Beyond the first flutter of surprise, the Martians had shown no
interest in the abrupt termination of the year's divinations. They
melted away, a trifle more silently perhaps than usual, when I
shattered the magic globe, but with their invariable indifference, and
having 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 only
the shadow of a passerby now and then to break the solitude. Whereon a
great loneliness took hold upon me, and, pacing to and fro along the
ancient terrace with bent head and folded arms, I bewailed my fate. To
and fro I walked, heedless and melancholy, thinking of the old world,
that was so far and this near world so distant from me in everything
making life worth living, thinking, as I strode gloomily here and
there, how gladly I would exchange these poor puppets and the mockery
of a town they dwelt in, for a sight of my comrades and a corner in the
poorest 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 the
beauty of everything around falling on the lax senses like some sleepy
draught of pleasure. Not a leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of the
sky was unbroken by the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim, the
splendid country, teeming with its spring-time richness, lay in rank
perfection everywhere; and just as rank and sleek and passionless were
those who owned it.
Why, even I, who yesterday was strong, began to come under the spell of
it. But yesterday the spirit of the old world was still strong within
me, yet how much things were now changing. The well-strung muscles
loosening, the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind drowsing
off to listlessness. Was I, too, destined to become like these? Was
the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid Martian sap? Was
ambition and hope to desert me, and idleness itself become laborious,
while life ran to seed in gilded uselessness? Little did I guess how
unnecessary my fears were, or of the incredible fairy tale of adventure
into which fate was going to plunge me.
Still engrossed the next morning by these thoughts, I decided I would
go to Hath. Hath was a man--at least they said so--he might sympathise
even though he could not help, and so, dressing finished, I went down
towards the innermost palace whence for an hour or two had come sounds
of unwonted bustle. Asking for the way occasionally from sleepy folk
lolling about the corridors, waiting as it seemed for their breakfasts
to come to them, and embarrassed by the new daylight, I wandered to and
fro in the labyrinths of that stony ant-heap until I chanced upon a
curtained doorway which admitted to a long chamber, high-roofed, ample
in proportions, with colonnades on either side separated from the main
aisle by rows of flowery figures and emblematic scroll-work, meaning I
knew not what. Above those pillars ran a gallery with many windows
looking out over the ruined city. While at the further end of the
chamber stood three broad steps leading to a dais. As I entered, the
whole place was full of bustling girls, their yellow garments like a
bed of flowers in the sunlight trickling through the casements, and all
intent on the spreading of a feast on long tables ranged up and down
the hall. The morning light streamed in on the white cloths. It
glittered on the glass and the gold they were putting on the trestles,
and gave resplendent depths of colour to the ribbon bands round the
pillars. All were so busy no one noticed me standing in the twilight
by the door, but presently, laying a hand on a worker's shoulder, I
asked who they banqueted for, and why such unwonted preparation?
"It is the marriage-feast tonight, stranger, and a marvel you did not
know it. You, too, are to be wed."
"I had not heard of it, damsel; a paternal forethought of your
Government, I suppose? Have you any idea who the lady is?"
"How should I know?" she answered laughingly. "That is the secret of
the urn. Meanwhile, we have set you a place at the table-head near
Princess Heru, and tonight you dip and have your chance like all of
them; 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 sovereign
with whom your people have a little difference, and shares unbidden in
the free distribution of brides to-night. This promises to be
interesting; depend on it I will come; if you will keep me a place
where I can hear the speeches, and not forget me when the turtle soup
goes round, I shall be more than grateful. Now to another matter. I
want to get a few minutes with your President, Prince Hath. He
concentrates the fluid intelligence of this sphere, I am told. Where
can I find him?"
"He is drunk, in the library, sir!"
"My word! It is early in the day for that, and a singular conjunction
of place and circumstance."
"Where," said the girl, "could he safer be? We can always fetch him if
we want him, and sunk in blue oblivion he will not come to harm."
"A cheerful view, Miss, which is worthy of the attention of our
reformers. Nevertheless, I will go to him. I have known men tell more
truth in that state than in any other."
The servitor directed me to the library, and after desolate wanderings
up crumbling steps and down mouldering corridors, sunny and lovely in
decay, I came to the immense lumber-shed of knowledge they had told me
of, a city of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored with
forgotten learning. At a table sat Hath the purposeless, enthroned in
leather and vellum, snoring in divine content amongst all that wasted
labour, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him into
semblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he should
have come to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of a
noble library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor,
amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and gold, and ivory, my
eye lit upon a volume propped up curiously on end, and going to it
through the confusion I saw by the dried fruit rind upon the sticks
supporting it, that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch a
mouse! It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound as a
king might bind his choicest treasure, the sweet-scented leather on it
was no doubt frayed; the golden arabesques upon the covers had long
since shed their eyes of inset gems, the jewelled clasp locking its
learning up from vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordly
tome with an odour of sanctity about it, and lifting it with
difficulty, I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood. Those
who 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. And
while I stood guessing at what the book might hold within, Heru, the
princess, came tripping in to me, and with the abrupt familiarity of
her kind, laid a velvet hand upon my wrist, conned the title over to
herself.
"What does it say, sweet girl?" I asked. "The matter is learned, by
its feel," and that maid, pursing up her pretty lips, read the title to
me--"The Secret of the Gods."
"The Secret of the Gods," I murmured. "Was it possible other worlds
had struggled hopelessly to come within the barest ken of that great
knowledge, while here the same was set to catch a mouse with?"
I said, "Silver-footed, sit down and read me a passage or two," and
propping the mighty volume upon a table drew a bench before it and
pulled her down beside me.
"Oh! a horrid, dry old book for certain," cried that lady, her pink
fingertips falling as lightly on the musty leaves as almond petals on
March dust. "Where shall I begin? It is all equally dull."
"Dip in," was my answer. "'Tis no great matter where, but near the
beginning. What says the writer of his intention? What sets he out to
prove?"
"He says that is the Secret of the First Great Truth, descended
straight to him--"
"Many have said so much, yet have lied."
"He says that which is written in his book is through him but not of
him, past criticism and beyond cavil. 'Tis all in ancient and crabbed
characters going back to the threshold of my learning, but here upon
this 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 an
inkling of the book already."
"'Tis poor, silly stuff," said the girl, slipping a hand covertly into
my own. "Why will you make me read it? I have a book on pomatums
worth 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 the
mutterings of the priest who draws back the curtains of the shrine--and
here, after the scribe has left these two yellow pages blank as though
to set a space of reverence between himself and what comes next--here
speaks 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 blushing
cheek was near to my shoulder and the incense of her breath upon me.
"Oh! Gulliver Jones," she said. "Make me read no more; my soul
revolts from the task, the crazy brown letters swim before my eyes. Is
there no learning near at hand that would be pleasanter reading than
this silly book of yours? What, after all," she said, growing bolder at
the sound of her own voice, "what, after all, is the musty reticence of
gods to the whispered secret of a maid? Jones, splendid stranger for
whom all men stand aside and women look over shoulders, oh, let me be
your book!" she whispered, slipping on to my knee and winding her arms
round my neck till, through the white glimmer of her single vest, I
could feel her heart beating against mine. "Newest and dearest of
friends, put by this dreary learning and look in my eyes; is there
nothing to be spelt out there?"
And I was constrained to do as she bid me, for she was as fresh as an
almond blossom touched by the sun, and looking down into two swimming
blue lakes where shyness and passion were contending--books easy
enough, in truth, to be read, I saw that she loved me, with the
unconventional ardour of her nature.
It was a pleasant discovery, if its abruptness was embarrassing, for
she was a maid in a thousand; and half ashamed and half laughing I let
her escalade me, throwing now and then a rueful look at the Secret of
the Gods, and all that priceless knowledge treated so unworthily.
What else could I do? Besides, I loved her myself! And if there was a
momentary chagrin at having yonder golden knowledge put off by this
lovely interruption, yet I was flesh and blood, the gods could
wait--they had to wait long and often before, and when this sweet
interpreter was comforted we would have another try. So it happened I
took 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, my
mind revolving between wonder and admiration of the neglected knowledge
all about, and the stirrings of a new love, while Heru herself, lapsed
again into Martian calm, lay half sleeping on my shoulder, but
presently, 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 this
lordly litter, I can think of nothing else." Again I bid her turn the
pages, noting as she did so how each chapter was headed by the coloured
configuration of a world. Page by page we turned of crackling
parchment, until by chance, at the top of one, my eye caught a coloured
round I could not fail to recognise--'twas the spinning button on the
blue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday I inhabited. "Read
here," I cried, clapping my finger upon the page midway down, where
there were some signs looking like Egyptian writing. "Says this quaint
dabbler 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 went
awandering till at a spot of knotted signs they stopped. "Why, here is
something about thy Isis," exclaimed Heru, as though amused at my
perspicuity. "Here, halfway down this chapter of earth-history, it
says," and putting one pink knee across the other to better prop the
book she read:
"And the priests of Thebes were gone; the sand stood untrampled on the
temple steps a thousand years; the wild bees sang the song of
desolation in the ears of Isis; the wild cats littered in the stony lap
of Ammon; ay, another thousand years went by, and earth was tilled of
unseen hands and sown with yellow grain from Paradise, and the thin
veil that separates the known from the unknown was rent, and men walked
to and fro."
"Go on," I said.
"Nay," laughed the other, "the little mice in their eagerness have been
before you--see, all this corner is gnawed away."
"Read on again," I said, "where the page is whole; those sips of
knowledge you have given make me thirsty for more. There, begin where
this blazonry of initialed red and gold looks so like the carpet spread
by 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, half
wondering as she gazed on those magic letters, let her eyes run down
the page, then began:
"And it was the Beginning, and in the centre void presently there came
a nucleus of light: and the light brightened in the grey primeval
morning and became definite and articulate. And from the midst of that
natal splendour, behind which was the Unknowable, the life came
hitherward; from the midst of that nucleus undescribed, undescribable,
there issued presently the primeval sigh that breathed the breath of
life into all things. And that sigh thrilled through the empty spaces
of the illimitable: it breathed the breath of promise over the frozen
hills of the outside planets where the night-frost had lasted without
beginning: and the waters of ten thousand nameless oceans, girding
nameless planets, were stirred, trembling into their depth. It crossed
the illimitable spaces where the herding aerolites swirl forever
through space in the wake of careering world, and all their whistling
wings answered to it. It reverberated through the grey wastes of
vacuity, and crossed the dark oceans of the Outside, even to the black
shores of the eternal night beyond.
"And hardly had echo of that breath died away in the hollow of the
heavens and the empty wombs of a million barren worlds, when the light
brightened again, and drawing in upon itself became definite and took
form, and therefrom, at the moment of primitive conception, there
came--"
And just then, as she had read so far as that, when all my faculties
were aching to know what came next--whether this were but the idle
scribbling of a vacuous fool, or something else--there rose the sound
of soft flutes and tinkling bells in the corridors, as seneschals
wandered piping round the palace to call folk to meals, a smell of
roast meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the curtains
between the halls, and--
"Dinner!" shouted my sweet Martian, slapping the covers of The Secret
of the Gods together and pushing the stately tome headlong from the
table. "Dinner! 'Tis worth a hundred thousand planets to the hungry!"
Nothing I could say would keep her, and, scarcely knowing whether to
laugh or to be angry at so unseemly an interruption, but both being
purposeless I dug my hands into my pockets, and somewhat sulkily
refusing Heru's invitation to luncheon in the corridor (Navy rations
had not fitted my stomach for these constant debauches of gossamer
food), strolled into the town again in no very pleasant frame of mind.