust it, flaming,
against the muzzle of the big animal. She made deliberate use of fire.
The beast that was after her roared and drew back, then made to come on
again. With all her strength she fought it over the eyes with fire.
Roaring with pain, it turned and fled. She threw down the flaming staff,
and with the young one on her back, chattering wildly, never stopped
until the forest was about her, until, finding a tree with a sinewy,
swinging curtain of vine, she had drawn herself and the young one up
from bough to bough, up to where, on high, in the comfortable fork of
two great branches, she reached what she esteemed as safety.
Night passed, dawn came. It came still and red, with a mist over a water
where long-legged, long-billed, scarlet-and-white bird people waded
about. They fished or stood on one leg pondering the universe, or not
pondering it, as you choose. She and the young one looked down a clear
forty feet and saw great roots of trees and between them black, yielding
earth. The light strengthened, and they leaped and slid and swung out of
this tree into another, and then another, and so they went by trees and
trees and trees until they came to firm ground and saw below them bushes
with fruit. The young one locked its hands about her neck and she sprang
and swung, now upon this bough, now with this liana between her hands.
So they came to the ground and the fruit bushes that were all covered
with bloomy, purple orbs. It was a good and quiet breakfast. There were
creeping folk and flying folk in this part of the world, but she saw and
heard no tree-folk.
She and the young one sat down upon the ground. The young one fell to
pulling at some tufts of grass, patting them and making its own range of
sounds, but she sat with her chin on her knees and her eyes down. Yet
another thing was happening. All tree-folk, of course, remembered; even
the big animals did that; everybody did it. But they did not know that
they remembered; they never gave the matter a thought. To their
apprehension, each day was taken up _de novo_. But now not only did she
remember, but she was aware that she remembered. Not clearly, of course,
only vaguely, but still aware. She was going over, she was returning to
a time that was not this present time. The big animal, his eyes and
claws and teeth--the bright thing jumping up and down and climbing over
the tree on the ground--the feel of it, pleasant when you were a little
way off, but the most dreadful bite of all if you touched it!... Back of
the bright thing was the storm, and the snake that had tried to bite
the young one, and back of that was the poor breakfast, and the
quarrelsome crowd of tree-folk, and how strange and unfamiliar they had
all of a sudden looked to her. And back of that--but she could not go
any farther back. It was as though there were a deep stream, and the
creeper that had stretched across was broken....
It was the bright thing to which she returned most fully--the bright
thing and the stick. Beneath the fruit trees lay enough of broken and
dead wood. Her hand went out to the nearest piece, which she lifted and
with some delight brandished. She spoke. As yet her language was almost
as limited as that of the big animals, but what she meant was, “I have a
long arm!--a longer arm than anybody else’s!” Three or four feet away a
lizard lay on a stone. She touched it with the stick. Then, as it raised
its head, she struck with force and killed it. This result caused her to
chatter with surprise. She had not been angry with the lizard--she had
not laid hand or foot upon it. The long arm had killed it--but she had
moved the long arm. She knew certain aspects of death well enough. That
lizard, no more than the snake of yesterday, would run about again!
She sat and thought. Then she took the stick and, rising, struck with it
at a cluster of purple fruit which had been beyond reach. The fruit came
tumbling down upon the grass. The long arm was good, then, for that,
too.
Out of the wood came one of the tree-folk--one of the other kind, the
kind that did not carry young ones around with them, the kind into which
half of the young ones grew. He was at some distance, and did not at
once see her. She stood and watched him coming.
The two were about of a height, but the other kind--because it did not
have young ones, and did not have to spend much of its time gambolling
with young ones and watching young ones, because it roamed more, because
it had, perhaps, a certain surplus of explosive energy which set it to
contending with its fellows or sent it, day and night, howling and
racing through the trees, because of this and because of that--the other
kind was ahead in muscular development. Muscular development meant a
heightened muscular sense. The other kind had, undoubtedly, a somewhat
greater delight in movement and action, from which, in the fulness of
time, might spring a certain initiative in enterprise, and a vast and
various network of results. The kind that had young ones, nursed them
and carried them about, had its superiorities, too, due again to a range
of matters beyond its present comprehension. But neither of them knew
about his or her own or the other’s superiorities. They were a very
simple folk--tree-folk.
The other kind now saw her, and after an instant of gazing, came on.
Although she had been so critical, yesterday, of the tree-folk, she
found--measuring by her standards--she found this one rather a strong
and comely individual. She had travelled, relatively speaking, a long
way without any other company than the young one. She certainly
experienced a sensation of friendliness.
The two stood jabbering at the edge of the wood. She had dropped the
stick, but now she stooped and picking it up flourished it about and
with the end struck off a cluster of fruit. Parade and showing
off--however they got into the world, here they were! The other kind
gave a deep screech of surprise, then stood, spellbound, watching this
so marvellous performance, then by degrees, became wildly excited. He
put out both hands, seized the stick, and tried to take it from her.
There was much wood upon the ground, but he could not conceive that any
other piece would serve. She had the only stick.
She resisted, and they quarrelled, both clutching the stick, jabbering
each at the other. Both put forth force to keep the thing that knocked
down fruit. But there was actually more strength in his long arms and
large hands than in hers. He wrested the stick from her and grinned with
delight in its possession.
It is probable that, of late, changes had been occurring among the
particles of his own brain. Probably he, too, had been making
discoveries. Neither the one nor the other might corner discovery. At
any rate, he now began to experiment with the stick. He knocked from the
tree all the purple fruit in reach, and then he sat down upon the ground
and with the end of the staff scraped at the earth and beat the grass
flat. His interest in what he was doing grew and grew. She had gone
away, sulking, to the young one. But it was impossible long to resist
the fascination of this new extension of power. She came and sat down in
the grass and watched. She was friendly again, and he, too, having the
stick, was gracious. He was a young, strong, well-looking member of the
tree-folk. Lying about were some small stones, miniature boulders. He
struck the end of the stick beneath one of these, put his weight upon
the other end, and lifted the stone out of its bed. The lever was here.
Both of them jabbered with excitement. There were other stones. She
wanted to disturb one, too, and she came across and put her hand upon
the stick. “Let me!” meant the sound which she uttered. But he jabbered
back, and shook her off, and went on turning over stones. Very angry,
she returned to the charge, and, watching her chance, suddenly jerked
the stick from him. He sprang to his feet and seized it again. She
screamed at him and held it stubbornly--a good, thick piece of wood it
was! The other kind, now in a violent passion, tugged and wrenched until
he got it from her. Then, with suddenness, he found yet another use for
a piece of wood. He knocked her down with it, and when, with a cry of
fury, she rose to her feet, he repeated the action.