BEATRICE THE SIXTEENTH (2)
By:
March 13, 2024
Beatrice the Sixteenth: Being the Personal Narrative of Mary Hatherley, M.B., Explorer and Geographer (1909), by the English feminist, pacifist, and non-binary or transgender lawyer and writer Irene Clyde (born Thomas Baty) introduces us to Armeria, an ambiguous utopia — to which we are introduced initially without any firm indications of its inhabitants’ genders. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize this ground-breaking novel for HILOBROW’s readers.
BEATRICE THE SIXTEENTH: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13.
THE CITY
Imagine a long, low, square room, with walls of polished black wood. Give it a ceiling of gilded arabesque and a floor of red cedar, on which are inviting masses of bright mats and rugs, and tall bronze vases, with taller palms and lilies. Let there be a low table near the centre for all the furniture, save that round it are set forms, on which sit a dozen silent figures in scarlet. Light there should be in plenty from a large curiously-wrought lamp that swings above the table, and from numerous lamplets on slender pillars in various parts of the room. Add a very tired, very dusty, English-clad traveller, prone in a corner. Such was the picture that the chamber presented where the solemn question was argued of my admission to Alzôna. I am told that when a member’s exclusion is debated in the House of Commons the individual in question politely withdraws meanwhile, out of an altogether touching consideration for the feelings of those speakers who are unfortunately compelled by conscience or party to deprecate his claims to a scat. But it was far from the designs of the Alzônians to lose sight of me for a moment; only they discussed the matter in low tones — mainly, indeed, in silent contemplation of maps, with a word or two interjected occasionally.
Counsel was not darkened by this queer process. It was not very long until the bright, grave figures gathered themselves up, and, with half-Japanese coos of salutation, glided out of the apartment. My friend of the horses came up to me — the younger, whose name, it seemed, was Ilex.
“Come, that is well! This is the Palace of the Warders; and Brytas and I, who are on duty, can entertain our friends here; so I can find you quarters without a minute’s trouble. The inns are closed: my own house is miles away — three, I think — and people will mostly have got to bed.”
An arm was put round me, and we wandered across the room to an opening, where a heavy curtain, pushed aside, admitted us to an open passage, which led between two wings of masonry to a low flight of steps. All was entirely silent. At the foot of the steps we entered a small covered courtyard or large balcony, with a massive and rich balustrade to the right, over which the sky could be seen. It was a faintly moonlit night, and there seemed to be a perfect forest of treetops outside. A sudden fright seized me next. I had thought we were quite alone, when Ilex’s call, “is there a light in your a quarters?” brought a sharp and startling response from quite near me, and I saw a dim, gigantic body two feet away, which turned out to be a fully armed sentinel.
Ilex thrilled with a sympathetic vibration.
“How stupid I always am! I really am not fit for my place.”
I had no time to reply. We entered a garden crowded with flowers, though it must have been near the summit of the building. It was much lighter than the dark balcony, and just at our right was a door, at which we stopped. It opened at a touch. We were in a small room, furnished almost as little as the immense hall we had left. But the walls were covered with soft hangings of dark blue cloth. In an alcove a brazier was rapidly heating an urn; a kind of bureau in the centre was uncovered, disclosing in its various divisions spices and eatables of different kinds; a rich service of plate and dishes of fine porcelain stood between it and the alcove.
“Brytas has done what I said: things seem all ready for us,” observed my companion, putting off the scarlet robe of state and laying it on one side. “We shall have coffee in a minute. In the meantime — a carusna?”
This, I found, was a banana, and by the time it was eaten and the coffee made, Brytas, under which name I recognised the other rider, came in. The orthodox thing appeared to be to lie on the woolly rugs and cushions that spread the floor. Both my hosts threw themselves down without hesitation, and I followed their example. We sat by the glowing embers, and ate and drank I do not in the least know what — only it was all delicious — Ilex sprang up and cleared the things into a corner, and produced a little cithara.
“Brytas plays so well.” And, indeed, for the next half-hour the room was full of the sweetest tinkling music, elaborately Æolian — the very lace-work of cord and plectrum. The performer ended with a quiet smile, put the instrument down, and would not play more. It was extraordinary how this matter-of-fact official personage, from whose face the light of youth had faded, had the power to call up such fairy-like visions at a finger’s touch. For there was nothing of romance in the conversation we had after that, or such as there was — was dropped in sportively by Ilex. We talked of the ways of the city — of its market days, its twenty Governors, its wide orchards, its walls and terraces. And they told me of its fertile environs, and of all the towns that flourished in its territory; of the arts, and the special excellence of each. I heard of the neighbouring kingdoms again — of Uras and Kytôna, Cranthé and Agdalis. I listened with vain expectation to their stories of the western sea and the outer barbarians.
I thought, with a rush of sudden emotion, of the river, swirling like an oceanic torrent, as I had seen it sweep past the wall, in such mysterious volume.
“Where does it rise?” I asked.
“That is unknown to us,” Brytas answered. “But it flows eighteen hundred miles from the east, and divides us from the desert. All past the northern boundary of Uras and our own country it runs, and past them, through other lands, to the sea. In the upper part of its course it traverses barbarian countries which are pretty well known; but eighteen hundred miles from the sea it flows through the Pass of Hylis. Beyond that are fierce barbarians, whom we keep safely on the farther side, neither venturing amongst them nor letting them come through.”
Well, was my knowledge of Greek numerals hopelessly muddled? And could I be putting hundreds for twenties? Or what could the explanation of these extraordinary stories be? Were my hosts playing with me? Were they the credulous victims of unscientific travellers’ tales?
None of these seemed a fair way of accounting for their statements. Besides, there was the river itself to be accounted for; not to speak of the city, which was a trifling circumstance compared with the other matters, but nevertheless, in its high civilisation and its artistic refinement, would have appeared a sufficiently surprising discovery to me two days ago.
Reduced to fruitless conjecture, I determined to leave the puzzle alone, and to try to obtain camels and make my way across the desert northwards, by sheer persistence, when I had no doubt I should sooner or later arrive in Turkish or Persian territory. It was obviously desirable to make the best use of my time meanwhile in becoming fully acquainted with the customs of the strange race among whom I was so unexpectedly a visitant.
“Have you many poor?” I asked; “and are they contented?”
Ilex looked at Brytas and smiled a little enigmatically.
“Is it permitted to ask,” said the latter, “whether the poor are numerous, and how they are dealt with, in the honourable stranger’s country?”
“In theory,” I said (and I am sure I don’t know how far I was speaking the truth), “no one need starve — actually starve — in England. If you are very badly off, you first of all try to raise money from your friends; then you live in a smaller and meaner house, you wear old rags, you eat dry bread and tea… finally —”
“And all this while,” said Ilex, “your friends come and talk to you and bring you presents — do they?”
“I am putting the case,” said I, “that you have exhausted your friends as a source of revenue. I think the next thing is the minister or district visitor. They will bring you round tea occasionally, and help you to buy rugs, which they call ‘blankets.’ (Tea is a warm drink, slightly stimulating; you haven’t it here?).”
“No — not by that name,” said Brytas. “The minister — is he paid for this service?”
“Well, no; he isn’t, exactly. At least, he is paid, but not to do this — that is, he needn’t do it… and yet he is supposed to do something in that way… then, after that — or if you don’t behave for in that case the minister will not have much to do with you unless you are so bad as to arouse his professional interest; for his real business is to cure badness after that there is nothing for it but to go to the Relieving Officer and the Guardians.”
Ilex and Brytas both sat up, with sparkling eyes. “A special officer who can cure badness! What a wonderful country yours is! We thought you were just an atom patronising, and really we were so absurd as to laugh at that; but if in your England you have physicians who know how to treat the soul, it is certainly we who are foolish! Here we have only the old empirical methods — the judge, the prison, the kûrbash…”
“I wouldn’t distress myself, in your place,” I returned. “The persons I speak of generally regard this mission of theirs as secondary to the inculcation of particular theories about religion, and they have not yet worked out any system of therapeutics which they can get put into practice.”
“Not even an approach to a system?” said Ilex, with disappointment.
“Not even an approach to a system.”
“Tell us, then, of those noble officials you have — the Relieving Officers and the Guardians of the Poor! I suppose they relieve and guard you, as their name indicates.”
“I’m not sure, when I come to think of it, that Poor Law Guardians isn’t the right name; and in that case it must be the Poor Laws, and not the poor, that the Guardians are supposed to protect. At all events, you may safely discard the idea, which I am sorry I have misled you into entertaining, that their main object — they are excellent people — is a sympathetic apportionment of relief to the victims of poverty. No; the Relieving Officer is merely a name for the servant of the Guardians; and the Guardians have to consider the ratepayers’ pockets. If they decide to afford you two shillings a week, well and good; if not, you go into a kind of gaol, which it is not so easy to get out of.”
“Without having done any wrong?” said Brytas.
“Good and bad alike?” said Ilex.
“They don’t call it a gaol,” I said hurriedly; “and many Guardians will give the two shillings, as often as the Inspectors will let them. I don’t understand the theory of it. The idea is, if you can work, you ought to go to something like gaol if you don’t.”
“But if you can’t?” said Ilex.
I gave up the Poor Laws in disgust. How little one knows about things so commonplace as workhouses and rates!
Rates and taxes were a great bother to my new friends. So they are to most people; but I mean that it was impossible to make these see the theory of them. Every explanation ended in some such observation as:
“But I should have thought plenty of people would have liked to pick out the decent poor people, and keep them in their train”; or —
“But why should I take Chloe’s money to keep Doris with?”
We did not go very deeply into the problems of government.
“Are the countries round about much like this land of Armeria?” I went on.
“Hardly. I think you will find marked differences in outward appearance and in character,” said Brytas. “But in civilisation and progress we are all on about the same level, I suppose. Well for instance, you go to Bruna, in Cranthé: you find you must take your red dress off, because you are not a literate in the seven classics; you find all the inhabitants assembling — every night, that is — and performing military evolutions in phalanges of separate castes; you find everybody speaking in a voice that sounds like a knife-edge. Quid ergo est? What does it matter? They think no worse of you because you do not know the seven classics, and parade in proper costume with a spear in the evenings.”
In conversing thus, my attention was struck by the metal coffee pot, which was beautifully worked, and would have done no discredit to Birmingham.
“What a fine design you have there!” I said; “is it old, or are such things made here nowadays?”
“I will introduce you tomorrow to the maker of it,” said Ilex quickly. “And as you admire it, I have no doubt one like it will be forthcoming for you.”
It occurred to me unpleasantly that I had not a sixpence, my letters of credit being with my lost effects. I felt this ought to be explained at once.
“I couldn’t pay for it,” I said. “You see, unfortunately — most unfortunately — my party have gone off with my money. That is, whatever their reason for leaving me, they have taken my goods and all I have with them. So I must be indebted —”
“Oh, but,” said Brytas, “the metal-worker will ask you to take it as a present. It is not everybody who appreciates good work.”
“It strikes me,” I said, “that a good many people simulate appreciation very assiduously, if that is the principle on which he does business.”
Brytas looked blank. “Why should they? To be given things they don’t want and don’t care for?”
“No,” I said. “To be given a serviceable coffee pot.”
“Nobody need be without a coffee pot; you can get them for next to nothing.”
“Not such handsome ones?”
“Oh, well! But isn’t it far pleasanter to have your own eightpenny pot, that you made or chose yourself, than play on a person’s confidence in that style? I don’t see quite how it would work. Anyhow, your admiration is genuine, and you needn’t scruple to take the thing — provided it is not in your way.”
Here Ilex insisted that I must be getting tired, and conveyed me across lofty saloons of varied size — some traversed by colonnades of pillars, some fitted with a raised daïs, others with latticed galleries — to a tiny courtyard of fairy-like delicacy. It was not more than twenty feet square: in the centre a fountain’s sparkling jet threw drops of crystal over dim sprays of green; at the sides an arcade of graceful Arabian arches formed a covered way. We went along the cloister to the left, and, halfway to the end, we came to an opening in the wall, where a flight of easy stone steps admitted us to the roof. Above us towered a huge mass of masonry, but on the city side there seemed nothing to impede the prospect. A few steps farther on a low escarpment of the lofty towers stopped our further progress. Ilex opened a door. A faint scent of cedarwood met me as the air of the chamber mingled with the night breeze.
“This is where I think you will sleep best,” said my companion, entering, and motioning me to follow. “This door on the right leads into another room, which is also for you. In the morning I will be here early, because my own room is next — just here.”
With an elaborate salutation, half inclination, half wave, my strange conductor departed into the semi-obscurity of the starlight.
I was standing at the door of my new quarters. But I could not for a few minutes settle indoors. I remained outside, glancing down at the half-visible silver of the fountain. Then I turned my eyes upwards to the stars.
They were totally unfamiliar to me!
With the stars of both hemispheres I am as well acquainted as with the alphabet. In Brazilian forests I have lain and watched the Southern Cross. I have steered my course by Orion in Arabian deserts, and marked the southing of Arcturus in California. At a glance, I knew that these were no stars of mine. No one who has not used the stars as a familiar and unfailing guide — perhaps a professed astronomer or a child may have the same feeling — can picture what it is to such a one to see the heavens spangled with strange, unknown constellations.
Where was I? Who was I? What was this place? I half expected to see the strange stars start from their orbits and dance like meteors in a sudden delirious whirl on the palace.
For a few moments I suppose I half fainted, for I remember thinking that this had actually happened, or begun to happen. My nerves had been shaken by the accident and the startling events which succeeded it. The relaxation of the past few hours had been followed, now that I was alone, by a reaction. I quickly stepped into the room and closed the door, which was fastened by a flat staple of bronze. The furniture was scanty, but I had no inclination for examining it. In the centre of the floor was a bed, covered with rugs. Its four posts were of the slenderest bronze, and attached to them were curtains of thin gauze. Throwing my things off, I lay down, but without much hope of rest. I thought it better to leave the lamps unextinguished. As I lay, all was quiet, except for the fountain, scarcely audible, and for a soft but penetrating musical note, which sounded at long — or what seemed long — intervals.
The rafters of the ceiling were coloured a dull red, with a few gilded bosses. In some odd way they recalled to me the dark beams which ran across a farm-kitchen’s open roof that I knew well as a child: memories of thirty years ago floated back to me, and, thinking of them, I fell asleep.
Morning came, and with it the sounds of loud music close by. I dressed and looked about me, the strains still proceeding and growing louder. Small windows, high up, and a break in the ceiling, admitted light. The lamps burned dimly in the brightness. By the bed stood an immense earthenware basin, very shallow — in fact, saucer-shaped — supported by a low column spreading out at the foot. This was filled with clear water. A little table carried a dish of the same dull earthenware, in which was some fruit. On the panelled walls hung a few musical instruments and weapons, which I promised myself to examine more closely. I ventured to peep into the adjoining room, which I found to be still smaller. A kind of couch occupied most of the space, but there was also a cabinet, filling one end of the apartment, and full of cupboards, somewhat after the Japanese fashion. Writing materials were set out here, and there was a plain seat of cedar placed conveniently. A large palm was the only other thing that I noticed.
The music was culminating in an intense crash. I half opened my door. Immediately outside Ilex was waiting for me. As we met, the sound became quieter, and gradually stopped. The players vanished down the stone steps.
“I didn’t know,” said Ilex, “whether you wanted to be disturbed. But I thought you had better be awakened whilst I was still here. Do you mind?”
I explained that I had been awake for sometime, and we passed into one of the largest of the saloons we had traversed the preceding night. In the centre, an island in that immense room, was a small oblong table. Near it stood Brytas and a younger officer.
As they greeted us with the polished salutation, which I did my best to imitate — though I saw the newcomer had some difficulty in keeping from laughing — servants in short kirtles began to move towards us from the sides of the room, where, in pillared recesses, were tables covered with the materials of our morning meal. As we sat down in the seats of citron-wood, Ilex explained that the stranger was, as I understood, a supernumerary official, waiting in readiness to take the place of either of them, if need be.
“And this morning, Cydonia will have the distinguished honour of taking you through the city. You ought especially to thank us, Cydonia, for giving you this privilege! I wanted particularly to go with the stranger myself, and hear what she says of our ways.”
“I know well enough,” said Cydonia, “that so you would, if you had the chance.” At which laughing reply Brytas refused to smile, but said to me at once, as though the matter were of the first importance:
“I hope you will not forget to consult the physician. That is the thing you must do before anything else. The royal physicians will be at the Council; but Athroës, in the next street, is an excellent authority, though too careless of Court favour to be celebrated. Go to Athroës. Then you will know what to do.”
I observed that I had some knowledge of medicine, and was a fully qualified practitioner, but they still insisted on the visit. Of course, I knew the value of an independent diagnosis, but I had no idea of placing myself in the hands of an empirical Syrian. Nevertheless, it was a good chance of securing some drugs. Mine had gone the way (whatever way that might have been) of all my other belongings.
Brytas finished breakfast quickly, and departed. Ilex stayed a few moments longer, and left me in charge of Cydonia.
“Wouldn’t you like,” said that functionary to me, “to change your dress for one of ours? If you will take my advice, it would really be better. We shall get along so much more easily so.”
I had no objection, and was accordingly provided with a tunic and outer robe, and duly instructed as to the mode of wearing them. A servant carried them into a latticed balcony, and left me to my own devices for getting them on. The tunic was easy; it was already fastened by clasps at the shoulders, and all that was needed was to slip it over one’s head. But the voluminous folds of the robe gave me endless trouble. In the midst of struggling with it, however, I had to stop to admire the lattice-work. Its tracery was admirable, and the invention displayed in varying the forms little short of marvellous. Through the long gallery each square panel of latticed wall was a fresh delight.
I could not manage the robe. When I tried, having got into it, to fasten and arrange it, its folds caught me, and twisted me, and tripped me up, and enveloped me, and altogether took charge of me, in a disconcerting fashion. I got it fastened somehow, [I the zone tied ??] on somewhere, and the long skirt, by dint of hard effort, raised to my ankles. All that remained was to replace shoes and stockings by sandals.
Cydonia met me with a smile of pleasure. My inextricable folds were speedily reduced to order by a practised hand, and I saw that I was dressed precisely as a Greek of two thousand years ago. It was then that it came back to me with a rush how I had found the stars strayed from their places the night before. Could it be true? A small matter distracted my attention; a servant was presenting me a rich, ample mantle of brocaded velvet, which I took instinctively and clasped round my neck. By no means Greek, this; and whilst I tried to reason out the hybrid costume, we passed, by the old tortuous way, to the gateway at the end of the bridge.
The inner gates, of ponderous bronze and oak, were swung open at our approach, and I was in the streets of Alzôna.
Not in the streets, either, for, strictly speaking, we were in a little square, not much bigger than the great gateway, earth-paved, and with a very narrow pathway leading to the right and left. But before us rose a fine flight of steps — rather a street of stairs than a stairway — and on either hand foliage grew, and met over the terraced path. Among the green leaves and the gorgeous gold and purple blossoms moved the people. Not many were to be seen, but most of those who were about were dressed similarly to myself, or else in the short tunic which I found to be the mark of servants — or slaves, as they turned out, in fact, to be more properly called. As we ascended the way, we passed between buildings on either hand, which recalled at the same time Greece and Egypt. More plain and massive, on the whole, than the perfect models of Greek temples which are the crowning delight of the architect, they yet had a character of lightness and freshness which is absent from the grand but overpowering structures of the Nile Valley. Fringed, too, as they were by their curtain of living green, and pulsating with the life of a busy town, they looked pleasant and familiar. We reached the summit of the short ascent, and saw its alignment extend before us as a long narrow street, foliage-arched to its farthest end. We turned sharply to the left, into a much broader street, where the rows of palms and tamerisks gave way to a central bank of green, where aloes, cactus, and caladiums grew. At a house here Cydonia stopped, and would have spoken to a slave who was standing at the doorway, but that the much-recommended doctor, Athroës, appeared in person. Negligent in toilet, tall, loose-limbed, or full of a caustic tolerance, the wiry doctor who now stood before us did not in the least carry out my preconceived ideas of the venerable hakim, dead to all but his preposterous science; and, while I wondered, Cydonia had discussed my symptoms with him on the threshold. I knew that since the afternoon I wrote of above, when I slept properly for the first time since my accident, no ill-consequences were to be apprehended from the effects of the camel’s ill-conditioned stroke, beyond a certain amount of nervous excitement, which would before long pass off. But it was perfectly clear to me that these people had serious suspicions of my sanity. Their limited knowledge of geography led them to regard all I said about countries of which they knew nothing as raving. It occurred to me, too, that they might suspect that I was feigning madness, in order to gain opportunities of acting as a spy.
And the suspicion was confirmed when the doctor laid a kindly hand on my shoulder and ushered me through a hall, in the a marble pavement of which a great tank for goldfish was hollowed out, to a tiny cabinet, where I was motioned to a seat.
“You have had a bad accident, I think,” he began, the brusquerie of the voice studiously kept under.
“Only a camel-kick,” I responded, laughing. “A night’s rest and pleasant company have put it right.”
“Well, I’m glad of that,” said Athroës; “these things are very awkward sometimes, especially when you lie for hours exposed to the sun.”
“I’m certainly thankful it’s no worse,” I said. “And I don’t see why I should trouble you and take up your time. I am pretty well acquainted with medicine, and I assure you I am quite satisfied with myself.”
“My good friend,” said the physician, “my time is not of the least account, so long as I am spending it as suits myself. Now, let us talk as one doctor to another. You can hear well? Your eyesight is not affected by the accident?”
“Neither my eyes nor my ears in the least,” I returned, “nor my brain.”
Athroës did not move a muscle. But it was not for a minute or two that he began, in a lighter strain:
“And so you come from far off, and did not know of Armeria nor any of the countries round about?”
“I come from England — perhaps you know it as Anglia, Britannia? — And I never had heard of Armeria. I regard it as a most remarkable and interesting discovery, which I don’t pretend to understand, but which will certainly create the greatest excitement amongst savants at home.”
The doctor did not seem overwhelmed at once by the grandeur of the prospect.
“And Zûnaris — what did you think of that?”
“Zûnaris?” I said, with a laugh; “That I can’t tell you, never having been there. As I say, I have come from England, and have been travelling in Arabia. I was at present crossing the desert from Nejd to Wady Keirân, when I happened so fortunately to light upon your city.”
He put a sheet of parchment and a reed-pen before me.
“Could you draw a rough map of these parts of the world?”
Map-drawing is not my forte. Still, I made out some kind of rough outline, while Athroës’ keen eye watched my hand with studiously governed interest.
The work grew on me, and I did not stop until I had not only laid down the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, but had filled in India and China and a bit of the East Mediterranean to boot.
“Which is water?” said the doctor, and I explained.
“What are these marks short, straight lines in regular order?”
These were the words which I had printed in the orthodox fashion. They were, it seemed, quite unintelligible, and I had to say where the places were, and how far they extended. A schoolchild could have set a good many of my distances right; but they were enough for my physician.
“Now, you and I are doctors,” he said, “and you know that one may have ideas — delusions — without there being anything serious the matter with one. So you’ll let me ask you straight — have you any delusions?”
I was going to burst out laughing at their persistent attempt to fasten upon me the absurd consequences of the dense ignorance of the world under which they laboured, when, for the second time that day, there came flashing inexorably on my mind the vision of the unknown constellations.
You have noticed often, I suppose, how the last impressions of the evening have a certain difficulty in making themselves chime in with one’s thoughts the next morning. Things we have had pressing upon our mind with insistent force at night, and which we think we shall never let go from our thoughts, occur to us through the forenoon like quite new ideas. We remember with a start our reflections of the night before, but it is two to one that our present mood is so far out of tune with that of the past evening that, important as the matter may be, it will have to demand attention more than once.
So I had, odd as it may seem, practically dismissed the affair of the stars again from my thoughts until that moment.
I started, I suppose. Athroës saw his chance, and, in short, it came out. So did the matter of the river.
Athroës listened attentively and silently. Nothing was said for two or three minutes. Then he got up and said briskly:
“Well, you will stay with us for a few days before pushing on. There is plenty to occupy your attention here — a political crisis, an economic difficulty, a new chrysanthemum, besides our habits and customs, which I dare say are novel to you. In fact, I think you’ll treat us shabbily with less than a three months’ visit.”
At this moment a face peered in at the door. “Is it permitted to come in?” said Cydonia.
“We’re coming out,” said the doctor. “Stop: take this bottle and drink it tonight. I will send another tomorrow — you are staying at the Warder’s Palace? That’s right. And go about seeing plenty; try the royal receptions. That’s a prescription I don’t take myself, but no reason why you shouldn’t!”
Cydonia and I passed out into the sunny street, but in my head was darkness and a whirl of unrest.
On the other side of the street was a cool covered well, or rather cistern. The shade of its roof drew me with an irresistible attraction.
“May we look into the well-house?” I said.
Cydonia readily assented, and I soon breathed more freely in its dark, noiseless recesses. The quiet and the magic glassiness of the water gradually made me a little less disturbed. I joined Cydonia, who was stretched on the pavement, idly looking into the liquid mirror, and was at once met with the remonstrance:
“Don’t think I am impatient with you! I am sure you have a headache, and I will wait quietly here until it passes off. Or, if you like, we will go in, and you shall lie down.”
“I will just ask you to wait a few minutes,” I replied. “The coolness here is doing me good. Perhaps the sun was too strong for me. Let me bend down to the water.”
On the clear surface I could see my reflection, and I was not displeased with the appearance of the national costume. But it occurred to me that my hair was dreadfully untidy. In fact, the headdress of none of the Alzônans was remarkable for neatness, and nobody had suggested to me what an unkempt appearance I presented. The vague horrors that oppressed my imagination, the uncertainty and unrest, fled before this trivial worry. In its turn it disappeared, and I felt more inclined to take a common sense view of my adventure.
“I took my life in my hands when I plunged into the desert,” I said to myself. “Any day might have been killed or died of fever, or a dozen uncomfortable things might have happened. After all, the worst of it is simply that I can’t account for things, and can’t satisfy myself as to why that should be so. Mightn’t I have plagued myself by the very same worrying every day of my life since I was six years old? Why not simply take things as they are, and put the best face on them? Someday an end will come, somehow. Let me stand the consequences of what I have deliberately done, and make no more fuss about it.”
Announcing my readiness to proceed, I rose. We moved up the pathway, which was now considerably more thronged with passersby. At once I noticed a movement in the crowd. Heads were turned, highly-pitched voices sank, long steps contracted. And, looking for the cause of this, I saw coming up the street a handsomely saddled horse, on which sat an oldish man, erect and thin, with sharp, bright eyes, pronounced features, and a commanding mien. Some among the populace took less notice of his presence than the bulk of them appeared to. Of these one was Cydonia, who offered the careless remark:
“That is the Grand Steward — Galêsa. Horrible old wretch! Look at his thin, hooked nose; and if you were to speak to him, most likely he would never look at you! He has no more manners than a centipede!”
Indeed, the distrustful glances which the crowd gave as they eyed him were plain enough proof that Galêsa was not popular, though that evidence was scarcely necessary. The masterful contempt with which he pursued his way, coolly regardless of anyone who for the moment stood in his path, was enough to provoke resentment in any but a very spiritless or a very philosophic mind.
“You would think, from his ascetic face,” pursued Cydonia, “that he thought of nothing but State intrigue and policy. Well, as to that, he is wily enough in such matters. But he is as fond of amusing himself as any of us. And his principal amusements are not what I care to tell you about. One, which I think is really particularly characteristic of him, is to call a few of his slaves together, and to insult them elaborately and with every variety of ingenious degradation for two hours at a time. He can’t actually ill-use them — at least — (this was said in a somewhat sarcastic tone) — “not without being very careful, and putting himself in the power of more people than it is quite safe for him to trust. But nobody can object to your having a quiet conversation with your slaves. And that is what he does.”
“Surely,” I said, “they might find themselves worse off if he had greater power over them?”
“Felix tells me,” answered Cydonia, “his chief weaver, that is — that if a slave comes into the household it is not a month before there is another broken and degraded spirit there, or else they die. There are some who seem to be able to laugh at him in their sleeves, but not very many — perhaps — well, I know of one just now, not more.”
“Tell me about your slave system,” I said. “Slavery is so little known to the continent I come from, and I rather — excuse my bluntness — I rather feel surprised that it exists in such a civilized place.”
Cydonia laughed: “Tonight, please! It is such a large subject, and very complicated. And there is the Council Hall.”
Across the road towered a large and handsome edifice, which we entered. Nearly all the houses were of one story — a fact which made the important public building very conspicuous. A long, narrow hall of entry, richly carpeted, led to the meeting place of the Council, which I was told was the civic, and not the royal, authority.
“You catch the Royal Council meeting in public and having a set debate like this!” observed my guide.
“Does yours?”
“Well, no,” I was able to answer. “But we have a kind of Council which registers their edicts and talks them over, and sometimes induces them to alter them a little, and very often delays them a good deal.”
I hope I was not unjust to the Houses of Parliament.
Cydonia told me that the City Senate was considering the question of offering a crown to a conspicuously successful diplomatist.
“Is the opposition on the score of expense?” I asked, “or is the diplomatist not quite eminent enough?”
“Expense? I don’t quite see where expense comes in,” said my invaluable Cydonia. “No, there is not, strictly speaking, any opposition to the idea at all. Only everybody with any pretensions to taste feels bound to give an opinion as to whether a crown is quite the proper thing, and what sort of crown it should be.”
“Do you know,” said I, “how we should arrange such a matter in Britain?”
“No,” said Cydonia, turning an innocent and inquiring eye on me.
“A respectable townsman would get up and propose that a gilt box be procured at a cost not exceeding fifty-two pounds ten; and the Mayor or the Provost, as the case might be, would go and order it from the jeweller’s.”
My friend really gasped.
“And do you call that a gift from the city?”
“Certainly. They pay for it.”
“And would you like it if I sent you a ring, and did not take any more trouble about it than to send a note to the jeweller to choose a nice one, and send me the bill? It doesn’t strike me that it would be a very graceful present.”
“Well, you see,” I said, amused, “municipal councillors are not necessarily persons of much taste, and they know if they place the order in the proper quarter they will get an orthodox thing. Goodness knows what they would design if they were left to themselves.”
“Oh, but I can scarcely believe you,” said Cydonia. “Not persons of much taste! However, can you trust them to manage the city if they can’t even give an opinion on a little point of art criticism? Besides, I would much rather have a less perfect thing that the givers took a personal interest in than something with which they had nothing to do at all.”
“But, then, they pay for it. And really, Cydonia, that is their business — finding money, and spending it, and trying to save it.”
“Not to lead and rule the city, but to finance it, and supply it with what you call gas — is that it?” was my cross-examiner’s final summary of the duties of a Mayor and Corporation, after further inquiry.
“Well, yes.”
“Then I think we are not quite agreed in our vocabulary. Your City Council is really a kind of public slave, with a recognised power of dipping into its master’s purse!”
The accuracy of the comparison was disputable, but we were missing the debate, to which I listened for a while without being much struck by the oratory displayed.
There was a good deal that was interesting, nevertheless, in the proceedings — notably two stately birds of paradise, which were, for some reason which I was unable to understand from what Cydonia told me, admitted to walk freely about the hall. Then, the arrangement of the place was curious. The Council sat, not round a table, nor in rows, but anyhow, on exquisite curule chairs in a kind of well, sunk four a feet or so below the level of the floor, but coming within few yards of each wall, so that there was a broad strip of standing room for spectators all round. This was skirted at the edge of the well by a metal balustrade, and columns at regular intervals of the latter supported the roof. Wrought bronze lamps swung from the ceiling. The central one was the finest I had ever seen, and, indeed, T never saw it surpassed in Alzôna. On a raised daïs sat the analogue of the Mayor — a stiff, quiet figure, with a curious fixed expression in the eyes, firm-set lips, and a slight frown. Two pages behind the Mayor carried oblong plates bearing quaint, and probably heraldic, devices. Flowers in considerable profusion were scattered about here and there in tall vases, some of bronze, some of porcelain. The listeners were quiet and well-behaved, though very numerous.
“How is it that so many of you can find time to come and listen to the disputations of the Council?” I inquired.
“What should we do? Isn’t it most important that the city should be well governed? Must it not be interesting to see the process of government, so to speak, shaping itself before one?”
“Yes, if it is so, I don’t doubt it. But how can you all spare the time? If it were in the evening, and instead of any other entertainment —”
“Do forgive me,” said Cydonia, “if I seem very stupid. But it does seem such a curious idea to me that entertainment should be reserved for the evening. Do you mean it?”
“It is so in Britain,” I said, “as a broad rule, I mean, and for the mass of people. One is fit for nothing but relaxation at night. Through the day, therefore, it is a waste of time, which might be given to work.”
“Goodness! You must be devoted to work. We, on the contrary, argue that at no time is enjoyment so keen as in the morning. And we think a day is wasted which is spent in unremitting labour till the evening comes — or if not wasted, regrettably monotonous. Let me take you into the theatre of the minstrels, and it may amuse you.”
This theatre lay some distance off. We passed down through delightful little gardens, half hidden in insulce of houses; open forests (it seemed) of lemon and citron trees; broad expanses of lawn, statue-dotted; terraced avenues of stately dwellings; busy streets of warehouses and bazaars — till we came to a building with a circular or apsidal end. Inside this proved to be lined with concentric rows of stone seats, facing a platform, all open to the sky. People were constantly but noiselessly passing in and out — merchants from their business, artificers from their work, children from their lessons. And all the time the tones of an orchestra of harps echoed through the building.
No applause, no buzz of conversation, no trampling or disturbance. It was the coming from one’s household work into a room in the same house, where a good performer is playing. One could have listened for hours, but Cydonia was anxious that I should see the armoury, which was in the neighbourhood. I fancy there might I be a reason for this plan, which was not disclosed to me, for as we passed one of the long low houses with latticed casements above and columned porticoes below, a bright little figure flew out and greeted my guide with such warmth as to make it evident that a good understanding existed between them. So, at least, I thought.
“Chloris,” observed Cydonia, “this is a stranger from a long distance. We are going to the armoury and will you come?”
Chloris drew herself up demurely, and went through the established salutation with the elaborate care of one who has only recently taken upon herself the obligations of adult politeness. Then she turned, and ranged herself beside us en route for our destination, which was a great square building — whether enclosing a courtyard or not I could not tell — with a massive tower rising, somewhat retired, at each angle. Inside there was a grand collection of the arms of different nations and periods. They were set out with a good deal of taste, and neither labelled nor huddled together. The backgrounds were carefully chosen to produce the best effect, and from symbols which were employed Cydonia was able to tell me the place where each weapon came from. One cannot wander about the world much without acquiring a nice discrimination in daggers, and the array, so well displayed, of steel and bronze completely took up my attention, and would. have satisfied a Kashmiri or a Nepâlese. Cydonia rather neglected me, and preferred to listen, with a sardonic smile now and then, to Chloris’s conversation. Judging from her manner, it was not very profound.
We had hardly traversed three rooms, divided by lofty screens of pierced ebony, hung with heavy curtains, when Cydonia decided that it must be time for a meal, dismissed Chloris, who fluttered off like a pigeon (contentedly discussing a peach), and took me to what I suppose we should call a café, for we had wandered a good distance from the Warder’s Palace. It was a very pleasant room, open back and front to the street and a green, shady grove. From these it was separated by vine-entwisted pillars. Its only decoration was its extremely handsome roof; plain polished tables and seats, its only furniture.
Again I was struck by the beauty of the people who sat near. Scarcely a rough-looking face appeared amongst them, though there was certainly a great range in the degree of good looks with which they were endowed. Our light meal consisted of dates and other fruits, eaten with rice, and of some of the varied mixtures of cereals and conserves of which the Alzônans, as I afterwards found, are exceedingly fond.
Small cakes flavoured with almond-paste and spices ended the meal, with which we drank the diluted juice of fruit, which they call vinon, being, as appears, altogether ignorant of wine. (They are acquainted with alcohol as a chemical, but seem to be ignorant of its toxic qualities; nor are any of the neighbouring tribes better informed, but are in the same state of blessed or unblessed ignorance — as you like to put it.)
“Now,” said Cydonia, “we will go and rest a little in the Lotus-Garden.”
Near the café an abrupt hill rose. It formed no obstacle to the spread of buildings, which clustered up its side in a steep street, fringed with trees, and quite impassable for anything but passengers on foot or mules; but very picturesque, for all that, to look at, in its irregular gradients. Passing by the foot of it, we reached, through a dark grey stone archway, a quiet, dreamy spot, where ponds, covered with white and pink blossoms, stretched between grassy plots planted with patches of low trees. A terrace rose along the foot of the wall that bounded the place on one side, but Cydonia stopped at the nearest clump of trees, and settled comfortably in their shadow, inviting me to do the same. A clear channel ran past our feet… I fell half asleep.
I was aroused by the pealing of a great gong, which is a sound I have an extreme dislike of. The noise of a gathering crowd came faintly to our ears.
“Oh, it is nothing. Just a notice that a criminal is going to be led round the city, or beaten, or some such cheerful thing!”
“That’s the second time,” I said instructively, “that your customs have given me a shock today. We have long since given up displaying criminals to the public.”
Cydonia did not answer, but played with a myrtle leaf.
“Don’t you find it does more harm than good?”
Thus directly appealed to, my guide answered discreetly, more Scottico: “In what way?”
“We found,” I said, “that the public sympathy with the prisoner was dangerously inflamed, or else that, in the rarer cases in which public opinion took sides against him, it was difficult to protect him from the crowd. In either case there is considerable danger of disturbance.”
“You don’t give your countryfolk a very good character,” said Cydonia. “Why they should sympathise with crime, or allow their dislikes to run into violence, you know better than I do. But there is no fear of that here, and perhaps your population may be more reasonable nowadays, as you say it is sometime since the change was made. I can’t myself understand how there can be any good in an administration of the criminal law in such a way that the people see nothing of it.”
“It is true,” I said, “that our laws were, and in theory still are, in many respects extremely harsh, and that popular opinion is inclined, in general, to side against the authorities. And you are right in supposing the dangers of riots to be less now than they were fifty years ago. But we move slowly, and when we have once got a reform introduced we are not quick to reform it. Besides, the sensibilities of the people would be shocked by the parade of criminal justice.”
“You like to keep it nicely hidden, and pretend it isn’t there? It isn’t the best way, do you think, to guarantee its being pure? Never mind; I dare say if I came to your country I should see you were right. But our way does best for us.”
“Are there any courts sitting at this moment?” I asked. I “If so, would it be a good way of spending the day to look in — that is, if we may?”
“Oh, we did away with courts a thousand years ago — to be precise, eight hundred and fifty. The Urasites and the Kytônians have courts — none of them carry out the criminal law as you say you do, though — but our arrondissement system is so perfect that we are enabled to dispense with them. What is the function of a court but to sift facts? And how can you judge conflicting versions of facts without knowing intimately the character of the people who assert them? We in Alzôna — we often laugh at Uras and Kytôna, where witnesses are interrogated in open court or by an examining judge. In the one case the got-up stories they repeat! The desperate bullyings they endure, in order to confuse them! In the other, what unfair fencing between the judicial examiner and the helpless defendant! And always the best case will be that put forward by the cleverest scamp. But in Alzôna the heads of the arrondissement, who know the parties intimately, are judges of the facts, and they declare them quite informally, without any ceremony.”
“That is exactly what our laws try to avoid,” I said. “The less an English judge or jury knows of the parties to a case, the better.”
“It is certainly better to know nothing than to know a little,” said Cydonia. “A little knowledge may only prejudice you.”
“And then,” I pursued, “what security is there for the honour and uprightness of the arrondissement heads — nomarchs do you call them? May they not gratify private revenge; levy blackmail — all that kind of thing?”
“They would be removed long before they had the chance,” was the reassuring answer. “And, then, their administration is being constantly watched by the heads of larger districts, who know them as well and as intimately as they themselves know the families of their own little sections. Besides, it is always possible to appeal.”
“And who is at the head of all this hierarchy? A Prefect, Chief Justiciary, Prator, Dicast?”
“The queen!”
As we left the Lotus-Garden we passed a building whose great open door disclosed a lofty, barn-like chamber of very large extent, in and out of which people were passing, and from whose roof hung specimens of handsome silks and woven fabrics. Evidently it was a kind of native bazaar, and I expressed a wish to go in.
It was very dark inside in comparison with the brilliant sunshine. As one’s eyes got accustomed to the half-light, the scene was lively and interesting. I thought at first that the bazaar consisted of several shops, but I learnt that all the commercial establishments were on a large scale in Alzôna and that the whole of this was one concern. There did not seem to be much of the Oriental procedure of bargaining: customers got what they wanted, and paid for it, much as they do (upon occasion) in the West. The goods were lovely, and the room itself handsomely panelled, with a moulded cornice, and an arched and timbered roof, in the dim haze of which were a few small windows. There were comfortable seats, too. People came in and rested for a few minutes, and went out again, without anyone seeming to think it unusual; so my impecunious condition did not trouble me, and I stayed with great enjoyment for a long time. Then I begged Cydonia to take me to other bazaars. We visited in quick succession shops for fruit, for jewels carefully guarded, these — for porcelain, for metalwork, for confectionery, until we were tired and glad to turn our steps homeward.
“I don’t see any shop for the sale of flesh,” I remarked.
“My good friend, we are not cannibals! You surely don’t expect to see us grinding each other’s bones and sucking each other’s blood?”
“Do you not eat animals’ flesh, then?”
Cydonia made a grimace, the more deliciously ludicrous as it was entirely spasmodic.
“Surely you don’t think us so desperately uncivilised as all that! I dare say we are behindhand in many ways — even the Paranlians are always telling us that — and very likely our customs here are rather antiquated. I don’t dispute it. And the country you come from, though I had never heard of it, may be miles ahead of us. Still, we are not quite savages!”
My apologies were amply forthcoming, and smoothed the ruffled waters. Certainly, I said, I would not dream of calling them savages. What I had seen that day was quite enough to convince me of their refinement and civilisation. But it seemed to me so natural a thing to consume the flesh of animals that I never dreamt of causing offence. The apology was accepted in good part.
“Foreign nations have strange customs,” said Cydonia, “and you get used to most things. Are your young children fond of flesh? And do you eat it raw?”
But here another matter struck me, and I asked to have it explained.
“You have shown me no temples,’ I declared. “Everywhere in Europe the temples are the first things, generally, that are worth showing to a stranger, especially the old ones. In London — which is our capital city — they would take one to see St. Paul’s and Westminster, or in Paris to Notre Dame.”
As I brought up the subject, I expected to gather some information as to the matter of the Alzônan religion, which would help greatly to settle their ethnical relationships; for I still clung to the vanishing hope that, in spite of so much that was unintelligible, I might be able to piece Armeria in with the rest of the earth.
“Temples? What is the use of them?” said Cydonia.
“Public worship,” I suggested.
“Your country is certainly strange,” was the reply. “I cannot get used to it at all. You will not mind my saying so? Say what you like about us, you know! But you are so susceptible that it shocks you to parade criminals in public, whilst at the same time you do not shrink from parading in concert your deepest spiritual emotions. Am I right about this, or have I not understood?”
“Partly right,” I said, I “but our services are at set times and in set terms — or at least in conventional phraseology — and participation in them is largely a matter of form.”
Cydonia looked thoughtful. “I am not sure that I would be able to get on in your cities,” was the next comment. “It must be so difficult to know how to behave — we think so differently.”
“I am sure you would get on very well indeed,” I said heartily, for the lithe, amiable figure beside me could not have been disliked or thought disagreeable in any society worthy of the name. And I began to talk about English cities and cathedrals, and afternoon teas, and Deans, and express trains, and telephones, to all of which items of interest my friend listened attentively. We were now rapidly making our way home, and I began to recognise some of the sparse, tall buildings as landmarks that I had noted in the morning.
A little distance off, as we neared the gates, lay an extensive building, which had rather the appearance of a fortress, but which Cydonia informed me was the Royal Palace. At last we reached the entrance to my temporary abode.
I felt as if I had lived years since the previous night.
Inexpressibly pleasant it was to have Ilex rush to meet us and lead me to my quarters, with an unaffected delight at having a visitor to entertain. I am given to analysing my sensations, and I satisfied myself, as I bathed my face in the cool, deep water, that the pleasure arose from Ilex being connected with the life from which I had been so strangely cut off.
It did not occur to me, that so was Brytas.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | & many others.