RGL e-Book Cover 2019©
RGL e-Book Cover 2019©
"Pantopia," The Panurge Press, New York, 1930
The first-person hero of this allegorical sci-fi/fantasy novel, an Englishman by the name of Phil Meredith, is shipwrecked on the technologically advanced island of Pantopia, whose inhabitants speak a variant of Spanish. There he finds mentors in the beautiful Aura (with whom he falls in love) and her father, the wise Saavedra, who discourse with him on Pantopian society, science and religion.
"Pantopia," Title Page
I HAVE been asked to write an introduction to Pantopia and I do so the more willingly because the book is of novel interest for me. When I first took the story into primary consideration I meant to end it with the love-story, told very freely, of the heroine of the book. I did the woman's confession in three or four letters to her husband, and I was very proud of it, though my friends told me that I could never get it published as it would surely be censored. However, I did not then know how mighty the censor was in England and America and so I paid little attention to the warnings.
I had other books written that I wanted to sell first and so I kept Pantopia by me for some time.
I had read D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and thought the book very good, indeed it made me believe that he would some day write a masterpiece. Suddenly I received his book Lady Chatterly's Lover. The selection of the gardener for the hero rather shocked me. Common men cannot as a rule make an art of love, and I thought the selection of the lover unfortunate, but I soon found that Lawrence had made Lady Chatterley a real personality and had displayed her passion very wonderfully. In fact Lawrence had done in this book what I wanted to do and had tried to do in Pantopia. If I published Pantopia at once I would be thought to have imitated him. The resemblance was astonishing, whole pages were almost exactly alike. I cut out the greater part of my heroine's confession and now leave the book to the judgment of my readers, only admitting that I excised some of the very pages that made the book valuable to me.
I meant the title of the book to tell really everything about it. I intended to say that the ideal was everywhere—Pantopia—and always possible, so I put all my deepest thoughts about religion into it and tried to say something new about it. I told of the Sacred City as it appeared to me to stand for the spirit of true religion and I added a chapter on The Forgotten Dead which seemed to me the essence of true piety. In fact I made this book the vehicle for all my most cherished ideas on life, death and the Hereafter, and I wished to end it by the chapter on women's love which I regard as deeper than that of men. But there it appeared I came into conflict with English and American prudery, and laid myself open to bitter criticism and even confiscation.
However, the book is there to speak for itself and my readers will forgive me for saying that I tried to make the book the best I have ever done and I still regard it, in some respects, as my best.
THE night was naked in its loveliness; the air warm, yet quick with the freshening breeze; the sky alive with stars. We had passed from the haze of the tropics, and every hour the atmosphere seemed to grow lighter, clearer, more invigorating. I had gone up to the bows of the ship and stood looking overboard at the rush of phosphorescent water creaming away from her forefoot.
The Saucy Jane was a barque of about a thousand tons, bound from Liverpool to San Francisco and back, touching on her way out at Buenos Aires and Valparaiso. An ideal vessel for a passenger seeking health, as I had already discovered; for now, as I pulled myself up by a forestay in sheer delight of exercise, I felt that I had entirely regained my health and was stronger than I had ever been in my life.
I had walked the foredeck for an hour or more, delighting in the mere beauty of the scene, when the lookout on the forecastle pointing to what seemed to be a low bank of clouds right ahead of us, asked:
"What do you make of that, sir?"
"A bank of clouds," I answered carelessly, "what else could it be?"
"Clouds don't look like that, somehow," he muttered, "but I suppose it is some sort of cloud."
The officer of the watch had noticed it, too, for at this moment he sang out to my sailor friend to keep his eyes skinned, and in two or three minutes more came himself to the foredeck.
"I can't make it out," he said, after staring a long time through his night glass, "I never saw anything quite like it. I suppose it is some kind of water-spout arrangement, drawn up by the heat of the day; but anyhow, we can't avoid it without going about, and I'm not going to tack in a fair wind for a cloud."
A few minutes more and we were quite close to the cloud, if cloud it were. It stood right across our path, rather like a fog, I thought, than a cloud.
"Strange," said the second mate, evidently uneasy, "I have sailed these seas for eight years, without ever seeing anything like it. That gale, a week ago, blew us right out of our course, but not far enough to the westward to sight San Salvador."
"What is San Salvador?" I asked.
"A desert island," replied Peters, and then he added: "I think I'll call the first mate anyhow, and risk a blowing up."
But the first mate when he came, grumbling and cursing, from his berth, was no wiser than the rest of us, though age and long experience of the uncertain sea had taught him prudence; for after gazing a while at the bank of fog, he touched the second officer with his telescope, and said:
"Jump below, Peters, and fetch the captain, will you?"
But Captain Thompson was very hard to waken, or loath to leave his cabin, for before he came up, if indeed he ever came up at all, the ship had run into the mysterious bank of fog, and the next moment without warning or shock, I found myself swimming in the sea. I was thunderstruck. I hadn't even gone underneath the water. What had happened?
I lifted myself as high as I could in the water and looked about me. Here and there behind me were spars floating and pieces of timber, but nothing else. Nothing except the wall of fog, through which the ship must have passed; for it lay further behind still than the wreckage. In front of me, as I rose on the crest of a wave, I saw a broken line a little higher than the horizon, that looked like land; but if land, it was miles away; and my clothes were weighing me down.
I had better go back, I thought, to the wreckage; a spar would help me to keep afloat and make me safer; besides, there might be sharks. I turned at once, and swam back to the wreck, and soon found what I was looking for, a large fragment of deck with a piece of bulwark still attached to it. It was the greater part of the little foredeck on which we had been standing before the catastrophe.
I climbed on it and found it would bear me, though awash with every sea; and then in comparative safety, I began to wonder and think. The ship had gone down under our feet: what was the mysterious cause or force which had wrecked the stout barque in a moment? Was I the only one saved? I raised myself by the bulwark and shouted again and again, but there was no answer; no sound save the lapping of the water against my fragment of deck. We could not have struck a rock, the wreck was too complete for that. The ship hadn't blown up; I should have heard the explosion. What could have happened?
And why was I the only one saved? Was it because I had been further forward than the rest of them? Good God! What an awful catastrophe: Captain Thompson, Peters, the first mate, and forty men, all lost! The Saucy Jane had gone down like so many others, never to be heard of again. The common phrase seemed to win a new and dreadful meaning. Was I to be heard of again? We were in mid-ocean, hundreds of miles from land, unless indeed—? I searched the darkness in front: the jagged outline was still there; thank God, it looked like land. I must try and get to it. It was my only chance.
In a few moments I had torn off a plank of the deck and was using it as a paddle. I worked hard, so hard that I got hot in spite of my wet things, but the progress I made was very slow, scarcely half a mile an hour, and the rude paddle was already wearing the skin off my hands; in a few minutes more it would be painful work. What should I do? I stopped paddling and drew myself up by the piece of bulwark and looked about me. Strange: the fog-bank was much further away than I had dared to hope. There must be a current helping me; yes, the dark outline was perceptibly nearer; it was land, I felt sure.
All this while I was not afraid. The catastrophe was so sudden and in itself so unexpected and complete that I had not had time to realize my danger before realizing as well the large hope there was of ultimate safety; but now, with nothing to do but wait, I began to be anxious.
What could the land be? Even if it was an island, it could only be a barren rock, uncharted, unknown. Suddenly I remembered what Peters, the second officer, had said. The gale of a week before had blown us hundreds of miles out of our course, perhaps as far to the westward as San Salvador, which he said was a barren island. Was that the long jagged outline before me? It must be an insignificant spot, my fears whispered, a mere rock, or it would long ago have been explored and its position noted on every chart, and yet, surely the outline I saw must be miles in length.
Again and again my mind ran over the probabilities without coming to any anchorage, but as time passed, and the outline before me grew clearer, silhouetted against the gray dawning, I saw that the land I was nearing was larger than I had supposed possible, much larger, and higher too; for behind the coast-line I now became aware of shadow-like outlines beyond. It was land, and if high and long, then perhaps large as well.
Suddenly I realized that I was being carried past it; I was certainly coming no nearer to it. Clearly the current made round the point of the land. The hour for action had come. I stripped off my clothes, made my trousers and coat into a bundle and bound them on my shoulders with braces and tie; then, without hesitation, slid into the water that seemed lukewarm to me, much warmer than the night air. Of course, this was only natural, as water keeps its heat longer than air; but at first, the fact surprised and then pleased me: I could swim for hours in this warm water.
For a long time I swam steadily, now and then getting anxious and frightened. But as soon as I lifted myself a little out of the water, I saw that I was getting nearer. I let myself down again, and swam on till the doubt came again, and again I would lay it to rest with a glimpse of the nearing land. But before I came ashore and pulled myself up on the sand, the day was breaking, the sun shooting streamers of light across the water.
How long I lay on the sandy beach I do not know, I was too tired to think. I fell asleep, I suppose, from sheer weariness for I was awakened by the blazing heat of the sun, which was almost at its zenith. I rose giddily, pulled on my trousers and coat which were quite dry, and staggered up the beach. I hadn't gone far before all memory of dizziness and fatigue left me, lost in sheer curiosity. I was destined, it seemed, to go from wonder to wonder, for not only was the island habitable, but inhabited, cultivated, beautiful. The beach ended naturally enough in a shingled fore-shore, and from this fore-shore rose a wall of masonry. I hastened to it and was delighted to find it built in a sort of Cyclopean style of rectangular masses of stone. I went along the wall for perhaps a quarter of a mile and then saw a break in it; involuntarily I hurried: it was a staircase.
In a breath I ran up the twenty or thirty steps and stood at the top in wonderment. For there on the top, and running like a ribbon round the island, was a broad road, fifty feet broad perhaps, and perfectly kept, and this road lay between an avenue of chestnut and other trees. On the seaward side, outside the trees, there was a stone parapet some three feet high, and on the other side the land lay like a park with lawns and clumps of trees, and cultivated plots. Along the roadside were wooden seats, seats let into the parapet, seats under the trees. I was lost in admiration at these proofs of comfort and civilized life.
I wandered along the road for a mile or so and was somewhat surprised at meeting no one and at seeing no one in the fields, till I suddenly bethought me that it was the very middle of the day and that the sun was quite as hot as on the line. The inhabitants were no doubt keeping within doors. Example is contagious: I sat down in one of the arbors on the wayside and determined to take a siesta till the heat of the day had passed. It was very comfortable in the arbor I had chosen; the birds, I remember, were chirruping in the shade overhead. Out of the sun the air was quite bearable and in a little while I fell asleep.
When I awoke I started to my feet: there were two men standing in front of me, oldish men for the hair of the one was grizzled and the beard of the other was quite gray. They smiled on me in a friendly sort of way and held out their hands, and I, too, smiled and bowed. Then I began asking them questions, in English first, and when I saw that they did not understand that tongue, I spoke in halting French and then a few words of Spanish, for being on my way to Buenos Aires, I had been learning Spanish all the time on board ship, and in the five or six weeks I had gotten some knowledge of the language because there were a couple of Spanish sailors on board who helped me by correcting my pronunciation and teaching me some idioms. At once I saw that my guides more than half understood me. They spoke slowly to me in a sort of Spanish and I gathered that they told me not to be afraid, that they meant me no harm.
I motioned them to a seat and sat down myself, but the elder of the two touched my arm quite gently and pointed to the entrance of the arbor, as if he wished me to accompany him. I showed them my bare feet and winced; at once they understood, for the younger left the arbor and in a few minutes returned with a pair of soft sandals woven of a sort of green grass. I put them on and then left the arbor with my smiling, gentle companions.
They walked swiftly with me for perhaps half an hour. At length, we swung round and up a sort of promontory and suddenly, as we got perhaps half way round, a wonderful sight burst upon my view. The promontory ran up to a head of some eight hundred or a thousand feet above the sea, and it was crowned with a huge building. Never in my life had I seen such grandeur of line or such magnificent masonry. The steps up to the building must have been two or three hundred in number, very low and broad, and the building looked like the work of giants. My exclamations of surprise and wonder brought again the ready smiles to the faces of my conductors, and we proceeded to mount the steps. We had gone but a little way up when I noticed on the farther side of the promontory and running down almost to the seacoast many detached houses; evidently this was a considerable place, though none of the houses was built in a street: each one was set in its own garden or its own grove of trees. I would fain have asked the reason of this, but whenever I paused and tried to ask questions, my guides touched me gently and smiled and pointed upwards; in all courtesy I was compelled to go with them.
When we drew near the chief entrance of the building I was again put to wonder. I had seen the portals of Amiens and Chartres and Rheims, the greatest cathedrals in the world, I thought then; but nothing like this. I can only describe it imperfectly by saying it was Cyclopean and magnificently impressive. Masses of roughly hewn stone with heavy shadows under deep portals, and nowhere a trace of ornament. As we passed through the entrance, the heavy curtain which veiled it was drawn aside, as if by some waiting hand, and I found myself in an immense hall, lighted on each side by great windows. The hall was larger than the great hall at Westminster, and to my astonishment, far more imposing. It must have been capable of holding easily ten thousand people, and there were in it, perhaps, four or five hundred.
Curiously enough, these four or five hundred seemed to take no interest whatever in me or my guides. They stood about in knots and groups, hardly speaking, and yet, to all appearance, unconcerned. Directed by my companions, I went through the body of the hall to the farther end, where, on a dais, led up to by a dozen steps, one man was seated in a sort of large chair. Before him was a table, and at the table sat two men, evidently scribes, for they had curious little instruments before them, something like our typewriters. The man opposite me on the throne was quite young; he did not seem more than thirty years of age.
When I advanced to the table and bowed, he rose and smiled and stretched out his hands with the self-same gesture which I had seen my guides use at first. It was evidently their mode of salutation. My guides began to speak to him. I thought they were telling him how they had found me and brought me to this place. He listened in silence while the two secretaries played upon their instruments. When my guides had finished speaking, the man in the chair rose and said a few words, and then smiled at me again and stretched out his hands with the same gesture of salute. My guides touched me and we turned and went down the steps into the body of the hall.
The people in the hall had now, as if with one accord, come a little nearer to where I must pass them, forming in fact a sort of lane, through the middle of which my guides and I walked, and to my delight some of the spectators were girls and good-looking. I was astonished to notice that the girls seemed generally nearly as tall as the men, and both men and women were of an excellent physique. As I passed, they all smiled and held out their hands, but in some of the faces it seemed to me I saw a sort of pity, which a little disturbed me. Why should these friendly smiling people seem a little sad on my account? I smiled too, gaily, half to reassure them, half with the thought of the funny object I must look in trousers and jacket buttoned up round me, and the pliable soft sandals on my feet.
Suddenly, out of the crowd of faces one face caught my eye. It was the face of a girl, singularly expressive and beautiful. I could not help noticing that, though she stretched out her hands to me, there was no smile on her face; on the contrary, indeed, profound sadness and pity. I half stopped while I looked at her and smiled, but her eyes dropped on her hands, and my guides touched me again and we went on. We had gone some twenty paces, had almost come to the door, in fact, when it suddenly came into my head to look round at the face which had so excited my interest. I turned and looked back, and again our eyes met. I smiled at her and held out my hands and bowed, as I had seen her country people do, and at once, as if by sudden impulse, she came out, followed me swiftly down the hall, and after saying something or other to my guides, put her hands on my head. I smiled at her in wonderment and held out my hands, and now she smiled in response and held out her hands too; I grasped them both eagerly. She colored a little as she drew them away, and then, touching me on the arm, indicated a side door. I found myself saluting my guides with smiles and outstretched hands to match their own, and a moment afterwards, my girl-friend and I had left the building and were going rapidly down a long flight of steps towards the scattered houses of the town that lay beneath us.
AS we went down the stairs together, I kept stealing glances at my companion. She was taller than most women, of girlish slight figure, and very good to look at. The profile was not perfect, I decided critically: the nose a little short and slightly tip-tilted, but the mouth was superb, ripe and sensitive, while the little chin was adorably round, like a child's. I was afraid of being caught staring, but I resolved to get a good look at her eyes as soon as the chance offered; they were large hazel eyes, I knew, but I could not define the expression. As I moved slightly faster to get in front and so catch a glimpse, she turned her face to me and smiled in amused comprehension. I felt myself growing hot—one blushes at twenty-five—but I could not help laughing, too, and then stretched out my hands and bowed. Afraid, I suppose, that I was again about to take her hands in mine, she put them behind her and drew herself up. I laughed at the childish gesture; my companion pouted for a moment and then smiled and went on down the steps.
It seemed to me that the ice between us was happily broken; we had made acquaintance; I knew her a little and began to wonder what her name was. Would she understand? I must try. I touched her sleeve; she turned to me at once, the fine eyes alight with interest. I noticed now that the hazel of her eyes had golden points in it, which gave an extraordinary expression of warmth and vivid life to her regard. I pointed to myself and said: "Phil," and again "Phil"; she nodded at once smiling, and then repeated after me "Phil" in a voice as rich as her eyes. "Now, you?" I went on, pointing to her. "I, Phil; you, what?" speaking in Spanish. At once she understood and replied "Aura," and then we both laughed in sheer enjoyment.
Clearly she understood Spanish, and at once began a conversation with me in that language. Her conversation was not quite the same as that of the Spanish sailors on the ship, but I soon began to understand her, and in ten minutes found that I could understand whatever she said and could express myself to her more or less clearly. I made up my mind to remember every new word in Spanish that she used and every expression, and it wasn't difficult, for never had a man a more delightful teacher. Aura didn't mind repeating an unknown word to me and even told me its origin and its uses.
At the bottom of the steps, we found ourselves in a broad avenue bordered on each side by a double row of trees: acacias and chestnuts they seemed to be, and some of the acacias were still in bloom. The sidewalk between these trees was peculiarly made, like asphalt in summer, yielding and springy, but not soft. It was a pleasure to walk on it, and now that the sun was going down, the soft sea-breeze made the air refreshing. We passed a dozen houses and then came to one seated on a knoll with banks of flowers in front of it. My companion hurried into the grounds, saying something as she went in, but I was not quite quick enough to catch the hurried exclamation. So I could do nothing but smile and follow. The house, Aura's house, as I christened it in my thoughts, was lifted some feet from the ground; it was all on one floor, though quite as high as a good English house, very large too, and built of cut stone like the great building we had left, but the stone was smooth and not rough hewn, and all about the windows and the door there was a wonder of carving and exquisite ornament, like the egg and spear ornament about the doors of Greek temples; a friendly smiling beautiful house, I thought, but strong like the sturdy gentle-mannered people themselves.
Aura went lightly up the steps and drew back the curtain which served as door, and then facing me on the threshold, smiled gravely and extended her hands. I repeated the salutation and followed her into a spacious hall. From the middle of the hall a man came to meet us, Aura's father evidently; the likeness was unmistakable. "Papa," she said by way of introduction. We saluted each other; he took my right hand and led me to a seat, and as I sat down, again he saluted me and then he and Aura took chairs and Aura began to talk quickly.
Her father was a man of about middle height and strongly built; perhaps forty-five or fifty years of age; but the brown hair was still dark and the long moustache showed no gray. His eyes were large and blue and they smiled readily, with kindness, I thought, as he looked at me. His voice struck me even on this first meeting: it was deep and resonant, musical too, a token so to say of his real personality. His voice and way of speaking attracted me.
I watched them and listened intently to their talk, though I could not understand all that was said; still, the meaning of it was clear to me. Aura was telling him of my arrival on the island and how I had been brought before the Supreme Court and how she had interfered. Her father accepted this with smiling approval. Suddenly he turned to me and in excellent English said:
"Aura tells me that you are English but that you know some Spanish, which is our tongue."
"Yes," I cried with delight, "I am so glad you speak English. I learned a little Spanish on the ship; it helps me to understand you, though when you talk quickly I lose a good many words."
"Oh, that will come," he said still in English, "it will come very quickly. I am glad my daughter saved you," and he held out his hand.
"Saved me? Saved me?" I repeated in wonder. "What crime had I committed?" I could not help asking him in English.
"Aura will explain it all to you in good time," he rejoined smiling. "Every land you know has its own customs."
I was puzzled, but quite content to wait for Aura's explanation.
Aura's father, though past middle-age, would be called handsome. His complexion was dark. There was southern blood in these people, I said to myself, and then again doubted, for Aura's skin was fair rather than dark, and her chestnut hair had strands of gold in it. As she sat there, her changing vivid face giving sense to the unknown sounds, I saw how beautiful she was, how vital.
The room was scantily furnished according to our ideas: a couple of tables and half a dozen chairs. But there were superb pictures standing about on easels and fine statuary; books, too, clothed the walls and the floor was wonderfully inlaid in many- colored woods representing the amber and gold and russet of dead leaves and the green of grass.
Before I had lost my interest in looking about me, two young men entered the room from a side door, and after saluting Aura and the master of the house, proceeded to set forth food on one of the tables. I was extremely hungry; but even without this sauce the meal would have struck me as excellent. There were two or three sorts of cold fish with a salad of many vegetables, and then extraordinary cheese, quite soft and very like a cream cheese, but provokingly tasteful, and afterwards piles of succulent fruits such as pears, figs, grapes and guavas. To my surprise all these fruits were richer and more juicy than any I had ever tasted: the pears had no hard inside seeds and every single pear was of a different flavor. I picked up some grapes afterwards, and they too had no pips inside, and the skin was astonishingly thin so that one could eat the whole grape.
I was amazed, but didn't like to ask the questions that thronged to my lips.
The drink, too, was good though strange: there was a cider, rather tart, and a wine like Moselle, very light but of fine bouquet. Aura and her father drank this with water, and all the while the two fine-looking young men waited on us, though they were dressed just like Aura's father and seemed to join in the conversation on a footing of perfect equality; they might have been young Spaniards of a good class, I thought. After the meal we all saluted each other, and then in a little while the father showed me to a bedroom where I soon forgot my astonishment and curiosity in the dreamless sleep of exhausted youth.
In the morning I awoke early, perfectly refreshed. In the cool dark chamber I had slept like a child. I lay supine and thought. Here was I, Phil Meredith, after Oxford and a couple of years wandering about the Continent, thrown upon this island. What was going to happen? How should I get home again? What a curious race I had fallen among! The servants looked like gentlefolk; the master of the house might have been a king, and Aura was more wonderful still. I did not attempt to conceal from myself the attraction her mere name held for me: rather, I surrendered myself to it in delighted anticipation. At length, the thought occurred to me that I must get up so as to meet her and learn the language; with Aura for a teacher, I said to myself, I should not be lazy or slow.
By my bed I found a suit of clothes of the same sort as those worn by the natives, and I took pleasure in putting them on. The socks were silky fine, like a glove, with a finger for the big toe; the green sandals were the same I had tried and found excellent the previous day. The trousers made me laugh: they were so full above, and tight round the ankle; but the stuff of which they were made was as grateful to the skin as silk and they were exceedingly light. The shirt was of silk, undyed by its color, and with a sort of ruffle at the neck that I thought suited me. When I had put on the little brown jacket and tied the thick red sash about my waist, I went and looked in the mirror. I could not help grinning: I was travestied out of all likeness to my usual sober self. At any rate I thought, with the facile conceit of youth, I am a lot fairer than any of these people except Aura, and with that self-complacent humor I went through the side door and passed into the grounds.
It could not have been more than six o'clock, and yet the air was warm already like new milk. I noticed almost immediately the astounding equality of the temperature. I was in the early sunshine, and yet I could have sworn that the temperature was very much the same as it was in my room at night. Life here seemed to be on a higher level than anything I had ever dreamed of. I crossed the sward which bordered the house and plunged into the fragrant odors and shade of a grove of pine and cedar trees at the side. A few dozen steps brought me to an open space with a summer house in the center, and turning round, I found I had a magnificent view of the lower town with its scattered houses and trees and the great plain of sea bounded on the right by the noble promontory and the solemn gray temple. As I turned again, I found Aura standing beside me smiling, with outstretched hands.
It is curious that every time we met she seemed to me more beautiful than when we parted: in the morning sun, now, she was simply radiant. I greeted her with "Good morning, Aura," and she said "Buenos dias, Phil," and nodded, laughing. We moved into the arbor for shade and she leant against the table, her willowy figure swaying backward. I could not help studying the perfection of her body. The thin white fabric she was wearing molded every line of the breasts and vase-like hips and showed her round limbs provocatively so that the blood beat in my temples and my mouth parched as with thirst. I said "lovely, lovely," pointing to her, and she repeated the word wonderingly, and then with a smile, having caught the praise. She was so full of life and charm, I longed to take her in my arms and kiss the melting red mouth. But I was afraid of offending her, so I turned to my earlier purpose. Pointing to the table I asked: "What is that?" and when she told me the name, I repeated it and she corrected me till I got it right. Then I pointed to a tree and so on, giving myself infinite pains to remember the words. With her quick good nature and eager intelligence, Aura entered at once into the spirit of the thing, and after learning fifty or sixty words, I came to the conclusion that the tongue she spoke was almost pure Castilian.
After reaching this point my progress grew rapid, for I would first give the name of the thing I indicated in Latin and then quickly catch the correct name as pronounced by Aura. My guesses were so often almost correct that Aura began to wonder how I came so near the mark and her curiosity and interest intensified mine, and so I remembered everything she told me easily and soon began to try and express myself in longer sentences. Even now I remember how at the end of an hour or two I stood before her and said the numbers very distinctly, counting them out the while on my fingers. Aura corrected me till I reached "Twenty," which she told me was her age; I counted five more and told her that was mine, and we both laughed. She looked so childish-gay as she held up her hand with outstretched fingers that I seized and kissed it. She smiled and shook her finger at me.
I was delighted to think that Aura was of Spanish descent: it seemed to bring her nearer to me to find that she too belonged to the European family of nations, and it explained many things to me, amongst others, the dark skin of her compatriots, her graceful gliding walk and magnificent eyes.
It quickly grew warm in the arbor and even in the shade of the great cedars, and it was with a sense of relief that we passed into the cool hall. Here my eye was caught by the books and I began to spell out the titles to see if I could not get a grammar or a dictionary. I soon found both. In the dictionary I turned up the words I had learnt and so fixed their spelling in my memory, and in the grammar I hunted out the auxiliary verbs and began to repeat them to Aura. When lunch time came, I was able to say a good many sentences and to understand almost everything Aura and her father said. To show how our understanding depends on the timbre of the voice, I noticed that I could understand Aura most easily, and then her father; but when the young men who were waiting upon us joined in the talk I was less certain of what they said. Towards the end of lunch I began to get so tired, or rather my memory did, that I went to my room for a little while to rest, on some pretext or other. This was the more easy, inasmuch as the sun had now reached its full strength and made a siesta almost necessary. I soon found that no one went abroad between the hours of one and four in the height of summer, unless there was some extraordinarily urgent reason, and we were now at the end of December, probably as far south as Buenos Aires.
When I came down in the afternoon, Aura proposed to take me for a drive with her, and we soon started in a little two-seated car, which appeared to be driven by electricity. I had noticed the day before that the road was as smooth as a billiard-table; I was now to find out the pleasure of flying along a perfect surface at something like sixty miles an hour. The heat was still great; but the pace we went kept us cool, and though I had been in many motor-cars, I never enjoyed a run so much. I could not have believed that the absence of vibration, noise and dust could make such a difference, but it did. Perhaps, too, the novelty and splendor of the views and the charm of the companionship helped to make that ride memorable to me.
The island was small, but full of interest: the center of it rising to a chain of high hills gave grandeur and diversity to the landscape. But what struck me most was the consummate art with which every natural beauty was relieved out and set as if it had been a jewel. The whole island looked like a magnificent park cunningly arranged to give the utmost surprise and enjoyment. Mere size is not very important to us men: we cannot see more than ten or twelve miles in any direction, and the views on this island were as spacious as if we had been in the center of a continent. Not only did the changes of scenery on the land give me perpetual pleasure, but the sea, too, was enlivened by numbers of small boats, which now rested fluttering and now darted about like gorgeous butterflies, for all of them were prettily decked out with colored awnings and flowers.
Nor were the fields of air untenanted. Nothing could exceed my surprise when Aura pointed out an air-boat coming across our course and, perhaps, five hundred feet above us. It seemed to be upheld by great wings of various shades which made me think of some gigantic sea-bird; and as it came closer, I saw that its perfection was indeed that of a living creature, for it poised nearly above us, as if to watch our movements, and then used its weight to skim downwards and gather speed, though the power driving it was evidently sufficient to give it a straight course, even against a strong wind. I now began to understand why so few men or vehicles passed us on the road: these people seemed to have gained equal control of sea and air and could therefore never be at a loss for amusement.
On our return the shadows lengthened and the air grew cooler, and I saw men at work in the fields and gardens. But I was not inclined to question Aura about them, for everywhere the crops surprised me and everywhere strange machines seemed to be at work. A little later, we passed a field where a couple of men were working, and suddenly there flared out an immense electric light.
"What's that?" I cried.
"Oh," said my companion, "that's nothing but our way of killing bad insects and so increasing the fecundity of the soil."
"But where do you get the electricity?" I asked.
"I thought you had wireless telegraphy in Europe," she replied, "surely then you ought to have wireless electricity everywhere."
"And electricity increases the productivity of the soil?" I asked.
"Surely!" she replied.
"But isn't the electricity very costly?" I asked.
"It costs us almost nothing," she said. "Why, the sun's rays throw nearly a million horse-power of electricity on every acre of land; you can use it or waste it as you please, but if you use it to kill all the poisonous insects and fungi, you increase the productivity of the soil more than a fifth."
"How extraordinary!" I cried.
"I have so much to ask you," I went on, "I have never seen such sunshine as there is here; does it never rain?"
"We keep all the rain for the night," said my strange companion. "Again, the electricity is able to make the days sunlit and the nights rainy just as we please."
"Good God," I exclaimed, "what an extraordinary place!"
"You see," she said, "we call this 'the electrical age,'" smiling at me, "we use electricity even to sterilize all waters. It has reduced human illness by more than one half; since rain has been relegated to the middle of the night, colds have become a rarity, although my father tells me that every one in Europe has them three or four times a year."
I could say nothing; could only stare my wonder. I had supped on marvels and could not easily bring myself to think of trivial things. Again it came to me that life here was on a higher level than any I had hitherto known.
My self-esteem had received a shock: this strange folk had solved problems which Europe was only beginning to grapple with; I was less assured of my welcome, which I had rather taken for granted, and a little nervous, even of Aura; she seemed further removed from me and harder to approach.
The sense of uneasiness and depression grew upon me and I suppose I must have shown this; for after the evening meal was finished and her father and the waiters had retired, Aura came over to me and asked if I had a headache.
"No," I answered.
"No? What is it then?" she asked, in overflowing tenderness. I could not help telling her that I felt lonely and depressed, for the sympathy in her eyes and words touched me to the heart. And then I do not know how I came to do it; perhaps I am very passionate or have in me an intense longing for love and affection, but the kindness in her eyes mastered me. I put my arm round her waist, drew her to me and nested my head against her breast. For a moment or so she stood quite quietly by my chair and then, stooping, touched my forehead with her lips. The tears came into my eyes and I looked up at her smiling:
"How good you are!" I said "how kind! wise too, and sympathetic: an angel!"
Suddenly I became aware of my danger and tried to control myself and move away. But Aura would not let me; pouting, she put back my hair from my forehead and stroked it gently with her cool fingers. "Sleep," she said softly, "sleep, Phil, and to-morrow you will be well." And all the while her limbs were against mine, and the lissom waist swayed on my arm, and new pulses woke in me and clamored hotly. But I had still some self-control and seized on the pretext eagerly:
"Yes, sleep will do me good," I said rising abruptly, "for my head aches." It was my first perfect sentence in the new tongue, and it was a lie. For I had no ache or pain and every muscle in me was tense like steel. But I had need of reflection, and so with lingering hands and eyes we separated for the night.
As soon as I was by myself in my room, the reaction came. I loved Aura, but she did not love me, I felt sure; her yielding was of sympathy and kindness, not of love. And perhaps by using her pity and getting her to kiss me I had damaged my chances of winning her. Fear seized me, I hated myself: how could I be such a fool? I asked myself again and again impatiently.
Then the thought came that caresses, too, had their own potency. If she only liked me now, liking was apt to grow into love and kissing would help to attach us. What a glorious creature she was! Pure wine of love, I thought fantastically, to intoxicate and delight. Again and again, in fancy, I took her in my arms and kissed her lips and felt the vital heat of her body and limbs on mine. Again and again I conjured up that brief moment in order to dull the fear that lay cold on my heart, the fear that she did not love me, had not shared my caress, was only divinely kind and sweet. But in any case I could not help hoping, and hope brought me such happy content that I soon fell asleep thrilling with her kiss.
THE early events of my stay on the island are clear in my memory, perhaps because early impressions are always most vivid. But I cannot recall the later incidents in orderly sequence. I remember, for example, that I learned the language very quickly; that is, I was soon able to understand everything said to me and able to say roughly what I wanted to say. But is was a later and different impulse, which I shall describe in due course, which induced me really to master the tongue.
In the very first week I got to know a number of persons, some of whom became very dear to me, and intimate, and are as easily recalled as if they were now present; while others seem to have faded altogether out of memory, probably because they were never more than casual acquaintances.
I must have seen Aura's cousins on the second or third day. The girls, Modesta and Teresa, were always in and out of our house, and Carlos, their brother, appeared regularly after the siesta; in the morning he worked, I was told, in a physical laboratory. Modesta was extraordinarily beautiful, far more regularly beautiful than Aura. She was very tall, with dark eyebrows and large dark eyes and clear white skin. The oval of her face was perfect and poets raved about her; but to me, she lacked Aura's abounding vitality and passionate temperament, and the regularity of her features seemed monotonous in comparison with Aura's changing soulful face. I do not mean by this to suggest that Modesta was commonplace in nature or intellect; on the contrary, she had a very strong personality and great talent. But she was always Modesta, whereas Aura was now a child and now a genius, capricious, incalculable, sunny-eyed and tender- hearted.
Teresa was an ordinary good-looking girl of the Spanish type, very practical and full of common-sense, renowned as a housekeeper, indeed, yet gifted, strange to say, with an extraordinary talent for music, which I was soon to see displayed.
Carlos was a youth with a strong dark face, whose capacities as a scientist I was incapable of judging; but he always struck me as prematurely prudent and astonishingly self-contained, kindly enough at bottom, but reserved to a fault.
With all of these I soon made friends. Indeed, for some reason or other, Modesta deigned to take a good deal of notice of me; I found later that this was probably due to no attraction of mine, but simply to the fact that she was in secret consumingly envious of Aura and Aura's popularity. But her attentions pleased me and I accepted them with naive unconsciousness; once or twice, indeed, my fatuous self-conceit—but the story I have to tell will discover all this in due course, so I need not pillory myself yet.
I think it was on the third or fourth morning that Modesta and Teresa came in, proposing that we should all go and bathe. Aura asked me whether I'd like to go, and I assented eagerly. We all set off together for the point of the promontory, in a new car which Carlos had just built: Teresa showed us various improvements he had made in the mechanism, but I could not follow her explanation as the language she used was too technical. The car was run by electricity, that is to say, by wireless electricity, and I didn't know how they could control it. Suddenly, the mast in the car threw out great wings, and a moment later the car itself left the road, mounted into the air, and while I was still gasping with wonder, slid quietly down onto the beach half a mile away.
The bath itself was an inlet of the sea which had been turned into a sort of amphitheater at the very point of the promontory. Tiers of seats had been cut out of the solid rock and a great many cabins had been erected round the land-end. These cabins were of massive stone, apparently intended to last for ages; like everything, indeed, which this strange people built.
There were already dozens of girls and men in the water when we arrived, and the air was filled with joyous laughter and a babel of young voices. In a few minutes we had all donned bathing costumes and were ready to join the crowd in the water. The girls were dressed in one-piece bathing suits, of various colors, the tops of which just covered and discovered the breasts. I could not help comparing Aura and Modesta, as they stood together at the end of the spring-board: Modesta was a little taller and beautifully proportioned, but to my mind, even in plastic beauty she could not be compared to Aura. The truth is, I suppose, that we have been taught to admire a certain type and every variation from this appears to us to be a fault, whereas it may be an excellence. In any case, the peculiarities of Aura's form were all lovely in my eyes. Aura's neck was not swan-like; but the short column gave her an air of extraordinary vigor; then her breasts were small and firm as a girl's and her feet were baby feet. The astonishing vitality in her and the daintiness lent her a contradictory but ineffable charm. Her form appealed to the senses irresistibly, just as her face appealed to my heart.
They jumped off one after the other, and I soon followed them. Even at this early hour in the morning, the water, to my surprise, though cool, was not cold. I learned afterwards that at this particular place all the sea water for half a mile out was warmed too by electricity, which added a surprising vigor to the bath. But after I had swum about for a few minutes I began to get tired, when suddenly Modesta challenged me to a race. Of course I did my best, but she beat me easily, and at the end of perhaps a couple of hundred yards, I had to draw myself on to one of the tiers of seats at the side and admit I was conquered. Modesta professed that she was tired too, and so she came and sat beside me, and we talked. I wanted to know why the sea was so calm, the surface just rippled by a light breeze; was it always calm?
"Nearly always," she said, "but they can let the storms in if they like, and sometimes they do."
"Who are they?" I asked. And she replied:
"Our guardians of the sea. But now tell me: is not Aura beautiful, quite lovely?"
"Very lovely," I answered, "and you are perfect."
But it would not do; she returned to the charge:
"Is there any girl as pretty as Aura in your country?" she asked.
I said I had never seen any one so lovely.
"It's only natural you should think so," she said, and she laughed.
I thought she alluded to my great affection for Aura, which I suppose was at this time manifest to anyone who saw us together. But I could not understand what she meant by natural; why was it natural? Then she asked what I thought of Aura's father: "Isn't he distinguished-looking?"
"Yes," I said, "astonishingly handsome."
"Not so much handsome," she insisted, "as distinguished. Saavedra is one of the greatest doctors we have, always busy in consultations and experiments, and Aura has inherited some of his brains, don't you think?"
I said "yes," I thought she was extremely clever.
By this time it was clear that Modesta was pumping me, and as I have always found that the best way to avoid pumping is to pump the questioner, I began to tell her how interesting everyone seemed to me: Carlos, Teresa and especially herself. "How beautiful you are," I said, and I might well say it; for as she sat there with her lower limbs glowing rosy-white in the sun and her beautiful form outlined by the clinging silk, it would have been a cynic who could have used any other language to her than that of admiration. She seemed to like my praise, but I must do her the justice to say that she put an end to it very quickly by exclaiming:
"You know we must be getting back; it will look strange if we keep away from the others so long. But I wanted to have a little talk with you because I liked you as soon as I saw you, and I hope we shall be friends always, don't you? Great friends, and remember that if ever I can be of any help to you in any way, I shall only be too glad to do my best," and she smiled at me bewitchingly as she spoke.
I do not know why it is, I suppose it is due to natural slowness of wit, or perhaps to a very good memory which allows me to recall any scene that interests me, hours and even days afterwards, but I have often found that a scene which was incomprehensible at the time becomes perfectly clear to me when I think it over afterwards, and the motives of people which were obscure become obvious; and so it was now. I was delighted with Modesta at the moment, but when I thought it all over later, I remembered a sort of aloofness of tone and coolness in the eyes that told me that she had been playing a little comedy with me. She had not been saying to herself, at all: "I like this newcomer and I shall be kind to him," but: "I'm afraid he is stupid and won't serve my purpose at all." Still, then and there, with the sunlight glancing on the waters and the crowds of gaily attired figures, I had not time to think or to discover motives. I just accepted everything heedlessly.
When we returned, I went over to Aura and asked her if she would swim with me; she said "yes" at once, brightly, and we swam out together and then rested, as I had done before, on one of the stone steps. The pretty scene I had before admired had now no charm for me; I could look at nothing but the marvellous girl at my side. And yet I could not feast my eyes on her loveliness, as I wanted to; I caught glimpses only of the superb neck, the mutinous changing face. Everything I saw fed my passion; things ugly in others were in her lovely: the little elbows were not bony-rough, but round and smooth like polished ivory. Just above the breast, the dress clung to the little mound where the arm and body met: I longed to kiss it, and yet I was afraid even to speak plainly. "Do you know," I began cunningly, "that Modesta seemed very anxious to find out whether I liked you and thought you pretty?"
"Really?" said Aura, turning her eyes on me, "and what did you say, may I ask?"
"The truth," I replied humbly, "that you were the loveliest creature I had ever seen and that I adored you." Aura laughed mischievously:
"That didn't please her, I am sure."
"No," I said, "for then she declared that we must be getting back and that after all my liking for you was only natural. What did she mean by that, I wonder?" I added.
"I don't know," replied Aura gravely.
"Unless," I went on, "she meant that my whole nature adores you."
She listened with downcast eyes. "It is so rare," I went on, gathering courage, "in this world to find anyone who realizes your ideal. But to find someone who altogether surpasses any dream or vision of ours, must be almost unheard of, and that's my case. You are more than ideal to me: you have everything, beauty, grace, wit, charm."
"Hush, hush," said Aura, "you really must not say such things, and I must not listen to you."
The reproof was not in itself very decided and it was accompanied by the kindliest glance.
"Whether I speak or not," I said, "that's what I feel, and shall always feel."
"Come," said Aura, blushing a little as she stood up and put her hands above her head to dive, "come." For one second she was outlined against the sky; the next moment she was sliding through the deep transparent water. I followed regretfully, for I loved to be alone with her; but I consoled myself with the reflection that I had spoken at last and that I had some new pictures of her in my memory, which I knew even then would be with me as treasures for ever.
When we joined the rest we were chaffed a little, but Aura took it all with such gaiety that her friends soon thought better of it, and then someone proposed a game: foreigner and native. I thought they pointed at me with the word foreigner, but I was soon undeceived. The game was very simple. One young fellow was chosen as foreigner and he went up and stood on the spring-board ready to jump into the sea. The rest of us went out some three hundred yards to the end of the amphitheater, and then one of the spectators at the side called "Go." The youth sprang into the sea and began swimming towards us, and at once the meaning of the game became apparent: it was our task to swim to his end of the amphitheater without being touched by him and without turning back on the way. Only the foreigner had a right to turn. By good luck, this first time I was on the outskirts, near the rocks, and swimming right on, I got to shore without being touched. But the foreigner had captured no less than six girls and one youth, and now all these seven congregated with him at the sea- end of the amphitheater, while the uncaught hundred of us had to swim the gauntlet out. This time I was among the caught and found twenty or thirty others in the same plight. The game went on till only one was left, a young man called Laurice whose black head was bobbing up and down at the end of the amphitheater, while all the rest of us were in the shallow water under the cabins.
"Oh!" said someone, "you'll never catch Laurice, you may as well give it up."
The girls were evidently all agreed about this, but amongst the crowd were fifteen or twenty young men, and they were determined to have a try. They did try; but the first time Laurice got through, amid the laughter and cheers of the girl- onlookers; for Laurice's speed and craft in diving were extraordinary. The second time he failed to break through the opposing line and bit by bit was driven backward into the shallower water and at last surrounded and caught. During this last act we could all see him distinctly and so were in a position to appreciate his wonderful skill and lithe grace. As he ran up the rocks and stood at the door of his cabin, I could not help saying to myself that I had never seen so splendid a specimen of manhood. Not more than five foot eight or nine in height, but superbly made; a model for a sculptor, I thought. The nervous limbs, small hands and feet and the deep arched chest were magnificent, and the head was nearly as fine: with his tanned skin he reminded me of the Perseus of Cellini.
I turned to my friends with eager praise of him; but while Teresa echoed me, both Modesta and Aura, I thought, seemed rather cold. Aura said little or nothing; but Modesta declared that there were a dozen men of the village better looking; "besides, he is always showing off," she added contemptuously. I was so stupid that I argued with her, for I did not understand her apparent want of enthusiasm.
After we had dressed and were preparing to start home, Laurice came up and asked Aura if he might accompany us; as he wished to have a talk with her father. "Of course," she said a little constrainedly, I thought, but Laurice appeared to notice nothing, for he turned to Modesta and Teresa with graceful compliments. Modesta showed manifest pleasure at his attentions, as, indeed, did Teresa, and even I who was not prejudiced in his favor could not help admiring his charm of bearing and speech. Every now and then our eyes met; he looked at me with a certain friendly curiosity and I looked at him with undisguised admiration: there was a suggestion of power underlying everything he said or did which captivated me, and his face was like a Florentine bronze. With the enthusiasm of youth I christened him "the Sun-God." But at the same time I was vaguely uneasy; I felt rather than saw that he admired Aura, and probably too, I thought with shrinking heart, had some attraction for her. Had I known what darkness he was going to bring into my day, I should have been less enthusiastic about this Apollo.
We all took the midday meal together, for Aura would not hear of her cousins going home. As she pressed them to stay I thanked her with heart and eyes, for it looked as if she were more than willing to give Modesta a chance of winning Laurice, and certainly Modesta seemed inclined to turn her opportunity to account.
In the course of talk, Laurice told us that his object in coming over was to show his new submarine to the Naval Commission, and he asked us all to witness the maneuvers. Of course we assented eagerly. When Carlos came in to look for us after the meal, Laurice was charming to him, told him he had heard of his car and wanted his opinion on his own submarine; even self-contained Carlos was flattered out of himself. Every moment showed me more clearly what a formidable rival this newcomer would be, though his courtesy to everyone prevented me from knowing whether indeed he was a rival or not.
The trial took place in the open sea, a mile or so beyond the promontory. The scene was very gay: a hundred boats surrounded the buoyed-off square, and dozens of airships hovered above. The water was very deep, but so clear that fish could be seen a hundred feet below the surface as through a window of glass. Laurice's submarine was hardly more than a launch; one man attended to the electricity and another to the appliances for sinking and raising the boat, while the inventor took control and steered. The speed of the little craft and its powers of sinking, rising and turning were almost uncanny: it showed the freedom and ease of a fish. Clearly these people had used submarines for generations. As soon as Laurice was free, he left the judges' boat and came to ours; the girls congratulated him and Carlos and Saavedra asked some technical questions which I could not understand.
I must say Laurice bore success perfectly: he seemed unconscious of it, and more interested in others than in himself. For example, when they were all praising his invention which had greatly increased the mobility of the submarine, he declared that one of Señor Saavedra's discoveries to prolong life was worth a thousand merely material inventions. The compliment was a neat one and seemed to be sincere: indeed his face was so expressive that everything he said appeared to come from his heart. But whether sincere or not, Laurice had all the qualifications for social success: he interested everyone, brought everyone into the conversation and seemed to take special delight in drawing out any little talent that one possessed. It was almost impossible to be with him without acknowledging his fascination. The more I saw of him, the more I feared his gay good-humor, tact and charm.
On our return from the landing-stage to the house, Laurice and Aura walked side by side, and my heart sank as I saw them together and caught fragments of his vivid pictured speech.
For the first time I realized the superiority which his mastery of the language gave him, and I made up my mind that within a month or two I would speak it as well as he did. My groping for words and stumblings over forms suddenly appeared to me as grotesque as a physical deformity, and I promised myself that I would soon cease to be ridiculous or contemptible.
Everything that took place afterwards confirmed me in my purpose. The evening meal was a long martyrdom: again and again Laurice showed unconsciously that he admired Aura: he was not at his ease with her as with the rest: now he showed off a little and now he was too deferential. As soon as supper was over, we all strolled into the garden; but Laurice went off, almost immediately, with Aura, leaving the rest of us to fall apart of our own weight. Saavedra returned to his books; Carlos and Teresa wandered off somewhere, and Modesta and I paced side by side and talked from the teeth outwards. Suddenly Saavedra appeared with a message that had just come for Laurice, recalling him to the University; he gave it to Modesta and begged her to find Laurice without delay and give it to him. In my relief and gladness, I was for calling Laurice; but Modesta put her hand over my lips: "Hush," she said, "hush, we will join them." And when I would have hurried, she restrained me: "Quietly, quietly," she said, and led by her, we turned on to the grass and moved quietly to the summer-house.
The moon was near the full, and as we reached the edge of the shrubbery that encircled the summer-house, we saw Laurice and Aura standing just outside in the full light. He had her hands in his and was evidently pleading with her. Aura's head was drooping so low that I could not see her face, but she did not answer, yet her whole attitude filled me with fear; I felt as if I could not breathe. As Laurice grew more impassioned, drawing her to him, Modesta pulled me behind the bush and chanted "Laurice, Laurice" at the top of her voice. The next moment she broke into the open circle with the message in her hands.
The interruption had come in the nick of time. Laurice came forward to meet us, in haste and evidently disturbed; but Aura stood as he had left her, hands clasped in front of her and her eyes on the ground. I was mad with anger: I could have struck her in my rage, and yet mingled with the anger was an unwilling admiration—Aura was incapable of feigning.
As I came near her, she raised her eyes to mine; her very soul looked at me through them. I don't know what inspired me, perhaps unselfish sympathy, perhaps the humility which is the very essence of true love, but I knelt and took her gown in my hand and kissed the hem of it: "Whatever Aura does is well done," I said; but my eyes were wet in utter misery. She put her hand on my head, and as I looked up and she saw my tears, she put out her hand to me in a caress of infinite kindness, and I kissed it. How we joined the others, or what was said, I don't know; I was still confused, half sad, half consoled, but we went, almost directly, to the house and then Laurice left us. While Aura went in, I conducted Modesta, as was the custom, to her own door. When we reached it, she looked at me curiously: "You are no fool, my friend," she said, and then added: "Get up early tomorrow and meet me in the summer-house." I looked at her and nodded my head. At last I understood: I had an ally.
I WAS up early in the morning and went out in the garden shortly after sunrise. In about a quarter of an hour Modesta joined me and we went together towards the summer- house.
"We were just in time last night, I think," said Modesta, and laughed, as if delighted, "and as for you, you are much cleverer than I had thought you."
"What do you mean?" I asked, though I had already guessed her meaning.
"I was afraid," she replied, "that you would be jealous and angry and show off your temper to Aura; but your kneeling and submission was a master-stroke; it was really cunning of you, cleverer than you know."
"I was angry," I said, "but it is hard to keep in a temper with Aura."
"It is only natural," she said, "that you should be in love with her, if the poets are to be believed."
"What do you mean by natural?" I asked impatiently, "it is the second time you have said that. Why should it be natural for me to fall in love with Aura any more than with anyone else?"
"Surely you know that Aura saved your life?"
"Saved my life!" I repeated in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," she went on quietly, "that Aura saved your life on that first day when you were taken to the Hall of Justice and condemned to death. Didn't you know that?"
"But why was I condemned to death?" I asked.
"It is an old law," replied Modesta carelessly, "that all foreigners who come through the electric cloud which protects the island are condemned to death. They are regarded as unworthy to become citizens and our forefathers used to fear that they might escape and disclose the secret of the island to outside peoples, and thus bring war and misery upon us. So the single life is sacrificed to protect the state. You were condemned to death, and if you had gone a few feet further down the Hall, you would have passed into the elements."
"But how was Aura able to save me," I asked, "if that is your law?"
"It is the family, you see, and not the individual which is the unit with us," Modesta replied, "and as Aura belongs to a distinguished family, her father having been thanked thrice by the state, she has the power of saving anyone whom she may choose to save, and perhaps because you looked at her and showed her you admired her very much, she chose to save you. We all wondered at it when we heard of it; but we have not wondered since we have seen you," she added laughingly.
"Good God!" I cried, recalling the whole scene in the Hall of Justice, "how horrible! And do you kill men for no reason? I only wish I had known this before. I wonder what Aura must think of me: I have never even thanked her."
"You will have lots of opportunities of thanking her," said my companion, "if you take my advice."
"And what is your advice?" said I, almost without thinking of what I was saying; for my whole mind was filled with what I had just heard, and I began to be glad, even of the danger for the sake of her who had rescued me.
"My advice is worth considering," said Modesta coldly, "even if it is not worth taking." She was nettled, I suppose, by my apparent want of interest in what she was saying.
"You may be sure I shall consider it," I answered, as seriously as she herself had spoken.
"Well," she began, "you want to win Aura, don't you? You want to make her love you?"
I nodded.
"And she has already half begun to think of Laurice," she went on, as if to herself, "and if it had not been for our very timely interruption last night you might be a day too late; but I think you are still in time. First of all, women all love to save a man and take a great interest in the person they have saved, and Aura is just a woman, believe me. Then, she is proud to a fault, and you can kneel at will, it appears, and kiss the hem of her garment. All of which is excellent policy. You cannot be too submissive, too humble, with her, as long as you are bold and resolute with others. But interest and flattered pride are not love, and you must know more of Aura, or I am afraid you may miss the way to her heart; for your rival will not give you much time, you may be sure. Laurice will be back from the University next week. I should not even be surprised if he paid us a visit before then. But say that you have a week's start; how ought you to act?" Here Modesta paused as if to collect her thoughts.
"I know Aura intimately: I have been with her ever since she was a little baby. Though I was very small myself, I used to delight in nursing her, and I know her almost as well as her own mother would have known her, had she lived. Aura is very proud, my friend, and very vain of her learning and knowledge. She won all sorts of honors at the University and was offered a tutorship. My advice is, let her teach you; sit at her feet and admire her; remind her of all you owe her: life, and more than life, love and happiness.
"Aura is generous, too," went on my strange mentor, after another pause, "most women are; and she will love to do more for you because of what she has already done. Now if I tell you all this, I tell it to you simply because it leads to the key of the whole position. Most women have a good deal of the mother in them, and Aura is gifted, or cursed, whichever you will, with the maternal instinct in an extraordinary degree. She loves to mother and protect and help people, and if you will put yourself in her way, continually, as something to cherish and help, you will call forth all her tenderness, and probably win her love."
"I am infinitely obliged to you," I said, "but it seems very cold-hearted planning how to win her, by flattering her and making up to her and all that; I should have preferred to let love win love, simply."
"All the fools and weak would prefer that," retorted Modesta, sharply, her fine face lighting up with pride and resolution, "they all want the fruit to fall into their mouths without the trouble of plucking it. But the wise and strong know that every good thing in this world must be fought for and won, paid for in some form or other. Aura's love will be sweeter to you because you had to use your wits to win her."
"Are you judging by yourself?" I asked with a shade of malice.
She turned her eyes on me gravely, but the colors would mount in her cheeks, in spite of her effort to look indifferent.
"By myself?" she repeated, as if she didn't understand.
"Yes, by yourself," I went on obstinately, "surely it is plain that if you teach me how to win Aura, you do it, not for my sake, but because you want Laurice for yourself."
"It may be so, or it may not," she said with a quiet dignity I could not but admire, "but I give you my word that I would have helped you to win Aura if there had been no such person as Laurice in the world."
At the moment I did not understand what she meant; but her tone of absolute resolution impressed me, and a little later I found the key to the riddle.
"I quite believe you," I replied quietly, though I did not altogether believe her at the time, "but now, don't you think it is as well that we should separate, for Aura will soon be coming down, and if she found us together it might annoy her."
"I don't know that that would be a bad card to play," Modesta said, "she is just a little jealous of me, I think, and if she saw us together, it might make her a little more anxious to keep her bond-slave."
"What you say is perhaps true," I replied, "but I really want to go and study. I have made up my mind to try to learn your language like a master, like Laurice, and I shall have to stick to grammar and dictionary for the next month or two."
"If you wish to speak like Laurice, you will need not only grammar and dictionary but all our poets; he gets his splendid epithets and winged words from their quiver. But take my advice and study with Aura, you will learn more from her and quicker than from books. Get her to teach you our customs and laws, our art and science—everything. She will be delighted," and as she spoke she laid her hand on my head, half in kindness, it seemed, and half in play. I understood what the caress meant when I looked up, for there was Aura gazing at us from the edge of the open space. Modesta, it appeared, was that unpleasant sort of ally who is determined to help in her own way; but to my intense relief, Aura seemed unconscious of Modesta's familiarity. She chatted quite freely to her, but when Modesta made some excuse and went away to her own house, Aura turned to me with a half- question:
"So you and Modesta are great friends?"
I was on the point of confessing everything to her, but thought it better to pass the matter over for the time.
"Now you are here," I cried, "let us talk of something interesting. I came down early to meet Modesta, simply because I was determined to find out from her what she meant when she said it was only 'natural' that I should care for you, and she has told me how you saved my life," and as I spoke I took her hands and kissed them.
"I was glad," she said, drawing her hands away quietly, "to be able to do it, no one has the right to take life; the law is a stupid survival and should be abolished."
"I am proud of being your debtor," I cried passionately, "already I owe you much more than life itself: new ideas, new feelings, new hopes—indeed, all that enriches and ennobles life.
"Don't let us talk of it any more," she said. "Had Modesta happened to be there, she would probably have saved you first. She is very resolute."
"Ah, no!" I said, "for I should not have looked at her twice. I absolutely begged for your help, in the Hall of Justice: your eyes were so pitiful-sad, as if you cared for me a little even then. Did you, Aura?"
Aura shook her head to warn me I was on forbidden ground, and as the moment seemed unpropitious, I refrained from love-making and added in another tone: "And now I want to learn your language, to speak as you speak; and I think I shall begin by reading some of your poets. Will you tell me which to take up first?"
"Of course I will," she said, "and you will learn quickly, I'm sure, for already one understands you very well. But after all, what does language matter?" she added as if speaking to herself. "Sometimes I think that spirit gets to know spirit without words, indeed almost in spite of words," and the kindness in her great eyes set my heart fluttering.
"I have felt something like that, too," I replied in a matter- of-fact tone, for I wanted to pique her a little. "But still, one looks like a fool when one makes mistakes in speech, and besides, your language is the key to the mind of your people. I want to know you well: your religion, your science, everything. You must help me, Aura."
"So far as I can," she replied with a smile, her mood changing in a moment, to suit mine. "But I don't know much about science or religion; science is not to my taste," she added pouting, "too detailed and mathematical; and though religion seemed very important to us once, we have outgrown it a little now, or think we have. But begin and tell me about your religion," she said, putting her hand on my arm, "and one of these days I'll show you our Sacred City which is the temple of what we call natural religion, calmly assuming that what seems to us natural must be natural to all mankind," and she laughed merrily.
Without more ado I took her at her word and began to trace for her the formal outlines of Christianity; but while she was interested in all I said about Jesus as a seer and teacher, she waived aside all supernaturalism as childish and absurd. She would not accept even our belief in a personal life after death, and she found a charming word, I thought, to justify her skepticism: "A wave rises," she said, "in the infinite Ocean, and you christen it 'Aura' or 'Phil'; it keeps its limited form for a moment, and then is merged again in the sea of Being. It came from darkness and returns to the darkness. Why should we even wish an eternity of existence for what is, by its very nature, limited and finite?"
I had to admit that there was no reason why we should expect a self-consciousness after this life which we did not enjoy before it.
"What was the message of this prophet, Jesus?" she asked me abruptly. "Do you remember His teachings?"
"The best of His teaching," I replied, "seems to us nearly perfect in unselfishness; we come to it, you see, in childhood, and it is made sacred for us by so many memories, that perhaps we don't judge it fairly. Still He preached repentance, forgiveness and love with infinite persuasiveness."
"Are His teachings carried out in the life and practice of your people?" Aura asked ingenuously; "and are your laws molded on them?"
I could not help smiling. "No, indeed," I said. "He told us to love one another and to forgive unto seventy times seven; He declared that repentance washed out sin, but we prefer to clap the offender in prison, careless whether he repents or not."
"And what do your present prophets think of this teaching of Jesus?" she asked suddenly, with the luminous eyes fixed on me.
"Oh," I replied quickly, "we have no prophets now; they belonged to another race, the Jews, and have left no descendants."
"That's nonsense," she retorted: "what has been, in human nature, is and will be. The race of prophets and inspired teachers no more dies out than the race of poets or the race of scientific enquirers. Think, and you will recall a living prophet and his teaching, just as clearly as that of Jesus, and it will perhaps be more profitable."
I was dumbfounded. For the moment I could think of no prophet in modern England. But suddenly the words "inspired teacher" recurred to me, and my memory went naturally to Thomas Carlyle; but I could not recall any positive teaching of his, he seemed to have spent himself in denunciations.
"There was a man, called Carlyle," I said hesitatingly, "who wrote against lies and hypocrisy and preached sincerity and work, and true hero-worship."
"His indignation," she remarked, as if thinking aloud, "we should say, was probably a measure of the degradation of his people: if you accept silly supernaturalism in your religion, you must pay the penalty for it. If you look to a life after death to redress injustice, you will be more tolerant of injustice in this life, and not fight it as you ought. If you trust lies about the soul, your daily life will soon be saturated with insincerity. Still one does not modify the real much by declaiming against it, but, by living in the ideal and showing it by way of contrast. It's our dreams which gradually shape our waking life to their own beauty. But what place had this man Carlyle with your people? Was he a ruler? Did he frame new laws for you, new institutions?"
I thought of the little house in Cheyne Walk and could not help smiling.
"Oh, no!" I answered, "he was a mere writer and lived in comparative obscurity." And as Aura looked up at me in astonishment, I felt compelled to explain: "You see, the Church regarded him as a revolutionary and dangerous; our rulers shrugged their shoulders over him as a harmless, though earnest, visionary; and the mass of the people knew nothing whatever about him. Who cares for a new star, except perhaps a few of the gifted ones?"
"But what do your people care for, then," asked Aura, "if they treat great men with contumely or indifference? What is their real, if unconscious, aim and purpose?"
"The individual citizen," I replied, "wants to get richer and live better, and incidentally to produce and bring up children. The state tries to get possession of all the different countries it can by bullying the weak and truckling to the strong."
"So," she said, "to use your word, they multiply and inherit the earth, indifferent to the worth of those they bring into life?"
"In the mass, quite indifferent," I was forced to reply.
"But don't they know that dominion and power come from knowledge and virtue, and not from numbers and greed?"
"I'm afraid they don't," I replied; "at least, to judge by their actions, they believe in numbers only and look upon greed as a virtue; for I am sure everyone of them regards wealth as the highest good."
"Don't let us talk of them any more," said Aura, with a shudder of disgust. "Their power can have no continuance; it is easier to build a house on shifting sand than an empire on wealth."
"You are judging without having all the facts before you," I replied. "My people have horrible vices, it is true, which they take for virtues; but they have some virtues, and it is by these they live, and by the fact that their rivals, for the most part, are even more ignoble than themselves. At least, we believe in political liberty and equality before the law, or try to persuade ourselves that we do, though the rich are the masters in our courts, just as titular nobles are the rulers of our society. But there are not lacking signs and tokens that your verdict may be correct: our rivals seem to be beating us lately, even in the race for wealth, and our politicians don't seem to know what to do."
"But surely," Aura exclaimed, "even politicians must know that wealth is but a byproduct of knowledge. What are your schools and colleges doing?"
"Training memories and not minds, I am afraid," I answered.
"But your laboratories," she went on, "your students of physics and chemistry and forces?"
"Ah," I replied, "that's just it. One of our rivals, Germany, has twenty students of these matters for one that we have, and their endowment of research is a thousandfold larger than ours."
"In that case," replied Aura, coolly, "they must beat you in the race, and the downfall of your people will be more profitable to humanity than its dominion."
"Oh, don't say that!" I cried, for her words filled me with fear, almost as if I had already felt the same truth, though I never dared to realize it to myself in words; "don't say that, for I cannot, will not believe it. We have a great history; we have gone into the waste places of the earth and planted colonies everywhere, which have now grown into powerful nations, and so secured the Motherland against overthrow and conquest. I don't know but what it would be well for us to lose our commercial and manufacturing supremacy, for then we might turn our energies to acquiring more valuable things than riches, and then profit in the long run by what now seems to us absolute misfortune. There is a fund of native vigor in the race, which, properly directed, might yet work wonders."
"You must talk to my father," said Aura, "about it all: he is very wise."
IN the morning, I reminded Aura of her promise to show me the Sacred City and to teach me the mysteries of what her compatriots called "natural religion." She was quite ready, but wanted to know whether I would go by the big general airship, or whether I would trust myself to her little car. I could not help smiling: did she really want to know, I wondered, whether I should prefer to have her all to myself, or to be mixed up in a crowd of unknown and indifferent people?
"I would rather have one day alone with you, Aura, than a thousand years with other people."
"Come, then," she replied gaily, "we will take my ship. You will be quite safe," she added to tease me.
She led the way to a little workshop at the end of the garden where all such mechanical contrivances were kept, and there she showed me her little airplane. But when I came close to it, I found it was not so little as I had imagined; the wings of it were both numerous and large, and so beautifully fitted and arranged that I could not help examining them with admiration.
"You see," said Aura, "any two or three of these wings would easily support the ship with our weight in her, and there are a dozen wings, so that nothing can go wrong."
I was astounded at the lightness and strength of the metal wings, but the way they were adjusted to take any angle needed and then remain rigid in the new position caused me still more astonishment. The little boat was a marvel of mechanical skill. Aura got in and ran her out, and then I took a seat beside Aura. A moment afterwards she had started the motor and with a little buzz, scarcely louder than that of a bee, we slid down the garden-slope and rose in a long curve into the air. I lost my breath with delight and fear; as the ground slid away from under us, I instinctively clutched the seat with both hands and for a moment was almost rigid with nervousness; but soon confidence returned, and with confidence a new sense of power and pleasure. At my request, Aura guided the little ship away out over the sea, and then over the promontory with its somber Hall of Justice, before heading it directly for the center hills and the Sacred City.
The motion was entrancing, infinitely easier even than the flight of a bird, for the bird has to move its wings and exert itself, but here, for me at least, there was no exertion and no noise whatever. Aura touched a lever and we swung to right or left, up or down, exactly as she wished. Once, indeed, to show me how wonderful the boat was, she closed all the wings as she said, or rather she turned them all perpendicularly so that for, perhaps, two hundred feet, we dropped like a stone, and then quite coolly she turned on wing after wing and the boat simply flew through the air in a long rising curve. I prayed her to moderate her doses of these new sensations, or I should be unfit to learn and understand anything when we came to the journey's end; but she was in one of her willful moods and was determined, as she said, to show me that a man was infinitely the superior of a bird, and so she played all manner of pranks, sweeping and poising and falling till my very brain reeled and I had to beg her to go quietly. When she saw that I was really distressed, her native kindness of heart made her humor me at once. She quietly descended till we were about forty or fifty feet above the tops of the trees, and there we swept along at a perfectly even pace. After half-an-hour of that incomparable motion, I could understand why no one cared to use the road for a long journey, smooth as it was and frictionless, for the road forced me to keep to a single plane, whereas here we could swing into the upper air or glide along the ground at will, without effort or fatigue.
In something over half-an-hour we reached our destination and "put up" at a certain station on the inland road. We had risen, Aura said, about two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The air was like champagne, light and cool. We left our machine in the care of an attendant and began walking up the hill through a double avenue of lime and acacia trees, all bouquets of flowers.
"But where is the Sacred City?" I asked.
"It lies before you," said Aura gravely. "Surely, as we came near, you saw the wooded hill in front of us?"
"Oh!" I said, "are we on the hill with the circle of houses round its base?"
"Yes," said Aura, "but the buildings you thought were houses are our temples. I will show you one of them," and we turned off to the right by a side road and soon stood in front of a temple. The architecture was a sort of Gothic, simplified to beauty. As we passed through the portals, a certain solemnity came upon me; whether it was due to Aura's unwonted gravity or not, I can hardly say.
"On our holy days," she began quietly, "you would find this temple crowded with boys and young men; for the virtue to which it is dedicated is the favorite virtue of youth: courage. And just now the professor here, who discourses of courage, is not only fitted to speak on the virtue, but is also well read in the records of bravery and gifted besides with passionate eloquence."
"Is the professor chosen for his speaking," I asked, "or for his courage?"
"Generally," she said, "he is required to have shown both courage and power of speech; but in this particular case he has every qualification. As a mere lad, a boiler burst in the place where he was working, and he went back to the steam-filled room to rescue another man. It is a marvel how he ever survived, for they say that his flesh was dropping from his hands when he came out. As soon as he recovered, he was encouraged to go to the University where he developed extraordinary talents as an orator. He is, really, a remarkable man, and has been thanked by the State.
"You see those busts on pedestals all round the Hall? They are the masks of those who in the past have done most to enlarge our conception of courage. At first, bravery was usually shown in battle; but now, for a century or more, we have had no war and courage has been limited for its expression to the chances and accidents of ordinary life."
"And so," I said, as we left the building, "this religion of courage is the religion chiefly of young boys?"
"Something more than that," Aura answered. "It is not only the religion of the young, but a discipline that all of us need at some time or other in our lives. Sooner or later in the myriad chances of our existence, our courage is put to the proof and tested to the uttermost. It is well for us, then, if we have mastered its lessons."
I had followed her in silence, musing over the gravity with which she had spoken, to a temple off the main road to the left. Its architecture reminded me of the Hall of Justice: it was Doric in elemental massiveness. Once again Aura proved an incomparable guide.
"This," she said, "is the temple devoted to Pity, and on one morning in each month it is crowded with girls, for we women, at least on this side, go back deeper into the past than men do; our instincts here are more sure and vital than theirs. The sympathy with suffering and weakness which we call pity is perhaps more necessary to the growth of humanity than even courage, and its professor here is one who has studied it more deeply than any other living creature. I am glad to say she is a woman. If you care to notice, nearly all the masks here of those who have extended and vivified our conception of pity are the masks of women."
As we stood again in the sunlit avenue at the side of the temple, "I think I understand," I said. "All the buildings round the base of the hill are devoted to different virtues and you teach all these virtues and their worth, as far as possible, by living examples."
My companion bowed her head gravely.
"You will forgive me," I went on, "if I do not think this virtue-worship, even when combined with hero-worship, quite exhausts all that I understand by religion." Aura agreed with me at once.
"Virtue-worship and hero-worship," she said, "are only the elements of religion. But let us go up the hill and you will see something more."
As we neared the top of the hill, I became aware of a great building crowning the summit. It was a colonnade of almost gigantic proportions; two or three rows of columns supported the massive roof, and in the wall facing us were great niches, and in every niche a statue. As we trod the pavement of this colossal cloister, I suddenly noticed that all the statues were mutilated: this one lacked an arm, that one an eye, and the other a foot. I turned to Aura for an explanation.
"As I told you," she began, "some of us prefer one of the temples at the base of the hill to worship in, and some another; but no matter what the virtue we prefer, or that we most need, we all worship here. The temples below are dedicated to men who have succeeded, heroic bringers of the Light, whereas this temple is dedicated to the myriads who have failed, or rather passed into the darkness unnoticed.
"This is The Temple to the Forgotten Dead, whom we think worthy of all honor.
"To take it at its lowest: who was the man who first made the wheel and so increased the power and lightened the labor of men almost beyond believing? And he who first made the screw? Unknown benefactors of humanity to whom we are all indebted. By this recognition, by worship in this temple, our people have tried at least to acknowledge the gifts, and by love and admiration to reward the bountiful unknown givers.
"But why were they unknown and unappreciated in their life time? Our fathers didn't want to blame the mass of men for misunderstanding the great ones; they preferred to attribute the failure to the benefactors themselves, so they symbolized their faults by depicting this man without a hand, and that one without eyes; but we know better. It is the many who are to blame and not the divine ones. Our fathers taught that for lack of this quality or that, the benefactors failed and fell unremarked. But we know better and cannot forget that it is to them and their achievement that we owe whatever is worthiest in ourselves. We have reached higher levels through climbing on their dead bodies.
"The symbolism of the maimed eye or foot or hand is crude, for it misrepresents the truth. The passion of sympathy and love for our unnumbered and forgotten benefactors is, we think, the purest form of piety. What they must have suffered who gave so much and received nothing!"
She paused for a while and then began again, in a low voice:
"How fine it seems to us when we are very young, that hero- worship! And how we reverence this or that great man standing alone for truth or right, like some giant tree, lifted far above the common surface of life! But when we grow older and have time for thought, we see that the soil in which the great tree stands and from which it derives its force and vigor is made up of vegetable mold, is, indeed, the decay and detritus of the leaves and boles of a thousand trees that have grown and died there and given of their lives and deaths to the making of the great tree we so much admire. Why should we worship the success chiefly and think nothing of the unnumbered failures which have made the success possible? We owe thanks to the very earth we walk on."
I could not but agree with her and I confessed to her that I admired the conception and even its crude symbolism.
She then led the way through a great portal in the colonnade, and almost immediately we found ourselves in a grove of trees. Before I had time to ask whether this had any meaning, she led the way rapidly to the center of the grove where we came to an open space, and in it a gigantic marble figure on a pedestal; it was that of a woman, with upstretched hands, and a moment later I perceived that she was blind, her eyes closed.
"What is this?" I asked Aura, in wonderment.
"This," she said, "is what our great men a long time ago selected as a symbol of the very spirit of religion; for the essence of all religion is aspiration towards the highest, and this they embodied in a woman's form, because they believed that our love of the ideal was intenser and purer than that of men."
"I can understand that," I said gravely, "the woman's figure and uplifted hands of aspiration are all right, but why is she blind?"
"Ah!" said Aura, turning to me with wet eyes, "because our poor human aspiration at its best is blind: an unconscious impulse, a straining upwards in the dark."
In silence we returned to the airplane, but once on board the little ship again, Aura's spirits seemed to come back to her. It was late in the afternoon, and the setting sun was painting the western sky with a thousand shades of pink and rose and gold, mingled with the greens of jade and malachite. We had scarcely lifted into the air when Aura told me she would play swallow for me. And, at once, she began to swoop and poise and turn and dart and hover till I cried out in giddiness and begged her to have mercy on me. She laughed and swept on in a straight line till she saw that I had recovered myself, and then she turned her mutinous face to me and said:
"You want to think and be grave, do you, sir? Come then, we will mount like the eagles." And she turned the levers and forthwith the plane began to swing up and up in great circles till the air grew bitterly cold and the island was outlined below us like a small irregular blot on the sapphire sea.
As I looked down, fascinated, all fear left me and every trace of nervousness; clutching the sides of the seat, I cried: "Higher, higher!" till Aura at last replied: "We can't go any higher." As I looked down my senses seemed to leave me, for the island was but a mote in the immensity and the sea below us was the purple floor to the vault above, and the meeting of sky and ocean was shadowful, vague, and my heart seemed to contract; for a moment I must have swooned. When I opened my eyes again, we were sweeping down in a long breathless curve, and very soon the air grew warmer, and I was able to discern the Sacred City with its cloistered crest, and the next great circle brought us over the Hall of Justice, and the peaceful bay and home.
I had had a great day and I could only say to Aura, with wet eyes: "I owe you more than life." She smiled divinely: her eyes seemed to lift my soul and in deep gratitude I ventured to hope.
THE very next day I began questioning Aura about the actual religion of her people: "You appear to have outlived your ancient beliefs," I said. "What is your new creed?"
"If you really want to know," said Aura gently, "you should ask my father. You have no idea how wise he is, how learned; then, too, he knows your people and literature as well as your language."
"Really?" I asked in blank amazement. "How did he learn about England?"
"It is very simple," Aura replied. "Every generation, nine or ten of our best young scholars are sent to study in Europe. Thirty years ago my father was one of those envoys and he went to England and all over the Continent. Ask him everything you like at lunch and he will answer you. By the way, it is time to go in now."
As we sat down, to lunch, I asked Señor Saavedra in English whether he had enjoyed his stay in England.
"Yes," he replied, in excellent English, "I liked it very much; but life there is very complex. I soon found it more profitable to study in France and Germany.
"Why?" I asked in astonishment, a little piqued.
"I am afraid I shall have to tell you in my language," he said, "because speaking English is an effort to me now, and perhaps it will be a good thing for you to forget your English a little."
"Indeed I would rather speak your tongue," I replied, "but where and what, may I ask, did you study in England?"
"We are not sent abroad to study, exactly," he said, "but to find out what scientific progress has been made by other nations, and whether we have anything new to learn from them. It is a precautionary measure which our State takes, for its own safety. Although we are far ahead of European nations in scientific research, still, it is possible for a gifted man in Europe suddenly to stumble upon some law or force that we have overlooked, and therefore we think it a wise provision of our people to send students abroad in every generation to keep us informed on these matters."
"Then, I suppose," I said, "you did not find much to learn in England?"
"England was less interesting to me," he said, "than France or Germany, especially Germany. You have no large body of scientific students in England. The State, though very rich, spends almost nothing on scientific endowment and, consequently, the chief scientific discoveries are now made in Germany. Twenty-five years ago, we all saw clearly enough that Germany would soon surpass England, even in industrial development, and ultimately in wealth, because the Germans are so much better taught than Englishmen, though of course the English colonies give England a market beyond the seas such as Germany does not yet enjoy and a power not easily calculable!"
"But, Father," said Aura, "what did you think of the religion in England? Phil is very anxious to know what our religion is, and seems astonished that we do not attribute much influence to it."
"It is two hundred years now," said Saavedra, smiling, "since any of us studied the religion of Christendom. The belief in Heaven and Hell and a God-made Savior seemed absurd to us and we have left it all on one side; but there may be redeeming features in it for those who live within its influence. Still, I must confess that the Christian belief did not impress me deeply and its influence even on believers seemed to me slight."
When lunch was over, and Aura and I were again in the arbor I could not help telling her that I thought her father rather contemptuous of Christianity. She was quite interested in all I had to tell her about the life of Jesus and His extraordinary influence.
Suddenly her father joined us and I took up the Sermon on the Mount and recited most of it to him. His comments seemed to me exceedingly interesting and cast a sort of new light on the age- old story.
"It is surely a little puzzling," he began, "that advice to make it up with your adversary, because if you do not he will go to the judge and get you thrown into prison: it seems poor, childish stuff. We should not do good out of fear. Besides it all strikes a wrong note. One of two things seems probable: either the teller of the story put that in himself because it appealed to him, or else Jesus really said it as part of the penalty of youthful impromptu speech. For when one speaks without notes and waits on inspiration, as the born orator is inclined to do, one is apt to fall below one's self now and then, and in order to get into the swing, as it were, one says something familiar to the mind, which is usually some youthful thought or other which has been in the memory a long time.
"This hypothesis seems to fit the case: Jesus begins by giving the best of His youthful intellectual riches; when the aphorisms are done with, He speaks for some time without special inspiration; then a childish argument comes into His mind and He shoots it off; dissatisfied vaguely with it, He trusts to his newest vision and so rises to His very highest. Have you noticed that He has scarcely uttered that base opportunism about the judge and prison before he recants and appeals boldly to the soul itself? 'Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you,' and the noble summing up: 'Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.' That 'be ye perfect' is wonderful. But none of us now can believe in the God-man and the Kingdom of Heaven, hardly even in a God."
Next day Aura made me know her father still better.
"I want you," she said, "to get from him an answer to all your questions. I can't teach you anything," she added, "but he is very wise and good through and through."
"He interests me intensely. I hope to profit by his wisdom." I confessed.
"He is the only man living," Aura went on, "who has been thanked three times by our State."
After dinner I told Saavedra what his daughter had said, and asked him to tell me something of his own creed and its sanctions.
"First of all," he said smiling, "you must know that we have given up all belief in the supernatural: not one man among us believes in a life after death. The absolute understanding that we must make our Heaven on this earth and reach happiness, or at least the fullest measure of life, here in our earthly pilgrimage, is the central thought of all our belief. That has remodeled our state and our whole existence. You may have noticed that we have no rich and no poor: enough to live on largely is guaranteed to all of us by the State. Of course we all work and work hard."
"Pardon," I said, "but you have servants and superfluities?"
"One moment," he replied. "Those of us who have been thanked by the State for eminent public services constitute a sort of aristocracy and have many privileges, among them this of servants. But all service with us is voluntary," he added: "those young men who wait on our table do it because they hope to gain manners and ideas from us, and the servants in our kitchen too are only there because they wish to help us and to learn for themselves: Aura is a gifted cook, quite famous," he added, smiling love at her.
"Your rewards are not munificent," I cried, "are your punishments just as slight?"
"Even slighter," he replied, laughing outright at my bewildered look. "We don't admit that any man has a right to punish another, and it is more than a century now since this power was given up by the State. The only power that the State held fifty years ago was the power to declare that this man or woman had injured the commonweal. Almost at once, it became the custom for the man or woman so censured to make away with himself or herself, and in a single generation this custom spread so that the whole family of the censured one committed suicide. At once the State allowed this power of condemnation to fall into desuetude."
"And so now," I exclaimed, "your State can reward but does not punish?"
He bowed his head and Aura exclaimed: "He doesn't tell you that he was the first to advise the State to abandon the custom of censure! But you were the first, weren't you, you dear?" And she put her arm round him and smiled up at him in loving pride.
I was tremendously affected; but I wanted to learn more. "How does the Communism work?" I asked. "A wise Englishman, Locke, said 'Labor for labor's sake is against nature.' We had thought that only the fear of starving would make all men work. Is that not so?"
"Public opinion," replied Saavedra, "will make men work harder than any fear of want. When public opinion is reasonable and right, it becomes a tremendous instrument."
"Whew!" I whistled, "that is a new idea and I believe a fruitful one."
Saavedra smiled at me: "It is the living principle of our whole existence," he said.
"And a great principle," I rejoined; "but have you no restrictions or restraints at all?"
"Few, but important ones: marriage is only permitted after a clean bill of health is given to both the man and woman, and we don't allow any foreigner to marry or become a member of our State."
I glanced towards Aura, but she did not meet my eyes. "Do you mean," I cried, "that it's impossible for me to marry here?"
"Such permission has never yet been given," he replied; "but it would hardly be denied to any one really worthy of the privilege."
"These are the reasons," I resumed, "why all your young men and women are so well-grown and healthy. You have eliminated poverty, destitution and hereditary disease, and so have won extraordinary healthy and capable citizens. You are to be congratulated."
But I had not got yet to anything like a clear comprehension of the morality and religion of this strange people.
If I try now to set down in order all that Saavedra taught me and all I picked up for myself about that strange society, I must do it by tracing my own growth in gradual enlightenment.
I began by asking Saavedra: "What is the first principle of your morality?"
"We start with the assumption," he replied, "that the vast majority of men will behave and act usually in a way useful to society, just as we feel certain beforehand that a child will walk upright and not on all fours, simply because it belongs to the genus homo."
"But suppose some one steals from you?"
"We have no theft from want," he remarked; "but at first there was pilfering difficult to account for; most of it has almost ceased. But I have lovely pictures and works of art, chiefly because of the talent of a grand-uncle, and if any one wanted one especially I think we'd let him have it, wouldn't we, Aura?"
She smiled assent: "You've already given a dozen away."
"You see," said Saavedra, "we men can be at least as unselfish as the ant. If an ant returning home with a crop filled with food meets some other ants with empty stomachs, he immediately disgorges so that his hungry neighbors may also be satisfied. And if he refused, he would be treated as a public enemy and forced to share. It has been known, I believe," he went on, "that when such a thing happens during a battle between two different species, the ants would stop fighting to punish a selfish comrade.
"But without going so far, what we feel is that every man and woman is inclined to do always what is good for the race, and I mean by good what is useful for the preservation of the race, and we all naturally regard that as evil which is hurtful to the race.
"The idea of good and evil has little or nothing to do with religion or some mythical conscience. It is a natural need of animals, powerful in proportion to their enlightenment."
"It sounds all right," I said, "but doesn't it make life drab and dull?"
Saavedra laughed. "Primitive peoples," he said, "used to eat their aged parents. The custom must have added a certain excitement to life, but we prefer the dullness of love and kindness.
"Seriously," he added, "the marvels of art, literature and science supply us with all the excitement we need. Aura must show you our picture galleries over there in the town, and to-morrow Professor Garza who has just returned from Paris is going to lecture on new inoculations against disease. You may have noticed," he went on, "that the common cold so universal in England and indeed throughout Europe is unknown here; we cure it with a simple injection."
"Do you limit the number of children in a family?" I asked irrelevantly.
He smiled again. "Some parents do, some don't; we leave that to the individuals. But we teach every boy and girl at puberty all we know of conception and contraception as well. Ignorance, we regard as the chief evil."
Somehow or other, the conversation turned then on modern war. I thought the electric cloud that protected the island very efficient, but exceedingly cruel.
Aura asked me to ask her father about it and about modern war. Saavedra contented himself with saying that the electric barrier hardly destroyed three ships in a year and he added: "Every people has surely the right to protect its own shores."
He went on: "The next great European war will assuredly be more destructive and more cruel even than the last. What fools men are to fight! If they did away with armies and navies, they could put an end to poverty and think what that would mean. And the next war will be far more awful than the last. Man's power is increasing enormously, thanks to science, but his goodness does not increase in the same measure, and science must make the next war more disastrous. Invisible light will be used," he added, and seeing my astonishment he continued:
"Let me give you an example. The leading ship of a convoy might carry a powerful lamp emitting ultra-violet rays at night. These would be invisible to the naked eye or to submarines, but could be picked up by the lookouts on friendly vessels by means of special field-glasses with quartz lenses and fluorescent screens. And just as invisible lights can be used to avoid submarines, it is possible to detect them by using a beam of 'inaudible sound' which will travel through the water like a searchlight and be reflected by the submarine."
I could hardly understand what he meant; the more I was puzzled, the more resolved I became to assimilate all this new knowledge and thus win to the level of these strange people.
I was dumbfounded, at a loss indeed to find any objections to their rational and humane sentiments. Besides I was determined to try to get Aura by herself before Laurice should call, so I simply thanked Saavedra warmly for all he had taught me and said I hoped he would one day tell me of his experiences in Europe and why he seemed to prefer France and Germany to the other European nations. "Now I want to see the pictures you praise so much," and I added to Aura: "perhaps you will take me."
She smiled, and ten minutes later we got into her airplane and sailed over the town into the Square. As soon as we alighted she led the way to the Great Gallery. But I must keep our experiences for another chapter, for indeed I wanted the tête-á-tête chiefly to make love to Aura whom I was already half afraid of losing.
AURA led me through the streets of the capital which I found much larger and more populous than I had imagined; the houses I remarked at once were all separated and most of them had a patio as well as a garden. The Center was a sort of park- like square surrounded by imposing public buildings such as the hospital and schools of research. Here we found the picture gallery. On our way Aura was greeted on every side with smiles and good wishes.
The gallery itself was like any of the European galleries, arranged, however, in a different way. Instead of a great painter's work being distributed over two or three rooms, it was all collected together and arranged according to the time of production, so that when you were looking at Rembrandt, for instance, you could study his whole development; and so with all the other masters. Moreover, all were classified according to their time; that is, the primitives were together and the later schools in order. I found all this very informative, educative, if you will, because it was certain that Velasquez learned a great deal from his stay in Italy, and here one could see just what he had taken to Italy and just what he had returned with. I told Aura that it was the most interesting gallery I had ever been in.
"But where are your own paintings?" I asked.
"Downstairs," she said, "you shall see them all later. But here there is a room I like because they have devoted it to beautiful women as a concession to popular taste."
I followed her into the room and was surprised by the wealth of the collection.
"What do you think of it?" she asked me intently.
"Many beautiful women," I said, "but none so lovely as you." I said it quite casually as if it was a mere expression of judgment and had nothing to do with feeling.
"I'm not nearly so pretty as that Murillo," she said, pointing to one; "you must see that; she is more perfect than Modesta."
"You are inexpressibly finer," I retorted. "I thought as my eye caught that picture first that it had a look of you, was like you in terms of flesh, but you are that and all the mind and spirit-charm to boot."
"Now you are flattering me, and I don't like flattery, or rather I do like it but I don't think it good for me, so you mustn't talk like that, please."
True love is of infinite cunning; born of intimate soul sympathy, it possesses a sixth sense that teaches how to win the loved one. I felt somehow that speaking of her loveliness, I was on the wrong track, and suddenly my love of her inspired me with better words:
"You must not forbid me to tell the truth to you," I said. "You must remember always you saved my life; that gives me a claim on you. Was it to make life wonderful and divine to me, or simply to kill me again in utter misery, having lost the pearl of great price, which I never could have imagined?"
"The pearl?" she repeated in a question.
"Yes, you are the pearl," I said, "more wonderful than anything I could ever have dreamed of. You have given me life and made it priceless to me. You are responsible for me and you know it. Look at all you have taught me. I'm half your child, your creation. I don't believe you will destroy me, and so I kiss your hand (and of course I suited the action to the word) for I know that some day soon I may kiss your lips, and in some great hour later on, you, of your divine goodness will kiss me. For that hour I live."
She looked at me with strange wide eyes.
"You've no idea," I went on smiling, "how close pity is to love. They nestle together in a heart like yours, a heart of gold."
She put her hand in mine and said: "You talk wonderfully, Phil; but I ought not to listen—"
I resolved to risk everything, and so I went on more boldly:
"If I had thought you loved Laurice, I wouldn't have spoken like this. You deserve the noblest, the best, and I know my own unworth and should have kept quiet. But he has a great position and thinks himself superior to every one, whereas you are the Goddess to me and should be adored. I adore you, the way you move and even when you frown as you are frowning now."
She smiled, but still shook her head.
"Not skin deep your displeasure," I said, "for your child is just begging you for one sweet word, one glance—"
Aura turned to me and pressed my hand. "You are a very dear clever child," she said, with her deep eyes resting on mine, "and you know that I like you."
Somehow I felt that for the moment I had gained enough, that it would be dangerous to try for more. I had won her interest, her sympathy; I had touched her heart, perhaps. It was enough for the time. I should never be to her the same, for I felt quite certain that the appeal to her pity—that same pity which had induced her to save me from death—was the real way to her heart. Besides, all of us, men and women alike, love to be placed on a pedestal and adored for what we are and what we are supposed to be.
We went downstairs afterwards and went all through the school of modern painting. I found it very interesting, but too impressionistic to be as effective as the old masters. The appeal of their work was simpler. One or two pictures—landscape especially—I could find little in until they were explained to me by Aura who pointed out just what the painter had wanted to do. There were studies of nude women too that I didn't care for. They were too realistic, the forms too stout for beauty—beauty, in truth, neglected for reality and the real fact had little interest for me. In this Aura agreed with me, and so, pleasantly chatting we came out of the gallery and made our way back home.
As we entered the garden I took Aura's hand and kissed it, smiling. "Your child thanks you for another good lesson." I could feel the pressure of her hand, but it was the look in her eyes that made the day golden for me.
From this time on I was always on the lookout to touch and caress Aura. One day, I remember, as I stood back so that she could pass through the door first, I let my hand stray down her hip, delighting in the round firm outline. She stopped at once and looked at me with a sort of question in her eyes: "Oh, I meant it," I said boldly. "I love to touch you everywhere and I can't always control myself: you are so lovely. You should blame your beauty, not my poor admiration." She was not offended, but pleased, as I soon discovered, and naturally the caresses quickly became more frequent and bolder.
I can never forget the first time I gave my hands complete freedom. I came on her in the garden from behind and took her in my arms, my left hand on her breasts, my right bolder still. After a moment's surrender, she stepped out of my embrace with a warning gesture: "It's not allowed, Phil," she said, "nor fair." "Is this fair?" I cried, kneeling before her and kissing the hem of her dress. Then suddenly I put my hands about her hips and buried my hot face in her lap. "You child," she said, but she smoothed my hair with her hands, and so we made peace.
I was still more successful in praising her mind and spirit. She had a class of girl-children to whom she gave lessons daily; I heard one of these and was lost in admiration of her wisdom and kindness. When I told her how I admired this, she would not have it; the privileged class, I found, all did the same thing: Laurice even and Modesta had their classes. Whereas in the American democracy, the effort of the rich seems to be directed towards forming a class apart, here everyone seemed actuated by the desire to help and instruct the less fortunate ones. A great deal of this striving was due, I soon discovered, to the personal influence of Saavedra, and it made me more curious and more eager to fathom his real motives and learn why he did so much for others. I had thought of this trait as a result of Christianity and I was astonished to find it so strong in this people who seemed to have no religious belief. When I talked about this to Aura, she told me she thought her father had been influenced by Jesus, as kindred spirits are influenced by one another, and she promised she would get him to read something he had written on the Crucifixion of Jesus which she believed would help me to understand her father's true nature.
The next morning, when we were all together at breakfast, she brought the matter up. But I must give a chapter to it, for it first made me realize that goodness is a commoner attribute of men than I had supposed and that Saavedra was one of the very best I was ever likely to meet.
"I'M afraid there's nothing new to tell about Jesus," Saavedra said earnestly. "We knew too little about Him. The Jews were more concerned with morality than any people and He brought morality to its highest in that new Commandment of His. But ordinary life in Europe is far below that counsel: you have first to get rid of greed and poverty and come to our fair equality. I am afraid that it will take Europe a thousand years to reach even our level."
"But, Father," Aura broke in, "I liked your story of the Crucifixion; I wish you'd read it to me and Phil, please," and her eyes begged.
Saavedra consented at once. "If you think it worth while," he said. "But Phil should know that I thought it nothing but a re- writing of the Gospel story, bringing out what is implicit in it. It's in my desk; if you'll bring it, I'll read it willingly."
At once Aura hastened away and soon returned with the manuscript. "I make no excuses," said Saavedra, taking the manuscript in his hands, "you have brought it on your own heads; but I am not proud of it, I would have you know."
"Please, Father," said Aura, "I want to see if it makes the same impression on Phil as it made on me years ago."
"So," said Saavedra, pointedly I thought; "it has got that far, has it?" and he smiled at her and then began to read.
(Night. John near the Cross with Peter)
Peter
How they mocked Him. "Why don't you come down from the Cross? You saved others, yourself you cannot save.... This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." Do men hate everyone sweeter and nobler than themselves?
John
It's not what they did but what He said, that hurts me.... His disappointment, His despair!
Peter
Despair?
John
You heard His cry: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
Peter
Well?
John
Oh, don't you see that He expected God to come at the last moment with legions of angels, to rescue Him or take Him up to Heaven: some visible sign of approval and affection? Oh, oh!
Peter
You think He expected that?
John
Surely! And when nothing happened, when He felt His life ebbing out in utter ignominy and defeat, His heart broke and He just sobbed: "It is finished!" Oh, oh! it was dreadful! (And he breaks down in tears.)
Peter
You think He counted on God's help to the last and when He found He was mistaken He gave up and—
(John bows his head in assent while trying to swallow his tears.)
Peter
Then the whole promise was wrong, the Gospel a mistake. We shan't govern the world or reign on earth. It's all a cheat!... We'll have to go back to our ordinary work.
John
Oh, His word was true, His love for all of us stands; we must keep on preaching His Gospel of forgiveness and repentance.
Peter
But that was what John taught!
John
Yes, but the Master added the new commandment: "That ye love one another," which is the heart of our faith.
Peter
Must I love Judas? Must you? Can you?
John
You heard Him tell us how to do it. "Father, forgive them," He said, "for they know not what they do." Judas did not know what he did, that's all; we can all believe that, forgive him and pity his ignorance.
Peter
You're right, John, I believe, for before coming here today, I heard one of the High Priest's servants say that Judas had given back the silver he received. He didn't do it for the money's sake, though I can't see what other motive he could have had.
John
I have often talked with him, heard him say he wished the Master would go up to Jerusalem and confront those scoundrelly usurers of the Temple who fleece the poor. It was Judas who put the scourge for the money-lenders in the Master's hand; I imagined he believed that God would really appear at the trial and help His beloved Son; I thought so myself. Perhaps Judas only wanted to put the Master to the test, believing that He would triumph. "They know not what they do." Oh, Peter, no man ever spoke like that about his torturers, and there He hangs, dead!
Peter
Here's Joseph coming back from Pilate and the Centurion is going to meet them; I must hear what they say.
(He hurries past the Cross. John moves slowly after him.)
(Joseph of Arimathea, accompanied by Nicodemus, meets the Centurion at the foot of the Cross. Peter lingers within earshot.)
Joseph
The Procurator orders you to deliver the body to me.
(Hands the Centurion a paper.)
Centurion
Yes, the body! I am to convince myself that He's already dead.
(He beckons a soldier.)
Joseph
You heard Claudia, Pilate's wife, say His legs must not be broken!
Centurion
Still I must convince myself He's dead. They seldom die in a few hours, yet He was anything but strong; that's why I got His cross carried for Him.
(Here a soldier with a spear draws near.)
Joseph (in great agitation)
His legs were not to be broken, Sir! He was not to be tortured in any way!
Centurion
I know my duty and shall do it. They often live seven days; it seems strange that He should die in seven hours—still—
(Joseph whispers aside with Nicodemus while the Centurion gives an order to the soldier, who goes to the Cross and pricks the body of Jesus, just above the hip, with his spear. Water and blood flow out.)
Centurion (to the soldier)
H'm, h'm, is He dead?
Soldier
Dead as meat; he never winced.
Centurion (nods to Joseph)
All right; the body is yours. He seemed a good man.
(Moves away to his men.)
Nicodemus (to Joseph, in great excitement, whispering)
Did you see that? He's not dead!
Joseph (in amaze, whispers)
What d'ye mean? Not dead?
Nicodemus
No. If He were dead, that watery blood would not have flowed out; that proves circulation. He has fainted merely. I think the Centurion knew that too. Luckily the seat was high up on the cross so His hands are not much torn. With care and speed, Joseph, we may save Him yet. Think of it!
Joseph
What's to be done?
Nicodemus
If only we had somewhere nearby to treat Him!
Joseph
I have a sepulchre close here; would that do?
Nicodemus (Pointing to Peter and John, who had drawn near.)
The very place. Then the soldiers will think it all right, and the priests' spies too, if there are any about. Who are those men?
Joseph
Followers of the Master. I know one of them. What shall we tell them?
Nicodemus
We can use one of them here to help us and I'll send the other for liniment and unguents to dress His wounds. We'd better send the stout fellow.
(Joseph beckons to them, and speaks first to John.)
Joseph
We want your help now to lift Him down from the Cross. (To Peter) Nicodemus here, a doctor and friend of the Master, wants you to go to his house and bring back the things he'll note down.
(Nicodemus takes out his ivory tablets, writes with a stylo on one and hands it to Peter with a word or two of direction. Peter runs off. Then Nicodemus and Joseph go to the Cross and begin to uproot the crux or upright. John puts himself under the weight and supports the Cross with his shoulders; they ease it little by little to the ground. Nicodemus unwinds the rope from about His feet and then cuts the thin cord that has been bound about the arms from the wrist to the shoulder to stop circulation and diminish the pain. As he cuts loose this binding, the face of Jesus twitches.)
In great excitement Nicodemus cries:
Look, look, Joseph! I was right; He's alive! I must take out the nails first so that if He comes to we'll be able to carry Him off at once to your sepulchre.
(He begins drawing the nails. John turns aside, shuddering.)
(Nicodemus, after freeing the hands, cuts loose the other binding and watches the result.)
Joseph (whispering)
No blood comes now—
Nicodemus
The faint is profound. Besides the arms were so tightly bound that circulation has not begun again yet. We must be careful; still we must take Him away at once, for when the blood starts afresh I want to staunch it and the pain will begin and I'm afraid He may groan or cry out. Will you lift His head?
John (holding out his hand)
I'm strong. Please let me carry Him.
Nicodemus
Then I'll take His feet and legs. Gently, lift Him quietly. Take the right arm, John, in yours; the blood's beginning to drip. If only He doesn't cry out or groan, we shall save Him yet. I wish that stout fellow would return.
Joseph
There he comes running.
Peter (panting, with a bundle on his back)
Whither are you taking Him?
Joseph
Just below there. I have a sepulchre. But help us! We don't want to shake Him awake until we bring Him to safety.
Peter
Awake! Is He alive?
Nicodemus
Alive, yes, and will live, I hope, many a day yet; He can hardly be more than forty.
John
Thirty-seven only; He was not gray until the last few days.
(They enter the sepulchre and Nicodemus sets Peter and John to chafing
the arms while he dresses the wounds in His hands and the
stab in His side.)
Peter (looking at the hole in the left palm, which Nicodemus is dressing)
The pain must be dreadful; those Roman brutes!
Nicodemus
Death by crucifixion is not a torture to the Romans, but a disgrace. They are callous, not cruel; they did not nail the feet; they always give the crucified a strong opiate with the sour wine and that causes insensibility. (Turning to his work and watching the blood drip slowly.) His heart must be weak; his faint is so profound; even now He's coming to very slowly; it's strange; but I had a patient a little while ago—Ah, that's better. (Jesus opens His eyes and then closes them wearily. John falls on his knees and kisses and fondles His hand.)
Nicodemus
Do not disturb Him. I hope He will sleep now and awake strengthened and refreshed. We can leave Him; His hands will not ache worse and the opiate given Him will induce sleep, I hope.
Peter
I'll watch by Him all night; the creatures of Caiaphas might do Him an injury.
John
I'll watch, too.
Nicodemus
'Twould be unwise; might cause suspicion. I think we should act as if He were dead, till we can get Him out of danger. Don't forget He'll be very weak and not able to walk. His heart is very feeble; you can scarcely hear it. Joseph and I will be back early; why not meet us here at the fourth hour and bring Him outside the city to Bethany or some place where He can get rest in safety and be taken care of till He gets strong. Time alone can cure such a shock and His hands must have time to heal.
Joseph
I can wait and watch without exciting question, for I own this place.
Nicodemus
That will be best; but leave Him undisturbed. I'll be back again with new medicines before dawn. So far all has gone better than we could have hoped. (Goes off L.C.)
Joseph (to John and Peter)
You ought to take some rest, but be sure and keep the good tidings to yourselves. If a word gets out, He'll be arrested, and that would kill Him in His present state.
Peter
Do you mean we mustn't tell even His Mother or Mary of Magdala? They'll be here early; they said they would.
Joseph
Not a word yet, please. We'll get Him to a house nearby before they come, I hope. I'm so relieved, it's good to know that He is alive. I feared that we had lost Him.
John
We all owe you so much; without you we were all lost. (Stoops and kisses the hem of his garment.) We'll do whatever you advise.
Peter
Had we not better roll the stone in front of the tomb. Then Joseph can watch while resting by yon wall.
(Joseph assents and they roll the stone into the mouth of the sepulchre. Peter and John go off L. C.)
Joseph (to Jesus)
You seem tired.
Jesus
A little. I walked with two who knew me slightly; the talk wearied me. I must have changed greatly.
Joseph
You're pale and thin; your face is a little drawn; you must rest. You are not in pain now, are you?
Jesus
Twitching in hands and shoulders that take my breath; but the pains don't matter.
Joseph
They'll soon cease; you're really stronger. Nicodemus says rest and hope are all you need.
Jesus (looks at him in amazement and repeats)
Hope.
Joseph
You should not see John so much; he depresses you.
Jesus
He understands me. (Changes His position wearily.)
Joseph (fussing)
You must not walk outside; the fresh air and sunshine do you good. Keep in the garden. Can I do anything for you? (Jesus shakes His head with a wan smile.) You are in pain again. I could put some ointment on. Where is it?
Jesus (looks at him and puts His hand on His head)
It is ill with me here, Joseph.
Joseph
You brood too much. Put the past out of your head. Why should you think of what is over?
(John enters, hastens to Jesus and kneels, kissing His hand)
John
Oh, you are worse again. I mustn't leave you, though I had to tell your lovers that the good tidings were true, that the Master had risen.
Jesus
John, John! Why say it that way! Please tell the simple truth!
John (stoutly)
It is the truth: you are risen and will yet come to love and honor even in this vile world. (He bends his head over the Lord's head.)
Jesus
Your affection is balm to my distress; your faith revives me. If there were more Johns there would be more Christs, and less need of them.
John
You're not in pain!
Jesus
Your sweet words have taken it away; you are so dear to me!
John
I want you to meet the faithful—
Jesus
Oh, no, no, please, I cannot! I have nothing to say to them, nothing. Who am I? A blind leader of the blind.
John
You need not say anything, but some are faithless. That fellow Thomas doubts. If he could see you, everything would be all right again.
Jesus
It can never be all right again, John. I am bereft of faith and hope. I have lost my way in the world. It is all dark now, oh, it's too bitter! The world was all illumined by my Heavenly Father's love and care, as by the sun: now, it is black night and I am lost. Don't let me see anyone, please. It's all over with me, quite finished, and the end is coming soon when I shall rest again. The long night, and sleep in the night, sleep without end—
John
Oh, don't say that! You kill me; I cannot bear to think that possible. Please, dear Master, for my sake and love's sake, do not give way like that. You are better.
Jesus
Only through your affection, John. I have nothing to say to anyone; no words of hope or cheer to give. I would rather not meet the others; they would not understand. Besides, it wearies me, I am broken, soul-tired, hopeless.
Joseph
He must have rest, John. Nicodemus says rest is the best medicine for Him. He should sleep now after His walk. (He lifts Jesus' feet on another stool and puts a coverlet over His knees. Joseph leaves the chamber. Jesus, holding John's hands, closes His eyes as if in sleep.)
Jesus
You have had your way, John. Thomas the doubter is convinced. But I am the doubter now; I wish I had not said that: "blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed!" It came out of me; it is perhaps untrue, who knows?
John (in exaltation)
It is true! The faithless and doubting never do anything. It is we, who believe, who are blessed; we do the works and bring the thought to triumph. Your Gospel of love and sympathy will yet conquer the world, conquer even Jerusalem! I am all tense still with the divine assurance of hope.
(Jesus leans back and faints)
(John cries out in alarm)
Joseph, Joseph!
(Joseph enters)
Joseph
What is the matter? Oh, He has fainted again! Nicodemus said He might die at any moment. I'm afraid we can't save Him, John.
John
Why not? He needs only faith and love.
Joseph
He has lost faith in His mission, in Himself, in God, in everything; and He cannot live without belief. Nicodemus says His heart grows feebler daily and He eats nothing to speak of.
John
Oh, He has given to us a sacred hope and love and inspiration. Why can't we give them all back to Him now in His need? Oh, why? (Jesus opens His eyes and smiles feebly at John.) Oh, Master, try, try to get well! We all love you so! We need you! Try for our sake! Without you we are sheep without a shepherd. Oh, Master dear, I love you and your divine words!
Jesus
It's all for the best, John, all. The thought often comes to me that all high causes fail at first, and the higher we climb, the heavier the fall. Your faith and affection are like stars in the night, to guide and console.
John
There are so many who love you, Master! Mary of Magdala is here every day for tidings. Yesterday, when you seemed better, she said you were the heart of her heart, and that is what you are to all of us, all who know you really: the Divine One, the Reconciler, the True Guide and Savior!
Jesus
My teaching is perhaps true in another sense. (To John.) Your faith and love, John, keep me alive, for some purpose I cannot divine. Your trust and love may save the Savior. (John kisses His hand in an ecstasy and the Master closes His eyes to rest.)
Peter
You ought to tell His whole story, John, to the world; His friends and lovers all want to know it. You haven't even told me all. Joseph says He died without saying anything important?
John
He died as He had lived: full of love for all men. His gentleness and sweetness won everyone as flowers win us. Now it is for us, Peter, to carry on His work.
Peter
You mean the doctrine of "Love one another, for tomorrow you will be with Me in Paradise." But what can we do? The Sadducees don't believe in any life after death.
John
Even in this life, love is better than hatred; but I would hardly care to live if I did not believe I should see Him again. All good in me was called to life by Him; He was the soul of my soul, my Savior and my Guide.
WHEN Saavedra had finished reading, we sat silent. Suddenly
he said: "It's weaker, Aura, than I had thought; you ought to
have spared Phil."
"Oh, Sir!" I cried, "you must not say that: it moved me intensely. I am infinitely obliged to you. I would not have missed it for anything; it has the divine spirit and yet is pure human."
Saavedra smiled. "There is something you ought to know," he said, "which perhaps you don't know: this wonderful appeal of Jesus to God, His Father, not to forsake Him, is to be found also in the twenty-second psalm, where it is attributed to David. If you read the whole of that twenty-second psalm, you will see that other things are attributed to David, which afterwards have been put into the mouth of Jesus. It is all very confusing. It is almost impossible for us to see Jesus at all as he was, except perhaps in one or two marvellous stories, such as the woman taken in adultery, which reaches the topmost height of thought."
Saavedra's knowledge and fairness of mind made a profound impression on me and I loved the story too as he had told it.
As he said, the whole story was in the Bible-narrative; it was a recasting of what we all know and yet, perhaps because of its completeness, it seemed new to me. I was grateful to Saavedra with heart and mind, and as soon as I was alone with Aura I thanked her too and begged her to let me know her father as she knew him. "He makes Jesus possible to me," I said, "as a man among men."
Aura nodded, smiling: "You have no idea yet how good and wise he is. But you'll get to know, for you too are like him."
"I wish I were," was all I could say.
I WAS still afraid of Laurice and his influence on Aura. Modesta had made me see that he was inclined to flirt with Aura, if not to make love to her, and everything, it seemed to me, was in his favor: Aura had known him from childhood; he was not only handsome but of a singular distinction; the only young man indeed who might be compared to her father in many- sided knowledge and high wisdom.
The more I thought of him, the more anxious I became. He had come back from the University where he was an occasional professor, and he seemed to spend all his time with the Saavedras. True, Modesta and her sister were there every day as well; but Laurice was full of enthusiasms and a splendid talker, better indeed, that is, more passionate and poetic than even Aura's father. Often he carried me off my feet and continually I wanted to applaud him, and if he had this magnetic influence on me, surely he would impress Aura still more deeply. My fears seemed well founded.
Besides, I could not act against him in any way: I saw no fault or flaw in his superb personality. But time and again Modesta heartened me.
One afternoon, when Laurice had wandered off with Aura and Carlos, Modesta purposely, it seemed, stayed behind with me. "Why are you so downcast?" she began; "you have no reason to be: I think you have won your 'pearl'!"
She was mocking me, for I had spoken of Aura to her as the pearl of life to me.
"You really think so?" I questioned. "I always feel my own inferiority when I am with Laurice; he talks superbly."
"True," Modesta said; "but his self-confidence is apt to mislead him. You need not be afraid: what you have done or said I don't know, but you have not wasted your time. Didn't you notice that Aura to-day did not wish to go with Laurice? She kept looking round for you, and her father too likes you more than a little. You are an excellent courtier, much better than I had imagined."
"Intense love," I said, "can teach even the dullest."
"Here they are coming back," exclaimed Modesta suddenly. "What did I tell you? Aura has come back for you. Now be your sweetest and reward her. I don't count—"
The next moment I too saw them through the trees. Aura and Carlos were hand in hand, and Laurice plainly out in the cold three yards behind.
At this moment, Teresa began playing her violin in the house; all the windows and doors were open and we could hear every note. It was a passionate thing of Debussy and she rendered it as only a born artist could.
We all stood entranced, and I managed to get beside Aura without attracting any attention.
"It was so good of you to come back to your boy," I said in a low voice to her. "When you are away, I seem to be without a soul."
"You stayed behind," she pouted in a half whisper; "you are always willing to talk to Modesta."
I smiled sadly, shaking my head the while. "You know better than that," I replied. "If the Queen of Heaven were here, I should only see you."
"Hush!" she replied smiling. "Teresa is a great artist, isn't she?"
A little later we all entered the house and Laurice took up a 'cello and Modesto went to the piano and we had a wonderful concert. Piece after piece was played and I at least had never heard finer music.
They were all invited by Saavedra to dinner, and for the first time I understood all that was said, and once by an apt quotation from Galdós I held the attention for a few minutes.
A memorable evening; for the three performers played together again and when I expressed astonishment at their power, Aura told me that music was taught in all the schools like dancing, and nearly everyone played some instrument. When we broke up for the night, I overheard Laurice asking Aura to meet him next morning in the summer-house. She must have accepted, for Modesta whispered to me: "I'll come for you," and I could not but accept tacitly.
I didn't sleep much that night, and the more I thought of the espionage to be exercised on Aura, the more I disliked it. It seemed unworthy of me and still more unworthy of my love. I debated it all with myself a hundred times in the night and got no sleep until I resolved to have nothing to do with it.
The next day, I was at the gate when Modesta came and she told me in huge glee that it was possible to go up to the first story in the summer-house and hear everything and see everything that took place in the downstairs room.
"I can't go with you, Modesta," I said. "I will not spy on Aura. If she cares for him, I cannot even be astonished. I care for her too much."
"All right," she said, "Mr. Facing-Both-Ways," and after a few more attempts to persuade me by making fun of me, we separated and I went back to the house.
Aura stayed in her room the whole morning. When she went out to meet Laurice, I saw her pass by and did not attempt to speak except to call out "Good-morning!" She replied, and went on down the garden. I shall never forget the hour that followed. I had to go to my room because tears came to my eyes perpetually, and I cry very seldom and with great difficulty.
At half past twelve lunch was served, and Aura was there but not Laurice, which seemed to me of the best omen; but she was very silent and Saavedra too seemed lost in thoughts. I asked him did he know anything about the Spanish poets in the other Spanish-speaking countries of South America and Mexico. He gave me the titles of two or three books, notably the Cantos de Vida y Esperanza of Rubén Darío, whom he praised as a great poet.
"I wonder," he began suddenly, "whether the virtue of a nation can be measured by its influence. If so, of course the English breed is easily the first, for it has grown in a century from ten or fifteen millions to nearly two hundred millions, including America and the colonies; English is evidently fated to become the chief language of the world. From the Rio Grande, seven or eight thousand miles through South America, the influence of Spain is predominant and her language, whereas France has no such hold on any continent. But is the influence an effect of chance, or is it the result of virtue? An almost insoluble problem," he ended smiling, and I could almost have cried out that my problem was insoluble too.
Before we had finished lunch, Modesta and her sister came in and enlivened the atmosphere. About an hour afterwards, Aura went to her room with Teresa for something or other and Modesta beckoned me to the garden.
"You want to hear what took place?" she said.
"No," I replied, "I can wait until Aura tells me."
"Well," she went on laughing, "I have never seen anybody look so miserable, and you have no need to, for Laurice lost. He put his arm around her and tried to kiss her, and she wouldn't be kissed, and for some reason or other—I suppose conceit—he showed less than his usual wisdom. 'I thought you liked me,' he said. 'I do,' she said. 'Well,' he said, 'you know what I mean; I believe it is that Englishman, Meredith, you are stuck on. But you can't marry him, so what's the good of thinking of him? He is a mere outcast.'
"I shan't tell you what she replied," said Modesta, "but her definition of you as an outcast would have pleased you. So Señor Laurice took himself off without waiting for further enlightenment. I don't believe he cares for her really. I have never known him so much below his usual level."
To say I was pleased is to say nothing. The blood ran riot in me. I could have shouted and cried for joy. I resolved to try to get an opportunity to tell Aura how glad I was, heart glad, that I had trusted her, and the opportunity came that same evening. As soon as we were alone together I said to her: "You look downcast, or at least as if in doubt. Is there anything I can do to solve the problem?"
"There is no problem," she said quietly.
"There is too," I said; "the whole day, Aura, has passed, and you have not made it memorable to me in any way. You have not said even 'Dear' to me, and I am waiting as if for salvation."
"You dear," she said, and took my head in her hands and kissed my forehead, to me a divine consecration.
A WEEK or so later, I had another long talk with Saavedra. After dinner, which was always at six o'clock, Aura, her father and I were together waiting to go to a cinema. I broke silence by asking: "Have you no crimes here? In Europe we have often murders for which we can find no adequate motive. Have you none here?"
"Chiefly as survivals," Saavedra replied, "and they are getting rarer and rarer."
"But what do you do with your Jack the Ripper, or with some one who violates a child; you don't punish them?"
"The condemnation of the community," said Saavedra, "is a very severe punishment."
"I should think it would excite a violent nature to go on and do worse in defiance or despair."
"We haven't found it so," he said. "Mankind and womankind too are eminently teachable. But all that I have tried as yet to show you," he said, "is what we have reached in the progress towards equality. We have got rid of the priest and judge and governor; and they are more detestable to us than an occasional Jack the Ripper. You see all our moral obligations are enormously strengthened because they operate among equals. 'Do unto others as you would they should do unto you' is our one law.
"If a Jack the Ripper came among us, two or three of our best men would offer themselves immediately to find out the reason of his crime and help him to self-control. Even the Frenchman, Fourier, has already gone as far as this: 'Leave men absolutely free,' he says, 'do not fear even their passions as religions do; in a free society these are not dangerous.'
"But though equality is the basis of our life, it isn't by any means all our life, not even the chief part of it. All those who are thanked by the State form a sort of aristocracy. They are more numerous than you imagine: We have inventors and passionate seekers after truth, artists and healers, actors too, and singers; everyone who gives us something new and good is immediately honored, and we all seek to show those who have done well the encouragement of reverence. We have men of science by the dozen who have injured themselves in order to study the effect of certain drugs on their own bodies; mothers who have given their lives to save a child. We have many to whom we are glad to proclaim our indebtedness. It is this aristocracy, or rather the principle of high unselfish endeavor which should underlie aristocracy, that we look upon as the finest thing in life; it is that which gives us progress and insures perpetual development.
"The most vital thing in life at its highest is growth; it is the overflowing life-force seeking to realize itself."
"Does that not consecrate the egotism?" I questioned, "of the strongest or wisest?"
He smiled: "You forget our life is based upon equality in necessaries; but for the best heads there is no distinction between egotism and altruism, for the highest altruism is only egotism at its highest. The richest, most generous life possible: that is what we seek to live.
"And to help us in this we have adopted all the best European art and science, and invention; every generation, young scholars return from abroad with the news of this or that genius, and his works are immediately spread abroad and we all profit by them. Don't you see that we hardly spend one evening a week in our houses? The triumphs of art and literature and music are the best part of our daily living."
"You have no particular rewards, then?" I asked.
"Whoever has been thanked by our State," he said, "has many privileges: Aura showed you one of them, but there are many others. The aristocrat can have a purse to go abroad with, when and where he likes, or he can live as he pleases while working for the commonweal."
"There are so many things I can't understand," I said. "How do you get European money?"
"We have large deposits of platinum," he said, "that can be exchanged in Buenos Aires or Montevideo for gold enough for our small needs."
"You don't think," I said finally, "that the belief in a Deity and His providence adds a great deal to life?"
"Why should I deny it?" he replied. "A good and kind earthly father enriches life, but we can't believe there is such a being as a benevolent God and we can't give our desires objective reality. Try to realize your vague idea of an all-good God, and compare Him with his creation, with Nature ravening in blood and tears. You remember Tennyson's verses in In Memoriam:
Are God and Nature then at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams
So careful of the type she seems
So careless of the single life,
That I considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear
I falter where I firmly trod
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great worlds altar-stairs
That lead through darkness up to God.
"Beautiful poetry, this; but the whole conception is anthropomorphic. We think of the problem in another way: what are the two highest emotions in man? Pity and reverence, I think; but both must necessarily be unknown to the Deity. No God can feel pity, or His eyes would never be free of tears. And reverence—that your Shakespeare called 'the angel of the world'—He cannot possibly feel. We men may rejoice in our pity and reverence; we are our own Gods and must make our own virtues and our own Heaven here on this friendly earth.
"Even life itself," he went on, with a tinge of sadness I thought, "is the merest accident; blazing suns and burnt-out planets whirl around through Infinity, but life is very rare, accidental, in fact. With all our research we can find it nowhere save on this earth, and here its continuance is of time and not Eternity. We are the creatures of a moment and of chance, and to talk of a personal God or indeed of a Deity of any kind as creator and providence seems to us altogether futile, at best a waste of time."
I could not but recall a passage that some years before had stuck in my memory; now I recited it:
"Life is like a bird of passage which alights and tarries for a time and is gone.... It is a visitant, a migrant, a frail, timid thing, which waits upon the seasons....
"It is almost certain that it is limited to our earth alone.
"Life is a mere passing phase of the cosmic evolution, a flitting and temporary stage which matter passes through in the procession of changes on the surface of a cooling planet."
"That's it," cried Saavedra, "life itself is a mere passing phase, and the existence of the individual is too feeble and short-lived even to consider!"
We talked on for a little while, and I found that he had a knowledge of modern science which was altogether beyond me: I never in my life imagined that scientific knowledge of light and sound and everything had grown in the last twenty years in such a magical way, and was still growing. I never heard anyone talk as Saavedra talked about it all. I only wish I could reproduce his ideas properly, but some of his phrases still stick in my mind.
He spoke of light and said that "the theory once proposed that the sun is gradually contracting, and so releases the energy which forms heat, is untenable because, with such a theory, the sun could not be more than fifty million years old. Physical and geological evidence seem to be conclusive," Saavedra added, "that the age of the earth—reckoned from a period which by no means goes back to its beginnings as a planet—is much, much greater. The age of the older rocks found from their uranium-lead ratio is generally put at over a billion years.
"Astronomical facts also support these ideas of the age of the solar system; we seem to require a time-scale which will allow at least ten billion years for the age of the sun.
"I could put the argument in another form," he added smiling; "but I am afraid it would carry no deeper conviction." I too had to laugh.
"Since all the other alternatives are eliminated, we suppose that the source of the sun's energy must be in the protons and electrons, charges of positive and negative electricity, of which the atoms are composed."
I could not follow Saavedra satisfactorily for much of what he said was beyond me.
When Saavedra spoke of sound, I understood a little more: he told me he was experimenting with vibrations which bear the same relation to sound as ultra-violet rays do to light. The highest notes audible by man have a frequency of about thirty thousand vibrations per second; indeed, many people cannot hear a bat's squeal, which is of approximately this pitch. The ultra-high sound waves have ten times this frequency, and are therefore inaudible.
He went on to say that scientists employ a quartz crystal as a source of sound. In an alternative electric field of low frequency it emits a musical note. As the frequency of the stimulating current is increased, this becomes higher and higher, and finally is inaudible. But the waves can make their presence felt in other ways. Owing to their short length, they do not scatter like wireless waves, but travel in a beam like light. When such a beam is passed through water, the water rises up in a mound where it reaches the surface. The vibrations produced by the current from a two-kilowatt oscillator kill fish, and, though quite inaudible, cause intense pain when a finger is dipped in the water. The delicate fabric of the flesh tissue is destroyed by the intense vibrations set up in it, just as a glass vessel may be broken by sounding the note to which it naturally responds. Preliminary experiments seem to show that these vibrations also kill bacteria and may be of value as a disinfectant.
"With the giant oscillators developed for wireless transmission," Saavedra continued, "sounds can now be made which would be deafening if they were audible, and whose action on plants and animals and possible medical value is only now being investigated."
Suddenly I remembered that George Eliot wrote about dying of "the roar that lies on the other side of silence."
I had supped on wonders; the better I knew this extraordinary man, the wiser he seemed; yet always his kindness made the deepest impression. I began to think of him as the best man I had ever met. Yet he was as eager as a child to go to the cinema or to see a new theater-piece, though perhaps great music attracted him most of all. A better companion I could not have wished, and my enthusiastic praise of him, my warm liking for him, pleased Aura intensely. "He has been everything to me," she said.
I DON'T remember exactly when it occurred, though I am trying to keep the actual sequence of events; but this one scene is not only vivid in my memory, but has become a part of my very soul. Modesta and her sister had come round with Laurice to take us to a concert and after the concert, as we came out, Laurice talked wonderfully. He told us that Saavedra was in the Supreme Council advocating a new process of intensive cultivation. It appeared that plants even had feelings and their productivity could be increased by using this knowledge. Modesta brought out the fact that Laurice had had a notable share in the discovery and ought to have been at the great meeting; for he also belonged to the council, was indeed the youngest member of it.
"The motion will be carried and become law without me," he said, "because everyone knows that our soil in the last twenty years has been made three times as productive as it used to be, and because everyone has such a high opinion of Saavedra who is introducing the new measure, and rightly: he is the wisest and most distinguished man now living."
I could see that Aura turned to him at once. Modesta must have felt it too, for she suddenly exclaimed: "It is beginning to rain."
"True," cried Laurice, "to-day they have brought on the rain an hour earlier. We must all hurry home or we shall get wet."
At this moment we came to the junction of the two roads and Modesta cried out at once: "Laurice, you will come by this road, won't you?" although Aura and myself fortunately had already taken the lower road.
"We will get home first," I cried, and Modesta answered at once:
"We will have a race."
"Not a race," I said as we separated, "but ordinary walking."
It suddenly came to me that I ought to try to make Aura a little jealous of Modesta, and so I said: "Modesta loves Laurice, doesn't she? And what a splendid pair they make! She adores him as I adore you, and yet Modesta is the more perfect of the two. She is really an extraordinary woman."
"She and I were always rivals in the classes at school," said Aura. "She is really very intelligent, but hard, almost like a man. I think Laurice the finer nature of the two."
It began to rain harder and we had to hurry and could not talk much. Fortunately we had not far to go. As we hurried on in the downpour, suddenly we came under the great light of the citadel and saw that the rain had made a perfect river across the street.
"We ought to have gone by the upper road," said Aura stopping. "What can we do?"
"It is very easy," I returned. The next moment I put my left arm around her waist and the right under her limbs and lifted her up and walked into the rivulet. It was not two feet deep and I easily held her above it. Two minutes later we were at the gate, and as I put her down our faces touched and she put her arms round my neck and kissed me: "You are a great dear!" she said.
I wonder has a first kiss ever had the same effect. I could have shouted with sheer joy. I knew she wouldn't give her lips easily, and although I was jubilant at having won, I was dreadfully humble too, feeling my unworthiness. But vanity soon applied the stimulant:
"Don't lose heart," I said to myself, "you too can grow."
As we got inside the house, I said: "You mustn't thank me for serving you, Aura; such service is my dearest delight."
"You mean that really?" she said, turning her great eyes on me.
"Oh, if I could tell you how intensely I mean it! I would carry you on my heart over all the unpleasant things in life, if you'd let me."
"You are so good to me, Phil!"
"No, to myself. You have no idea of your power. Before I met you, when I liked any girl, I thought of the pleasure I could get from her or with her. But when I think of you, it is always what I can give you, and that makes me humble. I believe that if I knew anyone could give you more than I, I would stand aside and let him do it if it killed me ....
"When your father the other day said that no foreigner could marry in the island I didn't mind much; I said they can't stop me being her servant: we have a lovely English phrase: 'a body servant.' I said to myself, I will serve her sweet body."
"I love what you say. But you must not talk of being a servant, that hurts me," and she slipped her hand into mine. "Besides you must take off your wet clothes at once."
I shook my head and went on: "How much I owe you: the greatest experiences in my whole life, the knowledge of unselfish love, a passion I never felt before and the deepest religious feeling! When you showed me the temple of the forgotten dead I was overwhelmed, and your explanation that those benefactors of humanity were not unknown because of some fault or shortcoming in them as ordinary people imagined, but because of the criminal blindness of their contemporaries, oh ...!"
"That explanation, Phil, was my father's, not mine!"
"Perhaps, but it was you who brought the new light to me; I owe you the two best sides of my soul." She put her left hand too on mine and I continued: "I want to be as wise and kind as your father so that I can repay you. But I don't believe that anyone could love you more than I do."
I put my arm around her, and as I drew the lissom figure to me, she lifted her face and again we kissed, and this time she left her lips on mine for more than a moment.
"You love," I said, as she drew away. "You must go up and change, dear," she said, and I let her go without even asking for another kiss, letting my eyes thank her for that "dear."
I went to my room and changed: the easy clothes and perfect climate made it a matter of five or ten minutes. I wanted to take myself in hand. I said to myself:
"From now on you are going to begin a new life, really going to try to be worthy of her and worthy of the highest happiness. Perhaps in time you, too, may grow like Saavedra, to the limit of human wisdom and human goodness."
With such thoughts as these and such resolve I went downstairs and found them all assembled in the sitting room. Saavedra had come in from a successful meeting and he was laughing at Laurice for not having been in his place at the Supreme Council.
"I knew you would win, Sir," said Laurice.
Saavedra, smiling, threatened him with his finger. Laurice talked of the music he had heard with perfect comprehension and evidently delighted Saavedra. Modesta, Aura and myself sat mumchance.
Suddenly the talk between Saavedra and Laurice turned upon the subject discussed at the Council. To my amazement, they both took it for granted that many plants had the systole and diastole of human breathing and certainly felt pain and pleasure. Poisons could be used to kill them as if they were animals and other drugs quickened their growth. I sat in mute wonder: what next, I wondered, shall I learn in this new world?
"You seem surprised," said Saavedra, turning to me, "by the fact that plant life is so like animal life, but it was an Indian investigator, Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, who first proved that steel even can feel and that plants have emotions even as you and I, and that everything created is living, struggling, dying with a spasm which is the same in kind, though not in degree, in a mimosa as it is in a man. For example, he brings up this plant under glass, screened from all shock and discomfort. To all appearance it flourishes and grows fat. But the pampered mimosa grows sluggish. Bose proves with mathematical precision that it can no longer react to stimuli from without, screened as it has been from contact with reality. He has made an instrument that can measure its nervous tone. He charts his results and proves to you in black and white that adversity is good for plants as it is for human beings. These conclusions he presents to the moralist with a smile; they can make what they like of them.
"We have learned many things from Bose and, I hope, profited by his extraordinary vision. Already this new knowledge has enabled us to increase the productivity of plants and vegetables ten-fold, and has thus diminished the labor we must use in order to live."
A little later they began to dance. I could dance fairly well and so asked Aura. She consented, but hoped I would ask Modesta first. Naturally, I did as she directed and we had a dance together. Then I danced with Aura. The difference was extraordinary: I don't think I ever touched her body, however involuntarily, without thrilling from head to foot. And once when Laurice and Modesta were dancing, I danced with Aura and went right through the room into the terrace beyond. There I held her still and danced; but when she wanted to stop I drew her closer and said: "How I wish that I might hold you close all my life!"
For a moment she stood still against me, yielding to my desire, then she drew away:
"Oh, Phil, you make me tremble!" At once I put my hand on her: "I'm so glad and proud! I'd rather have that confession than anything in the world."
Without a word Aura took a seat and said: "You're sure?"
"Oh, more than sure," I said, kneeling at her feet and putting my arms about her hips: "Don't you know that I worship you and always shall be at your feet, near your heart?"
"I don't want you at my feet, Phil, but on my heart, in my arms," and I found her lips with mine. To me it was divine. I realized that I had won my heart's desire and was ecstatically happy.
"Aura," I said at length, "may I tell your father?"
"Surely," she said, "but you'll find that he knows; he likes you and is full of sympathy."
"But will he be able to get me the permission to marry you?"
She smiled: "He can give the permission."
"Then I'll ask him for you to-morrow, if you'll let me," I replied, "for I love you beyond all measure and always shall love."
"Sure?" Aura asked.
"If you only knew," I said, "it is my pride and highest honor to have won you. It makes me wonder that you should care for me and I'll try to make you love me more and more. You are my savior and my dream of delight." And again our lips met. "But will you be content with me? That's the question."
"Love is our God," she replied, "if you love me always as you do now, you'll find me love's slave. Don't you know, we women love to give as you love to take. We love, love, Phil! Girls want and wish just like men, they are longing for caresses and are grateful for the tiniest attention men pay them."
THE more I knew Saavedra, the more I admired his character and his mind. His kindness, his generosity won my heart, and whenever we entered a new field of thought, he surprised me. One evening I wondered: "Why does no one to-day teach in parables or apologues, as Jesus did? Yet the symbolic story or parable is surely a high form of art?"
Saavedra agreed with me at once, adding that both Shakespeare and Goethe practiced the art at the very end of their lives. "Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest," he said, "are both manifestly symbolic: Caliban, with his love of drink and brutish desire, stands for the ordinary Englishman, and Ariel is the shaping spirit of imagination.
"And Goethe in Faust has now and then been led by the same spirit. But how inferior both are in essentials to the superb Prodigal Son or The Woman Taken in Adultery."
"Why don't you tell Phil," asked Aura turning to her father, "some of your parables? I love the one on Truth."
"You overpraise them, dear," said Saavedra smiling, "but if Meredith cares to hear some, I'll fetch them."
"Please, please," I cried, and at once he went out and returned with a little manuscript book, and smiling at Aura said:
"I'll put my best foot forward and begin with your favorite."
In the beginning, all the virtues went naked and none was ashamed; indeed, some of them, like Truth, proud of her virginal beauty, disdained even powder and would not use any ornament whatever.
One day, Truth met half a dozen children of the Lie, and they were all charmingly dressed, their deformities cunningly veiled and their beauties made seductive.
"Who are you, pretty ones?" she asked, though her heart failed her, for she had an inkling of the fact.
"Please, Miss Truth," exclaimed one appealingly, "we are the children of Love and his relations. This fair one (and as she mentioned her name, the little thing curtseyed) is called Miss Politeness or White Lie; her father has a great position at Court.
"That one there is Tarrydiddle, or Miss Pity; and little sister here is Silence, the child of Kindness."
"And your name?" asked Truth, with fear at heart, for the child was entrancingly pretty.
"Oh, my name is Praise," said the child looking down slyly. "Sympathy was my father, the eldest son of Love. I only wish," she added, lifting up her eyes, "that you had been my mother, for you are perfectly lovely and everyone is proud to be noticed by you."
Unused to praise, Truth blushed hotly: suddenly she appeared to herself a little obvious and downright, and in her heart, for the first time, she was a wee bit ashamed of her nudity.
Suddenly Saavedra broke off and closed his manuscript:
"Really, they are not worth hearing. I wrote them long ago and
now am rather appalled by them."
"Oh, Sir," I cried, "I love them; please, go on, please."
He went on:
Once upon a time, a mole was walking in a garden when a snail that had climbed high into a lilac bush, lost his hold and fell heavily to the ground. He lay there groaning with pain.
"Why do you groan like that?" said the mole. "It was your own fault; you should have taken care. I never fall."
"You never climb," replied the snail.
In a bag of coins there were many pennies, a few silver pieces and one or two of gold. There were constant disputes among them as to their respective values. It was determined to decide by vote, and one of the oldest pennies, green-mouldy and worn with age, was chosen President by an overwhelming majority.
It was decided at once that the copper coins were the most valuable; for copper could be put to the greatest number of uses.
A silver coin ventured to dissent: "One silver piece," he said, "is worth a dozen coppers where I came from; silver is rare and copper common."
But the pennies howled him down! Utility and not rarity was the true standard of value.
And then the question arose: "What was the value of the gold pieces?"
It was unanimously decided that gold, being soft and heavy, had very little, if any, utility value and even the silver coins admitted that rarity itself could add no value to what was worthless.
Gabriel in Council:
"The idea of service as the highest honor has been given to men; yet, they will not realize its truth.
"To do good to others is the best way to do good to yourself; but it seems impossible for mankind to understand this.
"Suppose we send some into the world with half- souls. They would surely be condemned to servitude by the more richly endowed, and the evils of authority and selfishness would become manifest."
Abdiel:
"A good idea. The half-souls would of course suffer less as servants."
Abdiel returned from Earth:
"Our experiment has been a mistake. The half-souls have got all the wealth of the world into their hands and are using the richly endowed as slaves."
Gabriel:
"What incalculable creatures these humans are!"
As he paused, I applauded and he went on:
They took a little quiet brown bird and put it in prison. They blotted out the heavens above it and set iron bars in front of it and the lark shook all the spaces of the day with song.
And some said: "Lo! we can find a finer bird," and they got one all gorgeous in plumage of ebony and ivory. They took it and throned it in the seventh heaven and gave it all that its heart could desire and the magpie croaked its content.
IT was after this talk that I told Saavedra I loved Aura and
hoped he would allow me to win her as my wife. At once he put his
hands on my shoulders: "My boy," he said, "you must know you are
already of the household and if you have won Aura I shall be glad
to help. She is very dear to me," he added, "and I don't want to
lose her. I hope you will make your home amongst us."
"Nothing I want more, Sir. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you both, but my whole life shall show it."
I hurried to find Aura and tell her how kind her father had been. She had divined it all, but when I began kissing her passionately, she restrained me: "Father expects us to be good," she said, and that was enough for me.
"When we are married," I said tentatively, "I want you to come to England with me and study our civilization; there are things in it you may like."
"As you wish, Phil," she said, "but father thinks it may hurt me. Still England has a great name and if you insist I don't think he'll be stubborn."
"It's for both our sakes," I said; "but we have lots of time still in which to make up our minds."
The truth was that I had already written some of my experiences on what I called "The Island of the Blest" and I was curious to know the effect the booklet would have in England: surely there would be some people in London to welcome these new ideas.
I DON'T know when it was that I first heard that Saavedra was to be thanked by the Supreme Council. Everyone seemed to think it extraordinary; Laurice, plainly overjoyed, came with the news one morning and stayed to lunch. Saavedra pretended to treat it all lightly, but I could see plainly that he was greatly affected and Aura as well. Only once before had the Supreme Council taken upon itself to thank anyone.
The day was fixed a week in advance and I asked whether I could be present at the ceremony. "Certainly," said Saavedra, "you are of the household; we will all go together."
The ceremony was fixed for midday; it appeared that all the farming population wished to thank Saavedra for the many inventions he had introduced with the object of diminishing labor and increasing the productivity of the soil. I could not follow the arguments properly, but Laurice was very eloquent in praise of Saavedra. "He introduced wireless electricity into agriculture," said Laurice, "and thereby doubled the producing power of the soil."
On the great day we were all ready at eleven o'clock and set out for the Hall. As we went up the great steps, I noticed a man glaring at Saavedra as we passed and muttering as if to himself. I was always accustomed to see such smiling faces when I went out with Aura or her father that this dark and scowling face struck me as extraordinary.
As soon as we entered the Hall I forgot all about it. A murmur of applause greeted us as we entered; everyone, it seemed, pressed forward to greet Saavedra and Aura, and even the members of the Supreme Council, as we came near the dais, rose in his honor. He smiled happily and though Aura's eyes were heavy with tears, I knew they were tears of joyful emotion.
The Chief of the Council read the thanks and passed the official paper to Saavedra who bowed and put it in his breast, and in five or ten minutes more we were on our way out of the Hall.
As we came to the door I could not but gaze with all my eyes: here it was that Aura had saved my life. At that moment the door was thrown open and there was a blaze of light. In one flash I saw that the scowling man I had before noticed was on my left and making towards Saavedra on my right; as he tried to pass me I stepped forward, and as he struck at Saavedra with a dagger I caught it on my left arm and at the same moment hit him with all my might on the chin. Down he went on his back and was immediately seized and pinioned by the spectators.
As Saavedra turned to thank me, I said: "I am glad, heart glad."
"You are not hurt, I hope," he cried.
"Nothing much," I answered, though I had of course felt the pain of the dagger entering my arm.
"But you are hurt," cried Aura; "look at the blood, it's streaming!"
"It's nothing," I said, "I'd have been willing to lose all the blood in my body to protect either of you."
In a moment Saavedra had taken off my coat and bound up my arm tightly above the elbow; the knife had cut the muscles of the forearm to the bone and the blood was spurting in streams.
In a minute a couple of doctors came to Saavedra's help; my arm was bound up and a litter brought to carry me home; but this I would not have at any price. "Please, Aura," I said, "let me walk quietly home with you; in a couple of days I'll be as well as ever. I'm so glad the Master is safe; nothing else counts."
"I'm heart glad," said Saavedra, "that I told you this morning you were of the household. Aura thanked me for the word and now I owe you my life." And so, supported by Aura and Saavedra, I made my way down the grand staircase to our home.
When we got home they wanted me to go to bed, but I would not hear of it, and when the doctor came he had to admit that I had no fever. Soon I was alone with Aura and was taken aback by a sort of timidity in her I had never before noticed. When I held out my arms to her, she came willingly; but when I would kiss her, she looked at me gravely: "I love you," she said slowly, "and I think I never really loved you before. I did not know you; I never dreamed of such speed and resolution. Oh! if I had noticed the man I would have stood in front of father as you did and taken the blow. But the man might have repeated it successfully; but you took the knife in your arm and struck at the same time: courage, self-abnegation, speed, everything—you great Phil! I am so proud of you; you are the captain of my heart for ever."
"Baby," I cried, "you overpraise me now till I feel ashamed; but if you love me, I am content."
"Love in us women," she said, "springs from admiration of just such resolution, strength and self-forgetfulness as yours. Before you were my companion, Phil, now you are my hero. There are great things in you, things that surprise one."
Of course, youth-like I took her in my arms and kissed her, and now she gave her lips and her heart too, I could be sworn. The little incident had won me Aura; now she denied me nothing, but strange to say, I did not go further at first; but in the after-days I did all but possess her. That I felt sure she wished me to keep for the marriage ceremony.
How shall I tell what Aura became to me? Before we were married she had strange moods. Once when I was kissing her and praising her, she pushed me away in a sort of pet and cried: "I don't like you a bit, you are frightening me. You take possession of me more and more every day and that scares me." The next moment she had thrown herself into my arms: "Forgive me, dear, love is best, and after all I want to be all yours."
On reflection I was astonished to realize that there were in Pantopia people who hated Saavedra, the greatest man of the country.
Later I found out that many men disliked Saavedra and even more did not care to understand him, and so I began to learn life. He suffered from the general indifference to him, I think, and yet he knew that great men can only be appreciated by people who are like them or are on their intellectual level. Still, the dislike of the many, or even their indifference to talent, is unpleasant.
I WONDER if it is often at the topmost height of happy hours that we men are brought to grief. Assuredly it was so in my case. Scarcely had I realized that the way of my heart's desire was open before me, when Saavedra seemed to lose verve and began to complain of sickness. He had caught a bad cold which turned into pneumonia.
As I had already discovered, his many and distinguished virtues had made him disliked by some of the lower sort. Now during his severe illness, the coldness of some of his colleagues struck me. He accepted all this as natural. "Try to help your fellows," he often said, "and they will pursue you with dislike," and I soon found out that he was justified.
Saavedra grew steadily worse, in spite of Aura's indefatigable care; the crisis came soon, and a little later he died.
I shall never forget that day! It was very early in the morning. I had been up all night at his bedside, and when Aura relieved me I went to my room to change my clothes. I think I had not been away more than twenty minutes, but this was long enough to alter everything. When I entered the little anteroom to Saavedra's chamber, I saw from the servant's face what had happened: the Master was dead.
Aura was broken; she did not speak, she could not even cry. I took her in my arms and led her to her room where she fell into an armchair. Her eyes begged me not to leave her, and so I sat at her side with her hand in mine.
Saavedra's death altered everything.. So long as he lived I had an excellent position. After his funeral I was nobody. Laurice reigned in his stead and I was never consulted nor considered. He had left his house and indeed all he possessed to Aura, but long before I had come upon the scene, Saavedra had made Laurice a sort of guardian and now he presumed on his position in every way. He gave Aura the family jewels, it is true, and induced her for a comparatively small sum to sell him the house. I persuaded Aura to accept his offer, for even before the great public funeral which he arranged, I was forced to see that no one house or indeed one island would be large enough to hold both him and me.
On our return from the funeral, Laurice came forward and assumed control. Naturally I went to see him in order to offer my help, but I could not find him. I spoke to one of the servants and went into my room to wait. After a while he came back and told me that Laurice thanked me, but did not need my services.
For days after her father's death, Aura seemed to be stunned, but suddenly one day her manner to me altered completely. Laurice had been with her for more than a hour, but what had this to do with our love? Yet when we met she looked away and had no kind word for me; I felt dreadfully unhappy.
Everyone's manner to me had altered. The servants were, of course, on Laurice's side, but what hurt me more was that even Modesta and her sister kept away from me. My position in the house was almost intolerable; I was an outcast.
I could not bear this for long, I suffered keenly; I made up my mind to get the truth from Aura. And soon when I happened to find her alone, I questioned her. She put a finger on her mouth for silence; but her eyes looked at me kindly and filled with tears. She left the room immediately, but when passing me she whispered: "Take this."
It was a letter. As quickly as possible I went to my room. I could scarcely open the envelope, my hands were so shaky. My eyes hurried over the lines:
"Phil, don't think that I have altered, but I fear for you. Laurice, you know, is now very powerful, and he told me that our marriage is impossible. He wants me to marry him, and he swore that in no case should I ever marry you. And here he has all the prejudice of the people with him, and he will make it impossible for us. I am even afraid for you, for you are not yet a citizen, you know.
"We must be very careful, dear; we cannot even talk freely together.
"I'll give you this letter at the first opportunity. You know that I love you, love you with all my heart and soul, and that I shall never change to you, whatever may happen.
"We shall have to fly from here, I'm afraid, and soon. Could we go in my airplane? We can easily carry petrol enough with us for a thousand miles; is that enough? I see no other way out. Let me know by a short letter what you think best.
"Your Aura."
I answered her at once:
"My dear Aura: I am so glad you proposed the way of escape. If we cannot get a ship in a thousand miles, we can die together, and anything is better than this life of misery and insults.
"But I hate to take you away from all you know and have loved. Still I, too, see no other way out; and in England or in France I can get work.
"I cannot thank you for your dear words of affection. Whenever I think of you, it is as if I thought of a spirit nobler than myself!
"We should start some evening, don't you think? or very early in the morning, about three or four o'clock. Please let me know when you will be ready: I am more than ready!
"Ever your Phil.
"P.S. Assure yourself carefully that your airplane is in perfect order and take as much petrol as possible. I am so sorry that I cannot help you, but it would only arouse suspicion."
Next day I got another letter from her:
"My dear, dear Phil,
"Since I got your letter I am so quiet and I am able to think again. There is no time to lose; every day's delay will make our position more difficult. We should leave to-morrow morning very early, say at half past two. I'll arrange everything about food, petrol, etc., and shall also take with me my jewels. I remember you told me once you have still some money, so this and my money and jewels will help us to get through the first part of our new life.
"But please, please be careful in coming to our meeting place. You must not take the way through the garden. Go over the little hill and through the wood to the open space; I'll be there. Oh, if it only were night! I can hardly bear the thought that I have to wait so many hours!
"I read your letter again and again. Yes, dear, if we cannot find a ship in a thousand miles, we can die together; even to die with you would be sweet, if I think how terrible a life without you would be!
"These last ten days have been hell. You will hear everything about it when we are together; but now I want to tell you that all these sufferings have deepened my love for you, made it a living part of my being.
"I think so often of the first months of our love. Strange, I liked you from the very first moment I saw you! There was a great sympathy for you in my heart, so that I felt rather ashamed when father praised the pity he said I had shown in saving you. It was not pity that forced me to raise my hand, but a new feeling I had never felt before. I simply had to do it. I had to save you, I wanted you so.
"Then later I was more than happy to see that you liked me too, and I tried to be with you as often as I could. And how happy I was when you asked me whether I loved you and whether I should be willing to become your wife. Oh, my Phil, my dear, dear man, you!
"I will not speak of the sunny days that followed, for I can't think of them without thinking of father, and that makes my heart cry with sadness. But it consoles me that you loved him just as deeply and faithfully as I did and that his death made you suffer just as it made me suffer.
"How brutally I was wakened up by Laurice that day when he told me that I had to stop thinking of you, the sooner the better for me. For you would never become a citizen and thus never be able to marry me. He would try to protect you and speak for you in the Council; but it would make your position dangerous if we were seen together as friends.
"And then his advice to make up my mind quickly. 'Your liking for that stranger,' he said to me, 'has brought you the dislike of many people, but if you'll marry me, I'll forgive you.' He would come for my answer after a fortnight when I had realized the position better.
"He would forgive me my love for you! He could just as well have said that he would forgive me everything that is good and beautiful in me.
"Your love, Phil! I could not live without it any more: that I know. These terrible days when I could not speak to you told me that. How I suffered!
"I can only think of you, Phil. I am one longing for you! We don't know what will happen to us, but I want you to know that I thank you with all my heart for all you have given me; I am so grateful that I may love you.
"I belong to you, dear, with head, heart, soul and body!
"Your Aura."
That night at two o'clock I stole out of the house and went
quickly up the hill and through the wood to the open space where
the airplane was.
Aura was already there waiting for me. We did not speak a word, but I could not help taking her in my arms to kiss her. She looked very pale and trembled all over. It was as if all her strength were exhausted by the excitement of the last weeks; she seemed unable to speak or move.
As soon as I saw her weakness, I knew I had to act. I lifted her into the airplane, sat down at her side and started the machine. In a few minutes we were high up in the air and leaving the island.
As we had agreed, we went across the track of ships to Europe. For we were almost sure that Laurice would follow towards Buenos Aires, thinking I had taken Aura there. All through the night we flew steadily. When the morning dawned I asked Aura to look out for a ship, for her eyes were better than mine.
Almost at the same moment she touched my arm and said: "Surely there is a ship right under us now, going to the north; a passenger ship, too." She was right. "I think we'll try it at once," I answered and began the long slow descent. We came down just in front of the ship and were signaled by the watch at once. The ship was brought to a standstill and in a short time we were on board: it was an English passenger steamer.
I said simply, when the Captain asked me, that we had flown from Buenos Aires and left it to him whether he would take the airplane for our passage money. The Captain was only too willing and in ten minutes the little airplane was hoisted on board. I was astounded when I found out afterwards that we had gone more than nine hundred miles.
The Captain wanted to know whether we were married, and when I told him that we were engaged and not married, he gave Aura and me two different cabins, both on the main deck (for the clever fellow had noted at once that the airplane would bring in a good deal of money), but we were separated nearly by the whole length of the deck. I could not help smiling: it was as if I were already at home.
Our sudden arrival caused a sensation on board. Within a few minutes we were surrounded by a great number of passengers. They were full of excitement and wanted to discuss everything. One of the men, who seemed to take a great fancy to Aura, was very curious as to how we could have come hundreds of miles in so small an airplane and yet have a good deal of petrol over. I explained it at once by the excellent construction of the airplane. The gentleman went on to say that it did not look Spanish, but I simply declared that I had bought it from an English firm.
All the time while they stormed me with questions, Aura stood there in the middle of the crowd quietly. She looked tired, but kept her tall slim figure straight. I could not but admire her: she was a queen compared to the other women who curiously studied her dress, her shoes, the style of her hair; they had never seen such a fashion before. They even touched her dress. I could not help watching all this for a while, it was too charming a picture. But how ashamed I felt when I looked into her eyes; they looked so helpless, so anxious. I immediately cut short all questions and led her to her cabin.
After a short time of recreation, I had breakfast with Aura in the dining room. "Now," I said to her, "you will find out how I felt when I was watched. You will see the people here on board are very curious and they will watch everything we are doing. We must be very careful to tell the same story and remember 'the least said, the soonest mended!' Let us write each other as we did the last days in Pantopia; I love your letters. Our hearts will live by these letters till we get to Southampton. The Captain says we will be there in eight days. You are tired to- day, and as I owe you the answer to your last long letter, I'll begin our correspondence. But please, please, answer my letter at once; you don't know how I love to read your letters!"
Aura said: "Yes, dear, I'll do everything you wish me to do." She spoke rather mechanically and went on: "I feel so weak, so tired, Phil. I can scarcely yet believe in our good fortune. Laurice seems to me like a black cloud in our sky."
"Don't think of him," I replied, "in ten days you will belong to me, and we shall both be free in London, where real freedom is possible."
I led her back to her cabin to rest and we did not meet that day before dinner. I could not get any sleep and so sat down to write Aura the letter which opened the series of letters from her which I give here and which I wouldn't have missed for all the gold of the world.
"Dear Phil,
"I can't sleep, I must first write to you to tell you how glad and joyful your letter made me.
"I cannot even yet realize that we are safe on an English ship; it all happened so quickly. The curious thing is that I try again and again to represent to myself the days before our flight and the flight itself, and I can't. It is as if I had dreamed everything. Even Pantopia has fallen away into a further distance, and if I did not notice my clothes and hear another language about me, I think I could not even imagine the country of my birth in which I grew up. Is it not peculiar? It is as if a veil is spread over everything that is behind us.
"I know and feel only one thing: that I am with you. It is difficult for me at our meals to be cold and play proper before all the watching eyes of our fellow-passengers. I am not hungry. I have only one wish: to sit near you and to touch you. My arms and hands quiver with impatience because they can't do what they wish to do: they want to embrace you, to feel you, to caress you.
"The only memory which is absolutely distinct in our rush through the night is that I sat at your side. I felt the warmth of your body through all your clothes; I was penetrated with your assurance and with your courage and will. All trouble left me and I felt content to leave everything to you. I thought of nothing except that I need have no fear and could be content. It was so wonderful after so many hours of fear and anxiety to know that no one could surprise us. I only wished you were not so covered up. What I would have given, if only a little piece of your ear had been free, only a little piece! I could have kissed it, touched it with my lips and my tongue and perhaps bitten it a little, just a little. I don't know whence the feeling came; but the thought that I could not touch you made me almost crazy.
"It was well that you were so quiet and sensible; otherwise I might have made a fool of myself. More than once the temptation came to me to take your hands from the driving wheel and to say to you: 'Leave all that, what does it matter. Take me in your arms and kiss me, that is the best and only thing I wish!"
"Tell me, did you divine my feelings at all? Once or twice you looked at me as if you would encourage me, and I was so thankful when you gave me that kiss! So short and quick it was, yet I tasted every moment of it. I felt your soft warm lips and the hairs of your moustache on my mouth.
"I am really ashamed now that during all those dangerous hours I had such thoughts. But your being near me was the cause. It made me feel so secure, I felt no danger. There was a sort of wild excitement in me. All the sadness and depression of the last weeks had vanished; I could have laughed and played.
"Dear, now, too, I feel so well and happy! I am not a bit tired and I am looking forward to the morning. Even if we cannot be alone together, at least, I can see you and hear your voice, and perhaps—perhaps—I shall get one real kiss from you!
"What would I give to be near you now! What are you doing. Sir, are you sleeping or are you awake thinking of me?
"Till to-morrow, then, and please, remember my kiss, dear! I am so hungry for your lips and your love.
"Your Aura."
"Dearest Phil!
"How sorry I am that all day long we had not one hour for ourselves, not one minute without the watching, curious eyes of these foreign people. And how curious they are!
"Why on earth are they so interested in us; we are not interested in them at all. The only person I care for is you, and I could not even have a talk with you, not even in the evening.
"You say in your letter, you are just as impatient as I am and I must not quarrel, it hurts you.
"Dear, you know I am not quarreling with you, but think! what do I care for these women's opinion about dresses and hats! What does it interest me which color they prefer to wear in Paris now or in London, and all such nonsense! I am asking for you, for you, only for you!
"I want to sit on your knees and feel your strong arms round me and hear your dear voice telling me how you love me and how beautiful our home will be, and what you intend to write and that you will show me the beauties of your country and of France and Germany.
"You say in six days we shall be in England, and then we shall belong to each other for ever, as man and wife, and all the people here won't bother us any more.
"But now the week seems to me like a little eternity. I don't know, but I think the horrible sufferings during that last time made me long for you so terribly and feel that every second I am not with you is lost, irrecoverably lost!
"It's love, Phil, your love that has spoiled me so that I become impatient if I can't get at once all I wish. You see, it's all your fault, dear!
"Forgive your girl, who loves you so intensely!
"Your Aura."
"My dear Phil,
"You are writing me that I am the giver and you are the recipient. Oh, Phil, you are not right; you have no idea what you have already given to me! Do you think that I shall ever be able to give you as much as I have got or am getting from you?
"You not only gave me generously from your rich knowledge what I wanted and needed, but you taught me not to be ashamed of my feelings. The better we understand our feelings, the more we are able to feel, you said, and the more we grow.
"You taught me by this that soul and body are not two different things, not antipodes, but both belong together, each is necessary to the other.
"And I know now that you are also right in another thing: we must tell each other what we feel truly, that is the only way to perfect understanding.
"I should like to tell you to-day some things I have always wanted to tell you, but never could, I don't know why:
"I shall never forget how my blood ran hot through my veins when your hands touched my hips the first time. I think it was in the first month you were with us. I passed the door into the dining room before you. Your right hand glided down the right side of my body, just as if it were casually, but when it rested on my hip behind, I knew you loved to feel my body. I yielded to your touch just a moment and I recall that I should have liked to turn round and kiss you to thank you. But instead, out of a sort of shyness, I went on as quickly as I could.
"I afterwards blamed myself. Why are we girls not brave enough to tell the truth? Why didn't I say to you: 'I am glad that you love to touch me. I love you that way too.' I thought of you day and night and kissed your dear, naughty hands!
"And during those terrible days in Pantopia when we could not talk together, not only my heart and soul were depressed; no, I suffered physically too. I could not bear to hear your deep voice; I felt the throbbing of my heart in my throat, and to remain quiet and unconcerned gave me absolute pain. I could hardly stand it.
"And when I was alone in my room it was even worse. Sometimes the longing for you was overpowering. My lips were thirsty for your kisses and my body hungry for the tender caressings of your dear hands. My skin burned, and one day—I'll never forget it—I felt for the first time in my life my breasts. It was as if they were trembling. And when your hands touched them gently I could have cried for misery and delight. I lay still for some time to live in the great feeling.
"Yesterday you said, laughing, to me that you are very proud of your pupil; that I learned astonishingly quickly. You flatterer, you; but do you know that I love your saying this to me?
"How I love to hear your voice! Last night, when you recited all the people admired you; I was so proud. Nobody can talk like you, nobody. I could listen to you for hours and hours. You change every moment; your voice makes everything live.
"But do you know when I love your voice best? When we are alone and you kiss me and whisper: 'Oh, come quite close, oh, how I love you, you darling!' These words are my words, Phil; I keep them in my heart like treasures!
"My dear, dear Phil, how I wish to take you in my arms! Do you feel how soft and warm they are? Put your head in the nest between my breasts. You can hear the beating of my heart then; do you hear it? It only lives for you, you dear, dear man!
"Your Aura."
"Phil, dear, you are a real boy! Fancy, getting the purser's cabin for us for some hours every evening! I think this even a greater adventure than our flight. Shall I come? Oh! yes. Yes! Yes!"
(Some hours later, at midnight)
"What overpowering sensations! I did not believe anyone could feel so intensely; I am sure I never felt anything like it. I did not believe that in the world there were such intense emotions.
"How did you learn that magic? When you left me I was lost, thrilling and weak with desire—and you?
"Your Aura."
"You are a dreadful man, Phil, really dreadful! How could you write such a letter to me. I blushed when I read it and grew hot all over. I tried to be angry with you, but I couldn't.
"Sometimes I think I must fight with you, that I can't allow you to take possession of me so absolutely. Your strong personality has absorbed my whole being. I only feel through you and with you. It is impossible for me to think of anything without thinking of you; it is as if I had become a part of you.
"I am really glad to be alone with you for some hours to-night; but I can't help it, I am a little anxious. Why? Is it because you wrote me such a bold letter? I had a strange feeling when I read your words, but I can't deny it, I loved the thrilling excitement. So why am I anxious, why?
"Your Aura."
"My dear, dear Phil,
"Oh, your question, how can I answer it? You say, you can't understand why I shrank away from you when you first touched me last night and a little while later I gave myself with a glad smile.
"I can't tell you why I did this. You know I want your passion, because I love you passionately too; I want your caressings and am longing to feel your body with my hands, with my body! And yet, at first your boldness and your passion frightened me: you had no reticences, no hesitations!
"I love your hands. I love them when they caress me gently. But last night there was something new in their touch. At first they seemed to me even cruel, and there was something strange in your face, in your eyes, I had never seen before. And you have never kissed me as you did last night.
"All was so new to me, I was overwhelmed; I could not help struggling. But then I saw your astonished eyes, it was if you looked disappointed, as if I had hurt you. All of a sudden I felt a warm feeling come from my heart and my body was glad to yield to your wishes.
"Oh, Phil, how wonderful love is! I never felt such excitement in my life. Sometimes I thought I couldn't bear it any longer, I could have screamed! But I had only to look into your eyes which were so bright and happy and showed me all your soul, and even the pain was sweet. And then, I only felt the delight, such delight as I had never dreamed possible.
"Yet the most beautiful thing was that all the time I did not only feel the passionate desire of my body, but the warm, deep love for you in my soul. A feeling like a great pity came over me. When I kissed you, I wished to embrace all the world, I felt so rich....
"Those hours last night will live in my soul for ever. They have altered my whole being, they have made me better. It seems to me that it is only since yesterday that I understand the world. I only feel love and wish that everybody should be as happy as we are.
"And I am so glad, Phil, that you are just as happy as I am. I kiss your hands, your eyes and your mouth, dear. Good night!
"Your happy Aura."
"Dear, my love!
"You say we shall be over in a day or two. The sooner the better, Phil, for I want you to know that I feel as intensely as you do. Even more, I think, for after one or two love-dreams, you become quiet and are glad to rest; whereas I get worse and worse.
"Yesterday when we parted, you kissed me sweetly but decisively; I went to my cabin crazy for you. And half the night I could not sleep, living again every love touch of yours. My body was like a harp that your touches had set vibrating and it would not stop thrilling.
"Oh, my darling, Phil, love me as I love you and I shall be satisfied, I promise you. Even now—it is four o'clock in the morning—the whole of me is one thrill, thrilling for you. My skin even is burning, and on my thighs it is as sentient as my lips. And my breasts are just as naughty. If you felt like this, Sir, you would come to me, even in the middle of the night. But you are much cooler, though a wonderful lover. I am all yours.
"Your loving Aura."
"My dear, dear Phil,
"You have asked me again and again to tell you the whole story of my life. You say you want to know me, heart and soul, and I must therefore sit down and tell you everything in order. I am afraid a great part will be tiresome to you, for girls' lives are much more monotonous than boys'; but I can only do my best and let you judge.
"The talk we had this evening with our friends comes back to me. I regret it so much that I can't speak English better so as to be able to take part in your conversations. But I have listened attentively and have understood everything.
"I was especially impressed by what that old Mr. L. said: 'There would not be as many misunderstandings between men and women, if the women would speak about their experiences and the events in their lives as freely as men do.'
"Events! But what events are there in the life of a girl? Your youth for instance is a chain of interesting events or even adventures. When you were twenty-two years old you had more than a hundred times as many experiences as I have had up to now.
"I was a very vivacious, or better, a rather wild child, and played mostly with boys. I think that was because father had educated me like a boy.
"We children were always ready for every frolic, and I was always in the plot; not only was I often the instigator, but I was always one of the first in the game. I could climb trees like a boy, could jump very well and was an excellent walker. 'To get tired' was against my honor, and I'd have died sooner than say 'I can't go any more.'
"Even as a very young child, father treated me like a comrade and trained me so well that, for instance, when I was only six years old I could accompany him in walks into the country for two or three hours. You know, father was very fond of walking; he said that driving in the motor car and airplane had spoiled men, made them lazy.
"I liked to watch the grown-up people and wished to have everything that they had. In spite of my boyish vivacity I was a real girl, very vain and proud of my frocks. I thought nobody could make such beautiful frocks as our old Berta who loved me affectionately and spoiled me dreadfully; she did everything for me I wished. When I was about seven years old, she made me a dress exactly like the ladies used to wear in that time. I loved to put this dress on and was very proud of it; it is true I felt a little uncomfortable in it, my simple frocks were much better for playing and jumping. But ladies did not jump, and so I had to be ladylike in my 'grown-up dress'; it did not disturb me a bit when father or the boys teased me and when they said that they liked me much better in my simple frocks, I only shrugged my shoulders: what did they understand about dresses.
"I was very sorry that I had no sister or brother. I wished so very much to have a little sister or a little brother. I never thought that they would grow just as I was growing. I loved babies who were clumsy and could hardly use their little feet. When I was with such children I felt very old and wished to protect them. Against what I wished to protect them, I don't know.
"But we had our most beautiful hours in the evening when father told us children, fairy tales and sagas. These hours were really wonderful. You will remember how well father could tell stories. The heroic deeds with wild beasts, dragons, sorcerers haunted our little heads. In our opinion our isle was very uninteresting: no miracles happened. And so we transformed the stories father told us into our games; we became the great heroes and were, of course, very brave; that means, we had sometimes big fights.
"Still to-day I love to recall the first years of my childhood. They were full of sunshine. The world belonged to us: our garden, the trees, the bushes, the fields; for all these were our world, and we boys and girls enjoyed it like happy little animals.
"One day I had my first great disappointment. It took me a long time before I got over it, and to tell the truth, I have never really gotten over it. It was when it became clear to me that I was only a girl.
"I was five years old when Teresa was born. She was the second daughter, and I think my aunt and my uncle wanted to have a son. After the birth of Teresa, my uncle came to father to tell him that everything was in order. 'Is it a boy?' my father asked. 'No, it is only a girl,' was the disappointed answer of my uncle. Even to-day I can see the disappointment in his face; the whole man was personified regret.
"Why did he say only a girl? Is a girl worth less than a boy? I brooded over these words a long time and could not find a solution. Then I asked father. But he laughed when he looked into my little face full of grief; he took me on his knees and said that he would not change me for all the boys in the world. But that was not the answer I wanted to have and so I tried to find the solution myself.
"And soon I heard more comparisons between boys and girls, and always the girls were considered as inferior to the boys, both mentally and physically. For instance, one day in the street a little boy cried, and in order to quiet him his father said: 'Don't cry, Luís; you are a boy; you should be ashamed. Only girls cry like that.'
"All those words hit me as if the people meant me personally. I suffered and had the feelings that we girls were treated unjustly. I decided in my little heart to revenge this injustice, and I remember that, in spite of being very young, I was sometimes a real little beast. I tried everything to make a boy cry, and when I had succeeded I laughed and said: 'Atsh! you are crying; yet you are a boy. See, I am a girl and I don't cry!'
"Do you remember the narrow ditch which separated our garden from that of our neighbor? It is very narrow and not deep. But for us children it was a hindrance. I often played with Juan, the son of our neighbor. Once we played in his parents' house, I said to him: 'Come, we'll go and play in our garden. Let us go and jump over the ditch.' I was agile and to jump over the ditch was nothing to me, but Juan was fat and clumsy—and he fell into it. He was quite wet and slunk home crying; I stood on the other side and laughed at him.
"This event is still fresh in my memory, as if it had happened to-day, and when I thought of it later I was often frightened of myself, how unconcerned and cold my heart was when I was doing all these things. What astonished me most was that I had not the slightest feeling of pity: when I saw that the boys were crying I was satisfied.
"This all happened before I went to school. The first years of school with all the new interests occupied my mind so much that the impressions of the time before faded a little. In our leisure hours we boys and girls played of course as we used to.
"I don't think that anything extraordinary happened during the first years of my school life; at least I can't remember anything. Life went on in the same way till we were twelve or thirteen years old and the time came when we girls began to become women.
"I know that in our development nothing happens suddenly; all grows gradually. Yet it is as if at this time there was a sudden division in our lives. The games with the boys ceased and we tried to avoid meeting them. Why we did so, we could not tell. We did not know anything. We only observed that we grew, that our bodies altered, some of us altered even very quickly. We did not like very much getting big hips, but we all wished to get beautiful breasts. I was unhappy, indeed, that my breasts remained small for a long time. Even when I was eighteen years old I was very thin and delicate. I did not become as I am now till the last year or so; I don't know whether the strenuous studying was the reason for it.
"Of course, all that was new in our life interested us immensely, and we wished to have explanations of it. As we could not get them from the grown-up people, we tried to find them out for ourselves, and we succeeded bit by bit. It is true, already before this time we sometimes wanted to know where babies came from, but now this question became dominant.
"We searched all the books we could get for hints and told each other our discoveries. Especially scientific books were of the greatest interest to us. So we came nearer to the truth gradually. The adults had no idea that we were especially keen in listening to dirty stories. We were excellent actors. They all thought that the 'children' could not understand anything the adults were talking about. But we really swallowed with delight every ambiguous word we heard.
"I don't mention this because I am proud of it. No, I only give the fact here because it was characteristic of the age from twelve to fifteen. When our curiosity was satisfied, we were able to think of all the sex matters just as we could think and speak about any other problem. It was only the mystery people have put around it which made us so curious and cunning.
"As I have already said, our relations to the boys had altered remarkably during those years of development. Yet there was between some of the boys and girls a sort of friendship, some of them even said they were engaged secretly. The different couples liked to meet separately. What they talked about and what they did when they were together with the boys, the girls never told. I remember that you told me how openly you boys spoke to each other when you were together and how frankly men often speak about their experiences with women; girls never do. It may be that there are exceptions; I have never met one single one. We discussed every question of general interest, but personal experiences were never touched upon.
"I never had a boy as a lover. At that time I read a good many novels, but when I thought of a lover, it had to be a real man, and in my opinion a real man must be at least thirty years of age. How I came to take this age as a limit, I don't know.
"When I was about fifteen years old, two events which happened nearly at the same time stirred my soul. The first was: One day when I was bathing I saw some naked women who were good-looking when they were dressed. How ugly their bodies were! Their breasts were flat and hung down heavily; their skin was slack. I was taken aback and so disgusted that I dared to ask our old Berta about this. 'How is it, child,' she said, 'that these women looked so ugly? They are not young any more and have had children. That is the women's fate, dear.'
"I was frightened. I always wished to have children when I was married; but should I, too, become as ugly as these women were? How dreadful!
"And the other event: I heard once—I forgot on what occasion—that a woman could get children only up to a certain age. Every woman becomes infertile when she is about fifty years old. This was a heavy blow for me, really. I don't know why, I always regarded this as a great injustice. I studied this question carefully and found that it was true what I had heard: life as a woman begins when we are about fourteen and ends when we are about fifty years of age. I felt very unhappy.
"Not enough that we have to suffer every month, that we have to do our work; not enough that we have to bear the children, we become ugly much sooner than the men, and our body, which is often really beautiful in youth, is sometimes a repulsive caricature in maturity; and now even a worse thing: nature itself sets a limit to our womanhood.
"I have not an idea why I always think—even to-day—that if a woman can't get a child any more, she is no longer attractive to the man. Well, we don't want many children, but I am afraid that the woman's passion ceases at the time that she gets infertile. My thoughts may be wrong, but I can't help thinking that.*
(*Quite untrue.)
"What I am describing here is only the development of my inner life. The everyday life went on peacefully enough. I passed through school without any difficulty; I was one of the best pupils of my class. Not that I was especially proud of it; I knew that I was lazy compared with many pupils who did not succeed as well as I did.
"I was longing to become the first woman of our isle who would be sent into the wide world to study as father was sent abroad. We girls thought it wrong that in our State, which was praised as the most advanced, mainly men were sent to the other countries beyond the electric cloud. In the government women had the same rights as men, but why not let them study abroad too? We never got a satisfactory answer when we asked for the reason; even father who was so broadminded did not like to discuss or hear about it. My dream has been realized, though quite differently to what I thought.
"I left school in October when I was seventeen years of age and entered the University at the beginning of April; the summer time was for recreation. During this time I saw again one of my friends, Ramón C.; we had not met for some years. As children we had been inseparable friends, and later when he was in school in the middle of the country and was preparing himself for his profession we wrote to each other.
"When we met again the first time we were both surprised: how we had altered! Even to-day I can remember how he stared at me; his eyes had a deep brown color, nearly black. He looked at me as if he had never seen me. I felt a hot wave coming up to my head. He, too, was quite new to me. We fell for each other in this very first moment. All my principles how a man I should love had to be, were forgotten.
"And it was not long before he told me that he loved me and wished to marry me. He was some years older than I. I said 'yes,' but we decided to wait a certain time.
"Of course, we kissed each other as often as we were together.
"The first weeks were gorgeous; but then I grew more thoughtful and colder. I found that he was intelligent and liked to study, but he only thought of winning place enough to be able to live a decent life. He was not ambitious, and for me ambition is identical with life itself: one is dead without ambition. And there was still another and more important thing: he loved me in his way and was passionate, I thought from his kisses, but he never dared to touch me really. He was always the same, he never changed; whereas my passion grew and grew, and when it was not satisfied, I became cold and angry, and then contemptuous. I had no feeling for him any more. I think with me it was only passion which drove me to him; for if I had loved him really I should have found excuses for him.
"I wished him to touch me. I longed for it. I did not tell him that; of course not; but I could not understand that he could not divine my desire. I remember that when we were walking together in the evening and he put his arm round me, I sometimes took his hand and guided it towards my breasts. But he kept his hand quiet. I trembled with longing that he would try to touch me out of his own desire; I could have beaten him because he never did. He could sit with me in my room and look at me for hours when I was working. He adored me as a Goddess; the poor fool did not see that I was only waiting for him to take me in his arms.
"I could not bear this disappointment for long. After three months I wrote him a frank letter that I could not become his wife; he was not ambitious and passionate enough for me.
"Now I can laugh at this 'love in youth'; but then I felt ashamed of myself that I had wasted a deep feeling on this man. I threw myself on my studies and have not looked at any other man since; I mean I did not love any other man—till I met you! And you at once surpassed my ideal: you were bolder and more passionate than I had imagined possible.
"Phil, it does me such good to be able to speak quite frankly. See, every healthy girl longs to be one with the beloved man just as he longs for her. The fear which she shows at the beginning is nothing more than the dread of the unknown, the new: it is inexperience rather than fear. She overcomes this feeling very soon, for the love she bears in her heart for the man will help her to understand him.
"Dear, my whole being is full of love for you, soul and body. I don't think any more of childbirth pains and of becoming old and ugly. I am so happy now that I am a woman, because you love me. I would give my life for you to-day, if I knew it would make you happy! I am going to be one with you always.
"Your Aura."
In reply to this letter I quoted her Meredith's poem of The
Wild Rose:
High climbs June's wild rose,
Her bush all blooms in a swarm;
And swift from the bud she blows
In a day when the wooer is warm;
Frank to receive and give:
Her bosom is open to bee and sun;
Pride she has none,
Nor shame she knows:
Happy to live.
and when we met she kissed me for it, said it was lovely.
I was glad, but I wanted more than this girlish confession and told her so. But I got little more till we reached England and were married there.