Part 6 (1/2)
”Where,” said the girl, ”could he safer be? We can always fetch him if we want him, and sunk in blue oblivion he will not come to harm.”
”A cheerful view, Miss, which is worthy of the attention of our reformers. Nevertheless, I will go to him. I have known men tell more truth in that state than in any other.”
The servitor directed me to the library, and after desolate wanderings up crumbling steps and down mouldering corridors, sunny and lovely in decay, I came to the immense lumber-shed of knowledge they had told me of, a city of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored with forgotten learning. At a table sat Hath the purposeless, enthroned in leather and vellum, snoring in divine content amongst all that wasted labour, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him into semblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he should have come to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of a n.o.ble library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor, amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and gold, and ivory, my eye lit upon a volume propped up curiously on end, and going to it through the confusion I saw by the dried fruit rind upon the sticks supporting it, that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch a mouse! It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound as a king might bind his choicest treasure, the sweet-scented leather on it was no doubt frayed; the golden arabesques upon the covers had long since shed their eyes of inset gems, the jewelled clasp locking its learning up from vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordly tome with an odour of sanct.i.ty about it, and lifting it with difficulty, I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood. Those who put it to this quaint use of mouse-trap had already had some sport, but surely never was a mouse crushed before under so much learning. And while I stood guessing at what the book might hold within, Heru, the princess, came tripping in to me, and with the abrupt familiarity of her kind, laid a velvet hand upon my wrist, conned the t.i.tle over to herself.
”What does it say, sweet girl?” I asked. ”The matter is learned, by its feel,” and that maid, pursing up her pretty lips, read the t.i.tle to me--”The Secret of the G.o.ds.”
”The Secret of the G.o.ds,” I murmured. ”Was it possible other worlds had struggled hopelessly to come within the barest ken of that great knowledge, while here the same was set to catch a mouse with?”
I said, ”Silver-footed, sit down and read me a pa.s.sage or two,” and propping the mighty volume upon a table drew a bench before it and pulled her down beside me.
”Oh! a horrid, dry old book for certain,” cried that lady, her pink fingertips falling as lightly on the musty leaves as almond petals on March dust. ”Where shall I begin? It is all equally dull.”
”Dip in,” was my answer. ”'Tis no great matter where, but near the beginning. What says the writer of his intention? What sets he out to prove?”
”He says that is the Secret of the First Great Truth, descended straight to him--”
”Many have said so much, yet have lied.”
”He says that which is written in his book is through him but not of him, past criticism and beyond cavil. 'Tis all in ancient and crabbed characters going back to the threshold of my learning, but here upon this pa.s.sage-top where they are writ large I make them out to say, 'ONLY THE MAN WHO HAS DIED MANY TIMES BEGINS TO LIVE.'”
”A pregnant pa.s.sage! Turn another page, and try again; I have an inkling of the book already.”
”'Tis poor, silly stuff,” said the girl, slipping a hand covertly into my own. ”Why will you make me read it? I have a book on pomatums worth twice as much as this.”
”Nevertheless, dip in again, dear lady. What says the next heading?”
And with a little sigh at the heaviness of her task, Heru read out: ”SOMETIMES THE G.o.dS THEMSELVES FORGET THE ANSWERS TO THEIR OWN RIDDLES.”
”Lady, I knew it!
”All this is still preliminary to the great matter of the book, but the mutterings of the priest who draws back the curtains of the shrine--and here, after the scribe has left these two yellow pages blank as though to set a s.p.a.ce of reverence between himself and what comes next--here speaks the truth, the voice, the fact of all life.” But ”Oh! Jones,”
she said, turning from the dusty pages and clasping her young, milk-warm hands over mine and leaning towards me until her blus.h.i.+ng cheek was near to my shoulder and the incense of her breath upon me.
”Oh! Gulliver Jones,” she said. ”Make me read no more; my soul revolts from the task, the crazy brown letters swim before my eyes. Is there no learning near at hand that would be pleasanter reading than this silly book of yours? What, after all,” she said, growing bolder at the sound of her own voice, ”what, after all, is the musty reticence of G.o.ds to the whispered secret of a maid? Jones, splendid stranger for whom all men stand aside and women look over shoulders, oh, let me be your book!” she whispered, slipping on to my knee and winding her arms round my neck till, through the white glimmer of her single vest, I could feel her heart beating against mine. ”Newest and dearest of friends, put by this dreary learning and look in my eyes; is there nothing to be spelt out there?”
And I was constrained to do as she bid me, for she was as fresh as an almond blossom touched by the sun, and looking down into two swimming blue lakes where shyness and pa.s.sion were contending--books easy enough, in truth, to be read, I saw that she loved me, with the unconventional ardour of her nature.
It was a pleasant discovery, if its abruptness was embarra.s.sing, for she was a maid in a thousand; and half ashamed and half laughing I let her escalade me, throwing now and then a rueful look at the Secret of the G.o.ds, and all that priceless knowledge treated so unworthily.
What else could I do? Besides, I loved her myself! And if there was a momentary chagrin at having yonder golden knowledge put off by this lovely interruption, yet I was flesh and blood, the G.o.ds could wait--they had to wait long and often before, and when this sweet interpreter was comforted we would have another try. So it happened I took her into my heart and gave her the answer she asked for.
For a long time we sat in the dusky grandeur of the royal library, my mind revolving between wonder and admiration of the neglected knowledge all about, and the stirrings of a new love, while Heru herself, lapsed again into Martian calm, lay half sleeping on my shoulder, but presently, unwinding her arms, I put her down.
”There, sweetheart,” I whispered, ”enough of this for the moment; tonight, perhaps, some more, but while we are here amongst all this lordly litter, I can think of nothing else.” Again I bid her turn the pages, noting as she did so how each chapter was headed by the coloured configuration of a world. Page by page we turned of crackling parchment, until by chance, at the top of one, my eye caught a coloured round I could not fail to recognise--'twas the spinning b.u.t.ton on the blue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday I inhabited. ”Read here,” I cried, clapping my finger upon the page midway down, where there were some signs looking like Egyptian writing. ”Says this quaint dabbler in all knowledge anything of Isis, anything of Phra, of Ammon, of Ammon Top?”
”And who was Isis? who Ammon Top?” asked the lady.
”Nay, read,” I answered, and down the page her slender fingers went awandering till at a spot of knotted signs they stopped. ”Why, here is something about thy Isis,” exclaimed Heru, as though amused at my perspicuity. ”Here, halfway down this chapter of earth-history, it says,” and putting one pink knee across the other to better prop the book she read:
”And the priests of Thebes were gone; the sand stood untrampled on the temple steps a thousand years; the wild bees sang the song of desolation in the ears of Isis; the wild cats littered in the stony lap of Ammon; ay, another thousand years went by, and earth was tilled of unseen hands and sown with yellow grain from Paradise, and the thin veil that separates the known from the unknown was rent, and men walked to and fro.”