CHAPTER XIII
While Zaidie was talking the _Astronef_ was sweeping swiftly downtowards the surface of Venus, through scenery of whose almostinconceivable magnificence no human words could convey any adequateidea. Underneath the cloud-veil the air was absolutely clear andtransparent, clearer, indeed, than terrestrial air at the highestelevations reached by mountain-climbers, and, moreover, it seemed to beendowed with a strange, luminous quality, which made objects, no matterhow distant, stand out with almost startling distinctness.
The rivers and lakes and seas which spread out beneath them, seemednever to have been ruffled by blast of storm or breath of wind, andtheir surfaces shone with a soft, silvery light, which seemed to comefrom below rather than from above.
"If this isn't heaven it must be the half-way house," said Redgrave,with what was, perhaps, under the circumstances, a pardonableirreverence. "Still, after all, we don't know what the inhabitants maybe like, so I think we'd better close the doors, and drop on the top ofthat mountain-spur running out between the two rivers into the bay. Doyou notice how curious the water looks after the Earth seas; brightsilver, instead of blue and green?"
"Oh, it's just lovely," said Zaidie. "Let's go down and have a walk.There's nothing to be afraid of. You'll never make me believe that aworld like this can be inhabited by anything dangerous."
"Perhaps, but we mustn't forget what happened on Mars, _Madonna mia_.Still, there's one thing, we haven't been tackled by any aerial fleetsyet."
"I don't think the people here want air-ships. They can fly themselves.Look! there are a lot of them coming to meet us. That was a ratherwicked remark of yours, Lenox, about the half-way house to heaven; butthose certainly do look something like angels."
As Zaidie said this, after a somewhat lengthy pause, during which the_Astronef_ had descended to within a few hundred feet of themountain-spur, she handed her field-glasses to her husband, and pointeddownwards towards an island which lay a couple or miles or so off theend of the spur.
He put the glasses to his eyes, and took a long look through them.Moving them slowly up and down, and from side to side, he saw hundredsof winged figures rising from the island and floating towards them.
"You were right, dear," he said, without taking the glass from his eyes,"and so was I. If those aren't angels, they're certainly something likemen, and, I suppose, women too who can fly. We may as well stop here andwait for them. I wonder what sort of an animal they take the _Astronef_for."
He sent a message down the tube to Murgatroyd and gave a turn and a halfto the steering-wheel. The propellers slowed down and the _Astronef_dropped with a hardly-perceptible shock in the midst of a little plateaucovered with a thick, soft moss of a pale yellowish green, and fringedby a belt of trees which seemed to be over three hundred feet high, andwhose foliage was a deep golden bronze.
They had scarcely landed before the flying figures reappeared over thetree tops and swept downwards in long spiral curves towards the_Astronef_.
"If they're not angels, they're very like them," said Zaidie, puttingdown her glasses.
"There's one thing, they fly a lot better than the old masters' angelsor Dore's could have done, because they have tails--or at leastsomething that seems to serve the same purpose, and yet they haven't gotfeathers."
"Yes, they have, at least round the edges of their wings or whateverthey are, and they've got clothes, too, silk tunics or something of thatsort--and there are men and women."
"You're quite right, those fringes down their legs are feathers, andthat's how they can fly. They seem to have four arms."
The flying figures which came hovering near to the _Astronef_, withoutevincing any apparent sign of fear, were the strangest that human eyeshad looked upon. In some respects they had a sufficient resemblance forthem to be taken for winged men and women, while in another they bore adecided resemblance to birds. Their bodies and limbs were human inshape, but of slenderer and lighter build; and from the shoulder-bladesand muscles of the back there sprang a second pair of arms arching upabove their heads. Between these and the lower arms, and continued fromthem down the side to the ankles, there appeared to be a flexiblemembrane covered with a light feathery down, pure white on the inside,but on the back a brilliant golden yellow, deepening to bronze towardsthe edges, round which ran a deep feathery fringe.
The body was covered in front and down the back between the wings with asort of divided tunic of a light, silken-looking material, which musthave been clothing, since there were many different colours all more orless of different hue among them. Below this and attached to the innersides of the leg from the knee downward, was another membrane whichreached down to the heels, and it was this which Redgrave somewhatflippantly alluded to as a tail. Its obvious purpose was to maintain thelongitudinal balance when flying.
In stature the inhabitants of the Love-Star varied from about five feetsix to five feet, but both the taller and the shorter of them were allof nearly the same size, from which it was easy to conclude that thisdifference in stature was on Venus as well as on the Earth, one of thebroad distinctions between the sexes.
They flew round the _Astronef_ with an exquisite ease and grace whichmade Zaidie exclaim:
"Now, why weren't we made like that on Earth?"
To which Redgrave, after a look at the barometer, replied:
"Partly, I suppose, because we weren't built that way, and partlybecause we don't live in an atmosphere about two and a half times asdense as ours."
Then several of the winged figures alighted on the mossy covering of theplain and walked towards the vessel.
"Why, they walk just like us, only much more prettily!" said Zaidie."And look what funny little faces they've got! Half bird, half human,and soft, downy feathers instead of hair. I wonder whether they talk orsing. I wish you'd open the doors again, Lenox. I'm sure they can'tpossibly mean us any harm; they are far too pretty for that. What lovelysoft eyes they have, and what a thousand pities it is we shan't be ableto understand them."
They had left the conning-tower, and both his lordship and Murgatroydwere throwing open the sliding-doors and, to Zaidie's considerabledispleasure, getting the deck Maxims ready for action in case theyshould be required. As soon as the doors were open Zaidie's judgment ofthe inhabitants of Venus was entirely justified.
Without the slightest sign of fear, but with very evident astonishmentin their round golden-yellow eyes, they came walking close up to thesides of the _Astronef_. Some of them stroked her smooth, shining sideswith their little hands, which Zaidie now found had only three fingersand a thumb. Many ages before they might have been birds' claws, but nowthey were soft and pink and plump, utterly strange to manual work as itis understood upon Earth.
"Just fancy getting Maxim guns ready to shoot those delightful things,"said Zaidie, almost indignantly, as she went towards the doorway fromwhich the gangway ladder ran down to the soft, mossy turf. "Why, not oneof them has got a weapon of any sort; and just listen," she went on,stopping in the opening of the doorway, "have you ever heard music likethat on Earth? I haven't. I suppose it's the way they talk. I'd give agood deal to be able to understand them. But still, it's very lovely,isn't it?"
"Ay, like the voices of syrens," said Murgatroyd, speaking for the firsttime since the _Astronef_ had landed; for this big, grizzled, taciturnYorkshireman, who looked upon the whole cruise through Space as a madand almost impious adventure, which nothing but his hereditary loyaltyto his master's name and family could have persuaded him to share in,had grown more and more silent as the millions of miles between the_Astronef_ and his native Yorkshire village had multiplied day by day.
"Syrens--and why not, Andrew?" laughed Redgrave. "At any rate, I don'tthink they look likely to lure us and the _Astronef_ to destruction."Then he went on: "Yes, Zaidie, I never heard anything like that before.Unearthly, of course it is, but then we're not on Earth. Now, Zaidie,they seem to talk in song-language. You did pretty well on Mars withyour American, suppose we go out and show the
m that you can speak thesong-language, too."
"What do you mean?" she said; "sing them something?"
"Yes," he replied; "they'll try to talk to you in song, and you won't beable to understand them; at least, not as far as words and sentences go.But music is the universal language on Earth, and there's no reason whyit shouldn't be the same through the Solar System. Come along, tune up,little woman!"
They went together down the gangway stairs, he dressed in an ordinarysuit of grey, English tweed, with a golf cap on the back of his head,and she in the last and daintiest of the costumes which the art of Parisand London and New York had produced before the _Astronef_ soared upfrom far-off Washington.
The moment that she set foot on the golden-yellow sward she wassurrounded by a swarm of the winged, and yet strangely human creatures.Those nearest to her came and touched her hands and face, and strokedthe folds of her dress. Others looked into her violet-blue eyes, andothers put out their queer little hands and stroked her hair.
This and her clothing seemed to be the most wonderful experience forthem, saving always the fact that she had only two arms and no wings.Redgrave kept close beside her until he was satisfied that theseexquisite inhabitants of the new-found fairyland were innocent of anyintention of harm, and when he saw two of the winged daughters of theLove-Star put up their hands and touch the thick coils of her hair, hesaid:
"Take those pins and things out and let it down. They seem to think thatyour hair's part of your head. It's the first chance you've had to worka miracle, so you may as well do it. Show them the most beautiful thingthey've ever seen."
"What babies you men can be when you get sentimental!" laughed Zaidie,as she put her hands up to her head. "How do you know that this may notbe ugly in their eyes?"
"Quite impossible!" he replied. "They're a great deal too prettythemselves to think _you_ ugly. Let it down!"
While he was speaking Zaidie had taken off a Spanish mantilla which shehad thrown over her head as she came out, and which the ladies of Venusseemed to think was part of her hair. Then she took out the comb and oneor two hairpins which kept the coils in position, deftly caught theends, and then, after a few rapid movements of her fingers, she shookher head, and the wondering crowd about her saw, what seemed to them ashimmering veil, half gold, half silver, in the soft reflected lightfrom the cloud-veil, fall down from her head over her shoulders.
They crowded still more closely round her, but so quietly and so gentlythat she felt nothing more than the touch of wondering hands on herarms, and dress, and hair. As Redgrave said afterwards, he was"absolutely out of it." They seemed to imagine him to be a kind ofuncouth monster, possibly the slave of this radiant being which had comeso strangely from somewhere beyond the cloud-veil. They looked at himwith their golden-yellow eyes wide open, and some of them came up rathertimidly and touched his clothes, which they seemed to think were hisskin.
Then one or two, more daring, put their little hands up to his face andtouched his moustache, and all of them, while both examinations weregoing on, kept up a running conversation of cooing and singing whichevidently conveyed their ideas from one to the other on the subject ofthis most marvellous visit of these two strange beings with neitherwings nor feathers, but who, most undoubtedly, had other means offlying, since it was quite certain that they had come from anotherworld.
Their ordinary speech was a low crooning note, like the language inwhich doves converse, mingled with a twittering current of undertone.But every moment it rose into higher notes, evidently expressing wonderor admiration, or both.
"You were right about the universal language," said Redgrave, when hehad submitted to the stroking process for a few moments. "These peopletalk in music, and, as far as I can see or hear, their opinion of us,or, at least, of you, is distinctly flattering. I don't know what theytake _me_ for, and I don't care, but as we'd better make friends withthem suppose you sing them 'Home, Sweet Home,' or the 'Swanee River.' Ishouldn't wonder if they consider our talking voices most horriblediscords, so you might as well give them something different."
While he was speaking the sounds about them suddenly hushed, and, asRedgrave said afterwards, it was something like the silence that followsa cannon shot. Then, in the midst of the hush, Zaidie put her handsbehind her, looked up towards the luminous silver surface which formedthe only visible sky of Venus, and began to sing "The Swanee River."
The clear, sweet notes rang up through the midst of a sudden silence.The sons and daughters of the Love-Star instantly ceased their own softmusical conversation, and Zaidie sang the old plantation song throughfor the first time that a human voice had sung it to ears other thanhuman.
As the last note thrilled sweetly from her lips she looked round at thecrowd of queer half-human shapes about her, and something in theirunlikeness to her own kind brought back to her mind the familiar sceneswhich lay so far away, so many millions of miles across the dark andsilent Ocean of Space.
Other winged figures, attracted by the sound of her singing, had crossedthe trees, and these, during the silence which came after the singing ofthe song, were swiftly followed by others, until there were nearly athousand of them gathered about the side of the _Astronef_.
There was no crowding or jostling among them. Each one treated everyother with the most perfect gentleness and courtesy. No such thing asenmity or ill-feeling seemed to exist among them, and, in perfectsilence, they waited for Zaidie to continue what they thought was herlong speech of greeting. The temper of the throng somehow coincidedexactly with the mood which her own memories had brought to her, and thenext moment she sent the first line of "Home, Sweet Home" soaring up tothe cloud-veiled sky.
As the notes rang up into the still, soft air a deeper hush fell on thelistening throng. Heads were bowed with a gesture almost of adoration,and many of those standing nearest to her bent their bodies forward, andexpanded their wings, bringing them together over their breasts with amotion which, as they afterwards learnt, was intended to convey the ideaof wonder and admiration, mingled with something like a sentiment ofworship.
Zaidie sang the sweet old song through from end to end, forgetting forthe time being everything but the home she had left behind her on thebanks of the Hudson. As the last notes left her lips, she turned roundto Redgrave and looked at him with eyes dim with the first tears thathad filled them since her father's death, and said, as he caught hold ofher outstretched hand:
"I believe they've understood every word of it."
"Or, at any rate, every note. You may be quite certain of that," hereplied. "If you had done that on Mars it might have been even moreeffective than the Maxims."
"For goodness sake don't talk about things like that in a heaven likethis! Oh, listen! They've got the tune already!"
It was true! The dwellers of the Love-Star, whose speech was song, hadinstantly recognised the sweetness of the sweetest of all earthly songs.They had, of course, no idea of the meaning of the words; but the musicspoke to them and told them that this fair visitant from another worldcould speak the same speech as theirs. Every note and cadence wasrepeated with absolute fidelity, and so the speech, common to the twofar-distant worlds, became a link connecting this wandering son anddaughter of the Earth with the sons and daughters of the Love-Star.
The throng fell back a little and two figures, apparently male andfemale, came to Zaidie and held out their right hands and beganaddressing her in perfectly harmonised song, which, though utterlyunintelligible to her in the sense of speech, expressed sentiments whichcould not possibly be mistaken, as there was a faint suggestion of theold English song running through the little song-speech that they made,and both Zaidie and her husband rightly concluded that it was intendedto convey a welcome to the strangers from beyond the cloud-veil.
And then the strangest of all possible conversations began. Redgrave,who had no more notion of music than a walrus, perforce kept silence. Infact, he noticed with a certain displeasure which vanished speedily witha musical, and half-malicious littl
e laugh from Zaidie, that when hespoke the Bird-Folk drew back a little and looked in something likeastonishment at him; but Zaidie was already in touch with them, and halfby song and half by signs she very soon gave them an idea of what theywere and where they had come from. Her husband afterwards told her thatit was the best piece of operatic acting he had ever seen, and,considering all the circumstances, this was very possibly true.
In the end the two who had come to give her what seemed to be the formalgreeting, were invited into the _Astronef_. They went on board withoutthe slightest sign of mistrust and with only an expression of mildwonder on their beautiful and strangely childlike faces.
Then, while the other doors were being closed, Zaidie stood at the openone above the gangway and made signs showing that they were going upbeyond the clouds and then down into the valley, and as she made thesigns she sang through the scale, her voice rising and falling inharmony with her gestures. The Bird-Folk understood her instantly, andas the door closed and the _Astronef_ rose from the ground, a thousandwings were outspread and presently hundreds of beautiful soaring formswere circling about the Navigator of the Stars.
"Don't they look lovely!" said Zaidie. "I wonder what they would thinkif they could see us flying above New York or London or Paris with anescort like this. I suppose they're going to show us the way. Perhapsthey have a city down there. Suppose you were to go and get a bottle ofchampagne and see if Master Cupid and Miss Venus would like a drink.We'll see then if our nectar is anything like theirs."
Redgrave went below. Meanwhile, for lack of other possible conversation,Zaidie began to sing the last verse of "Never Again." The melody almostexactly described the upward motion of the _Astronef_, and she could seethat it was instantly understood, for when she had finished their twovoices joined in an almost exact imitation of it.
When Redgrave brought up the wine and the glasses they looked at themwithout any sign of surprise. The pop of the cork did not even make themlook round.
"Evidently a semi-angelic people, living on nectar and ambrosia, withnectar very like our own," he said, as he filled the glasses. "Perhapsyou'd better give it to them. They seem to understand you better thanthey do me--you being, of course, a good bit nearer to the angels than Iam."
"Thanks!" she said, as she took a couple of glasses up, wondering alittle what their visitors would do with them. Somewhat to her surprise,they took them with a little bow and a smile and sipped at the wine,first with a swift glint of wonder in their eyes, and then with smileswhich are unmistakable evidence of perfect appreciation.
"I thought so," said Redgrave, as he raised his own glass, and bowedgravely towards them. "This is our nearest approach to nectar, and theyseem to recognise it."
"And don't they just look like the sort of people who live on it, and,of course, other things?" added Zaidie, as she too lifted her glass, andlooked with laughing eyes across the brim at her two guests.
But meanwhile Murgatroyd had been applying the repulsive force a littletoo strongly. The _Astronef_ shot up with a rapidity which soon left herwinged escort far below. She entered the cloud-veil and passed beyondit. The instant that the unclouded sun-rays struck the glass-roofing ofthe deck-chamber their two guests, who had been moving about examiningeverything with a childlike curiosity, closed their eyes and claspedtheir hands over them, uttering little cries, tuneful and musical, butstill with a note of strange discord in them.
"Lenox, we must go down again," exclaimed Zaidie. "Don't you see theycan't stand the light; it hurts them. Perhaps, poor dears, it's thefirst time they've ever been hurt in their lives. I don't believe theyhave any of our ideas of pain or sorrow or anything of that sort. Takeus back under the clouds--quick, or we may blind them."
Before she had ceased speaking, Redgrave had sent a signal down toMurgatroyd, and the _Astronef_ began to drop back again towards thesurface of the cloud-sea. Zaidie had, meanwhile, gone to her lady guestand dropped the black lace mantilla over her head, and, as she did so,she caught herself saying:
"There, dear, we shall soon be back in your own light. I hope it hasn'thurt you. It was very stupid of us to do a thing like that."
The answer came in a little cooing murmur, which said, "Thank you!"quite as effectively as any earthly words could have done, and then the_Astronef_ passed through the cloud-sea. The soaring forms of her lostescort came into view again and clustered about her; and, surrounded bythem, she dropped, in obedience to their signs, down between thetremendous mountains and towards the island, thick with golden foliage,which lay two or three Earth-miles out in a bay, where four convergingrivers spread out through a vast estuary into the sea.
As Lady Redgrave said afterwards to Mrs. Van Stuyler, she could havefilled a whole volume with a description of the exquisitely arcadiandelights with which the hours of the next ten days and nights werefilled. Possibly if she had been able to do justice to them, even heraccount might have been received with qualified credence; but still someidea of them may be gathered from this extract of a conversation whichtook place in the saloon of the _Astronef_ on the eleventh evening.
"But look here, Zaidie," said Redgrave, "as we've found a world which iscertainly much more delightful than our own, why shouldn't we stop herea bit? The air suits us and the people are simply enchanting. I thinkthey like us, and I'm sure you're in love with every one of them, maleand female. Of course, it's rather a pity that we can't fly unless we doit in the _Astronef_. But that's only a detail. You're enjoying yourselfthoroughly, and I never saw you looking better or, if possible, morebeautiful; and why on Earth--or Venus--do you want to go?"
She looked at him steadily for a few moments, and with an expressionwhich he had never seen on her face or in her eyes before, and then shesaid slowly and very sweetly, although there was something like a noteof solemnity running through her tone:
"I altogether agree with you, dear; but there is something which youdon't seem to have noticed. As you say, we have had a perfectlydelightful time. It's a delicious world, and just everything that onewould think it to be; but if we were to stop here we should becommitting one of the greatest of crimes, perhaps the greatest, thatever was committed within the limits of the Solar System."
"My dear Zaidie, what, in the name of what we used to call morals on theEarth, _do_ you mean?"
"Just this," she replied, leaning a little towards him in herdeck-chair. "These people, half angels, and half men and women, welcomedus after we dropped through their cloud-veil, as friends; we were alittle strange to them, certainly, but still they welcomed us asfriends. They had no suspicions of us; they didn't try to poison us orblow us up as those wretches on Mars did. They're just like a lot ofgrown-up children with wings on. In fact they're about as nearly angelsas anything we can think of. They've taken us into their palaces,they've given us, as one might say, the whole planet. Everything wasours that we liked to take. You know we have two or three hundredweightof precious stones on board now, which they would make me take justbecause they saw my rings.
"We've been living with them ten days now, and neither you nor I, noreven Murgatroyd, who, like the old Puritan that he is, seems to see sinor wrong in everything that looks nice, has seen a single sign amongthem that they know anything about what we call sin or wrong on Earth.There's no jealousy, no selfishness. In short, no envy, hatred, malice,and all uncharitableness; no vice, or meanness, or cheating, or any ofthe abominations of the planet Terra, and _we come from that planet_. Doyou see what I mean now?"
"I think I understand what you're driving at," said Redgrave; "you mean,I suppose, that this world is something like Eden before the fall, andthat you and I--oh--but that's all rubbish you know. I've got my ownshare of original sin, of course, but here it doesn't seem to come in;and as for you, the very idea of _you_ imagining yourself a feminineedition of the Serpent in Eden. Nonsense!"
She got up out of her chair and, leaning over his, put her arm round hisshoulder. Then she said very softly:
"I see you understand what I mean, Lenox.
That's just it--original sin.It doesn't matter how good you think me or I think you, but we have it.You're an Earth-born man and I'm an Earth-born woman, and, as I'm yourwife, I can say it plainly. We may think a good bit of each other, butthat's no reason why we might not be a couple of plague-spots in asinless world like this. Surely you see what I mean, I needn't put itplainer, need I?"
Their eyes met, and he read her meaning in hers. He put his arm up overher shoulder and drew her down towards him. Their lips met, and then hegot up and went down to the engine-room.
A couple of minutes later the _Astronef_ sprang upwards from the midstof the delightful valley in which she was resting. No lights were shown.In five minutes she had passed through the cloud-veil, and the nextmorning when their new friends came to visit them and found that theyhad vanished back into Space, there was sorrow for the first time amongthe sons and daughters of the Love-Star.