CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE GIANT LOVERS.
I.
Now it chanced in the days when Caterham was campaigning against theBoom-children before the General Election that was--amidst the mosttragic and terrible circumstances--to bring him into power, that thegiant Princess, that Serene Highness whose early nutrition had played sogreat a part in the brilliant career of Doctor Winkles, had come fromthe kingdom of her father to England, on an occasion that was deemedimportant. She was affianced for reasons of state to a certainPrince--and the wedding was to be made an event of internationalsignificance. There had arisen mysterious delays. Rumour and Imaginationcollaborated in the story and many things were said. There weresuggestions of a recalcitrant Prince who declared he would not be madeto look like a fool--at least to this extent. People sympathised withhim. That is the most significant aspect of the affair.
Now it may seem a strange thing, but it is a fact that the giantPrincess, when she came to England, knew of no other giants whatever.She had lived in a world where tact is almost a passion and reservationsthe air of one's life. They had kept the thing from her; they hadhedged her about from sight or suspicion of any gigantic form, until herappointed coming to England was due. Until she met young Redwood she hadno inkling that there was such a thing as another giant in the world.
In the kingdom of the father of the Princess there were wild wastes ofupland and mountains where she had been accustomed to roam freely. Sheloved the sunrise and the sunset and all the great drama of the openheavens more than anything else in the world, but among a people at onceso democratic and so vehemently loyal as the English her freedom wasmuch restricted. People came in brakes, in excursion trains, inorganised multitudes to see her; they would cycle long distances tostare at her, and it was necessary to rise betimes if she would walk inpeace. It was still near the dawn that morning when young Redwood cameupon her.
The Great Park near the Palace where she lodged stretched, for a scoreof miles and more, west and south of the western palace gates. Thechestnut trees of its avenues reached high above her head. Each one asshe passed it seemed to proffer a more abundant wealth of blossom. For atime she was content with sight and scent, but at last she was won overby these offers, and set herself so busily to choose and pick that shedid not perceive young Redwood until he was close upon her.
She moved among the chestnut trees, with the destined lover drawing nearto her, unanticipated, unsuspected. She thrust her hands in among thebranches, breaking them and gathering them. She was alone in the world.Then---
She looked up, and in that moment she was mated.
We must needs put our imaginations to his stature to see the beauty hesaw. That unapproachable greatness that prevents our immediate sympathywith her did not exist for him. There she stood, a gracious girl, thefirst created being that had ever seemed a mate for him, light andslender, lightly clad, the fresh breeze of the dawn moulding the subtlyfolding robe upon her against the soft strong lines of her form, andwith a great mass of blossoming chestnut branches in her hands. Thecollar of her robe opened to show the whiteness of her neck and a softshadowed roundness that passed out of sight towards her shoulders. Thebreeze had stolen a strand or so of her hair too, and strained itsred-tipped brown across her cheek. Her eyes were open blue, and her lipsrested always in the promise of a smile as she reached among thebranches.
She turned upon him with a start, saw him, and for a space they regardedone another. For her, the sight of him was so amazing, so incredible, asto be, for some moments at least, terrible. He came to her with theshock of a supernatural apparition; he broke all the established law ofher world. He was a youth of one-and-twenty then, slenderly built, withhis father's darkness and his father's gravity. He was clad in a sobersoft brown leather, close-fitting easy garments, and in brown hose, thatshaped him bravely. His head went uncovered in all weathers. They stoodregarding one another--she incredulously amazed, and he with his heartbeating fast. It was a moment without a prelude, the cardinal meeting oftheir lives.
For him there was less surprise. He had been seeking her, and yet hisheart beat fast. He came towards her, slowly, with his eyes upon herface.
"You are the Princess," he said. "My father has told me. You are thePrincess who was given the Food of the Gods."
"I am the Princess--yes," she said, with eyes of wonder. "But--what areyou?"
"I am the son of the man who made the Food of the Gods."
"The Food of the Gods!"
"Yes, the Food of the Gods."
"But--"
Her face expressed infinite perplexity.
"What? I don't understand. The Food of the Gods?"
"You have not heard?"
"The Food of the Gods! _No_!"
She found herself trembling violently. The colour left her face. "I didnot know," she said. "Do you mean--?"
He waited for her.
"Do you mean there are other--giants?"
He repeated, "Did you not know?"
And she answered, with the growing amazement of realisation, "_No!_"
The whole world and all the meaning of the world was changing for her. Abranch of chestnut slipped from her hand. "Do you mean to say," sherepeated stupidly, "that there are other giants in the world? That somefood--?"
He caught her amazement.
"You know nothing?" he cried. "You have never heard of us? You, whom theFood has made akin to us!"
There was terror still in the eyes that stared at him. Her hand rosetowards her throat and fell again. She whispered, "_No_."
It seemed to her that she must weep or faint. Then in a moment she hadrule over herself and she was speaking and thinking clearly. "All thishas been kept from me," she said. "It is like a dream. I havedreamt--have dreamt such things. But waking--No. Tell me! Tell me! Whatare you? What is this Food of the Gods? Tell me slowly--and clearly. Whyhave they kept it from me, that I am not alone?"
II.
"Tell me," she said, and young Redwood, tremulous and excited, sethimself to tell her--it was poor and broken telling for a time--of theFood of the Gods and the giant children who were scattered over theworld.
You must figure them both, flushed and startled in their bearing;getting at one another's meaning through endless half-heard, half-spokenphrases, repeating, making perplexing breaks and new departures--awonderful talk, in which she awakened from the ignorance of all herlife. And very slowly it became clear to her that she was no exceptionto the order of mankind, but one of a scattered brotherhood, who had alleaten the Food and grown for ever out of the little limits of the folkbeneath their feet. Young Redwood spoke of his father, of Cossar, of theBrothers scattered throughout the country, of the great dawn of widermeaning that had come at last into the history of the world. "We are inthe beginning of a beginning," he said; "this world of theirs is onlythe prelude to the world the Food will make.
"My father believes--and I also believe--that a time will come whenlittleness will have passed altogether out of the world of man,--whengiants shall go freely about this earth--their earth--doing continuallygreater and more splendid things. But that--that is to come. We are noteven the first generation of that--we are the first experiments."
"And of these things," she said, "I knew nothing!"
"There are times when it seems to me almost as if we had come too soon.Some one, I suppose, had to come first. But the world was all unpreparedfor our coming and for the coming of all the lesser great things thatdrew their greatness from the Food. There have been blunders; there havebeen conflicts. The little people hate our kind....
"They are hard towards us because they are so little.... And because ourfeet are heavy on the things that make their lives. But at any rate theyhate us now; they will have none of us--only if we could shrink back tothe common size of them would they begin to forgive....
"They are happy in houses that are prison cells to us; their cities aretoo small for us; we go in misery along their narrow ways; we cannotworship in their churches.
...
"We see over their walls and over their protections; we lookinadvertently into their upper windows; we look over their customs;their laws are no more than a net about our feet....
"Every time we stumble we hear them shouting; every time we blunderagainst their limits or stretch out to any spacious act....
"Our easy paces are wild flights to them, and all they deem great andwonderful no more than dolls' pyramids to us. Their pettiness of methodand appliance and imagination hampers and defeats our powers. There areno machines to the power of our hands, no helps to fit our needs. Theyhold our greatness in servitude by a thousand invisible bands. We arestronger, man for man, a hundred times, but we are disarmed; our verygreatness makes us debtors; they claim the land we stand upon; they taxour ampler need of food and shelter, and for all these things we musttoil with the tools these dwarfs can make us--and to satisfy theirdwarfish fancies ...
"They pen us in, in every way. Even to live one must cross theirboundaries. Even to meet you here to-day I have passed a limit. All thatis reasonable and desirable in life they make out of bounds for us. Wemay not go into the towns; we may not cross the bridges; we may not stepon their ploughed fields or into the harbours of the game they kill. Iam cut off now from all our Brethren except the three sons of Cossar,and even that way the passage narrows day by day. One could think theysought occasion against us to do some more evil thing ..."
"But we are strong," she said.
"We should be strong--yes. We feel, all of us--you too I know mustfeel--that we have power, power to do great things, power insurgent inus. But before we can do anything--"
He flung out a hand that seemed to sweep away a world.
"Though I thought I was alone in the world," she said, after a pause, "Ihave thought of these things. They have taught me always that strengthwas almost a sin, that it was better to be little than great, that alltrue religion was to shelter the weak and little, encourage the weakand little, help them to multiply and multiply until at last theycrawled over one another, to sacrifice all our strength in their cause.But ... always I have doubted the thing they taught."
"This life," he said, "these bodies of ours, are not for dying."
"No."
"Nor to live in futility. But if we would not do that, it is alreadyplain to all our Brethren a conflict must come. I know not whatbitterness of conflict must presently come, before the little folks willsuffer us to live as we need to live. All the Brethren have thought ofthat. Cossar, of whom I told you: he too has thought of that."
"They are very little and weak."
"In their way. But you know all the means of death are in their hands,and made for their hands. For hundreds of thousands of years theselittle people, whose world we invade, have been learning how to kill oneanother. They are very able at that. They are able in many ways. Andbesides, they can deceive and change suddenly.... I do not know....There comes a conflict. You--you perhaps are different from us. For us,assuredly, the conflict comes.... The thing they call War. We know it.In a way we prepare for it. But you know--those little people!--we donot know how to kill, at least we do not want to kill--"
"Look," she interrupted, and he heard a yelping horn.
He turned at the direction of her eyes, and found a bright yellow motorcar, with dark goggled driver and fur-clad passengers, whooping,throbbing, and buzzing resentfully at his heel. He moved his foot, andthe mechanism, with three angry snorts, resumed its fussy way towardsthe town. "Filling up the roadway!" floated up to him.
Then some one said, "Look! Did you see? There is the monster Princessover beyond the trees!" and all their goggled faces came round to stare.
"I say," said another. "_That_ won't do ..."
"All this," she said, "is more amazing than I can tell."
"That they should not have told you," he said, and left his sentenceincomplete.
"Until you came upon me, I had lived in a world where I wasgreat--alone. I had made myself a life--for that. I had thought I wasthe victim of some strange freak of nature. And now my world hascrumbled down, in half an hour, and I see another world, otherconditions, wider possibilities--fellowship--"
"Fellowship," he answered.
"I want you to tell me more yet, and much more," she said. "You knowthis passes through my mind like a tale that is told. You even ... In aday perhaps, or after several days, I shall believe in you. Now--Now Iam dreaming.... Listen!"
The first stroke of a clock above the palace offices far away hadpenetrated to them. Each counted mechanically "Seven."
"This," she said, "should be the hour of my return. They will be takingthe bowl of my coffee into the hall where I sleep. The little officialsand servants--you cannot dream how grave they are--will be stirringabout their little duties."
"They will wonder ... But I want to talk to you."
She thought. "But I want to think too. I want now to think alone, andthink out this change in things, think away the old solitude, and thinkyou and those others into my world.... I shall go. I shall go backto-day to my place in the castle, and to-morrow, as the dawn comes, Ishall come again--here."
"I shall be here waiting for you."
"All day I shall dream and dream of this new world you have given me.Even now, I can scarcely believe--"
She took a step back and surveyed him from the feet to the face. Theireyes met and locked for a moment.
"Yes," she said, with a little laugh that was half a sob. "You are real.But it is very wonderful! Do you think--indeed--? Suppose to-morrow Icome and find you--a pigmy like the others... Yes, I must think. And sofor to-day--as the little people do--"
She held out her hand, and for the first time they touched one another.Their hands clasped firmly and their eyes met again.
"Good-bye," she said, "for to-day. Good-bye! Good-bye, Brother Giant!"
He hesitated with some unspoken thing, and at last he answered hersimply, "Good-bye."
For a space they held each other's hands, studying each the other'sface. And many times after they had parted, she looked back halfdoubtfully at him, standing still in the place where they had met....
She walked into her apartments across the great yard of the Palace likeone who walks in a dream, with a vast branch of chestnut trailing fromher hand.
III.
These two met altogether fourteen times before the beginning of the end.They met in the Great Park or on the heights and among the gorges ofthe rusty-roaded, heathery moorland, set with dusky pine-woods, thatstretched to the south-west. Twice they met in the great avenue ofchestnuts, and five times near the broad ornamental water the king, hergreat-grandfather, had made. There was a place where a great trim lawn,set with tall conifers, sloped graciously to the water's edge, and thereshe would sit, and he would lie at her knees and look up in her face andtalk, telling of all the things that had been, and of the work hisfather had set before him, and of the great and spacious dream of whatthe giant people should one day be. Commonly they met in the early dawn,but once they met there in the afternoon, and found presently amultitude of peering eavesdroppers about them, cyclists, pedestrians,peeping from the bushes, rustling (as sparrows will rustle about one inthe London parks) amidst the dead leaves in the woods behind, glidingdown the lake in boats towards a point of view, trying to get nearer tothem and hear.
It was the first hint that offered of the enormous interest thecountryside was taking in their meetings. And once--it was the seventhtime, and it precipitated the scandal--they met out upon the breezymoorland under a clear moonlight, and talked in whispers there, for thenight was warm and still.
Very soon they had passed from the realisation that in them and throughthem a new world of giantry shaped itself in the earth, from thecontemplation of the great struggle between big and little, in whichthey were clearly destined to participate, to interests at once morepersonal and more spacious. Each time they met and talked and looked onone another, it crept a little more out of their subconscious beingtowards recognition, that something
more dear and wonderful thanfriendship was between them, and walked between them and drew theirhands together. And in a little while they came to the word itself andfound themselves lovers, the Adam and Eve of a new race in the world.
They set foot side by side into the wonderful valley of love, with itsdeep and quiet places. The world changed about them with their changingmood, until presently it had become, as it were, a tabernacular beautyabout their meetings, and the stars were no more than flowers of lightbeneath the feet of their love, and the dawn and sunset the colouredhangings by the way. They ceased to be beings of flesh and blood to oneanother and themselves; they passed into a bodily texture of tendernessand desire. They gave it first whispers and then silence, and drew closeand looked into one another's moonlit and shadowy faces under theinfinite arch of the sky. And the still black pine-trees stood aboutthem like sentinels.
The beating steps of time were hushed into silence, and it seemed tothem the universe hung still. Only their hearts were audible, beating.They seemed to be living together in a world where there is no death,and indeed so it was with them then. It seemed to them that theysounded, and indeed they sounded, such hidden splendours in the veryheart of things as none have ever reached before. Even for mean andlittle souls, love is the revelation of splendours. And these were giantlovers who had eaten the Food of the Gods ...
* * * * *
You may imagine the spreading consternation in this ordered world whenit became known that the Princess who was affianced to the Prince, thePrincess, Her Serene Highness! with royal blood in her veins!met,--frequently met,--the hypertrophied offspring of a common professorof chemistry, a creature of no rank, no position, no wealth, and talkedto him as though there were no Kings and Princes, no order, noreverence--nothing but Giants and Pigmies in the world, talked to himand, it was only too certain, held him as her lover.
"If those newspaper fellows get hold of it!" gasped Sir Arthur PoodleBootlick ...
"I am told--" whispered the old Bishop of Frumps.
"New story upstairs," said the first footman, as he nibbled among thedessert things. "So far as I can make out this here giant Princess--"
"They say--" said the lady who kept the stationer's shop by the mainentrance to the Palace, where the little Americans get their tickets forthe State Apartments ...
And then:
"We are authorised to deny--" said "Picaroon" in _Gossip_.
And so the whole trouble came out.
IV.
"They say that we must part," the Princess said to her lover.
"But why?" he cried. "What new folly have these people got into theirheads?"
"Do you know," she asked, "that to love me--is high treason?"
"My dear," he cried; "but does it matter? What is their right--rightwithout a shadow of reason--and their treason and their loyalty to us?"
"You shall hear," she said, and told him of the things that had beentold to her.
"It was the queerest little man who came to me with a soft, beautifullymodulated voice, a softly moving little gentleman who sidled into theroom like a cat and put his pretty white hand up so, whenever he hadanything significant to say. He is bald, but not of course nakedly bald,and his nose and face are chubby rosy little things, and his beard istrimmed to a point in quite the loveliest way. He pretended to haveemotions several times and made his eyes shine. You know he is quite afriend of the real royal family here, and he called me his dear younglady and was perfectly sympathetic even from the beginning. 'My dearyoung lady,' he said, 'you know--_you mustn't,'_ several times, andthen, 'You owe a duty.'"
"Where do they make such men?"
"He likes it," she said.
"But I don't see--"
"He told me serious things."
"You don't think," he said, turning on her abruptly, "that there'sanything in the sort of thing he said?"
"There's something in it quite certainly," said she.
"You mean--?"
"I mean that without knowing it we have been trampling on the mostsacred conceptions of the little folks. We who are royal are a classapart. We are worshipped prisoners, processional toys. We pay forworship by losing--our elementary freedom. And I was to have marriedthat Prince--You know nothing of him though. Well, a pigmy Prince. Hedoesn't matter.... It seems it would have strengthened the bonds betweenmy country and another. And this country also was to profit. Imagineit!--strengthening the bonds!"
"And now?"
"They want me to go on with it--as though there was nothing between ustwo."
"Nothing!"
"Yes. But that isn't all. He said--"
"Your specialist in Tact?"
"Yes. He said it would be better for you, better for all the giants, ifwe two--abstained from conversation. That was how he put it."
"But what can they do if we don't?"
"He said you might have your freedom."
"_I!_"
"He said, with a stress, 'My dear young lady, it would be better, itwould be more dignified, if you parted, willingly.' That was all hesaid. With a stress on willingly."
"But--! What business is it of these little wretches, where we love, howwe love? What have they and their world to do with us?"
"They do not think that."
"Of course," he said, "you disregard all this."
"It seems utterly foolish to me."
"That their laws should fetter us! That we, at the first spring of life,should be tripped by their old engagements, their aimless institutions!Oh--! We disregard it."
"I am yours. So far--yes."
"So far? Isn't that all?"
"But they--If they want to part us--"
"What can they do?"
"I don't know. What _can_ they do?"
"Who cares what they can do, or what they will do? I am yours and youare mine. What is there more than that? I am yours and you are mine--forever. Do you think I will stop for their little rules, for their littleprohibitions, their scarlet boards indeed!--and keep from _you_?"
"Yes. But still, what can they do?"
"You mean," he said, "what are we to do?"
"Yes."
"We? We can go on."
"But if they seek to prevent us?"
He clenched his hands. He looked round as if the little people werealready coming to prevent them. Then turned away from her and lookedabout the world. "Yes," he said. "Your question was the right one. Whatcan they do?"
"Here in this little land," she said, and stopped.He seemed to survey it all. "They are everywhere."
"But we might--"
"Whither?"
"We could go. We could swim the seas together. Beyond the seas--"
"I have never been beyond the seas."
"There are great and desolate mountains amidst which we should seem nomore than little people, there are remote and deserted valleys, thereare hidden lakes and snow-girdled uplands untrodden by the feet of men._There_--"
"But to get there we must fight our way day after day through millionsand millions of mankind."
"It is our only hope. In this crowded land there is no fastness, noshelter. What place is there for us among these multitudes? They who arelittle can hide from one another, but where are we to hide? There is noplace where we could eat, no place where we could sleep. If wefled--night and day they would pursue our footsteps."
A thought came to him.
"There is one place," he said, "even in this island."
"Where?"
"The place our Brothers have made over beyond there. They have madegreat banks about their house, north and south and east and west; theyhave made deep pits and hidden places, and even now--one came over to mequite recently. He said--I did not altogether heed what he said then.But he spoke of arms. It may be--there--we should find shelter....
"For many days," he said, after a pause, "I have not seen ourBrothers... Dear! I have been dreaming, I have been forgetting! The dayshave passed, and I have done nothing but look to see you again
... Imust go to them and talk to them, and tell them of you and of all thethings that hang over us. If they will help us, they can help us. Thenindeed we might hope. I do not know how strong their place is, butcertainly Cossar will have made it strong. Before all this--before youcame to me, I remember now--there was trouble brewing. There was anelection--when all the little people settle things, by counting heads.It must be over now. There were threats against all our race--againstall our race, that is, but you. I must see our Brothers. I must tellthem all that has happened between us, and all that threatens now."
V.
He did not come to their next meeting until she had waited some time.They were to meet that day about midday in a great space of park thatfitted into a bend of the river, and as she waited, looking eversouthward under her hand, it came to her that the world was very still,that indeed it was broodingly still. And then she perceived that, spiteof the lateness of the hour, her customary retinue of voluntary spieshad failed her. Left and right, when she came to look, there was no onein sight, and there was never a boat upon the silver curve of theThames. She tried to find a reason for this strange stillness in theworld....
Then, a grateful sight for her, she saw young Redwood far away over agap in the tree masses that bounded her view.
Immediately the trees hid him, and presently he was thrusting throughthem and in sight again. She could see there was something different,and then she saw that he was hurrying unusually and then that he limped.He gestured to her, and she walked towards him. His face became clearer,and she saw with infinite concern that he winced at every stride.
She ran towards him, her mind full of questions and vague fear. He drewnear to her and spoke without a greeting.
"Are we to part?" he panted.
"No," she answered. "Why? What is the matter?"
"But if we do not part--! It is _now_."
"What is the matter?"
"I do not want to part," he said. "Only--" He broke off abruptly toask, "You will not part from me?"
She met his eyes with a steadfast look. "What has happened?" shepressed.
"Not for a time?"
"What time?"
"Years perhaps."
"Part! No!"
"You have thought?" he insisted.
"I will not part." She took his hand. "If this meant death, _now_, Iwould not let you go."
"If it meant death," he said, and she felt his grip upon her fingers.
He looked about him as if he feared to see the little people coming ashe spoke. And then: "It may mean death."
"Now tell me," she said.
"They tried to stop my coming."
"How?"
"And as I came out of my workshop where I make the Food of the Gods forthe Cossars to store in their camp, I found a little officer ofpolice--a man in blue with white clean gloves--who beckoned me to stop.'This way is closed!' said he. I thought little of that; I went round myworkshop to where another road runs west, and there was another officer.'This road is closed!' he said, and added: 'All the roads are closed!'"
"And then?"
"I argued with him a little. 'They are public roads!' I said.
"'That's it,' said he. 'You spoil them for the public.'
"'Very well,' said I, 'I'll take the fields,' and then, up leapt othersfrom behind a hedge and said, 'These fields are private.'
"'Curse your public and private,' I said, 'I'm going to my Princess,'and I stooped down and picked him up very gently--kicking andshouting--and put him out of my way. In a minute all the fields about meseemed alive with running men. I saw one on horseback galloping besideme and reading something as he rode--shouting it. He finished and turnedand galloped away from me--head down. I couldn't make it out. And thenbehind me I heard the crack of guns."
"Guns!"
"Guns--just as they shoot at the rats. The bullets came through the airwith a sound like things tearing: one stung me in the leg."
"And you?"
"Came on to you here and left them shouting and running and shootingbehind me. And now--"
"Now?"
"It is only the beginning. They mean that we shall part. Even now theyare coming after me."
"We will not."
"No. But if we will not part--then you must come with me to ourBrothers."
"Which way?" she said.
"To the east. Yonder is the way my pursuers will be coming. This then isthe way we must go. Along this avenue of trees. Let me go first, so thatif they are waiting--"
He made a stride, but she had seized his arm.
"No," cried she. "I come close to you, holding you. Perhaps I am royal,perhaps I am sacred. If I hold you--Would God we could fly with my armsabout you!--it may be, they will not shoot at you--"
She clasped his shoulder and seized his hand as she spoke; she pressedherself nearer to him. "It may be they will not shoot you," sherepeated, and with a sudden passion of tenderness he took her into hisarms and kissed her cheek. For a space he held her.
"Even if it is death," she whispered.
She put her hands about his neck and lifted her face to his.
"Dearest, kiss me once more."
He drew her to him. Silently they kissed one another on the lips, andfor another moment clung to one another. Then hand in hand, and shestriving always to keep her body near to his, they set forward if haplythey might reach the camp of refuge the sons of Cossar had made, beforethe pursuit of the little people overtook them.
And as they crossed the great spaces of the park behind the castle therecame horsemen galloping out from among the trees and vainly seeking tokeep pace with their giant strides. And presently ahead of them werehouses, and men with guns running out of the houses. At the sight ofthat, though he sought to go on and was even disposed to fight and pushthrough, she made him turn aside towards the south.
As they fled a bullet whipped by them overhead.