CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GARDEN OF TANJE.
A series of banquets and other entertainments followed each otherduring our stay at the palace of Tanje. The goddess had held frequentinterviews with the professors and myself regarding the externalsphere, and had examined our maps and charts with the greatestcuriosity.
His majesty did not take nearly so much interest in our revelations asthe goddess, being inert and prosaic in character.
The Lilasure.]
On the morning of the fourth day of our stay at the palace of Tanje Ireceived a visit from the grand chamberlain Cleperelyum, with acommand from the goddess to meet her in her boudoir. Cleperelyum ledme to the sacred apartment, which, when I entered, was vacant. Thewalls were models of decorative architecture, the panels being filledwith silk tapestry of a pale yellow-green hue, the mouldings beingivory-white. The panelled frieze was filled with figures in violet andgold, and sea-green upholstery covered couch and divan, while thedraperies were silks of cream and blue. It was a luxurious retreat.The carpet was a silk rug, soft as a bed of rose leaves, with a broadborder in tones of green, violet and white.
Presently the goddess entered with a winning smile on her features.She was arrayed in a dress of soft violet silk, that, apparently, hadno other garment beneath, so perfect was the revelation of her figure.Beneath the figure it fell to the ground in a thousand folds, like awave of smooth water bursting into foaming rapids. Round her neck wasa garland of lustrous yellow pearls. On her head she wore a tiara ofmuch smaller dimensions than that worn on public occasions. Her posewas upright as an arrow.
The Laburnul.]
I rose and bowed profoundly, and the goddess also bowing, requested meto be seated.
"I have sent for you," said she, "to learn more about your country andto talk with you about ours. I am consumed with curiosity regardingthe external world." "Your holiness," I replied, "permit me to saythat your graceful condescension exceeds, if possible, your splendor.I am truly bewildered at the vastness of my good fortune indiscovering a country ruled by so glorious a goddess."
"And I also," said the goddess, "have learned that Bilbimtesirol isnot the universe, but a very small portion thereof indeed. I amintensely interested in your accounts of the outer world. I amoverpowered with the thought that the exterior surface of the planetis peopled with beings like ourselves, and that civilization,government, religion, art, manufacture, and social life are so greatlydeveloped beneath a still more glorious sun than ours."
"Did it never occur to your astronomers," I inquired, "that humanactivity might also pervade the outer sphere?"
The Green Gazzle of Glockett Gozzle.]
"Our astronomers," said the goddess, "have long since decided that theconditions of climate on the exterior planet were too severe to allowhuman life to exist. They are aware that a great luminary gave theouter earth light by day, for our most daring aerial voyagers havefrequently caught a glimpse of its light seen through the polar gulf.They argued that the equatorial regions were too hot, and the polarregions too cold, to support life, consequently the outer earth was abarren waste as desolate and uninhabited as your own satellite."
"Would your holiness like to visit the exterior earth?" I boldlyinquired.
"If duty did not prevent me," she replied, "I would love to visitthose far-off strange lands and peoples and see your sun and moon andall the stars!"
From the goddess I first learned the precise location of Atvatabar.Lying exactly underneath the Atlantic Ocean it stretched east and westsome two thousand miles, surrounded by the interior sea. There wereother continents in Bilbimtesirol which we had already dimly seenspread upon the concave walls of the world around us.
"You must come to see both Egyplosis and Arjeels," said her holiness,"but before you leave Tanje you must see my garden."
"It must be a little paradise!" I exclaimed.
"Let us go and see it now," she said, and, so saying, arose with agracious gesture and led me out of the apartment.
I accompanied her holiness down the terrace leading to the lovelyretreat. Curving walks led between banks of flowers of all hues.There were avenues of tall shrubs not unlike rhododendrons, with thesame magnificent bloom. Other plants, such as the firesweet, displayeda blinding wealth of yellow flowers.
Jeerloons.]
The goddess led the way to the conservatory in the garden wherein weretreasured strange and beautiful flowers and zoophytes illustrative ofthe gradual evolution of animals from plants, a scientific faith thatheld sway in Atvatabar. The goddess showed me a beautiful plant withlarge fan-shaped leaves from whose edges hung a fringe of heavy roses;long trailing garlands of clustering star-shaped flowers sprang fromthe same roots. The plant was a perfect bower of bliss, and whilecalled the laburnul, might with greater propriety be styled the roseof paradise.
A Jeerloon.]
Another fern-like plant was in reality a bird flower, called thelilasure. It had the head and breast of a bird, from whose back grewroots and four small feathers resembling those of the peacock. Itstail resembled two large fronds of a fern, which served the animal forwings, for by their aid it flew through the air.
There was also a flock of strange green-feathered creatures,resembling buzzards, called green gazzles, on whose heads grewsun-flowers. On either side, beneath their wings, were the plant rootsby means of which they still sucked nourishment from the soil, astheir bills were not yet perfectly developed. They belonged to alocality on the south coast of Atvatabar known as Glockett Gozzle.
The lillipoutum was another wonderful creature, half-plant half-bird.It represented the animal almost entirely evolved from the plantstage. A wreath of rootlets adorned the neck, but the most conspicuousfeatures were the stork-like legs that terminated in roots withradiations like encrinital stems. The bird fed itself like a plant bysimply thrusting its root-legs into the soft ooze of lake bottoms andslimy banks of rivers. Its tail was also a root possessing greatabsorptive powers. In shape the bird resembled a flamingo, and itsfeathers were of an old-rose color, mottled with lichen-green. Abeard-like radiation of roots decorated its head, and its bill wasextremely delicate.
The Lillipoutum.]
Such wonders as these intensified the glamor of the interior world. Iwas fast becoming bewildered with the intoxication of an environmentof strange, abnormal creatures--unlike anything I had ever seenbefore.
The goddess regarded her pets with the greatest interest, and waspleased at being the first to acquaint me with such living wonders ofAtvatabar.
"Your holiness," I said, "these creatures are so wonderful that unlessI had actually seen them it would be impossible for me to believe intheir existence." As I spoke, two strange bat-like forms flew towardus; they were flying orchids, known as jeerloons, with heart-shapedfaces and arms terminating in wire-like claws. Their wing projectionswere bristling with suckers like the rays of a starfish. Altogetherthey were weird, uncanny creatures. The goddess caught one of them inher hands, and laughed at my excitement. "They will haunt you in yourdreams," she exclaimed, "poor, pretty things!"
"But now," she added, "let me show you a plant that is fast becominga brood of animals, both root and flower. It is the jugdul. Stillrooted in the soil, strange faces are swelling in the mould, while theflower is a leaf surmounted by a weird, small head, the nasal organ ofwhich is a ponderous proboscis. We do not know as yet what kind ofanimal life will evolve from the plant, but the botanists andphysiologists of Atvatabar are agreed that at least two new species ofanimals will be developed when the evolution of the zoophyte iscomplete."
The Jugdul.]
I assured her holiness that I considered myself the most favored ofmen to be permitted to visit the sanctuary wherein the occulttransmigration of life was being manifested. It was a rare experience!
Just then the goddess directed my attention to a flying rootresembling a humming-bird. It was the far-famed jalloast, thesemi-evolved humming-bird of Atvatabar. Other similar beings,half-root, half-bird, were see
n perched in a bower of tree-ferns,whose waxy green fronds fell like an emerald cascade about thejalloasts.
From porcelain boxes suspended along the roof of the conservatory aperfect forest of strange plants depended, a species of zoophyte knownas the yarp-happy, which seemed to be a combination of ape andflower. Its peculiarly weird, ape-like face was covered with a hood,and from the open mouth of each animal the tongue protruded. From theneck of the animal three long leaves radiated, the two lower leaves ineach case terminating in claw-like extremities, which gave a weirdexpression to the zoophyte.
The Yarphappy.]
Right underneath these strange beings, there grew an immense quantityof spotted pouch-shaped plants, each having the head of a cat growingabove the pouch. This peculiar zoophyte was known as the gasternowl.From either side of the junction of the cat-like head with the pouchradiated two speckled leaves. The tips of the ears terminated infrond-like plumes, and a peculiar plume like a crest surmounted thehead.
A strange root known as the crocosus was developed into a perfectanimal that crawled with four legs upon the floor. The animal was notunlike the lizard, or a diminutive crocodile, with an immensely longneck, which it held erect. The neck terminated in a bulbous head, withan open, bill-shaped mouth, not unlike the mouth of a pelican, whileright below the jaws there grew a root-like appendage, that coiledaround the neck. The animal possessed a root-like tail, and was a mostinteresting creature.
The Jalloast.]
To enumerate all the wonders of the conservatory of planttransmigration at Tanje would be impossible. I saw the jardil (orlove-pouch), an orchid resembling a pouch, with the face of a childgrowing therein, from which radiated rootlets and jabots of spiralfronds. I also saw the redoubtable blocus, an animal resembling ajerboa, or kangaroo, whose only trace of plant existence was a fewrootlets growing out of its back. The funny-fenny, or clowngrass, wasa weed with veritable goblins growing on the stems. The goblins hadlong noses and wore high hats and lace collars, but were otherwise butplants with absorbent roots. They were so grotesque that I began tothink that nature was laughing at me quite as much as I laughed atnature.
When leaving the conservatory I heard a chorus of tender voices like aband of spirits singing, whereupon the goddess directed my attentionto a cluster of fairy girls that, like flowers, were growing upon thestem of a plant. It was a peculiarity of these fairy creatures tosing every time their goddess passed by, her spiritual atmospherequickening them into conscious life and song. I was fairly dazzledwith such a tribute of love to my gracious companion, and were thefairy flowers not sacred things I would have borne them away toexhibit such a trophy to the outer world.
The Gasternowl.]
This wonderful plant seemed more like the production of spirit powerindulging in a weird fantasy of imagination, rather than an evolutionof nature. It was a new experience to me to hear the little creaturessing in a tender chorus of adoration to the goddess and dancegleefully upon their stems. My guide fondled the strange creatureswith her own fair fingers, and they seemed to me the greatest wonder Ihad yet beheld in Atvatabar.
"These," said the goddess, "are gleroserals, and I would gladly giveyou a spray were it not that removal from their tender habitat wouldkill them. But here is a flower, half-bird, half-plant, that I willsend you in a proper cage if you care for it." The zoophyte referredto was another bird plant that flew around the conservatory possessingthe head and body of an eagle, the wings of a butterfly and the tailof a plant. The plant-like appendage was composed of long beautifulsprays of graceful foliage, not unlike pine branches, that were curvedinto sinuous forms as the animal flew. It was known as the eaglon, andwas without legs. I thanked the goddess for her precious gift,whereupon we left the conservatory.
The Crocosus.]
Wandering through thickets of roses whose burning blossoms swoonedupon their stems, we came upon a thick carpet of verdure thatsurrounded a hidden lake of clear, cool water. The rocky basin of thelake had been sculptured by human hands. Its margin was in outline abold pear-shaped curve, that also curved upon itself, formed by animmense chiselling of the fundamental rock. In a little harbor of cutrock lay a pleasure boat, a curiously-wrought shell of silver that waspropelled by magnicity. The goddess entered the boat, bidding mefollow her. We sat together on an ample couch in the stern of the boatunderneath a silver canopy. Touching a button, the boat moved swiftlyover the water. It was a scene of rapture! Gazing into the depths ofthe water I saw the bottom of the lake sculptured in immense masses offlowers of stone, like the roof of a Gothic cathedral, but a hundredtimes more luxuriant. Around and above us rose heights of blessednessfilled with all the thousand ecstasies of leaf and flower. An isletbore a little pagoda that stood in the eternal noon a pillared jewelof stone, silent and beautiful. It was half concealed with festoons ofcreeping plants whose flowers were great globes of crimson, yellow andblue.
There was around me--paradise, and beside me--ecstasy!
"You are pleased with my garden?" said the goddess.
"This must be the garden of Hesperides that our poets write of," Ireplied. "Here at last I have found the ideal life."
The goddess reclined on the couch in an attitude of luxurious grace.Her every gesture was at once heroic and beautiful.
The Jardil, or Love-Pouch.]
"Tell me what your poets say of nature, life and love," said she; "dothey ever sing the delights of hopeless love?"
As the goddess uttered this last question I felt within me a strangedelight. There sat beside me, floating on that mysterious wave, theidol of a great nation, the deity of its universal faith, a divinityof power, glory and beauty, laying aside spiritual empire to becomethe companion of a simple explorer of the internal world, herdiscoverer and her friend, by a most happy chance of fortune.
As these thoughts swiftly ran through my brain, and before I had timeto reply, music, soft, weird, intensely intoxicating, was blown fromamong the tempestuous bloom of the paradises. The melody seemed theholiest thrill of hearts communing in the rapture of love! To explainthe sweetness of the moment is impossible--the goddess was so alluringand serene. She kept her own emotions in the background as the resultof a proud devotion to duty, and yet I felt swathed with a soul thatseemed to have found an opportunity worthy the expression of its life.
A situation so daring, yet so tender, required an equally daring andreverent soul to meet it. I felt all its surpassing loveliness.
"Our poets," I replied, "have written of love in all its phases,describing the most spiritual passions as well as the most lustful. Inpoetry love may be any phase of love, but the reality is a compound oflust and spirituality, being rooted both in body and soul."
"Do your people," said the goddess, "never differentiate lust and loveand obtain in real life only a spiritual romantic love such as we doin Atvatabar?"
"We believe, your holiness," I replied, "that such a love as you referto is only to be found in a spiritual state and is the secret ofdisembodied blessedness."
"You must see Egyplosis," said she, "ere you depart from us, and therelearn the possibility of ideal love in actual life."
"To discover such a joy," I replied, "will repay my journey toAtvatabar a thousandfold."
We alighted from the boat on a rocky margin of the lake that led intoa labyrinth of flowers. Here we wandered at will, discovering at everystep new delights. Lyone was not only a goddess, but also the fondincarnation of a comrade soul.