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The World Above
[Illustration: The World Above A Duologue _by_ Martha Foote Crow The
Blue Sky Press Chicago]
_Of this first edition of The World
Above there have been printed five
hundred copies on Van Gelder
hand-made paper and twenty-five
copies on Japan vellum, of which
this is number 171_
Copyright, 1905, by
The Blue Sky Press
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WORLD ABOVE.
The scene is laid in a shadowy and mystic place known to the dwellers
there as The Darker Realm. It has been built and burrowed from time
immemorial far down underneath some great, beautiful, sunny, human
metropolis, called The World Above, but of this light-crowned city those
who inhabit the subterranean retreats of The Darker Realm know but
little, of its happy days and doings they can but dream.
The galleries of The Darker Realm are like an interminable network—one
could so easily be lost there! Some parts are new and are built up
smoothly with polished stone; other parts are old—so old and irregular
that it seems as if they must have been set there many, many centuries
ago. Perhaps the place has been an ancient mine where dim-eyed people
sought the turquoise gem for their devil-altars; perhaps it was once a
human town over which volcanic ashes and desert sands have fallen and
drifted for many a long century. Unexhumed and rediscovered, it lies
there, and the dwellers in The World Above find use for the water-way
conduits that thread its interminable passages.
There are two persons in the story: Jean, a young man, a workman in The
Darker Realm, and Angelica, a young maiden, daughter of another workman
in the same.
Scene I.
(A place in The Darker Realm. The background forms a cave-like enclosure
or gallery with an arched roof composed of massive blocks of fitted
stone. At the center of the enclosure is a tall well-sweep with other
gigantic structures. Chains and tubes range along the walls and ceiling.
At the right there is an opening into one of the larger conduits, and
over the opening a trap-door is held up diagonally by a long dusty rope
with a pulley attaching it to the wall above. From above this opening
dangles a cord that floats out tensely, showing that a strong current of
air is coming down through the conduit and is flowing out into the
gallery. Near the front a foot-bridge crosses a gulley in the floor of
the passage; one can see the glint of the water flowing below. At the
left, high up on the wall, juts forth a crane and on this hangs an iron
lantern from which a sickly light is given forth. This is almost the
only center of light in the place, though it is possible to see that
there is some kind of a lamp beyond the half-open door of a windowless
hut which is dimly perceived at the back of the gallery. Also, above the
foot-bridge, there is a flue in the ceiling, and through this flows
downward a faint, pale light, almost imperceptible, like the dimmest
twilight. At the back of the gallery, arched openings on either side
lead to passages of impenetrable blackness.
From the door of the hut a young girl emerges and passes across the
gallery. She hums a strain of the hymn Varina, and as she comes along,
she touches the wall lightly with her white finger tips and walks with a
hesitating step as if the floor were slippery, or as if she were
accustomed to find her way more by the sense of touch than by that of
sight. She is a slender and delicate looking girl, and the pupils of her
eyes are large and dark as if they were trying to gather all the light
they could. Her garment is a poor, dull-colored thing, and her face and
her two hands are the only spots of pure white in the whole picture. She
comes forward slowly, touching the wall sensitively and sings, as she
approaches, in a voice like a soft, sweet flute, and yet more pathetic
than any words can describe.)
[Music: _Angelica_—“There is a land of pure de-light,”—]
(She comes forward to the bridge and looks down into the water.)
[Music: _Angelica_—“Where saints immortal reign;”]
(She looks up toward the flue; the dim radiance there falls like a halo
upon her head. She whispers:)
_Angelica_—“Saints immortal!” I wonder what “saints immortal” may be!
(She looks around wonderingly and then looks down at her hand and turns
a ring upon her finger, and then holds it up to the pale light from
above, and smiles as she sings the second line of the stanza.)
[Music: _Angelica_—“Infinite day excludes the night, and pleasures
banish pain.”]
(Then she turns and takes in long breaths of the air from the fresh
current, lifting her shoulders as if she enjoyed the mere pleasure of
breathing.)
[Music: _Angelica_—“There ev-er-last-ing spring a-bides,”]
(She rests her face upon her hand meditatively.)
_Angelica_—This air—it must be the “everlasting spring” that mother
sings about, it is so sweet!—for when I ask mother what “spring” is, she
says it is where the air is fresh and sweet. Ah, yes! I would rather be
out here, rather than in the close room, since mother is so sad and will
not talk with me. Here the air comes rushing down the conduit and pours
out into the gallery and fills me with such joy that I can scarcely
breathe enough of it! I breathe and breathe it in! But—(she stops,
listening, and holds her hand to her heart) surely, surely that is
Jean’s step! It comes nearer! It turns down the Branch of Blind Alleys.
It is, it is! Jean! Jean! (Then with an effort to gain composure of
tone—) Why, Jean, is that you? (A boyish-looking fellow comes forward;
he is dressed in workman’s clothes and has all the marks of sordid labor
upon his frame. His body is muscular but his complexion shows the pallor
that suggests the cellar-grown plant. His eyes glow, however, with happy
expectancy as he moves swiftly toward Angelica and takes her hands in
his.)
_Jean_—Angelica! Do not pretend you did not hear my step; I saw you
listening. I could tell from the very Court of Miracles what you were
thinking of if I saw only the bend of your head! But look you! I am
here! Jean! It is Jean!
_Angelica_—I know. (She turns and seems to make up her mind to throw all
ruse aside; with a gesture of welcome she cries:) Ah, I thought I was
never to see you again!
_Jean_—I thought so, too. I have wished to see you!
_Angelica_—Why, then, were you so long?
_Jean_—I was working with old Jacques over in the Old Freestone Branch
beyond the Court of Miracles.
_Angelica_—(She shudders.) The Old Freestone? O, why did you go there?
_Jean_—Some one must go, Angelica, and I was the youngest and strongest.
If I had not gone, old Jacques would have had to as he was the only one
that understood the buttressing of the ancient wall, and I wouldn’t have
had old Jacques made to go for worlds!
_Angelica_—No indeed, old Jacques that saved your life and pulled you
out of the Great River!
_Jean_—Yes, dear old fellow! And it’s dangerous over there. You know
they made the walls of the Old Freestone Branch out of blocks of stone
so large that when a break starts and they begin to fall, it is not safe
to be working among them.
_Angelica_—Yes, I know; Didon was lost there. Ah, poor Didon!
_Jean_—Yes, alas! But do not think of Didon; think of me! I am here
again! I came to see you!
_Angelica_—But not for so long, for so long! And all the time I feared
and wondered what I should do if you should fall from a bridge into the
water, or should be caught beneath a break, or should have illness, or
should get drawn into the quicksands.
_Jean_—Ah, do not think of these things! Think only of the pleasant
side! Think that we are together!
_Angelica_—But how can I think of this when I remember that any moment
you may be snatched away from me and I never see you again! Do you not
remember how when a stone in the wall crumbled away and a rivulet burst
into the new tunnel that the Triangle Branch men were working on, and
you with them, how the rivulet all in a moment swelled into a stream
that rushed forward with a roar we could hear away here, and how it tore
down walls and bridges and air flues in its course, and how you nearly
got caught in it? You barely escaped, Jean!
_Jean_—Yes, I know it, Angelica.
_Angelica_—And ah, if you should fall beneath a break, or get caught in
a quicksand, if you should leave us quite alone, mother and me! Wild
terror comes over me every time I try to think it out.
_Jean_—Do not try to think it out, dear Angelica. Put your hand on my
arm. Feel how strong it is! I shall work for you.
_Angelica_—Now that father is gone, I may need to have you work for me.
_Jean_—Your father gone? Where?
_Angelica_—Three days now he has not come home.
_Jean_—But he will surely come.
_Angelica_—Yes, if he be not caught in a break!
_Jean_—Well, if he comes not, I shall still be here, strong and loving.
_Angelica_—(Timidly) Loving?
_Jean_—Yes, loving; why not? Have I not always been loving? From the
first day I ever came into the Great River Branch and pushed my
tool-cart along with old Jacques and saw you sitting there on the
doorstep of your hut, saw you there but a minute when your mother called
you in because she heard strange voices outside and the jingle of
tools,—from that day have I not loved you and thought of you as my most
sacred dream?
_Angelica_—(Clasping her hands) Have you, oh have you? Have I been to
you like a dream?
_Jean_—And did you not think of me at all? Do you not remember that day
too?
_Angelica_—I do not remember that day, I think, but I remember other
days. I remember when we played together down where the Branch of Blind
Alleys juts into the Great River Gallery. I had caught a little lizard
and kept it to play with and called it Prince, and along came Didon,
heedless, cruel Didon, and he gave my poor Prince one knock on the head.
What is a lizard? he cried, and you—do you remember what you did?
_Jean_—Well, what I did was to give Didon a good thrashing. I beat him
well and he deserved it.
_Angelica_—(Sighing) Ah, poor Didon!
_Jean_—Do not say “poor Didon.”
_Angelica_—But alas, he suffered and lost his life in the War, and all
because of my Prince, my poor little dead lizard. Yes, that was really
the cause of the war, wasn’t it? The Blind Alley men taking up my side
and the Triangle men and the Great River men on his, and then the fight
going on and taking in other Branches besides.
_Jean_—So we got tired of the lizard-play!
_Angelica_—We did indeed.
_Jean_—Yet it was good play while it lasted, wasn’t it?
_Angelica_—Yes, it was good play while it lasted, but I have noticed
that the things we play with get so after awhile that we do not care to
play with them anymore. Have you noticed that?
_Jean_—No, I never did; but then, you are the great noticer.
_Angelica_—But I think you are!
_Jean_—Well, out of our lizard-play came the war, which went on——
_Angelica_—Until the Break!
_Jean_—Yes, the Great Break when the wall fell in and poor Didon was
crushed under the toppled mason-work.
_Angelica_—That made all our wars seem useless and small, didn’t it? But
do you think that the great pressure of the crowd of boys and men from
the Branch of Blind Alleys that took up your side and fought with
Didon’s crew, made the gallery wall cave in? Or did it just cave in of
itself?
_Jean_—How can I tell? It may have been either, or both. The walls are
always falling in the Old Freestone galleries.
_Angelica_—It is this never knowing the causes of things that worries
me! Now when the water began to flow right in to the top of the Main
Cross Tunnel and all the men were so frightened by that, as if the whole
Darker Realm were to come to an end, why were they so much more
frightened than usual? And I overheard them talking about a diver going
down from above. Now if a diver was to go down from above to stop the
hole, where was he to dive from?
_Jean_—O, the explanation of all that is easy enough. I think there must
have been a river above there and a bridge.
_Angelica_—A bridge? (in astonishment) a bridge above there? A bridge
like this one I am standing on? Are there bridges above us? Is there a
world above with bridges and galleries and air-conduits and lizards and
lizard-wars and—and breaks?
_Jean_—(Laughing) O no! I am certain that if there were a world above,
there wouldn’t be any wars and breaks in it!
_Angelica_—I am sure I don’t see how you know that. You can’t imagine
anything else for the people to do but roll tool-cars, clean pipes, and
repair breaks, can you?
_Jean_—I can’t imagine it, no; but I am sure if there were a world above
it would not be so sad and dark as this.
_Angelica_—Dark? What does that mean?
_Jean_—Isn’t this The Darker Realm?
_Angelica_—Oh! I see! And yet I am not sure that I _do_ see!
_Jean_—Why, dark is everything that isn’t light, everything that isn’t
lamps and cressets, everything that isn’t your face, everything that
isn’t you! If there’d been a world above, you’d have been in it, not
here!
_Angelica_—(With enthusiasm) Ah, I wish I had!
_Jean_—(In a surly voice) I don’t.
_Angelica_—Why not?
_Jean_—Because I want you here—here with me!
_Angelica_—Oh, yes, that!—but if we both could go to The World Above?
_Jean_—Don’t talk such nonsense; of course there isn’t any such thing,
and what’s the use of bothering our heads with puzzling and wondering?
_Angelica_—Yes, that’s just it, wondering! I can’t help wondering.
There’s something in my head that goes on wondering and wondering. My
wondering-machine will keep going, and I cannot stop it. It makes me
very unhappy and yet I do not wholly want it to stand still. Now, I
can’t help wondering what these fearful things mean, these breaks. Do
you never wonder?
_Jean_—Wonder? No. I wonder at nothing. I don’t see anything to wonder
at.
_Angelica_—Now, I wonder all the time. I want to know the meanings of
things. What makes this water flow, what makes the lamp burn, who made
this cloth of my dress, these walls and foot-paths, the cressets and
windlasses and charcoal-burners. I asked mother if she made the cloth
and she said “no.” I said, “who did?” She said, “how should I know?” I
said, “where did it come from?” She said, “Father brought it.” “Where
did he get it,” I said. She said, “I didn’t ask him,”—and not a word
more would she say. Where do my dresses come from, this cloth-stuff, do
you know? Do they not come from The World Above?
_Jean_—Why, no. They just come from your mother. She sews them for you.
And the stone in your precious ring, that Jacques calls an opal, do you
know where it came from?
_Angelica_—(Eagerly) From The World Above?
_Jean_—(Very impatiently) Oh, no! _I_ gave it to you. It came from me. I
loved you and I gave it to you.
_Angelica_—But where did _you_ get it?
_Jean_—I found it in the Court of Miracles at the edge of the Great
Pool, of course, where we are always finding things. We never found
anything that was not found there, of course, for that is the Great
Place-of-Finding-Things.
_Angelica_—Do you believe that?
_Jean_—Believe what? That this is the Great Place-of-Finding-Things?
Why, of course! How can you keep from believing what you feel with your
very own hands and hear with your own ears? When I took hold of the
scoop something slipped over the handle and I felt a little knob-like
thing go between my fingers. I caught at it and cleaned away what was
tangled around it and gave it to you.
_Angelica_—And I washed it and washed it and washed it, and made it
clean, quite clean, and lo, it was a ring just right for my finger, for
my finger, finger, finger! (She flourishes her hand joyously with the
ring upon it.)
_Jean_—Let me see it again; let me take it and look at it.
_Angelica_—Oh, you cannot take it! I cannot be without it one moment, I
love it so.
_Jean_—But let me, me only, look at it one moment. (He snatches at her
hand and draws it to him and kisses it impulsively.)
_Angelica_—I thought you wanted to look at the ring!
_Jean_—I forget the ring when I think of you, dearest Angelica. Can’t
you forgive that? Can’t you? Can’t you?
_Angelica_—I would try, perhaps; but now, look at it! look! (She holds
up the ring to the lamp’s light.) See the wonders in it?
_Jean_—I see no wonders; it is just a little round drop of dull white
set on a band of gold.
_Angelica_—Little round drop of dull white indeed! See there! See there!
Do you not see a streak of something, like the pain that now and then
shoots down through one’s shoulders?
_Jean_—No, there is no streak in it.
_Angelica_—But now, _now_, see it! Try it in this light, in this pale,
pure light that shines down through the flue from above.
_Jean_—Ah, yes, I do see it now; now that you hold it in the light of
the flue, I see it; now, a darting of red!
_Angelica_—Of red? What is red?
_Jean_—O wonderful eyes!—Don’t you know that red is a color?
_Angelica_—A color? What is a color?
_Jean_—Why, a color is—is, well, for instance, red; look at it!—_that_
is a color.
_Angelica_—But it changes. Is that, now—see!—is that a color too? Can
you not catch the other dartings?
_Jean_—Yes, I see; that is blue; yes, that is a color, too. Now I can
see yellow, orange and purple; these are the colors; all the colors
there are, are here.
_Angelica_—How do you know, now, that they are all the colors there are?
_Jean_—I know because these are all the colors I have ever seen, and of
course, then, they are all there are.
_Angelica_—But how did they come there? What put the dartings in there?
What are they for?
_Jean_—Come there? What for? What silly questions! Why, this is an opal,
and it is the nature of opals to have these colors in them and to dart
about in this way.
_Angelica_—And are these beautiful colors to be seen only in the opal?
_Jean_—Of course, where else should one see them? Did you ever see them
anywhere else, child?
_Angelica_—No, I never did, but I thought perhaps you might, since you
have traveled so far, so far beyond the Great Cloaca Branch and the
Branch of Blind Alleys and even beyond the Great Cross. (She holds the
opal in the light and turns and turns it.) It seems to me that I dimly
perceive other dartings than these you have named, although perhaps I am
mistaken. But it is very beautiful and I love it. (A pause.) Well, well,
it is all a mystery, I see I must have a new pair of eyes or a new sense
of some kind to know all about this wonderful thing you call color.
(Brightening) But I know I shall have them some day, else why did I get
the opal and how was it that I found the shooting, pain-like rays in my
opal? Jean, if I had made the world, I would have made it all opals! I
wish I _could_ make a world! O, but everything should be beautiful if I
could make life!
_Jean_—(Patronizingly and coaxingly) Make life? What do you mean by
that?
_Angelica_—Why, make life, make things and people! Oh, if I could but
make things and people!
_Jean_—I don’t see what you could do with them when you made them.
_Angelica_—Oh, I would have them live and laugh and have lights, lights,
all they wanted of lights!
_Jean_—But what for?
_Angelica_—Oh, because I love people and I love lights. I could never
have too many lights. Oh, how I love them! When I wake up from a long
sleep and see that mother has set the lamp a-burning I could shout for
joy. Then if I had lights enough, I know I would not have to bring my
opal out to the bridge to make it throw forth all its dartings. If I
could make a world, I would have things very different from this.
_Jean_—Should I be there?
_Angelica_—Oh, yes, you would be there but (with just a little touch of
coquetry) I should not pay much attention to you. (Seriously) I should
be so busy looking around at all the beautiful opal-colored things. Now
for myself I would have a skirt of red and a sacque of blue and the
walls of my hut should be covered with red and purple all swaying and
melting as in the ring, and I would have the shades that sweep from
color to color, the softest for my ceiling and beneath my feet the
richest and warmest. Thus should my world have been, had I made the
world!
_Jean_—Do not worry your mind with these visions and wonderings, dearest
Angelica. You will become so excited you will be ill, dear.
_Angelica_—Oh no, I shall not be ill, I shall be well! It makes me
almost believe that there is such a world above when I think of how well
I could be if I were in it. For, why did I have eyes that long for
light, light, more light, if I was never to have more light?
_Jean_—Dear Angelica! (soothingly.)
_Angelica_—No, no, do not speak against it! I know there _is_ a world
above. I know it. I feel it. O, let us go there! Let us go up through
this flue and find it!
_Jean_—Why, Angelica, if there had been such a thing, your mother would
have told you and old Jacques would surely have known about it.
_Angelica_—Then I shall ask mother,—and now! For I feel that I cannot
wait; I must know. I shall ask mother; I shall make her tell.
_Jean_—And shall I go and ask old Jacques?
_Angelica_—Do you do so, and come to tell me again. Come here in an
hour, here to the Bridge. Good bye, Jean! Good bye! We must find The
World Above!
(Jean watches Angelica go into the hut and then passes slowly across the
gallery and disappears in one of the Blind Alleys.)