Edwin Lester Arnold

“ So I had a bath and a swim, a breakfast, and, to my shame be it acknowledged, a sort of farewell merry-go-round dance on the yellow sands with a dozen young persons all light-hearted as the morning, beautiful as the flowers that bound their hair, and in the extremity of statuesque attire.
Then at last I got them to give me a sea-going canoe, a stock of cakes and fresh water; and with many parting injunctions how to find the Woodman trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest of my life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my lonely voyage. ”

“ Looking gently in the dead girl’s face, was Blodwen—Blodwen—my thousand-years-dead wife
Standing there serene and lovely, with that strange lavender glow about her, was that wonderful and dreadful shade—holding the dead girl’s hand and looking at her closely with a face that spoke of neither resentment nor sorrow. I stood and stared at them, every wit within me numb and cold by the suddenness of it, and then the apparition slowly lifted her eyes to mine, and I—the wildest sensations of the strong old love and brand-new fear possessed me. What! do you tell me that affection dies? ”

“ Drifting silently down on a rocky island, I was having a drink at the water-pitcher at the moment, while Heru, her hair beaded with prismatic moisture and looking more ethereal than ever, sat in the bows timorously inhaling the breath of freedom, when all on a sudden voices close at hand caught our ears, and the next instant a row of heads, the bodies and boat below invisible in the mist, came round a corner. It was one of Ar-hap's war-canoes toiling up-stream. Heru and I ducked down into the haze like dabchicks and held our breath. ”

“ A fine fellow, swarthy, huge, and hairy, at any other time or place I could have given him due admiration as an admirable example of the savage on the borderland of grace and culture, but now I only glanced at him, and then to where at his side a girl was crouching, a gem of human loveliness against that dusky setting. It was Heru, my ravished princess, and, still clad in her diaphanous Hither robes, her face white with anxiety, her eyes bright as stars, the embodiment of helpless, flowery beauty, my heart turned over at sight of her. ”

“ When I turned to the little heap of spoil the ravishers of the dead had gathered and laid out on a cloth upon the stones, at once my mood softened. There in that curious pile of trinkets were things so ancient and yet so fresh that I heaved a sigh as I bent over them, and a whiff of the old time came back—the jolly wild days when the world was young rose before me as I turned them tenderly one by one. There lay the bronze nobs from a British shield, and there, corroded and thin, the long, flat blade that my rugged comrades once could use so well. ”

“ Now, being somewhat thirsty, I had already drunk half the wine in my beaker, and whether it was that draught, drugged as all Martian wines are, or the sheer loveliness of the maids themselves, I cannot say, but as the procession entered, and, dividing, circled round under the colonnades of the hall, a sensation of extraordinary felicity came over me—an emotion of divine contentment purged of all grossness—and I stared and stared at the circling loveliness, gossamer-clad, flower-girdled, tripping by me with vapid delight. ”

“ Mars! oh, dreadful, tremendous, unexpected! With a cry of affright, and bringing my fist down on the table till all the cups upon it leapt, I told him he lied—lied like a simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten as his wit—smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then turned away and let my chin fall upon my breast and my hands upon my lap.
And yet, and yet, it might be so! Everything about me was new and strange, the crisp, thin air I breathed was new; the lukewarm sunshine new; the sleek, long, ivory faces of the people new! ”

“ Up rose the English with an angry shout, and swept past us, killing the black champion as they went, and driving the French before them far down into the valley. Then ran I to my dear comrade, and knelt and lifted him against my knee. He had swooned, and I groaned in bitterness and fear when I saw the strong red tide that was pulsing from his wound and quilting his bright English armor. With quick, nervous fingers—bursting such rivets as would not yield, all forgetful of his secret, and that I had never seen him unhelmed before—I unloosed his casque, and then gently drew it from his head. ”

“ I arose, stretched, put on my half-dried clothes, and mounting a low hummock on the forest edge looked around. The sun was riding up finely into the sky, and the sea to the eastward shone for leagues and leagues in the loveliest azure. Where it rippled on my own beach and those of the low islands noted over night, a wonderful fire of blue and red played on the sands as though the broken water were full of living gems. ”

“ All was peace here; the sky a lovely lavender, a promise of coming morning in it, and a gold-spangled curtain of stars out yonder on the horizon. Not a soul moved. Below appeared a sheer drop of a hundred feet into a moat winding through thickets of heavy-scented convolvulus flowers to the waterways beyond. And as I looked a skiff with half a dozen rowers came swiftly out of the darkness of the wall and passed like a shadow amongst the thickets. In the prow was all Hath's wedding plate, and in the stern, a faint vision of unconscious loveliness, lay Heru! ”

“ He saw the house and gates in the full stream of the moonlight, and then turned to me.
“Welcome!” he cried, “right welcome to my home! Ho! ho! you shall sleep snug enough to-night. Look at the shine on it. They have lit up to welcome us!” and he pointed with a long, fleshless finger to those ghostly windows! “Ho! ho! ho!” came, like a dead voice, the echo of his laughter out of the blank courtyard depth, and the old man, so strange and wild, struck his rusty spurs upon the bare sounding ribs of his beast and turned and rode through the portal. ”

“ We saw a mighty mass of foreign cavalry creeping round the shoulder of the hill, like the shadow of a raincloud upon a sunny landscape: we saw the thousand gonfalons of the spoilers fluttering in the wind: we saw the glitter on the great throng of northern chivalry that crowded after the black charger of William of Normandy and the sacred flag—accursed ensign—that Toustain held aloft: we saw their sweeping charge, and then when it was passed, the battle was gone and done, the Saxon power was a hundred little groups dying bravely in different corners of the field. ”

“ I could not sit and see her soul come out at her frightened eyes, and not a Martian moved a finger to her rescue; the red shine gleamed on empty faces, tier above tier, and flung its broad flush over the endless rank of open-mouthed spectators, then back I looked to Heru—that winsome little lady for whom, you will remember, I had already more than a passing fancy—and saw with a thrill of emotion that while she still kept her eyes on the flaming globe like one in a horrible dream her hands were slowly, very slowly, rising in supplication to ME! ”

“ At times I sat and stared into the yellow tapers, living the brief spell of my last life again—all the episode and change, all the hurry and glitter, and unrest that was forever my portion—and then, in spite of resolution, I would doze to other visions, outlined more brightly on the black background of oblivion; and then I started up, my will all at war with tired Nature’s sweet insistence, and paced in weary round our canvas cell, solitary but for those teeming thoughts and my own black shadow, which stalked, sullen and slow, ever beside me.
But who can deride the great mother for long? ”

“ Why, even I, who yesterday was strong, began to come under the spell of it. But yesterday the spirit of the old world was still strong within me, yet how much things were now changing. The well-strung muscles loosening, the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind drowsing off to listlessness. Was I, too, destined to become like these? Was the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid Martian sap? Was ambition and hope to desert me, and idleness itself become laborious, while life ran to seed in gilded uselessness? ”

“ Editha had hardly come to her home and dried, in a day or two, her weeping eyes, when all the noble vagrants from yonder battle were up in arms to woo her. Never was maid so sued! From morning till night there was no rest or peace. From the uppermost bower looking over the fair English glades, down into the thickets of nut and hazel, the air reeked of love and petitions. The mighty Dane, like a sick bear, slept upon her curtained threshold and growled amorousness into her timid ear before the sun was up. ”

“ Dashing into the banquet-hall, still littered with the remains of a feast, and looking down its deserted vistas, there at the farther end, on his throne, clad in the sombre garments he affected, chin on hand, sedate in royal melancholy, listening unmoved to the sack of his town outside, sat the prince himself. Strange, gloomy man, the great dead intelligence of his race shining in his face as weird and out of place as a lonely sea beacon fading to nothing before the glow of sunrise, never had he appeared so mysterious as at that moment. ”

“ Resplendent in weight and strength, he came sliding down from off the platform of his cradle, and amid the crash of struts and stays, amid flying splinters and the dust of transit, rolled out majestic into the red furnace light; where, trembling in every fiber, and gently swaying like a young giant feeling his strength for the first time, with the strong breath within murmuring, and the great steel heart pulsating audibly, our iron toy was born and launched, and came forth magnificent, huge, overpowering—then, checked by its anchor-chains, swerving round to face the farther end, and halted. ”

“ It was an hour before dawn, the fire had burnt low and I was dreaming of an angry discussion with my tailor in New York as to the sit of my last new trousers when a faint sound of moving shingle caught my quick seaman ear, and before I could raise my head or lift a hand, a man's weight was on me—a heavy, strong man who bore me down with irresistible force. I felt the slap of his ice-cold hand upon my throat and his teeth in the back of my neck! ”

“ And, instead, the screen ran rattling back, and there before me, in a neat-swept space, and on a platform of oaken planks—glossy in new forged metal, shiny with untarnished filings, gleaming in the pride of burnished brass and rivets—high, bulby, complicated, a maze of pistons and levers and wheels, was a great machine!
Somehow, as I saw that ponderous monster, so full of cunning although so lifeless, a tremor of wondering appreciation ran through my mind, that soulless body fascinated me with a prophetic fear and awe which at another time and in another place I should have laughed at. ”

“ The twin black apes were still drinking, but the panther across the puddle had had enough; I saw him lift his grateful head up to the flare; saw the limp red tongue licking the black nose, the green eyes shining like opals, the water dripping in threads of diamonds from the hairy tag under his chin and every tuft upon his chest—then darkness again.
To and fro the green blaze rocked between the thunder crashes. It struck a house a hundred yards away, stripping every shingle from the roof better than a master builder could in a week. ”

“ I laughed with the bitter mockingness of one possessed by another love, and unwound those ivory bonds and pushed the fair maid back, and there against the dusk of leaf and branch she stood and wrung her fingers and beat her breast and spoke so sweet and passionate, that even my icy mood half thawed under the white light of her reckless love, and I let her take my hand and hold and rain hot kisses on it and warm pattering tears, till all the strength was running from me, and I half turned and my fingers closed on hers—but, gods! ”

“ At first it seemed to me, who stood near to the priestess of Mars, with that beaming sphere directly between us, and the newly risen world, that its smooth and flawless face was absolutely devoid of sign or colouring. Then, as the distant planet became stronger in the magnifying Martian air, or my eyes better accustomed to that sudden nucleus of brilliancy, a delicate and infinitely lovely network of colours came upon it. They were like the radiant prisms that sometimes flush the surface of a bubble more than aught else for a time. ”

“ What passed then within that steel casque I did not know, though now I well can guess, but that slim gallant turned from me, and never a word he spoke. A gentle tremor shook him from head to heel, and I saw the steel plates of his harness quiver with the throes of his pent emotion, while the blue plumes upon his helmet-top shook like aspen-leaves in the first breath of a storm, and over the bars of his cruel visor there rippled a sigh such as surely could only have come from deep down in a human heart. ”

“ At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator; and then again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write it—the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and lost is ever before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult of the struggle into which that vision led me still throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the planet I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction which followed me back from the quest drowns all other sounds in my ears! ”

“ Again I thought of Blodwen and my little one; the seaport, with its golden beaches, and the quiet pools where the trout and salmon of an evening now and again shattered the crystal mirror of the surface in their sport as she and I sat upon some grassy bank and talked of village statecraft, of conquests over petty princelings, of crops and harvests, of love and war. Then, again, I thought of the Roman galleys, and Cæsar the penman autocrat; of the British camp, and, lastly, the great mischance which had, and yet had not, ended me. ”

“ The gallant Martians, when they saw the princess saved, came swiftly down upon us. Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh—like cries of admiration and surprise, the rattle of spray on the canoe sides mingled with the splash of oars, the flitting shadows of their prows were all about us, and in less time than it takes to write we were hauled aboard, revived, and taken to Hath's barge. ”

“ I had not knelt by my fallen enemy a moment, when suddenly my men set up a cry behind me, there was a rush of hoofs, and, ere I could regain my feet or snatch my sword or shield, a great black French rider, like a shadowy fury dropped from the sullen evening sky, his plumes all streaming behind him, his head low down between his horse’s ears, and his long blue spear in rest, was thundering in mid career against me not a dozen paces distant. As I am a soldier, and have lived many ages by my sword, that charge must have been fatal. ”

“ The big beast dragged the ruck like withered weed behind him, bellowing all the time with a voice which made the hills echo all round; and then, when he got his feet upon the shallows, rose dripping and mountainous, a very cliff of black hide and limb against the night shine, and with a single sweep of his antlers tore the webbing from me, who lay prone and breathless in the mud, and, thinking it was his enemy, hurled the limp bundle on the beach, and then, having pounded it with his cloven feet into formless shreds, bellowed again victoriously and went off into the darkness of the forests. ”

“ Ah! and again I forged hot and impetuous on my master’s rods and rivets as the old pulse of battles and onset swelled in my veins—forged and hammered while the stream of such fancies bore me on—until, unwitting, the very molten stuff beneath my hands took form and fashion of my thoughts, and grew up into shining spear-heads and white blades until the fantasy in turn was passed, and I checked my fancies and saw, ashamed, the foolish work my busy hammer had fashioned, and sadly broke the spear-heads and snapped the blades, and came back with a sigh to meaner things. ”

“ I have seen many splendid pageants and many sights, each of which might be the talk of a lifetime, but somehow nothing ever so engrossing, so thrilling, as that ghostly figure in flowing robes stealing across the piazza in starlight and silence—the princess of a broken kingdom, the priestess of a forgotten faith coming to her station to perform a jugglery of which she knew not even the meaning. It was my versatile friend Heru, and with quick, incisive steps, her whole frame ambent for the time with the fervour of her mission, she came swiftly down to within a dozen yards of where I stood. ”

“ I beat my hand upon my bosom, and spent impotent curses on the starlight sky, to think how all was changed—to think how those splendid princely shadows were gone—how all those sweet, rough spearmen who had ridden with me, fetlock deep, through the crimson mire of Crecy had passed out into the void, leaving me here desolate, poor, accursed—this empty hand that trained the spear that had shot princes and paladins to earth under the full gaze of crownèd Christendom, turned to a low horse-boy’s duty, my golden mail changed to a hedgeman’s muddy smock, on foot, degraded, friendless, and forlorn! ”

“ Ay, if you have a spark of generous comprehension, if one drop of the milk of kindness still bides within you, you shall people this place we go to find with such teeming, sprightly fancies, such moving mockeries of frail human kind new risen from their ashes at your feet, that you shall wring your hands out of pure rue for them that were, and pluck your beard in dumb chagrin, and beat upon your heart, even to watch all that which once was ruddy valor and hot love, and white beauty go adrifting so upon the dusty evening wind! ”

“ I had warmed my cross-gartered, buskined Saxon legs by the blaze for the best part of an hour, thinking over all the strange episodes of my coming to these ancient isles, and seeing again, on the blank hither wall, this very circle all aglow with the splendid color of its barbarous purpose, the mighty concourse of the Britons set in the greenery of their reverent oaks—the onset of the Romans, the flash and glitter of their close-packed ranks, and the gallant Sempronius—alas! that so good a youth should be reduced to dust—and thus, I suppose, I dozed. ”

“ Faugh! ’twas but a woman’s dress left on a rusty nail, a splendid raiment once—such as a noble girl might wear, and a princess give—padded and quilted wondrously, with yards of stitching down the front, wherefrom rude hands had torn gold filigree and pearl embroideries, and where the wearer’s heart had beat those rough fingers had left a faded rose still tied there by a love-knot on a strand of amber silk—a lovely gown once on a time, no doubt, but now my sword had run it through and through from back to bosom. ”