""Slaves," no; how should I know it?"
"I thought you must understand a thing so fundamental, and it was that thought which made your questions seem unkind. But if indeed you have come so far as not to understand even this, then let me tell you once we of this garb were women--priestesses of the immaculate conceptions of humanity; guardians of those great hopes and longings which die so easily. And because we forgot our high station and took to aping another s.e.x the G.o.ds deserted and men despised us, giving us, in the fierceness of their contempt, what we asked for. We are the slave ants of the nest, the work-bees of the hive, come, in truth, of those here who still be men and women of a sort, but toilers only; unknown in love, unregretted in death--those who dangle all children but their own--slaves cursed with the accomplishment of their own ambition."
There was no doubt poor An believed what she said, for her att.i.tude was one of extreme dejection while she spoke, and to cheer her I laughed.
"Oh! come, it can"t be as bad as that. Surely sometimes some of you win back to womanhood? You yourself do not look so far gone but what some deed of abnegation, some strong love if you could but conceive it would set you right again. Surely you of the primrose robes can sometimes love?"
Whereat unwittingly I troubled the waters in the placid soul of that outcast Martian! I cannot exactly describe how it was, but she bent her head silently for a moment or two, and then, with a sigh, lifting her eyes suddenly to mine, said quietly, "Yes, sometimes; sometimes--but very seldom," while for an instant across her face there flashed the summer lightning of a new hope, a single transient glance of wistful, timid entreaty; of wonder and delight that dared not even yet acknowledge itself.
Then it was my turn to sit silent, and the pause was so awkward that in a minute, to break it, I exclaimed--
"Let"s drop personalities, old chap--I mean my dear Miss An. Tell me something about your people, and let us begin properly at the top: have you got a king, for instance?"
To this the girl, pulling herself out of the pleasant slough of her listlessness, and falling into my vein, answered--
"Both yes and no, sir traveller from afar--no chiefly, and yet perhaps yes. If it were no then it were so, and if yes then Hath were our king."
"A mild king I should judge by your uncertainty. In the place where I came from kings press their individualities somewhat more clearly on their subjects" minds. Is Hath here in the city? Does he come to your feasts today?"
An nodded. Hath was on the river, he had been to see the sunrise; even now she thought the laughter and singing down behind the bend might be the king"s barge coming up citywards. "He will not be late," said my companion, "because the marriage-feast is set for tomorrow in the palace."
I became interested. Kings, palaces, marriage-feasts--why, here was something substantial to go upon; after all these gauzy folk might turn out good fellows, jolly comrades to sojourn amongst--and marriage-feasts reminded me again I was hungry.
"Who is it," I asked, with more interest in my tone, "who gets married?--is it your ambiguous king himself?"
Whereat An"s purple eyes broadened with wonder: then as though she would not be uncivil she checked herself, and answered with smothered pity for my ignorance, "Not only Hath himself, but every one, stranger, they are all married tomorrow; you would not have them married one at a time, would you?"--this with inexpressible derision.
I said, with humility, something like that happened in the place I came from, asking her how it chanced the convenience of so many came to one climax at the same moment. "Surely, An, this is a marvel of arrangement. Where I dwelt wooings would sometimes be long or sometimes short, and all maids were not complacent by such universal agreement."
The girl was clearly perplexed. She stared at me a s.p.a.ce, then said, "What have wooings long or short to do with weddings? You talk as if you did your wooing first and then came to marriage--we get married first and woo afterwards!"
""Tis not a bad idea, and I can see it might lend an ease and certainty to the pastime which our method lacks. But if the woman is got first and sued subsequently, who brings you together? Who sees to the essential preliminaries of a.s.sortment?"
An, looking at my shoes as though she speculated on the remoteness of the journey I had come if it were measured by my ignorance, replied, "The urn, stranger, the urn does that--what else? How it may be in that out-fashioned region you have come from I cannot tell, but here--"tis so commonplace I should have thought you must have known it--we put each new year the names of all womenkind into an urn and the men draw for them, each town, each village by itself, and those they draw are theirs; is it conceivable your race has other methods?"
I told her it was so--we picked and chose for ourselves, beseeching the damsels, fighting for them, and holding the sun of romance was at its setting just where the Martians held it to rise. Whereat An burst out laughing--a clear, ringing laugh that set all the light-hearted folk in the nearest boats laughing in sympathy. But when the grotesqueness of the idea had somewhat worn off, she turned grave and asked me if such a fancy did not lead to spite, envy, and bickerings. "Why, it seems to me," she said, shaking her curly head, "such a plan might fire cities, desolate plains, and empty palaces--"
"Such things have been."
"Ah! our way is much the better. See!" quoth that gentle philosopher.
""Here," one of our women would say, "am I to-day, unwed, as free of thought as yonder bird chasing the catkin down; tomorrow I shall be married, with a whole summer to make love in, relieved at one bound of all those uncertainties you acknowledge to, with nothing to do but lie about on sunny banks with him whom chance sends me, come to the goal of love without any travelling to get there." Why, you must acknowledge this is the perfection of ease."
"But supposing," I said, "chance dealt unkindly to you from your nuptial urn, supposing the man was not to your liking, or another coveted him?" To which An answered, with some shrewdness--
"In the first case we should do what we might, being no worse off than those in your land who had played ill providence to themselves. In the second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing, or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to barter and change a little."
All this was strange enough. I could not but laugh, while An laughed at the lightest invitation, and thus chatting and deriding each other"s social arrangements we floated idly townwards and presently came out into the main waterway perhaps a mile wide and flowing rapidly, as streams will on the threshold of the spring, with brash or waste of distant beaches riding down it, and every now and then a broken branch or tree-stem glancing through waves whose crests a fresh wind lifted and sowed in golden showers in the intervening furrows. The Martians seemed expert upon the water, steering nimbly between these floating dangers when they met them, but for the most part hugging the sh.o.r.e where a more placid stream better suited their fancies, and for a time all went well.
An, as we went along, was telling me more of her strange country, pointing out birds or flowers and naming them to me. "Now that," she said, pointing to a small grey owl who sat reflective on a floating log we were approaching--"that is a bird of omen; cover your face and look away, for it is not well to watch it."
Whereat I laughed. "Oh!" I answered, "so those ancient follies have come as far as this, have they? But it is no bird grey or black or white that can frighten folk where I come from; see, I will ruffle his philosophy for him," and suiting the action to the words I lifted a pebble that happened to lie at the bottom of the boat and flung it at that creature with the melancholy eyes. Away went the owl, dipping his wings into the water at every stroke, and as he went wailing out a ghostly cry, which even amongst sunshine and glitter made one"s flesh creep.
An shook her head. "You should not have done that," she said; "our dead whom we send down over the falls come back in the body of yonder little bird. But he has gone now," she added, with relief; "see, he settles far up stream upon the point of yonder rotten bough; I would not disturb him again if I were you--"
Whatever more An would have said was lost, for amidst a sound of flutes and singing round the bend of the river below came a crowd of boats decked with flowers and garlands, all cl.u.s.tering round a barge barely able to move, so thick those lesser skiffs pressed upon it. So close those wherries hung about that the garlanded rowers who sat at the oars could scarcely pull, but, here as everywhere, it was the same good temper, the same carelessness of order, as like a flowery island in the dancing blue water the motley fleet came up.
I steered our skiff a s.p.a.ce out from the bank to get a better view, while An clapped her hands together and laughed. "It is Hath--he himself and those of the palace with him. Steer a little nearer still, friend--so! between yon floating rubbish flats, for those with Hath are good to look at."
Nothing loth I made out into mid-stream to see that strange prince go by, little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which was a ma.s.s of flowers, not bunched together as they would have been with us, but so cunningly arranged that they rose from the footstool to the pinnacle in a rhythm of colour, a poem in bud and petals the like of which for harmonious beauty I could not have imagined possible. And in this fairy den was a thin, gaunt young man, dressed in some sort of black stuff so nondescript that it amounted to little more than a shadow. I took it for granted that a substance of bone and muscle was covered by that gloomy suit, but it was the face above that alone riveted my gaze and made me return the stare he gave me as we came up with redoubled interest. It was not an unhandsome face, but ashy grey in colour and amongst the insipid countenances of the Martians about him marvellously thoughtful. I do not know whether those who had killed themselves by learning ever leave ghosts behind, but if so this was the very ideal for such a one. At his feet I noticed, when I unhooked my eyes from his at last, sat a girl in a loose coral pink gown who was his very antipode. Princess Heru, for so she was called, was resting one arm upon his knee at our approach and pulling a blue convolvulus bud to pieces--a charming picture of dainty idleness. Anything so soft, so silken as that little lady was never seen before. Who am I, a poor quarter-deck loafer, that I should attempt to describe what poet and painter alike would have failed to realise? I know, of course, your stock descriptives: the melting eye, the coral lip, the peachy cheek, the raven tress; but these were coined for mortal woman--and this was not one of them. I will not attempt to describe the glorious tenderness of those eyes she turned upon me presently; the glowing radiance of her skin; the infinite grace of every action; the incredible soul-searching harmony of her voice, when later on I heard it--you must gather something of these things as I go--suffice it to say that when I saw her there for the first time in the plenitude of her beauty I fell desperately, wildly in love with her.
Meanwhile, even the most infatuated of mortals cannot stare for ever without saying something. The grating of our prow against the garlanded side of the royal barge roused me from my reverie, and nodding to An, to imply I would be back presently, I lightly jumped on to Hath"s vessel, and, with the a.s.surance of a free and independent American voter, approached that individual, holding out my palm, and saying as I did so,
"Shake hands, Mr. President!"
The prince came forward at my bidding and extending his hand for mine.
He bowed slow and sedately, in that peculiar way the Martians have, a ripple of gratified civility pa.s.sing up his flesh; lower and lower he bowed, until his face was over our clasped hands, and then, with simple courtesy, he kissed my finger-tips! This was somewhat embarra.s.sing. It was not like the procedure followed in Courts nearer to Washington than this one, as far as my reading went, and, withdrawing my fingers hastily, I turned to the princess, who had risen, and was eyeing her somewhat awkwardly, the while wondering what kind of salutation would be suitable in her case when a startling incident happened. The river, as said, was full of floating rubbish brought down from some far-away uplands by a spring freshet while the royal convoy was making slow progress upstream and thus met it all bow on. Some of this stuff was heavy timber, and when a sudden warning cry went up from the leading boats it did not take my sailor instinct long to guess what was amiss.
Those in front shot side to side, those behind tried to drop back as, bearing straight down on the royal barge, there came a log of black wood twenty feet long and as thick as the mainmast of an old three-decker.
Hath"s boat could no more escape than if it had been planted on a rocky pedestal, garlands and curtains trailing in the water hung so heavy on it. The gilded paddles of the slender rowers were so feeble--they had but made a half-turn from that great javelin"s road when down it came upon them, knocking the first few pretty oarsmen head over heels and crackling through their oars like a bull through dry maize stalks. I sprang forward, and s.n.a.t.c.hing a pole from a half-hearted slave, jammed the end into the head of the log and bore with all my weight upon it, diverting it a little, and thereby perhaps saving the ship herself, but not enough. As it flashed by a branch caught upon the trailing tapestry, hurling me to the deck, and tearing away with it all that finery. Then the great spar, tossing half its dripping length into the air, went plunging downstream with shreds of silk and flowers trailing from it, and white water bubbling in its rear.
When I scrambled to my feet all was ludicrous confusion on board. Hath still stood by his throne--an island in a sea of disorder--staring at me; all else was chaos. The rowers and courtiers were kicking and wallowing in the "waist" of the ship like fish newly shot out of a trawl net, but the princess was gone. Where was she? I brushed the spray from my eyes, and stared overboard. She was not in the bubbling blue water alongside. Then I glanced aft to where the log, now fifteen yards away, was splashing through the sunshine, and, as I looked, a fair arm came up from underneath and white fingers clutched convulsively at the sky. What man could need more? Down the barge I rushed, and dropping only my swordbelt, leapt in to her rescue. The gentle Martians were too numb to raise a hand in help; but it was not necessary. I had the tide with me, and gained at every stroke.
Meanwhile that accursed tree, with poor Heru"s skirts caught on a branch, was drowning her at its leisure; lifting her up as it rose upon the crests, a fair, helpless bundle, and then sousing her in its fall into the nether water, where I could see her gleam now and again like pink coral.
I redoubled my efforts and got alongside, clutching the rind of that old stump, and swimming and scrambling, at last was within reach of the princess. Thereon the log lifted her playfully to my arms, and when I had laid hold came down, a crushing weight, and forced us far into the clammy bosom of Martian sea. Again we came up, coughing and choking--I tugging furiously at that tangled raiment, and the lady, a mere lump of sweetness in my other arm--then down again with that log upon me and all the noises of Eblis in my ears. Up and down we went, over and over, till strength was spent and my ribs seemed breaking; then, with a last desperate effort, I got a knee against the stem, and by sheer strength freed my princess--the spiteful timber made a last ugly thrust at us as it rolled away--and we were free!
I turned upon my back, and, sure of rescue now, took the lady"s head upon my chest, holding her sweet, white fists in mine the while, and, floating, waited for help.
It came only too quickly. The gallant Martians, when they saw the princess saved, came swiftly down upon us. Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh--like cries of admiration and surprise, the rattle of spray on the canoe sides mingled with the splash of oars, the flitting shadows of their prows were all about us, and in less time than it takes to write we were hauled aboard, revived, and taken to Hath"s barge. Again the prince"s lips were on my fingertips; again the flutes and music struck up; and as I squeezed the water out of my hair, and tried to keep my eyes off the outline of Heru, whose loveliness shone through her damp, clinging, pink robe, as if that robe were but a gauzy fancy, I vaguely heard Hath saying wondrous things of my gallantry, and, what was more to the purpose, asking me to come with him and stay that night at the palace.
CHAPTER IV
They lodged me like a prince in a tributary country that first night. I was tired. "Twas a stiff stage I had come the day before, and they gave me a couch whose ethereal softness seemed to close like the wings of a bird as I plunged at its touch into fathomless slumbers. But the next day had hardly broken when I was awake, and, stretching my limbs upon the piled silk of a legless bed upon the floor, found myself in a great chamber with a purple tapestry across the entrance, and a square arch leading to a flat terrace outside.
It was a glorious daybreak, making my heart light within me, the air like new milk, and the colours of the sunrise lay purple and yellow in bars across my room. I yawned and stretched, then rising, wrapped a silken quilt about me and went out into the flat terrace top, wherefrom all the city could be seen stretched in an ivory and emerald patchwork, with open, blue water on one side, and the Martian plain trending away in illimitable distance upon the other.
Directly underneath in the great square at the bottom of Hath"s palace steps were gathered a concourse of people, brilliant in many-coloured dresses. They were sitting or lying about just as they might for all I knew have done through the warm night, without much order, save that where the black streaks of inlaid stone marked a carriageway across the square none were stationed. While I wondered what would bring so many together thus early, there came a sound of flutes--for these people can do nothing without piping like finches in a thicket in May--and from the storehouses half-way over to the harbour there streamed a line of carts piled high with provender. Down came the teams attended by their slaves, circling and wheeling into the open place, and as they pa.s.sed each group those lazy, lolling beggars crowded round and took the dole they were too thriftless to earn themselves. It was strange to see how listless they were about the meal, even though Providence itself put it into their hands; to note how the yellow-girted slaves scudded amongst them, serving out the loaves, themselves had grown, harvested, and baked; slipping from group to group, rousing, exhorting, administering to a helpless throng that took their efforts without thought or thanks.
I stood there a long time, one foot upon the coping and my chin upon my hand, noting the beauty of the ruined town and wondering how such a feeble race as that which lay about, breakfasting in the limpid sunshine, could have come by a city like this, or kept even the ruins of its walls and buildings from the covetousness of others, until presently there was a rustle of primrose garments and my friend of the day before stood by me.
"Are you rested, traveller?" she questioned in that pretty voice of hers.
"Rested ambrosially, An."
"It is well; I will tell the Government and it will come up to wash and dress you, afterwards giving you breakfast."
"For the breakfast, damsel, I shall be grateful, but as for the washing and dressing I will defend myself to the last gasp sooner than submit to such administration."