"What do you know of love?" I asked.
She shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Almost nothing, except of the lesser
loves--the love of children, the squirrels in the forest."
"Of parents," I suggested.
"No," said Dream decisively. "You cannot love those whom you do not
know."
"But how does it happen that you do not know your parents?"
"How should I? Sometimes for two years, sometimes for three--as the gods
decide--the child remains with its parents. After that it is taken away
from its parents and brought up by the gods. That is the law."
"But these women who have their children taken away from them--how do
they bear it?"
"Sometimes they are so sad that they go away into the forest and eat the
nightshade and die. More often they weep for a long time and then they
forget. When a thing is the law and it cannot be altered, there are very
few who become angry or grieved about it. What would be the use? The
gods are very careful about the children, you know."
"In what way careful?"
"If a child is weak, sickly, or misshapen, it is killed instantly. If it
is unable to learn how to do any work it is killed. The strong which
remain are well treated. For some years they do little work, they are
well fed, they are healthy and happy."
I thought of the gangs of magnificently built men that I had seen at
work in the fields. I looked at the strong and beautiful girl beside me.
The drastic methods of the lords of Thule had at least brought about one
thing--the highest possible physical condition of the race.
"Tell me," I said, "do your gods interfere also in the matter of
marriage?"
She gazed at me with her sincere and wondering eyes. "What is marriage?"
she said, in much the same tone as she had inquired what a boat was.
I told her something of the marriage ceremonies existing in my own
country, and she was very much amused.
"But why?" she asked; "that is a very great to-do about very little. If
a man loves a woman and the woman also loves the man, what more is there
to say? Why write down things in books and call many people to a feast?"
"Dream," I said, "you are an immoral heathen."
"Those also are words that I do not know. You will tell me about them."
I did not tell her about them. I had already been rather struck by the
curious simplicity of her own speech. Her phrases were at times
biblical, though she knew nothing of any religion, and could not have
read a bible if she had possessed one.
"And when, as you say, a man and woman love one another, is it customary
with you for them to live together for the rest of their lives?"
Dream yawned. I was wearying her.
"It is so strange," she said, "to have to tell you the things that
everybody knows. Also what you ask is so funny. Of course people who
love live together. Is not that right?"
I hardly knew what to tell her. She had the innocence of the first
garden. After all it may be that the notions of right and wrong which
are very properly accepted in my own country are not to be imposed upon
every people in every form of civilisation. I did not wish to judge her.
I therefore changed the subject.
"This evening, Dream, I want you to take me to that town where you all
live. I am going to save you and take you away from this island. To do
that I must make a boat or a great raft. I must have men to help me."
"I will take you there if you wish, but if I do I shall die immediately.
Every day and every night the overseeing gods go up and down there. It
is well known that I left my work at the loom, and that I am to die. The
gods have said I am to die, and what they say always happens. Any one of
them who saw me in the town would point at me with his death-rod and I
should fall. Still, no one has ever escaped, and as I must die anyhow, I
will take you to the town if this gives you pleasure."
I could not of course hear of this. My first step to secure her safety
could not reasonably be a step which would ensure her death. I asked
her, however, how these overseeing gods--the police of the town, as I
figured it--would recognise her.
"By the pictures," she said. "They have pictures of every one of us. My
picture is put up throughout the town on the walls of houses."
"I see," I said. "If I go to the town at all I will go alone. Shall I be
in any danger from your people?"
"None. You wear the grey garments. True, you do not walk like a god, and
you suffer from short arms, as I do. But would you be safe from the gods
themselves?"
"Yes," I said. "I have something that was given to me to show them. It
is a sign that they are not to injure me."
"Injure?" she echoed. "The gods injure nobody. They kill when it is
necessary, but they do not injure. If one has a crooked spine, or if one
falls sick, or if one has lived too long, or if one refuses obedience,
as I have done, then of course they must die. It is the law. The gods
themselves have told us that in the old days our forefathers were beaten
or shut up in prisons or their goods were taken away from them. This was
called punishment. We are free from all that. We have food and shelter,
we have light and warmth, we have times of work and times of play. No
one punishes us. That is why it is our duty to love the gods."
"Who taught you to say that?"
"They taught it me themselves. It is one of the first things that a
child learns. But I grow weary of sitting here and telling you the
things that everybody knows. Will you come with me through the forest
and down to the shore where the caves are where I sleep?"
I assented. She rose up and draped her garment anew about her. As we
walked side by side I asked her if she was not afraid of sleeping in the
caves. Surely there first of all the gods would go to look for her.
"No," she said. "Never. No god has ever been inside those caves since
the creature came out of the sea and lived there."
"What creature?"
"How should I know? It was more than fifty years ago, and none of us
live for fifty years. But I have heard the story as it is told by my
people. The creature that came out of the sea was something like a
serpent, but larger than all serpents. Those who looked into its eyes
died of horror. Two of the gods died. It went away into the caves, and
no one has ever seen it again. I suppose it still lives there waiting
for something. But it is far away in the very heart of the caves where I
never go. If I heard it moving I should awake at once, for I sleep but
lightly, and so I should save myself. If I could remain always in the
caves I need have no fear of the gods, but one must have the sun, and
water to swim in, and food to eat. Is that not so?"
I agreed with her. "But," I said, "in the forest you are in constant
danger."
"Only on calm days. When the wind blows the gods will not go into the
forest. That is well known, but I do not know what the reason is."
I knew perfectly well. I had already learned their fear of something
falling on them. Over-civilisation had broken up their nerves and
rendered them flaccid and spiritless. They had no reason to fear the
wild cattle with the death-rod in their hands. They had no reason to
fear the docile race that they had tamed in ignorance to serve them. But
the limb of a tree might fall, or a cave might be haunted. I grew to
hate these first-class beings, as they called themselves.
She began now to ask me questions about the land from which I had come,
and all that I told her was subjected to her barbarian criticism. She
was perfectly shocked at hearing of hospitals, and regarded the whole of
the medical fraternity as impious. "If those who are weak and sickly are
patched up and made to live a little longer, is there not a danger that
they will have children who will also be weak and sickly, and so much
more trouble be made? We see that this is so with the beasts that we
rear, and the plants that we cultivate. Is it not so with men also?"
I had to admit that it was. But I pointed out to her that in my country
we regarded many other things besides physical perfection.
"So I have already observed," she said, with almost embarrassing
frankness. "Are the women of your country beautiful?"
"Some of them are very beautiful. Some, I fear, are not beautiful at
all."
"Then why do they live? It must be very unpleasant. Are any of them more
beautiful than I am?"
"I have never seen anyone, Dream, as beautiful as you are."
"Say that again," she said, "it makes a pleasing sound."
I did not say it again. I felt my responsibilities towards this
beautiful but wholly barbarous creature. It seemed to me my duty at the
very first to purge her mind of her superstitions about that deformed,
intelligent, and learned section of humanity in whose divine character
she had been taught to believe.
"If your masters are indeed gods, as you say, why did they not destroy
the creature from the sea?"
"Two of them went out to kill it, but they saw its eyes and horror
overcame them so that they died. After that they saw that this was a
very evil creature, and in their wisdom they left it alone."
"They must be poor creatures to be so easily frightened to death. In my
country we could not believe in gods that ever die. Yet the very first
of your masters that I saw when I reached this island has since died and
his body has been burned."
"His body--yes. But he himself still lives. I was taught these things by
the gods when I was a child, and it is wrong of you to try and make me
think otherwise."
I began to realise the tremendous strength of early impression. I could
call to mind that I had seen evidence enough of it before ever I came to
Thule. It seemed almost impossible for me--one man--to fight against
this crafty and complex organisation of tyranny and slavery that was
here blindly accepted. I turned to another of her terrors--her terror of
the sea.
"Do you swim well?" I asked her.
She laughed. "One swims as one walks or runs. Why not? You ask such
strange things."
"Very well then," I said, "you shall swim in the sea."
"No. The sea is the evil water. If one had only that water to drink, one
would die. Is that not so?"
"It is, but----"
"Very well then. We are rightly taught not to touch the sea. You speak
to me sometimes very much as if you were a god, and you boast of
freedom, and you have come all the way from a far-off country; but you
yourself would not dare to enter the sea."
It was my turn to laugh. "I am going to swim in it this evening," I
said.
"I implore you not to do it," said Dream.
"I shall come to no harm."
"You will most certainly die."
"You will see that I shall not."
"It would be a pity, because I myself perhaps may escape death yet for a
few days longer, and I might begin to love you."
We had now reached the entrance to the caves.