Part 13 (1/2)
It was a fine morning when I woke again, and obviously broad day outside, the suns.h.i.+ne coming down through cracks in the old palace roof, and lying in golden pools on the floor with dazzling effect.
Rubbing my eyes and sitting up, it took me some time to get my senses together, and at first an uneasy feeling possessed me that I was somehow dematerialised and in an unreal world. But a twinge of cramp in my left arm, and a healthy sneeze, which frightened a score of bats overhead nearly out of their senses, was rea.s.suring on this point, and rubbing away the cramp and staggering to my feet, I looked about at the strange surroundings. It was cavernous chaos on every side: magnificent architecture reduced to the confusion of a debris-heap, only the hollow chambers being here and there preserved by ma.s.sive columns meeting overhead. Into these the yellow light filtered wherever a rent in a cupola or side-wall admitted it, and allured by the vision of corridors one beyond the other, I presently set off on a tour of discovery.
Twenty minutes' scrambling brought me to a place where the fallen jambs of a fine doorway lay so close together that there was barely room to pa.s.s between them. However, seeing light beyond, I squeezed through, and I found myself in the best-preserved chamber of all--a wide, roomy hall with a domed roof, a haze of mural paintings on the walls, and a marble floor nearly hidden in a century of fallen dust. I stumbled over something at the threshold, and picking it up, found it was a baby's skull! And there were more of them now that my eyes became accustomed to the light. The whole floor was mottled with them--scores and hundreds of bones and those poor little relics of humanity jutting out of the sand everywhere. In the hush of that great dead nursery the little white trophies seemed inexpressibly pathetic, and I should have turned back reverently from that chamber of forgotten sorrows but that something caught my eye in the centre of it.
It was an oblong pile of white stone, very ill-used and chipped, wrist-deep in dust, yet when a slant of light came in from above and fell straight upon it, the marble against the black gloom beyond blazed like living pearl. It was dazzling; and shading my eyes and going tenderly over through the poor dead babes, I looked, and there, full in the s.h.i.+ne, lay a woman's skeleton, still wrapped in a robe of which little was left save the hard gold embroidery. Her brown hair, wonderful to say, still lay like lank, dead seaweed about her, and amongst it was a fillet crown of plain iron set with gems such as eye never looked upon before. There were not many, but enough to make the proud simplicity of that circlet glisten like a little band of fire--a gleaming halo on her dead forehead infinitely fascinating. At her sides were two other little bleached human flowers, and I stood before them for a long time in silent sympathy.
Could this be Queen Yang, of whom the woodcutter had told me? It must be--who else? And if it were, what strange chance had brought me here--a stranger, yet the first to come, since her sorrow, from her distant kindred? And if it were, then that fillet belonged of right to Heru, the last representative of her kind. Ought I not to take it to her rather than leave it as spoil to the first idle thief with pluck enough to deride the mysteries of the haunted city? Long time I thought over it in the faint, heavy atmosphere of that hall, and then very gently unwound the hair, lifted the circlet, and, scarcely knowing what I did, put it in my shoulder-bag.
After that I went more cheerfully into the outside suns.h.i.+ne, and setting my clothes to dry on a stone, took stock of the situation. The place was, perhaps, not quite so romantic by day as by night, and the scattered trees, matted by creepers, with which the whole were overgrown, prevented anything like an extensive view of the ruined city being obtained. But what gave me great satisfaction was to note over these trees to the eastward a two-humped mountain, not more than six or seven miles distant--the very one I had mislaid the day before. Here was reality and a chance of getting back to civilisation. I was as glad as if home were in sight, and not, perhaps, the less so because the hill meant villages and food; and you who have doubtless lunched well and lately will please bear in mind I had had nothing since breakfast the day before; and though this may look picturesque on paper, in practice it is a painful item in one's programme.
Well, I gave my damp clothes but a turn or two more in the sun, and then, arguing that from the bare ground where the forest ended half-way up the hill, a wide view would be obtained, hurried into my garments and set off thither right gleefully. A turn or two down the blank streets, now prosaic enough, an easy scramble through a gap in the crumbling battlements, and there was the open forest again, with a friendly path well marked by the pa.s.sage of those wild animals who made the city their lair trending towards my landmark.
A light breakfast of soft green nuts, plucked on the way, and then the ground began to bend upwards and the woods to thin a little. With infinite ardour, just before midday, I scrambled on to a bare knoll on the very hillside, and fell exhausted before the top could be reached.
But what were hunger or fatigue to the satisfaction of that moment?
There was the sea before me, the clear, strong, gracious sea, blue leagues of it, furrowed by the white ridges of some distant storm. I could smell the scent of it even here, and my sailor heart rose in pride at the companions.h.i.+p of that alien ocean. Lovely and blessed thing! how often have I turned from the shallow trivialities of the land and found consolation in the strength of your stately solitudes!
How often have I turned from the tinselled presence of the sh.o.r.e, the infinite pretensions of dry land that make life a sorry, hectic sham, and found in the black bosom of the Great Mother solace and comfort!
Dear, lovely sea, man--half of every sphere, as far removed in the sequence of your strong emotions from the painted fripperies of the woman-land as pole from pole--the grateful blessing of the humblest of your followers on you!
The mere sight of salt water did me good. Heaven knows our separation had not been long, and many an unkind slap has the Mother given me in the bygone; yet the mere sight of her was tonic, a lethe of troubles, a sedative for tired nerves; and I gazed that morning at the illimitable blue, the great, unfettered road to everywhere, the ever-varied, the immutable, the thing which was before everything and shall be last of all, in an ecstasy of affection.
There was also other satisfaction at hand. Not a mile away lay a well-defined road--doubtless the one spoken of by the wood-cutter--and where the track pointed to the seash.o.r.e the low roofs and circling smoke of a Thither towns.h.i.+p showed.
There I went hot-footed, and, much too hungry to be nice in formality, swung up to the largest building on the waterside quay and demanded breakfast of the man who was lounging by its doorway chewing a honey reed. He looked me up and down without emotion, then, falling into the common mistake, said,
”This is not a hostel for ghosts, sir. We do not board and lodge phantoms here; this is a dry fish shop.”
”Thrice blessed trade!” I answered. ”Give me some dried fish, good fellow, or, for the matter of that, dried horse or dog, or anything mortal teeth can bite through, and I will show you my tastes are altogether mundane.”
But he shook his head. ”This is no place for the likes of you, who come, mayhap, from the city of Yang or some other abode of disembodied spirits--you, who come for mischief and pay harbourage with mischance--is it likely you could eat wholesome food?”
”Indeed I could, and plenty of it, seeing I have dined and breakfasted along the hedges with the blackbirds this two days. Look here, I will pay in advance. Will that get me a meal?” and, whipping out my knife, cut off another of my fast-receding coat b.u.t.tons.
The man took it with great interest, as I hoped he would, the yellow metal being apparently a very scarce commodity in his part of the planet.
”Gold?” he asked.
”Well--ahem! I forgot to ask the man who sewed them on for me what they were exactly, but it looks like gold, doesn't it?”
”Yes,” he answered, turning it to and fro admiringly in his hand, ”you are the first ghost I ever knew to pay in advance, and plenty of them go to and fro through here. Such a pretty thing is well worth a meal--if, indeed, you can stomach our rough fare. Here, you woman within,” he called to the lady whom I presume was his wife, ”here is a gentleman from the nether regions who wants some breakfast and has paid in advance. Give him some of your best, for he has paid well.”
”And what,” said a female voice from inside, ”what if I refused to serve another of these plaguy wanderers you are always foisting upon me?”
”Don't mind her tongue, sir. It's the worst part of her, though she is mighty proud of it. Go in and she will see you do not come out hungry,” and the Thither man returned calmly to his honey stick.
”Come on, you Soul-with-a-man's-stomach,” growled the woman, and too hungry to be particular about the tone of invitation, I strode into the parlour of that strange refreshment place. The woman was the first I had seen of the outer race, and better than might have been expected in appearance. Big, strong, and ruddy, she was a mental shock after the slender slips of girlhood on the far side of the water, half a dozen of whom she could have carried off without effort in her long arms. Yet there was about her the credential of rough health, the dignity of muscle, an upright carriage, an animal grace of movement, and withal a comely though strongly featured face, which pleased me at once, and later on I had great cause to remember her with grat.i.tude. She eyed me sulkily for a minute, then her frown gradually softened, and the instinctive love of the woman for the supernatural mastered her other feelings.