For a long time we asked questions to which we could obtain no answer, or not such as conveyed any meaning to us.
We tried to learn the extent and depth of the domain of the Dwellers, and the location of the Reservations in which my friend might be confined. But the book was not a geography. Neither was it a first volume. Its records evidently assumed a mass of knowledge which we did not possess.
We made progress of a kind when it occurred to me that it would give us some indication of the probable extent of the subterranean world if we could learn its population.
“How many are there of the nation of the Dwellers?” I queried.
There was no answer.
“How many were there last year?”
No answer came.
“Have you any records of population?”
It seemed as though there were a mental impulse of hesitation, but still no answer came.
“How many children were born last year?” it occurred to me to ask.
The answer was immediate, “It was reported to the Council of Five that three boys had been born in the Great Nursery, and one in the Place of Renunciation.”
“And how many girls?” I replied, in a natural supposition that this information was incomplete, but there was no answer.
I then went back, querying from year to year, getting for each year a similar answer but with a total that increased as the years receded, and with a record of male births only, till, at ten years’ distance, the reply came--
It was reported to the Council of Five that eight boys had been born in the Great Nursery, and twenty-four boys and one girl in the Place of Twilight.
I would have asked further, but my companion interposed with reason. “I think that we are learning little. If it can tell how long they live, and how many are their deaths, (for as they are born, I suppose that they may die also), we can then judge how numerous they may be, but from their births only we cannot.” This we tried, but only to be met again with silence, or with baffling answers.
By persistence and variety in the form of queries we obtained allusion to “those of the Great Lethargy,” and to “The Desire of the Darkness,” but nothing more definite. In a final desperation I tried to obtain information by means of inquiry as to their customs of marriage, and at last obtained abstracts from the report of a very lengthy trial or debate, which threw a sombre and uncertain light upon the information which we had obtained already.
Mainly, it consisted of a duel of argument between The First, who was evidently male, and whom we supposed to be the head of the Council of Five,--and the Elected One, who was a woman.
It was evident from the moods of both that the matter with which they dealt was of a tragic and overwhelming importance, though there could hardly have been a greater contrast than was shown in the styles of their controversy.
The thoughts of The First were slow, deliberate, weighty, solemn, yet with an extremity of urging which almost amounted to supplication. Those of the Elected One were swift, insistent, passionate, crowding thought on thought, in protest, defiance, and vindication. They were impatient with the intolerance of youth, and bold with the assurance of immortality.
It appeared that the First One put forward a new method of life for the women of their kind, or for their descendants, pleading that its adoption was essential to the continuance of the race of the Dwellers.
But with a fierce scorn she repelled it--“Do you think that women will consent to be as uncoloured and alike as men? Or that they will conceal themselves in dead hangings, as in some savage infancy of the world?”
He answered slowly, “It is only this, that you will be alone if you will not. If you will not that your daughters do these things to save our race from extinction, then you will be alone in your own places. No man will come to you. It is already resolved that all shall take this vow, if you refuse to aid us.”
The reply came with a swift derision. “And would they keep it for a score of sunsets? Is there a man in the Lower Places that would not come if I should call him? But it is the thing which we have resolved also. It is no threat to us. Till we have the girl, there is no man shall come near us. There is no man shall cross the Blue Darkness, nor enter into the Place of Twilight. We will not appear at the Feasts of the Inner Moon, nor at the Mimes of the Recollections. Should we rejoice in our seats on the Upper Slopes, knowing that we had doomed our daughters to be less than we?”
The First One answered with the same deliberation as before, but with a cold finality, as one delivering a judgment from which no appeal could be made. “For six months’ time, unless you sooner yield, there is no man will come near you. If you are rebellious longer, we shall use such force as may be needed that our wills may conquer, and thereafter there will be nothing of the Place of Twilight, nor of the Blue Darkness, nor of the Place of Preparation.
“If your seats be in the Upper Slopes at the time of the Great Assembly, are not these seats made by the hands of men? Are they not known as the Given Places?
“That which we give we can take.
“If there be any wisdom among you, all these things may continue; but for your daughters is a different way.”
His thought smote the mind decisively, as a doom relentless and unescapable, but it did not daunt the courage nor abase the mockery of the thought that met it. “You threaten that which is beyond your power, nor do we fear, nor believe you. In six months’ time you will not waste the Blue Darkness nor the Place of Twilight, for if we do not have the girl by the next new moon, we will ourselves destroy them. Tell your young men that. Tell them that we shall uproot the Wilderness and the Five Approaches. You may counsel; but will they refrain? You may threaten; but will they act?
“You are old and weary of life, but we are not old, and we shall never weary. Life is ours, and we have learnt by your failure. But we will not resign our customs either in the Choosing of Males, or in the Rites of the Preparations. Shall our daughters be less than we? Or shall we degrade ourselves that others may come after us? We are ourselves the race, and it is in ourselves that it shall continue.”
At this point, as a book may be illustrated, so the thought changed to picture, and we had a moment’s sight of the protagonists as they had appeared as these thoughts were contended.
They were in a lighted space in a hall of vast and shadowy gloom, so that even their giant forms were dwarfed by its proportions. They were in the midst of a great assembly, through and over which there was a diffused light, coming from no visible source, so that the gloom deepened on every side towards the vaulted roof, and the invisible distance of the walls.
She stood forward from a group of women, vital as herself, multi-coloured in their nudity. But she stood out from them like a living flame, the ruddy orange of her hair continuing in a lengthened ridge along the spine, dividing the fire-hued back that softened forward to a paler gold.
There was no speech from her lips, for their thoughts leapt out too swiftly for words, but they were parted in mockery, and her eyes were alight with defiance, as The First leaned forward from his high throned seat, and threw out sudden hands of pleading as he increased the intensity of the thought with which he assailed her.
“You boast that you will not die, as we have boasted before you. You boast that you will not tire. Are there no women in the Place of Forgetting? Are there not those among them that are as vigorous as yourself, and with a beauty that may last for millenniums? Yet love cannot allure them. If those that have been dearest approach, they regard them with indifferent eyes. We show them birth, and they are not wakened: they see death, and have no care to avoid it.
“Look at myself!”--he rose up from the throne, and stood erect, strong, active, as though he were an ivory statue of perpetual youth,--“is there one of the young men who seek the Place of Twilight who is more strong or more graceful?--One whom I could not overcome with my hands in the Place of Trials? Will it not still be so for a millennium of the years to be.--And for another--and another?
“And yet I know. I have heard the call that will grow louder. I have felt the desire of the Silence,--and it will grow, though to-day it be powerless. It will conquer, though to-day it be impotent.
“As you boast to-day, have we not boasted before you?
“We think to last in the Perpetual Places, but the night will find us, even as it falls on the rain-drenched roof of the world, where our ancestors once crouched and shivered.
“We have conquered cold. We have defeated darkness. We have tamed heat till it licks our feet like a fawning dog. We have resisted corruption. But there is a night of the soul that falls across the procession of unending years, against which, one by one, we fight a battle that is always lost.
“... And every year our race declines, and our women-children are fewer.
“Therefore, each for each, shall you take the Males of our choosing, forgetting the Caprice of Choice, and the Seven Grounds of Rejection. Therefore shall the girl go not to the Place of Preparation, but to the toil of the fish-tanks, and so in turn shall the two that are younger----”
It was at this point that my comrade interrupted, not impatiently, but with a quick suggestion that the discussion to which we were attending was of no immediate assistance, and when I assented somewhat reluctantly,--for I had been more interested than she in the situation which was revealed by the disputation,--she went on to suggest that the book we were consulting so industriously was not likely to contain anything of a greater value.
She added, “I think that we are not merely wasting time, but incurring a needless peril. I think that there is little doubt that we have penetrated into the Sacred Places where the Dwellers did not wish us to enter, and it may be that we have already encountered the reason for this reluctance. It is not likely that they would wish this information as to the condition of their nation to be known, even to their friends, and still less that there should be any possibility that it might be carried farther to those who are at enmity with them. There may be other things which might be learnt which would be still more to their detriment. It might be fatal to both of us should we be discovered in this occupation, while we have little hope of any resulting gain, for it is not the history of past days which we need to know, but rather the place where your friend is confined, the means of secret approach, the method by which he may be freed, and the safest road of escape to the outer world when we have released him.”
I answered, “You are right, as you usually are. But we have a proverb that we may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, which appears applicable to our present circumstances. If our movements and occupation be within the knowledge of the Dwellers, our prospect of escape is already too small to be interesting. If they have no knowledge, as yet, of where we are, I suggest that we may do well to discover the library from which this volume had apparently been taken, where there may be other books of a more direct utility.”
My companion assented, though doubtfully. “It is an added risk, for an uncertain gain; yet it is true that if we turn back now, we have very little to set against the certain peril which we have incurred by penetrating into these secret places. Nor have we any guidance to direct our search in subterranean ways, the extent of which may be greater even than we have previously anticipated,--and even the search for the library which we suppose to exist does not appear to be a very simple enterprise.”
I knew that. The librarian, if such she were, had followed us down the passage, and must have come either from the surface world, or from one of the other passages that we had passed. The latter was the more probable supposition. But which passage should we prefer? And how far should we explore it before turning back and attempting the other?
The search for such a library, even should it exist, might be as difficult as for the ultimate destination at which we were aiming. I saw also that time had become of greater importance to my companion than to myself. I had still the best part of the year before me. She had days only, if she were to return within the limit fixed by the treaty. To both of us it might be of the greatest moment to escape unseen from the Sacred Places, if these were really they. For myself, there was the consideration that, should she return within the allotted period, I should be left without the aid of her counsel, or the support of her vitality.
It was under the influence of these thoughts that I suggested, “Suppose we wait here for a time, watching from the farther side of the passage. It may be that she will wake, and herself return the book to the library, and we would follow unseen. Otherwise, we might follow her in any other direction which she might take, which would be as likely to bring us to some definite issue, as wandering blindly in the darkness of these passages--and we know how much easier is the walking when she goes before us. But if she should sleep beyond our patience we will search ourselves without further waiting.”
My companion answered, still doubtfully, “I don’t think it likely that she brought the book simply to return it, for why then should she not have given it the information where it was, without bringing it here at all? But it may be so. It is all guesses. It shall be as you will.”
Before we commenced our vigil, however, I made a further venture into the lighted room, for I had seen that both water and food (the bread-like cake which I had found when first I ventured below the surface) were among the articles that stood against the left-hand wall, and the chance was too good to lose.
I have wondered since, in the light of these experiences, how far the furtive lives of those creatures who exist behind the skirting-boards of our houses, are to be either pitied or envied. I feed, as a mouse feeds, venturing audaciously for bedside crumbs while a light still burns, and the fear, real enough, and with sufficient cause, which came as I watched the huge form that might rise at any moment and chase me with a monstrous hand outstretched, must be off-set by the satisfaction that the meal gave to the alertness of my physical being, and to the joyous sense of a hazard won with which I rejoined my companion in the outer darkness.
For (have I not said already?) the darkness in the passage was absolute. Even immediately in front of the open doorway, the darkness fell like a curtain.
Here arises an issue on which I am in two minds continually. In this strange world we were constantly surrounded by phenomena which were not explicable by any knowledge I possessed, nor consistent with any previous experiences. So was it here. I was accustomed to light that invaded darkness and gradually died as its source was distanced, but here was light which was sharply defined in its area,--which ended evenly and abruptly. To explain this is necessary for my narrative. But that necessity is incidental. We were surrounded by phenomena which were equally new, but which were entirely irrelevant. Sometimes I was able to imagine an explanation: sometimes not. Sometimes the cause became clear subsequently, or was told to me. I should like to tell of all these things, but I have a tale to tell also. I am of one mind to turn aside, and of another mind to go forward. But I see that if I would reach the conclusion at which I aim, I must restrain my desire to wander.
We sat for some time in the darkness against the opposite wall watching the form of the Dweller, who did not move, and was still apparently sleeping. There was no means of judging the passage of time, but it was long since I had slept, and after the meal I had to confess to an increasing drowsiness, on which my companion suggested that I should use the time in sleep, which I required at shorter intervals than herself, while she would watch for us both.
