"They manage these things better in Meleager," I half muttered to myself, whilst Dr Wayne continued to expatiate to me on the bellicose attitude of the Hohenzollerns, on the magnificent patriotism of the French politicians, of the foresight and skill displayed by our own ministers of state, and of the lofty altruism of the Tsar. I listened, but without the attention that the exceptional nature of the case seemed to demand. Somehow it merely appeared to me that the mundane kaleidoscope had only sustained another vigorous revolution, and that the scarlet of human riot and unrest was in reality no more predominant now than in the previous arrangement of its component colours. And yet I should be doing myself an injustice were I to speak of my lack of interest concerning this stupendous piece of news; although at the same time I found myself surveying this newest phase of the world's progress with the cold aloofness of an external critic from some distant planet—which attitude after all exactly fitted my case. Thus I fell once more into a reverie on therelative values of human happiness and human progress, that theme whereon I had so often argued with my councillors in my deserted palace at Tamarida.
I spent a restful night lulled by the throbbing of the engines and the swirling of the waters displaced by our keel. The good doctor slept on the cabin sofa opposite my berth, and once or twice rose in the night hours to attend to my wants. On the following morning I had completely recovered, and news to this effect having been bruited throughout the ship, various uninvited visitors came to inspect the castaway in Dr Wayne's cabin. At my urgent entreaty I was spared a good many of these intrusions, but my kind protector could not well exclude the baboon-faced captain, whose empurpled visage framed in masses of ochre hair thrust itself more than once through the doorway and inquired in rasping accents after my welfare. The bibulous ship's surgeon too invaded my retreat, and expressed a desire to astonish my stomach with special concoctions of his own mixing. Good Dr Wayne did all that was possible to save me from these well-meaning persons, and finally he closed the cabin door on the pretence of my exhaustion. Left thus in peace, my companion began to address me seriously in regard to certain matters. I had so far refrained from giving the name I bore on earth, and was firmly resolved not to betray it, nor could any attempt draw the required information from me. Acknowledging his failure, the Doctor with asigh of resignation desisted to apply, at the same time begging me to mention some name, a fictitious one if I were so minded, for the benefit of the authorities on landing. The suggestion seemed reasonable enough, and after some further parley I agreed to accept temporarily the absurd name of Theodore King, concerning which Dr Wayne made some jocose observations. In the name then of Theodore King, man rescued at sea in latitude 38° by longitude 18° or thereabouts, was my official report endorsed, and in this nominal disguise I was eventually disembarked at Liverpool stage.
But for the all-pervading sensation caused by the recent declaration of war and the many ramifying minor excitements of the moment, I much doubt whether this ingenious attempt at self-concealment would have succeeded so easily. But for this crucial event I might easily have become a centre of inquisitive interest that would have caused great inconvenience and delay; as it so fell, however, everybody on board theOrissawas far too engrossed with the supreme agitation of the moment to pay much attention to the eccentric, not to say insane, individual who had been picked up from a collapsed aeroplane off the coast of Portugal.
With special insistence and appeal and with arguments whose soundness I was forced to admit, I had even allowed Dr Wayne to clip my super-abundant locks, and had likewise consented to clothe myself in a tolerable suit of blue serge, which hehad begged from a good-natured passenger of unusual height. Thus clad and groomed, I managed to leave the boat in company with my careful protector without exciting overmuch curiosity either from my fellow-travellers of theOrissaor from the crowd on the landing-stage. After a certain amount of staring and a good many inquiries, which Dr Wayne skilfully parried, I found myself in a cab loaded with the Doctor's luggage jolting through the squalid streets of Liverpool on our way to a hotel. Here we spent a few hours in a private room, surrounded by masses of newspapers which my companion set to study with intense eagerness.
And here I shall digress a little in order to confront a real difficulty of understanding which must have already struck the reader. How evolved it that a complete stranger like Dr Charles Wayne allowed himself to be so burdened with such an incubus as myself? That is a query, I admit, which none save Dr Wayne is competent to answer, but I suspect even he can hardly solve the difficulty satisfactorily. When he comes to read these pages in due course, he may conceivably be able to say, "It was this," or "It was that, which not only aroused my interest in this mysterious being but also impelled me to serve and obey him henceforward." Yet even then I think he will fail to analyse truthfully the different motives which induced him thus to surrender his own freedom of action and to place himself without a murmur at my disposal. It mayhave been my piteous condition of solitude; it may have been my almost unearthly beauty of form and face; it may have been my uncanny misfortune out in mid-ocean; it may have been my quiet arrogance and originality of demeanour; it may have been his professional curiosity in a prospective patient;—it may have been one, or some, or all, or none of these things which contributed to his subservience. I cannot tell, and I feel Dr Wayne may be no wiser in the matter than myself. Sometimes I imagine that some faint exhalation of the supernatural must cling around my person, for it does not seem impossible to me that after adventures such as mine a delicate psychical fragrance (if I may so dare to describe that which is in reality indescribable) may permeate my bodily husk. Such an aroma, though but dimly comprehended, might admittedly prove of irresistible attraction to that rare spiritual type of humanity to which I strongly hold Dr Wayne to belong in spite of his homely exterior. I trust he will pardon the apparent impertinence of this statement, since it proceeds from the sole being who has been able to discover and appreciate the inherent sweetness and strength of his soul within. And for my own part I am often haunted by the notion, which I have scarcely the temerity to express in writing, that it was not the mere mundane accident of an accident that led Dr Wayne to embark on theOrissawhere later on he was brought into such close contact with myself in my hour of need.
VII
Weleft Liverpool in the late hours of a brilliant August afternoon on our way to London. Throughout the journey southward I lay back dreamily in my seat, watching each receding vista and appreciating all with the dual interest of recollection and novelty. I preferred to recline thus in silence, and my companion, whose frequent inquisitions of my face in no wise disturbed me, seemed disinclined to resent my mood. Arrived at Euston we proceeded to a certain hotel on the Embankment which perpetuates a historic name and whose latter-day luxury is tempered by the near presence of a mouldy but modernised chapel, that can still claim to be a royal appanage. Dr Wayne had at first demurred to my choice of this particular hostelry, which is decidedly not celebrated for the moderation of its bills; but as in all else his opposition soon relaxed before my repeated desire. Accordingly it was I who engaged what I deemed a convenient and adequate suite of rooms, wherein we installed ourselves without further ado. My new surroundings in many ways attracted me, and we had not been an hour in the hotel before I was ensconced in a corner of the exiguous balcony outside our windows, lost in contemplation of the noble tawny floodswirling seaward through lines of sparkling lamps. Before retiring to sleep, however, I deemed it only fair to allay the evident apprehensions of Dr Wayne concerning expense. Accordingly I produced and untied my small leather wallet, emptying its shower of flashing jewels on to a table beneath a powerful electric lamp. The Doctor, who owned some superficial acquaintance with the science of metallurgy, was amazed at this sudden display of concentrated wealth, and henceforward appeared fully reconciled to our present mode of life.
[I may add here also that in the course of the next few days my friend carried a portion of these superb gems to a diamond merchant in the city who was personally known to him. This London dealer, so Dr Wayne informed me, could not repress his admiration of these glittering trifles, which, in spite of the unfavourable condition of the market induced by the war, he was soon able to dispose of, presumably with a handsome commission for his services. Be that as it may, a sum of eight hundred pounds was thus realised, and this money I insisted on Dr Wayne, to his evident reluctance, placing to his credit at his own bank. "Point d'argent; point de Londres"; at any rate I had solved for the nonce any question of financial difficulties.]
My impressions of London were so confused in this early stage of the great European War that I see little gain in attempting to crystallise my feelings into any sort of description. Indeed, I found it well-nighimpossible to attune my own thoughts to the popular attitude of the moment; but then I never ceased to remind myself that of necessity I was detached from a purely patriotic outlook owing to my long residence in Meleager with its consequent effects on a plastic mind that had definitely grown to regard the Earth and all therein as things left behind for evermore. The excited talk and scandal of the hotel corridors, the sheaves of redundant telegrams affixed from time to time on the public screens, the yells of the newsvendors, the headlines of the popular journals announcing English, French, Russian, Belgian and Servian victories in endless succession; thebrouhahaof the streets and the gossip of the boudoir, all alike left me cold and phlegmatic. Dr Wayne used to read aloud to me daily from half-a-dozen papers, for I had signally failed to reacquire my long-suspended love of reading; but I was unable to grasp more than the patent fact that the fate of Paris was hanging in the balance:—Paris, the city of light and leadership; Paris the capital of Saint Louis, of Henry of Navarre, of Louis le Roi Soleil, of Napoleon Buonaparte; Paris, the erstwhile acme of my earthly ideals. Doubtless it was my own obliquity and rustiness of mind that caused this lamentable lack of comprehension of the situation as a whole, and prevented me from viewing it through those same rosy glasses of insular humour wherewith the bulk of my countrymen were regarding the trend of passing eventson the Continent. I knew myself to be at best an amphibian, with my body on Earth and my heart in Meleager, yet capable of a residence in either planet. I felt lost and lonely in this city of reek and confusion, whose inhabitants probably outnumbered the whole tale of my own forsaken people. After a week or so I ceased to find solace in wandering amid streets and churches and galleries, and spent more hours than ever in musing with my eyes directed towards the river, the shipping and the steeples that clove the hot blue August sky. Dr Wayne meanwhile was busied with many matters, such matters as would presumably engage the attention of a time-expired Indian public servant; and from my peculiar tincture of indifference I was equally resigned to his absence or his presence, provided only he did not desert me, of which contingency I had no fear whatsoever.
With the sudden salvation of Paris at a critical moment and the ensuing German retreat from the Marne, the cloud of foreboding was partially lifted from me, without however quickening any fresh growth of interest within. Yet I listened to Dr Wayne's daily budget of news, and comported myself with conventional intelligence on the rare occasions that I found myself brought into contact with the Doctor's friends, who apparently regarded me as an interesting case, a sort of God's fool, in Dr Wayne's charge, in which impression I was naturally averse to undeceive them, for such a view at present suited my comfort and convenience.
September was now well advanced, and I much doubt if ever I should have achieved the desire, still less the determination, to leave a place I felt too languid to dislike but for a critical incident which I was half-hoping, half-dreading to occur. One afternoon Dr Wayne entered my room in an excited state and with unwonted heat began to dilate on a curious adventure he had just experienced in the hotel itself. It seems that on his return he noticed in the vestibule of the hall two diminutive swarthy foreigners seated in the middle of a miscellaneous mass of rugs, shawls, laces, cushions, ornaments of brass and other objects, all of Oriental appearance, though the Doctor assured me of obvious British or German manufacture. Dr Wayne, who, as I have already hinted, was an enthusiastic patriot, became somewhat nettled on seeing all this trumpery displayed for sale during so serious an epoch, albeit several expensively dressed women were already hovering round the men and their wares, like moths attracted to some sugary compound. The vendors, who had graceful manners and spoke fluent though broken English, called themselves vaguely "Indians," which statement on Dr Wayne's searching questions they qualified by remarking they were loyal subjects of the Indian Empire. The Doctor's rising suspicions were by no means appeased by this explanation; but on finding that the hotel servants as well as the hovering females resented his method of cross-examination, and were inclined to champion theseEastern peddlers, he ultimately desisted and retreated upstairs to vent his tale into my ears. I listened to him with that polite aloofness which has grown to be a second habit of nature with me, at first with faint attention, but ere long as he proceeded with intense though concealed agitation. For the detailed description of the pair of merchants in the hall below promptly convinced me of the accuracy of my first impression—that these Indian peddlers were no other than envoys from Meleager who had traced their erring King hither.
I wonder if my reader has ever experienced Fear. And by Fear I do not mean mere fright, or terror, or alarm, or other mental spasms with which Fear is so often vulgarly confused. If he reads Mr Kipling's poems about Mowgli, the little hunter of the jungle, he will obtain some inkling of that mysterious emotion which is in reality man's tribute to a relentless destiny.
"Very softly down the glade runs a waiting watching shade,And the whisper spreads and widens far and near;And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now—He is Fear, O little Hunter, he is Fear!And thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against thy sideHammers: Fear, O little Hunter—this is Fear."
Yes, Fear in one aspect is a physical recognition of the existence and the approach of the Unknown; and its external symptoms are first of all an involuntary erection of the hair of the head, a sensationof intense heat in the scalp and a subsequent exudation of chill sweat over the body, which last offers some relief to the internal or psychical lesion caused by Fear. I endured it then, as I suddenly realised in the midst of Dr Wayne's half-humorous discourse that I was a fly caught in the web of Fate; a victim rotating on the wheel of destiny; an atom of humanity that was urgently required for the completion of some great cosmic design....
It passed; thank God, It passed; and moreover It left me stronger and wiser than before. Very likely those honest penetrating grey eyes of my companion detected my fleeting wave of anguish, but he only kept an eloquent silence; and when a few minutes later I expressed a wish to descend and interview these alleged Indian wanderers, he offered neither comment nor opposition.
On reaching the vestibule I found the two foreign traders conversing amiably with a youthful frock-coated manager, for the fashionable ladies had evacuated the hall in pursuit of the tea and the music which were being provided in a distant chamber. At my approach the Indians took no farther notice of me than by smiling blandly and by indicating the various articles spread at their feet. Meanwhile the supercilious young manager addressed me: "Your friend Dr Wayne seems to think we are encouraging spies or bad characters here; but so far as I can judge, these men are only Indian hucksters, and several of our ladies are very pleasedwith the bargains they have bought this afternoon. What do you make of them, sir?"
"I believe," said I slowly, envisaging the two Meleagrian nobles, envoys to our Earth disguised in the mean garments of Oriental mountebanks, "from their features and their dress these men hail from the Nicobar Islands, where I once held an official post."
And in the most natural and condescending manner I could command I straightway began to question the two smiling pseudo-merchants in Meleagrian.
"Are you here in order to kill me?"
To which sentence with a grin of pleased recognition and a sweeping obeisance the elder of the pair replied with downcast eyes:
"Far be such evil thoughts from us! We seek to entreat your Majesty's return to your sorrowing subjects in Meleager!"
"Aha!" cried I triumphantly in English to the admiring clerk; "theyareNicobarians!" (I might just as safely have styled them Baratarians so far as he was concerned!) "I thought I could not be mistaken."
And thus the serious farce continued to be enacted for some little time in the presence of an outsider, all blissfully ignorant of the fact that he was over-hearing a colloquy of prime importance between two ambassadors of another planet and their run-away king.
I need not add that I was successful in convincing the worthy manager of the genuine character andzealous loyalty of these two dwellers in one of the obscure outlying dependencies of our Indian Empire, so that he was in excellent temper when a sudden summons called him away to the telephone. His withdrawal enabled us to continue our conversation with greater ease, my interlocutors imploring me to reconsider my decision to remain on Earth. Not to prolong this narrative, I shall only add here that finally I consented to meet these envoys again after an interval of one month, by which date I hoped to arrive at a definite decision as to my future course of action. In any event, I pleaded for a breathing-space wherein to digest all the extraordinary adventures of the past few months. Finally, though not over-willingly, they consented to this respite, and then in token of our mutual pact we three simultaneously in accordance with the Meleagrian practice touched our breasts with all ten fingers, a gesture that implies a most solemn oath in cases where the more elaborate ritual is undesirable or difficult to effect.
My last question was directed to their possible difficulty in tracing my whereabouts, for having formed no plans I could not therefore inform them of my movements. But such an objection evidently offered no difficulties to the Meleagrians who only smiled and straightway began to proffer me certain of their goods with a noisy plausibility that formed a perfect imitation of the methods of that humble class whose functions and personality they had usurped. I at once set to chaffer with affectedeagerness, with the result that a returning queue of bedizened leaders of fashion, the majority of them with cigarettes in their mouths, entered the hall in time to observe a tall, fair and distinguished-looking gentleman (obviously an Englishman) finally decide to purchase for three guineas a long, soft chuddah shawl which its vendor was folding and twirling before his eyes with easy grace. Having secured my shawl with the requisite cash, the second trader now sidled towards me holding in both his slender brown hands an ornamental casket which he pressed upon me with many encomiums in quaint broken English. A mere flicker of light in the tail of his eye afforded me the necessary hint to accept the box, for which I paid a pound or so. The Indian then wrapped my bargain with much ceremony in blue crinkled paper and carefully deposited it in my hands, wherein it lay heavy as lead. There followed a casual nod on my part, met by elegant salaams to the wealthy sahib, and the next moment I was ascending the staircase with my shawl and box, pursued by the inquiring glances of the astonished ring of ladies.
On gaining my bedroom I cautiously unlocked the casket, which I found was filled to overflowing with English sovereigns and bank-notes. I did not happen to need them, but at least I was touched by the agreeable thought that the donors did not desire their king to suffer the straits of penury in the coming interval of waiting.
VIII
I foundDr Wayne quite ready to acquiesce in my newly formed decision to leave London; indeed, I fancy he still owned some qualms concerning the style and expense of our present abode. The only question that now remained was whither should we proceed. It was the Doctor and not myself who ultimately settled this point, for he had set to search the advertisement columns of his numerous journals, and after much hesitation had lighted on the notice of a Welsh hotel which on reflection commended itself also to my choice. The place was named Glanymôr and was situated on the southern shores of Cardigan Bay at a convenient distance from a small county town. It doubtless possessed the double advantage of quiet and remoteness, the two qualities of locale I especially demanded, so that after some farther discussion I asked Dr Wayne to make the necessary arrangements for our proposed sojourn there. In four days' time therefore from the date of the incident of the Indian peddlers, we were able to leave Paddington Station on our way towards the spot selected, where I looked to obtain the peace and solitude essential for me to refresh my jaded brain and to provoke it to some definite conclusion. I left London without a pang of regret,but also without any pleasurable enthusiasm for the change of air and scene I was seeking; so languid and detached was my outlook towards the future.
After several hours of travelling westward, after noon we reached a large market town of South Wales where a hired motor car was awaiting us. It was a glorious day, cool, calm and bright, with the tang of autumn in the air but the guise of summer still masking the face of Nature. Ere long we were speeding through a district of tall hazel hedges and small fields in endless succession, recalling at times an immense rural chess-board set amidst steep hills of no distinction of outline but with their grassy flanks relieved in many places by patches of autumnal gorse, of roseate ling and of murrey bracken. Little rills, peeping through miniature thickets of delicate lady fern, coursed here and there down the slopes, and at times we were skirting the bank of a torrent with golden-brown peat-stained waters circling and curling around mossy boulders. In many places the hedge banks were still gay with hawkweeds, scabious and belated foxgloves. Already the charm of the revisited Earth was beginning to arouse my sluggish spirits, and the sight of this mountain brook with its suggestions of a happy childhood that delighted in rambling and fishing began to stir the clogged and mantled pool of my earthly memory. Here at any rate was still the Earth, the beloved Earth radiant and unspoiled, the Earth untainted by the deadlymiasma of modern progress which is striving with too evident success to convert the whole world into grey suburban uniformity and ugliness. Next we sped through a squalid hamlet compact of raw stuccoed chapels, of tin-roofed cottages and blatant villas of shrieking prosperity; and the late burgeoning of my earthy affections was rudely nipped. Nevertheless, we had soon quitted the ghastly modern township with its ill-dressed and ill-favoured inhabitants, and started to descend by a long gentle declivity to a broad bottom, for we were crossing the lofty watershed between two important Welsh rivers. We finally reached a wide valley cleft by a noble stream that was now a deep silent volume of water overhung by woods of oak and larch, and now a series of broad gushing shallows whose leaping waves broke merrily over opposing snags and rocks. At intervals we passed prosperous farms, old-fashioned country houses that seemed haunts of ancient peace, and stretches of rich pasture that were contiguous with the river's meanderings. Out of this delectable valley we ascended a sharp rise and, avoiding a moderate-sized country town, at length we reached an exposed hill-top which afforded us the prospect of the estuary of the river we had so lately left behind. Some two miles farther ahead our goal was attained, after traversing a tract of sand dunes whose desiccated soil gave sustenance to clumps of glaucous sea-holly and prickly bushes of the sand-rose that at this seasonbore large sorbs of burnished purple. The hotel itself, a gaunt, rambling, recently erected structure, was perched on the rim of a precipitous range of cliffs. It was certainly a blot upon the landscape; but its interior promised solid comfort, whilst the hearty welcome of the landlord, bereft of his usual tale of summer boarders, made plenteous reparation for the lack of such luxury as we had bidden adieu to in London.
From the balcony outside our rooms upstairs there was a spacious and comprehensive view of the surrounding scenery. In front of us lay a broad basin enclosed in a broken circuit of rising ground and with the yellow sands and foaming bar of the issuing river in the middle distance. The opposite extremity of this half-enclosed sheet of water ended in a projecting rocky headland dotted with white-washed farmhouses and cottages, and barring the farther view of the coast-line to southward. Nearer at hand and adjacent to the inn there jutted forth the northern horn of the little bay, backed by the craggy islet of Ynys Ilar formed like a couched lion with his visage set towards the sinking sun. The rocky shores had assumed everywhere a purple-black tint against the pale blue of sea and sky, whilst inland the bleak unfertile soil showed brown and bare in the walled fields now denuded of their crops of oats and barley. I would not deny a certain inherent charm to the quiet scenery of Glanymôr, and possibly some landscape painter ofan unambitious type might have felt tempted to portray its sober tints and restful contours; but I myself experienced a sense of disappointment in what I deemed its negative character. Here was no savage majesty of nature; no sweep of limitless ocean; no thundering breakers on a boundless strand; no gloomy groves descending to the shore; no groups of gnarled and distorted pines that were eloquent of furious gales. And yet the features and general aspect of the place somehow imbued me with regretful thoughts of Tamarida, its haven and its twin promontories. For the first time a craving for my lost palace struck at my heart, as I gazed upon the encircling sweep of land and sea and sky. It may have been my fancy, but I thought I perceived a shadowy vision of that aerial city hover for a second like a mirage in the greyness of the dull horizon.
Our daily life at Glanymôr was placid and not unpleasant. The soft Welsh air, the perpetual sobbing of the sea beneath our windows, the peaceful atmosphere, the wholesome food all reacted on my over-strung nerves, which in time began to recover their wonted tone. I was braced by bathing in the Atlantic waters, icy-cold though they were; I appreciated my daily walks in company with Dr Wayne along the crest of the indented shore that faces the crags of Ynys Ilar. I mightily preferred the cries of the curlew and guillemot to the shouting of men and the hooting of cars in London. Altogether I was tolerably happy but for one drawback,and this was my total inability to concentrate my thinking powers on the very subject I had travelled hither to study. Try as I would, I could not marshal my reasonings and calculations to meet in one point; and so I allowed the crucial question to remain unanswered, almost unattempted, and let myself drift with the current of my own indecision. Instead of racking my brain, I preferred to lie in some sheltered hollow of the rocks above the water, watching the waves collect and disperse with half-shut eyes that idly noted the dull yellow riband of tiny shells which marked the limits of the advancing and receding tides along the line of cliffs. Dr Wayne, in such hours as he could spare from his multiplicity of newspapers, was evidently studying me and my movements with silent interest, but we rarely spoke during our long walks above the coast-line or over the brown fallows and stony paths of the wind-swept treeless countryside.
Thus passed day after day of that precious interregnum, which ought to have been expended in constant deliberation and with the nicest weighing of advantages, instead of being frittered thus in yielding to an insistent temptation to somnolence and vacuity of mind. Perhaps there may have been some external unsuspected force, which was being directed against my own efforts of concentration to prevent my arriving at any conclusion. I had been the plaything of Fate for so long that possibly I may be excused for harbouring such a notion.
IX
A quarterof a mile behind our inn of Glanymôr stood the buildings of a fair-sized farm. I used often to walk to Pen Maelgwyn, whose name recalled that of a doughty Welsh chieftain slain in Plantagenet days, ascending the slope thither by means of a narrow footpath traversing the russet stubbles wherein still lingered a few gay marigolds and fragile poppies. The front of the house, a long low erection, was coloured a Naples yellow, but its roof and many clustering byres and sheds were all thickly coated with dazzling whitewash. Above the porch and many windows set with diminutive panes had been painted ornamental stripes of black and vermilion in a local style that has now almost fallen out of fashion. Before the threshold lay a broad stone slab marked in chalk with elaborate patterns in rings and lines, which Dr Wayne, who is skilled in Celtic folk-lore, tells me is a relic of the dim past, when such tracery was designed to entice the good fairies indoors and at the same time to exclude any malignant elementals that might be skulking near. The whole length of the façade of the dwelling was distinguished by a narrow walled-in flower garden, wherein Mrs Mary Davies, the farmer's wife, cherished a number of gaudy dahlias,Indian pinks, purple asters and tall spikes of golden-rod, these last being much patronised by a pair of elegant Red Admiral butterflies.
The messuage and its attendant buildings were wholly enclosed within a low rampart of rubble and loose boulders, also profusely daubed with the prevailing whitewash, this boundary wall surrounding an irregular space which included a round weed-covered pond and a number of middens for the cackling fowls of every condition—geese, chickens, ducks, turkeys and even peacocks. The yard was dirty, stony and unkempt, yet it possessed a certain fascination of its own, and there was a stile surmounting its haphazard parapet whereon I often sate, sometimes to watch the crowded life of the haggard, but more generally with my face turned towards the open sea. By directing my eyes hence in a sou'-westerly direction, so as to avoid the converging lines of the Welsh and Irish coasts, I had been told that nothing but the ocean with no intervening obstacle of land stretched between the cliffs of Glanymôr and the far-away coast of North America. There were no trees within a mile and more of Pen Maelgwyn, but the rough stone wall was heavily fringed with tall aromatic herbs such as tansy, wormwood and wild reseda to make amends for the total lack of arboreal verdure.
Hither then I often strolled during the morning hours when Dr Wayne was absorbed in his newspapers or his correspondence, and from the date ofmy first intrusion at Pen Maelgwyn I always received a courteous welcome from Mr and Mrs Davies, the tenants of the place, who held a couple of hundred acres of varied but indifferent land. That Mr Hannaniah Davies belonged to the old school was evident from his speech, his dress and his professed outlook on life itself. Having served as bailiff for many years to a neighbouring squire he spoke English easily and correctly, and moreover with a well-bred accent. His wife Mary, on the other hand, could scarcely aspire to a word of any language save her native Welsh, so that our intercourse was of necessity confined to gesticulation and smiles, or to a few trivial phrases of which the expressions "Dim Saesneg" on her part and of "Dim Cymraeg" on mine, were perhaps the most lucid and useful. With Hannaniah however I often held converse—on the war, on politics, on travel, on religious controversy; and though he was bigoted and benighted in his tenets yet he could argue with politeness and good temper, which constitutes a virtue in itself, and that no common one. Our debates were usually held in the kitchen (which I vastly preferred to the chill musty parlour with its garish modern furniture and its repellent portraits of pastors and demagogues) and in this low warm cosy chamber I loitered for many a pleasant hour. The uneven stone floor was generally strewn with lily-white sand; the settle and chairs and dresser of pale Welsh oak shone brightly with Mary's affectionate polishing;I loved the many quaint old jugs and plates which had happily escaped the accursed hand of the plundering collector. In the deep-set space of the sole window flourished Mary's winter garden, a miscellaneous series of pots and saucers containing a fine geranium, a fuchsia, a trailing white campanula, some musk and a bizarre vegetable of the leek family that resembled a shining green octopus set on end. Above our heads depended from the rafters fine hams and bunches of odorous sage and marjoram.
In this old-time chamber I often partook of my "merenda," which invariably consisted of a glass of buttermilk with one or two square currant-engrained biscuits known to the polite world as Garibaldis, but owning a less romantic if more descriptive name in the days of my boyhood. This matutinal hospitality, I may add, was repaid not in coin but by the loan of papers and periodicals which Hannaniah read by the aid of a pair of antiquated spectacles, that reposed on the great sheepskin folio Welsh Bible always ready for use. Thus alternately reading aloud and discoursing, with Mary's clogs clattering in and out of the fragrant kitchen, I often succeeded in making the worthy Hannaniah waste an hour or more of his valuable agricultural time in the course of the morning.
A calendar month had already elapsed since our arrival at Glanymôr, and I was beginning to wonder in what guise the waiting Meleagrian envoys would next present themselves. Yet although the monthhad been fulfilled, with a few days to spare, I was still speculating as to how, when and where they would approach me. With my mind absorbed in anticipation and replete with intense curiosity that was not tinctured by any alarm, I went one morning to Pen Maelgwyn on my usual errand, and on my arrival found my friend Hannaniah much excited over a matter of domestic concern, which he was eager to impart to me. It appeared that both Mr Davies's farm lads, English-speaking boys from a large industrial school of the Midlands, had been lately secured in the local recruiting nets, so that the farm itself was suffering in consequence of their departure. There were none to fill the vacant places, and so pressed was the farmer that two days ago he had been only too thankful to engage the temporary services of what he described as a "nigger tramp," who called himself an Indian. The new-comer certainly did not seem very proficient in the duties he declared himself willing to perform but he seemed intelligent and anxious to please; whilst on his side the sorely tried Hannaniah was thankful to obtain even such inferior assistance as this. There were hopes expressed that the strange heathen might in time develop into a fairly capable farm hand, and in this expectation even the suspicious Mrs Davies had agreed to lay aside her intense prejudice against the man's colour and appearance. Thus spake Hannaniah Davies; and I need not say that at this piece of news my heart began to hammerat my ribs, though not (I can truthfully vouch) with fear, but rather with suppressed exaltation. For I felt thankful to be relieved at last from my long spell of uncertainty and indecision, than which any definite evil seemed almost preferable. The idea of coming action served to brace and vivify me, so that it required some restraint on myself to criticise the matter propounded by the farmer with the proper degree of calmness. I approved warmly his decision to employ the stranger, and then remarked with an air of indifference: "I wonder if by any chance I can speak your black man's language, if he is really an Indian, as he declares. I have spent many years among the natives of Hindostan, and I should much like to interview the man, whose name you tell me is Hamid."
I had scarcely finished speaking when Hannaniah, looking out of one of the tiny panes of thick greenish glass of the kitchen window, spied the subject of our conversation crossing the yard, and at my suggestion he beckoned him to approach the homestead. Mrs Davies, too, who had paused from her usual routine of scrubbing, was deeply interested, and in her native vernacular expressed her admiration for the powers of the Saxon gentleman who could speak the language of the blacks, for in her simple philosophy all dark-skinned foreigners owned but one lingo, whilst a multiplicity of tongues was a special privilege reserved for the Aryan race. Hannaniah wasno doubt more enlightened on such a point, but I fancy he had no fixed or correct views concerning Indians and negroes; it would therefore in no way be surprising to him, a good bilinguist, that anyone who had lived in the East like myself should understand the language of a wandering Oriental. He left the room, and I followed him into the soft breeze and the mellow October sunshine which was reviving Mary's rain-sodden dahlias round which the Red Admirals were hovering with brilliant if somewhat tattered wings.
The figure of the newly hired labourer could be observed slowly descending the long yard, for he was encumbered with a bundle of clover under his left arm, whilst his right side was heavily weighed down by a bucket of some provender for the calves. His garments formed a sort of ugly compromise between the costumes of East and West—a turban of soiled mauve muslin, a shabby threadbare brown coat and loose baggy trousers of canvas such as Levantine sailors affect. In this cheap and unattractive garb I quickly recognised Fajal, a leading member of the hierarchy of Meleager, and after Anzoni the most trustworthy and agreeable personage of all that august body to my mind. On our appearance in the yard the new servant halted a moment, placed the dirty bucket on the ground, and made an obeisance equally to Mr Davies and myself. As he bent before us in his squalid disguise, with his delicate shapely hands encrusted with barley-meal,and with his shoddy boots all caked with filthy mud, I reflected and marvelled for a second or two on the inexorable sense of duty or responsibility which could compel such a man as Fajal, whose pedigree could easily vie with that of a Habsburg or a Colonna, to stoop to such abasement and to face such vicissitudes. Yet though he bent ragged and grimy and cringing before us, I could still detect the noble fruit concealed within the rugged husk, albeit such a gift of discrimination was wholly beyond the range of the farmer's blunter powers of perception and inferior knowledge of humanity. I addressed a few commonplace phrases in Meleagrian to Fajal, who replied with discreet modesty, only in his last sentence bidding me seek him in the adjacent byre as soon as it was feasible. Mr Davies standing by was certainly impressed with the fluency of our conversation, but after an admiring "Well! Well!" as a tribute to my linguistic attainments, he turned away in order to visit his head labourer, John Lewis, who was cutting bracken on the distant lea against the sky-line. I accompanied my host so far as the farm gate, but declined to walk with him to the upland, whither I watched him proceed alone. With the master and man busy over the fern stacking, with the mistress and maids employed within the dairy or kitchen, the way was clear before me. I turned my eyes with mixed feelings towards the indicated byre, which stood next to a row of newly thatched ricks of oats and barley, the spoils of thelately garnered harvest. In that humble structure I knew there tarried now for me the messenger of Fate, the arbiter of my destiny. It was as useless, as it would have been cowardly, to evade or postpone the inevitable interview, so without further ado I carefully shut the yard gate and slowly picked my steps through the stones and mire to the open doorway of the shippen.
X
Thecow-house at Pen Maelgwyn was a lengthy rather dilapidated building, and in its atmosphere of semi-darkness and bovine stuffiness I groped my way along the narrow passage between the crazy old mud wall and the wooden railing which secured the beasts. At the farther end was a square pen wherein the calves were kept, and it was here that at length I chanced on Fajal who was busily occupied in feeding his charges. On noticing me approach, he made an end of his task, and letting down the slip rail advanced to accost me in the gangway. Here he sank on his knees upon the slimy cobbles, at the same time catching hold of my coat with uplifted hands. This unexpected attitude of worship and devotion at once struck me unpleasantly; I deemed it insincere and inappropriate; and I repelled my suppliant in no gracious manner, striving to disengage myself from his grasp.
"I had a better esteem of you, Fajal," I began in tones of reproachful chagrin, "than that you should still attempt to mock me by persisting in this threadbare pretence of a subject and his king. You know who I am, and what I am in the eyes of the body to which you belong; so why indulge in this sickly acting when there is no stage and nonecessity for hypocrisy? Speak to me as man to man. Tell me what you wish to say, but tell it in the spirit of plain truth and reality."
Nevertheless, crouching yet more abjectly into the mire, Fajal still clung obstinately to my knees and even endeavoured to kiss my feet as he started to speak in a hollow voice that suggested intense emotion kept with difficulty under control.
"Majesty! Your rebuke is neither harsh nor undeserved; and if it so pleased you, I should willingly and joyfully feel the weight of your foot upon my neck, or even on my face. Cheerfully would I in my own person make the atonement justly due to you for the treacherous ingratitude that has been your Majesty's sole reward for your reign of virtue and self-sacrifice in Meleager. But there is no mockery in my attitude of subjection to the King of Meleager who has thus successfully defied and vanquished his fate, and now for a second time receives the entreaty to come and reign amongst us. And this time the loyalty I am authorised to proffer will not be confined to the uneducated populace, but it will also emanate freely from our hierarchy who have delegated me, seeing that I was in the past your most open admirer and warmest upholder, to implore your pardon and to beg you to acquire incalculable merit by returning and resuming that unselfish and beneficent sway for which at this moment all Meleager is sighing and praying. Do not suffer me to plead in vain, O King!"
Fajal paused, and then as I stood motionless and showed no disposition to interrupt he continued to entreat yet more vehemently, using at times the old arguments I had heard years ago from d'Aragno, and at times a novel system of reasoning based on the present affection and anxiety of the Meleagrians for my return.
"We are at the present time in a parlous state of unrest and transition in Meleager. Our people cry aloud for their vanished King, and threaten to over-turn our ancient constitution, for some peculiar instinct seems to have penetrated the common mind—by what means or influence assuredly even I cannot divine—that you have deserted our planet in wrath and dudgeon to seek again your Father's court. Already a revolution has taken place in the hierarchy itself, and Marzona's satellites have shared their leader's fate, the fate which you yourself inflicted on him, most noble, puissant and wonderful Being! All, all pray daily for your speedy return; whilst amongst such old councillors as have survived the late cataclysm and the newly elected members of our caste, there is but one ardent all-pervading desire—to see yourself installed again as our King, our King who has of his own motion mastered The Secret, who has flown back to Earth, who alone is fitted to rule in Meleager....
"And if you will but accept again our crown under these changed conditions of tardy sincerity in our hierarchy and of burning loyalty of our peoplein all its ranks, what results may you not achieve? The periods of your rejuvenation will continue unchecked; you will be living and ruling and bending life to your purpose for generations hence, nay, centuries after my poor bones and those of my colleagues have been converted to dust and ashes; for aught I know to the contrary you may even, if you so will, achieve immortality thanks to the unmatched potentialities of our marvellous fountain. The very salutation 'O King, live for ever!' that occurs again and again in your Book of the Christian cult will in your case cease to be the meaningless compliment of courtier and sycophant. You will rule and rule, always youthful, always dominant, the one thing stable in a community of perpetual change. There are certain limits perhaps which you may not exceed, but these you already recognise and will observe henceforward in the same spirit that you have so nobly and unselfishly exhibited in the past. And if the day should dawn—may it be untold æons hence from my own day of recall!—when you will have grown weary of well-doing, weary of your unending performance of duty even under the lightest of moral yokes, when you sigh for release and oblivion, and yearn to plunge into the dusky mazes of the Hereafter, are there not means accessible to gratify such a craving? There is but one mode of entering this world, and that involves travail and tears, but there are a hundred exits from the house of life, and many of these arepleasant and free of dolour. Remember what one of your own Herthian poets has dangled before the eyes of those who are exhausted and sighing for their euthanasia:
"'There are poppies by the river,There is hemlock in the dell.'
"Nevertheless, may the time be far removed when the ideal King of Meleager thinks fit to abdicate, preferring the unseen unsubstantial bliss of the Other Life to the ceaseless routine of sovereignty with its attendant pleasures and burdens....
"Majesty, ponder all this in your present quiet retreat which as yet has been scarcely touched by the encroachments of the bloodshed and tumult that have been released to complete the utter downfall of your unhappy Earth. Have you not dimly apprehended the dire prospects that even now await your fellow-mortals on this devoted distracted planet? Is she not in the pangs of a fresh period of travail, and seeing her thus threatened and knowing her past history, do you expect her to bring forth a regenerating angel? I tell you, no. The horrors of carnage and greed and ambition have only begun; the stream of blood is trickling slowly, but it will continue to creep onward with increasing volume till scarcely a corner of the Earth will not be saturated with human gore....
"But enough of this awful theme, for my personal argument there is unsound insomuch as you yourselfare concerned, for you at least will be spared the sight and taste of the evils that will assuredly follow. Your sojourn on Earth will be very brief; already the effects of your last immersion in our sacred pool are beginning to subside; so that before this fateful year draws to its bloody and hideous close, your spark of life will be extinguished. Do not therefore imagine that you will be permitted to achieve the allotted span of mankind on Earth; the hidden waters of the Meleagrian spring are both lethal and vitalising. Once the proper hour of renewal is passed, a species of decay, even of disintegration, will supervene, and you will sink into your miserable grave, a loathsome object, a mass of disease, impotence and decomposition.
"Reflect, O King, reflect, ere it prove too late! Make your choice between an inevitable, speedy and revolting demise here on Earth, and the prospect of a further reign in Meleager under such conditions as I have already indicated to you."
With this last earnest appeal Fajal watched me narrowly for some seconds, whilst I remained voiceless and irresolute. Seeing me thus still obdurate in my indecision, he sighed heavily and then sought in the folds of his vest, whence he drew forth a thin packet that he presented to me with these significant words: "If you doubt my warning and advice, look in this mirror steadily a while, and you will then understand."
I had scarcely transferred the package to thebreast of my coat before I noticed an entering figure darken the patch of sunlight formed by the open door at the other end of the byre. It was Mr Davies returned from his fern cutting and now bent on an inspection of his stock. He saw nothing unusual however in my seeking thus the society of his new servant, who was now diligently cleaning the racks overhead. I delayed for a few minutes' talk with the farmer before bidding him good-morning and walking back to the inn.
In the verandah I found Dr Wayne smoking a pipe and enjoying the rare sunshine of this fleeting St Luke's Summer. We smiled at one another as I passed within, but I did not pause to converse, for I was impatient to open my concealed parcel. So I went upstairs and seated myself on a chair in the full light shed from the open window. Having unwound some folds of cloth I extricated the mirror of which Fajal had spoken, and found it to be a moderate-sized rectangular piece of thick glass without any frame and offering no peculiarity of aspect. Taking it in both my hands and in full glare of the sunlit window, I set to gaze intently in the expectation of some development whose nature I already half divined. As I prepared for this careful inspection of myself, or rather my counterfeit, I recalled to mind a picture I had seen years ago in the Wiertz Museum in what was then the capital of the Belgian kingdom, representing a youthful courtesan of the Mid-Victorian era stripped bareto the waist and contemplating herself in a cheval-glass. But in the painter's canvas the glass itself returned no true image of her comely complacent face and her swelling breasts, but in their stead a leering female skeleton, a revelation that seemed in no wise to shake the lady's composure. So in my own case I had a shrewd premonition I was destined to receive some shock of this nature out of the innocent-looking mirror lately presented to me. Of this shadowy encounter before me however I experienced no dread; very possibly the glass would reveal to me my own anatomy as a suitablememento morito dissipate any lingering notions I might still entertain as to the undesirability of prolonging my life by a refusal to return to Meleager. But why, I asked myself, should I be afraid to survey my own basic framework? Are we not all mere skeletons clothed in an exiguous garment of skin and tissue, and animated by some mysterious internal engine which keeps intact the fleshy envelope and supplies the motive power of mind and muscle?
The perfectly smooth complexion that confronted my inquiring look suggested nothing save the early stages of manhood, though there was perceptible in the eyes a weary nervous expression, that hinted at a youth marred or tempered by experience and disillusion. Many minutes must have been occupied in contemplation of this beautiful and yet spurious specimen of juvenile physiognomy before I began to note a very slight alteration in the skin and outlinesof the face before me; tiny delicate pencillings like the ghosts of hoar-frost tracery were forming below the lids and at the corners of the temples; the rotundity of the cheeks seemed to shrink; queer vindictive lines started here and there on the countenance, spoiling its fixed impression of repose and announcing anxiety and discontent. I grew overwhelmingly interested in this whimsical exhibition of scientific magic (if I may so describe it); of alarm or disgust I felt no scintilla as yet, so absorbed was I in my attitude of inquisitive observation. Having once declared itself visibly, this metamorphosis of the face seemed to develop more rapidly; the skin was bereft of its freshness and became sallow and somewhat transparent; I could tell the staring bones within, and the contours of the skull were clearly defined. The hair had lost its sheen, and the throat its firmness and fulness. But it no more horrified me to detect my own skeleton peeping forth through the imprisoning flesh than it would have startled me to see my naked body on stripping to bathe. Whatever might be my final decision, whether to remain on Earth and perish, or to proceed to Meleager and live, Fajal's device could exercise no sort of influence over my well-ordered mind. It was uncanny, unwholesome, unnatural; but as a practical argument for its acknowledged purpose it must prove utterly unavailing, and was in truth almost childish in its conception.
I was still absorbed in watching this phenomenonof the disunion of body and bones with complete unconcern, when my nimble imagination suddenly darted into a diverse channel of speculation. From my present medical or scientific abstraction I found myself sharply recalling Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes in the Campo Santo of Pisa, wherein are depicted for the edification of the careless Christian the three stages of human decay after death. It was a morbid but persistent theme, and not only did I fail to exclude it from my unwilling brain, but other paintings and representations equally or even more gruesome, such as the decadent artists of the days of the later Medicean princes loved to depict, arose to my prolific fancy. I recalled Zumbo's horrible wax figures, exhibiting at once the loathsome corruption of the flesh and the exquisite torments of hell-fire, wherewith a certain Tuscan Grand Duchess was wont to stimulate to self-denying piety a mind engrossed by the pomps of rank and riches. With these unwelcome but spontaneous memories there now supervened a physical sensation that was most repugnant. The room itself, despite the fresh sea breeze and the cheerful sunshine, grew close and oppressive; there arose an intolerable smell of putrefaction, the unmistakable bouquet of the charnel-house; and this insidious encroaching odour filled my whole being with a sense of disgust that I found impossible to expel.
Meanwhile in the mirror itself the process of disintegration was advancing apace. At first I soughtto ignore the changing tints of the rotting flesh and the entry of the worms and other vermin of the abandoned dead, and haply I might have succeeded in my mental struggle, had it not been for the increasing and well-nigh overpowering stench of the tomb which seemed to gather and enfold me in its dank miasmatic embrace. The pure light of the sunlit room had yielded to a dingy crepuscule, in which alone was plainly visible that accursed rectangle of glass with its surface churning out horror upon horror not only for the retina but also for the nostrils. And in the midst of this dissolving creeping mutating picture of human corruption there still shone out intact the feverish unfaded eyes that were stretched wide with a blank despair. I searched and searched with questioning dilated pupils their awful counterparts in the cruel glass, as though I were striving to force them to surrender up their appalling secret. At length I seemed to obtain the solution I sought yet dreaded to receive: it was Finality. What I saw being enacted before me by proxy was my own fate, my utter blotting out from the page of life, and not a mere stage, painful and ugly doubtless, but nevertheless only an intermediate stage to another phase of existence, as I had hitherto devoutly held. At last I realised that my own appointed portion was but this mean trilogy: the grave, corruption and nothingness; for the Hereafter owned no longer any concern with myself, the amphibian of two worlds, who had evadedhis manifest duties alike on Earth and in Meleager. I remembered with a shudder Fajal's solemn warning as to the dire effects of that youth-bestowing and yet death-dealing fountain wherein I had so often been immersed. Was it really so? Had I in my flight from my kingdom lost that priceless yet elusive endowment, the soul? A faint gleam of hope in the midst of my terror shot suddenly into the mirk of my anguish, when I recalled Anzoni's farewell greeting to myself and his expressed desire for a mutual meeting in the halls of the Hereafter. Ah, but then Anzoni had assumed I was going to meet my fate like a hero, and had no intention of slinking back to Earth!
Thus, despite this vague consoling thought, this clutching at a fescue in the whirlpool of my despair, I became obsessed with a fierce longing and determination at all costs to cheat death and to cling to every chance that is vital and physical. Fajal's mission had triumphed. I grew frenzied at the fearful prospect adumbrated for me on this glassy screen; I was frantic to quit the Earth, and equally frantic to stake anything and everything on a second translation to Meleager. I tried to dash the mirror from my hands, only to discover that, like Medea's poisoned coronet, the accursed thing clung to the flesh of my palms and fingers, and refused to be shaken off. In my madness of terror I screamed aloud, and with the glass still adhering like burning wax to my skin I dashed myself against the wallrepeatedly till I shattered to atoms the devilish instrument of torture in my ravings.
I can call to mind nothing further until I returned to sufficient consciousness again to see Dr Wayne's anxious and expectant face bent over me, as I lay prone on the boards surrounded by a mass of glittering fragments and splinters. My hands were cut and bleeding, but already the kind Doctor was tending them with some soothing antiseptic, and the pain was endurable. I allowed myself to be enticed to bed, where I passed the remainder of the day recovering from the double shock of mind and body I had so lately sustained. As usual, Dr Wayne spoke very little, and though his honest face betrayed his keen curiosity over my latest adventure, he asked no questions, and indeed scarcely ventured any comment, except the remark that there was a most peculiar scent of violets in the room, which was odd, seeing it was mid-October.
Violets!
XI
Itrequired two or three days of repose and nursing before I could recover from my recent shock and the injuries to my hands. When at last I was sufficiently restored to leave the house for a walk, I felt small inclination to proceed to Pen Maelgwyn, and after hesitating as to my direction I eventually turned my steps towards a small beach that nestled below the northern promontory of the bay. In this sheltered fissure of the coast I used sometimes to sit on the shaly rocks covered with soft tussocks of faded sea-pinks, or else used to linger by the tide idly seeking amongst the wet shining pebbles for stray moss-agates or the tiny cowries like roseate pearls that a westerly gale invariably cast on these shores. Accordingly I followed a path towards this cove and descended the cart track that finally lost itself in the dry sand and globular boulders of the upper portion of this little haven. On advancing thus far I perceived to my surprise and annoyance that I should not obtain solitary possession of my accustomed haunt, for close to the water's edge stood a horse and cart; whilst I could detect the grating sound of shovelling sea-gravel by some person who for the moment was hidden by the cart itself. I strolled down the long narrow space todiscover with a start of astonishment that the individual occupied in digging the gravel was none other than Fajal. He seemed in no wise disconcerted at my apparition, but merely continued to ply his task till I almost touched him, when he immediately dropped his spade and sank on his knees amidst the dripping stones and weeds. He then proceeded to kiss my hands, my knees, and even my feet, but of this behaviour I took no heed.
"I have examined my face in your mirror, Fajal——" I began.
"Your Majesty has no need to tell this to your servant," replied he, with a sad, weary smile on his face, which expressed neither pleasure nor interest in my statement.
"—And I am now wholly convinced of the necessity for my immediate return to Meleager," continued I, rather nettled by Fajal's nonchalance.
"A few minutes' study of self in its surface is of more avail than a month spent in book-lore or close meditation," retorted Fajal dryly. "It is our last resource, our irresistible argument, although to the best of my knowledge there has never arisen any occasion to resort to it hitherto. Yet you perceive we are fore-armed in Meleager against every emergency, even for the case of a recalcitrant monarch who will not return to the people he has deserted."
"I should never have deserted Meleager," Icried with some heat, "had not your caste set before me the choice of death or flight."
"Your Majesty then holds that any deviation from the course of fixed duty can be legitimately excused?" replied Fajal, arching his eyebrows. "But this is neither the hour nor place to raise a thorny question of political ethics which I look forward some day to discussing at our leisure. I have only to regret that in the course of my mission I have been compelled to perturb your Majesty so greatly in mind and body before I could impress on you the inevitability of your return to Meleager. It grieves and shames me to reflect that the arguments and entreaties of myself and my colleagues here and in London should have proved so futile and barren of success."
Fajal then gently took my hands in his, removed their wrappings of lint, and from a box of salve carefully anointed the still sore and angry flesh. (They were completely cured by the following morning.) He then began to speak to me of many matters concerning my return to Meleager and my subsequent duties there which I do not deem it desirable to inscribe in this place, and he ended by enumerating the arrangements already made for my second translation to my expectant subjects.
"This very night," said he, "I shall be dismissed with ignominy from Pen Maelgwyn. John Lewis, the old labourer, is already jealous and hostile, and there will shortly arise a quarrel between us, whereinI shall unsheathe this knife. A hubbub will then ensue; Mrs Davies will uphold her servant, and Mr Davies, who seems less unworthy than the majority of his type, will reluctantly consent to my immediate dismissal. I shall be given my wages; I shall collect my humble store of clothing; and at early dawn to-morrow I shall quit Pen Maelgwyn. This day week, which will be the twenty-seventh day of the month, you will prepare for my secret return. Wait until midnight in your room, and then listen for the unmistakable call for your presence without delay at the farthest point of the headland yonder. All will be in readiness for your easy departure from the inn; even the lurcher in the stable-yard will be silenced that night. Have no qualms or fears; your Majesty will only have to traverse the two furlongs of ground between the inn and the rocky cape, whereat our craft will rest till we have embarked.
"One other matter however I wish your Majesty to understand. Is it not the case that you dispatched a manuscript to Earth some three years ago?" (I nodded assent.) "That scroll was duly delivered on Earth, was found, read, discussed and printed, with the only possible result that could arise therefrom. The person who gave your narrative to the world was one Edward Cayley, a learned recluse, and he was naturally only accounted a credulous fool for his pains. The book was certainly published, and though the absurd venture scarcelydeserved their serious attention, our envoys here have contrived to destroy nearly all copies of the volume. Perhaps also Cayley himself might have succumbed later to some of our peculiar methods of removal, had he not suddenly expired of the heart disease from which he had long suffered. The whole matter of your communication from Meleager has however been entrusted unconditionally to myself, and as I apprehend no danger whatsoever from anything you may publish, it is open to you to act freely in this connection. Here is Mr Cayley's book—keep it for any purpose you may require. I assure your Majesty I fear no ill result will accrue either from the late Mr Cayley's romance or from the manuscript which you yourself" (here I gave a start of genuine astonishment) "have been inditing almost daily in your chamber at Glanymôr. I cannot conceive either the contemporary pleasure or the ultimate object of your Majesty's constant occupation with the pen; it may be the old literary bacillus of Earth that is not yet eradicated from your semi-divine system; it may be some fanciful desire to benefit the planet of your birth by showing its leaders that human happiness is not necessarily involved in human progress, which is the fundamental error of these modern Herthians; it may be that a sheer sense of humorous amusement prompts you to this action. But whatsoever your goal, it is clear that you intend to charge your excellent friend Dr Wayne with the editing of your manuscript."(Again I gave an involuntary start.) "Be it so. I have not the wish or the intention to thwart your Majesty in this innocuous pastime; nor shall I seek to disappoint Dr Wayne in his hungry expectation of the unveiling of the complicated enigma whose nature he dimly realises. Indeed, I am anxious to do a service to that interesting man, for whose hospitality to our errant King on Earth I am grateful, and whose rare spiritual qualities I admire and respect. Let him publish what you have written here in Glanymôr; what benefit can happen to you or what injury to us from proclaiming such a farrago of the impossible and the improbable? Very few will read the book, and none will give credence to its contents. Yours is not so much a mad world, as it has been arraigned by your leading poet, as an unbelieving world, which rejects with fury of derision all evidence of whatsoever is not obvious to its recognised scholars and astronomers."
I acquiesced in silence. It was astounding to me to learn that so much was known of my most private concerns, and I saw little use in arguing or asking questions. It was evident too that Fajal regarded my return to Meleager as a settled matter past all debate, and this mental admission induced in me a welcome sense of peace and deliverance.
Thus we stood on this misty solemn October afternoon beside the grey placid sea, surely the most extraordinary pair of mortals—if as mortals we could be faithfully so described—on the surface ofthe globe. No sound save the regular silvery tinkle of the tiny waves lapping on the beach and an occasional movement from the stolid cart-horse beside us broke the spell of oppressive stillness, so that when finally Fajal spoke, his voice seemed to proceed from some far-off unseen place, which had no connection with our present environment.
"Has your Majesty no other aim than to escape the terrors of the grave in thus deciding once more to exchange your Mother Earth for Meleager? Do the loyalty and the prayers of your subjects weigh as nothing in the scales of your predilection? Has your abandoned palace no remembered charms? Our temple bells, our sunlit city, our shining harbour, our dawns and our sunsets, do these count for naught? O King, have none of the fibres of your once generous heart struck root in our soil? Have you already forgotten your splendour, your kingdom, your people, your friends in these few weeks spent upon your blood-soaked insurgent Earth?"
With a look of sorrowful reproach accompanying these words of rebuke, Fajal bade me examine a small tablet of crystal or of some transparent substance that he held in the hollow of his left hand. I gladly lowered my ashamed and burning face in its direction, but could perceive no more than a mass of variegated colours that seemed to be perpetually shifting and changing. I strained my eyes for long, vainly seeking to identify any of the minute objects thus depicted, till at last I ceased from theattempt in despair of success. With a sigh of resignation, Fajal now presented me with a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles, which I adjusted to my eyes, with the immediate result that the scenes in the crystal seemed enlarged and clarified. I saw distinctly my palace at Tamarida with the warm sunbeams flickering on marble pillars and dancing in golden bars on the frescoed vaulting; I saw the gardens, cool and umbrageous, with their many fountains spurting their foamy jets upon the drenched fronds of fern and palm; I saw my aery balcony with its table of audience and faithful Hiridia standing disconsolate beside my favourite chair; under the external awnings of blue and yellow I saw the deep purple line of the harbour beyond the enclosing balustrade. A veritable wave of nostalgia seemed to engulph me, as I watched thus every familiar scene of my Meleagrian existence pass in procession before my gaze.
As a lost soul might gaze on Paradise I beheld the pillared court of the great temple displayed before me, with its sunlit space filled with the usual throng of worshippers upon a holy day. There was the medley of colours, like some huge bed of gorgeous tulips, the white of the hierarchy, the crimson of the nobles, the green of the merchants, and the many varied tints of the garments of the populace; what past memories of my reign did not such a vision evoke in me! I fretted to be gone, so as to regain that rich and varied crowd beneath thatglowing sky, to reassume my accustomed place of honour and adoration in their midst. And then, even as I yearned, chafing at the ties which still bound me to Earth, my companion was able to inflame yet further my longing to return. With his disengaged right hand he searched the pocket of his coat and a moment later I beheld in his fingers a strange-looking instrument bearing some resemblance to the mystical sistrum of ancient Egypt. Bidding me continue to fix my eyes on the crystal before me, Fajal waved aloft this curved and stringed spherule, whereupon a soft murmuring seemed to fill the languid heavy autumnal air, and this muttering again developed into advancing waves of harmony that concentrated in an ultimate crashing note of triumph in my very face. The sounds now appeared to shrink and retreat, now to advance and expand in volume, but after some moments of vague, desultory, erratic come-and-go the music at length seemed to collect and pour as through some invisible funnel into the actual crystal lying in Fajal's palm. The ambient air was now completely free of its reverberations, and the music subsided into moderate compass, convenable with the scale and setting of the variegated scene that still lay exposed on the crystal tablet. Finally, the compressed sound blended with the multitude of figures in this miniature reproduction of the temple of Tamarida, so that I could distinguish the articulation of the many worshippers as well as thecanticles of the choristers wafted from afar to my ears. So might the Olympian Zeus in heroic days have heard the daily orisons of his earth-born suppliants, and have sought for the sparse note of sincerity amidst that vast uproar of human prayer ascending from a thousand altars to his ivory throne set amidst the unattainable clouds of highest heaven. But here from Meleager the issuing petition rang out unanimous, solemn and unfeigned....
I had heard and seen sufficient; there was no more room nor any need for further colloquy with Fajal. I have but a dim impression of my hands being saluted, and of my striding rapidly with downcast head from the beach, leaving my fate behind me in the person of the humble Indian labourer with the horse and cart. In the waning light of the October evening I hastened back to the inn, and threw myself on my bed to digest my latest experience, the ultimate phase of my unique mission. In an hour's time I had shaken off the bewilderment of my encounter by the beach, and was able to converse naturally with Dr Wayne. It was now merely a matter of waiting seven days for the call, and there was nothing to prevent my passing this brief span of time pleasantly and profitably. I hope I have done what lay in my power to conciliate Dr Wayne, with whom I enjoyed some interesting walks in the mild drizzling weather along the summits of the rocky coast. Once or twice thenotion arose in me of taking the good man into my complete confidence, but eventually I decided against this course, and confined my efforts to preparing him for the task of publication of my second manuscript and of Mr Cayley's book which I shall leave behind me when I am called to quit this Earth. I have an overwhelming desire to see this purpose fulfilled, and as Fajal has given me express permission to do so, why should not I indulge this innocent whim of mine, however useless and trivial it may be deemed? I think it was Dean Swift who once declared that the man who contrived to make two blades of grass grow where but one had bloomed before bestowed more solid advantage on the human race than all the combined clique of the politicians. So, if I can attract one convert into seeing through my own experienced eyes that what is called progress is not the sole thing needful and desirable for this sorely tried old world of my birth, I shall have accomplished my most modest aim. I shall have sown a seed of arresting reflection amidst the rampant tares of self-sufficiency and materialism which now clog the Herthian soil.