The world below
Now I made up my bundle again, and having eaten freely of the strange
fruit, I expressed my readiness to explore the golden lights and shadows
of the forest that lay before us.
We had agreed that I should now depend upon my own vitality, even though
our progress must necessarily be slower in consequence, but I rose and
went forward very buoyantly, and though I knew that she was restraining
her natural pace to keep beside me, I was well content to feel that I
was moving with a lightness and energy which she could not have expected
from any previous experience. There may have been some exhilarating
quality in the food which I had just eaten, but, apart from that
possibility, I had rested well, the air was pleasantly warm, and I had a
sense of unaccustomed freedom from the rags which I had discarded.
Had there been a hard surface beneath us, I might have regretted the
impulse on which I had left my boots,--though it would have been equally
correct to say they had left me,--but the moss was soft and deep, and
though it gave a curious tingling sensation (which I forgot
subsequently) it was otherwise a very soft and pleasant carpet on which
to tread.
The wood which we were now entering must have stretched (as I
calculated) for about forty miles along the great valley which lay
within the ridge of coast-wise hills which we had to reach and cross to
gain our objective. It was probably about ten miles wide at the point at
which we were attempting to pass it.
We had gone about half-a-mile at a very quick walk, the trees not being
sufficiently close to obstruct us seriously, when my companion asked me
if there were nothing that occurred to me as unusual in the scene around
us.
I had not thought of anything. I had been occupied by the beauty and
variety of the trees which we were passing, but as she asked I felt it,
and shuddered.
“Yes,” I said, “it is the silence.”
She answered, “Silence is good; but it is the cause of the silence. The
trees live, but they do not move. I think that wind is forbidden.
Besides the trees and the moss, it seems that we are the only creatures
that live.”
And I knew, as her thought reached me, that she was right. There was no
moving life in the trees, nor in the air, nor in the moss beneath us. I
searched, and if I could have found the smallest insect, I think it
would have broken the spell which oppressed me, as I realised the
isolation in which we moved.
I stood, and hesitated. I was ashamed of my thought, but at last I gave
it. “I do not want to go farther.”
“Do you feel it?” she answered, “I felt it sooner.”
“It is not that I fear,” I answered, “there seems no cause to fear in so
great a peace, but I find it hard to go forward.”
“Yes,” she said, “the Dwellers may not be here, but I think that they
have left their wills to protect it. It is a new thing to me. Shall we
yield, and turn, or resist it?”
I hesitated for a moment, for I felt a curious disinclination to go
farther, beneath which there was a stubborn unwillingness to turn back
with so little of reason to justify it.
“It must be a long way round,” I thought at last, “and it might be even
more perilous. You shall decide.”
She answered readily, “Then we will go forward. I will go first, if you
will, because I am the more sensitive to the power against which we
shall be contending, and I may also be more resolute to resist it.
“I know that you were trying to decide in this way, though you found it
hard to do so.
“My own decision is not because it is a long way round, which is of
little moment, nor because it may be more dangerous to take that way,
for it may be less so, which is more probable. But I think that these
were not your reasons. They were only those which your mind supplied, as
best it might, to support your preference.
“You know, as I do, that there may be great danger if we go forward,
though you cannot understand what it may be. Therefore you fear it. But
you have within you a spirit which has been trained to conflict by the
conditions of your life, and which is reluctant to turn aside from a
chosen path, and especially so when the danger is not immediately
evident, nor physically apparent.
“My own reason is different. I feel that these woods are held by a power
which will turn us back, if it be sufficient to do so. I suppose this
power to derive from the Dwellers, because I know them to be supreme in
these regions, and I cannot think that there could be any other whose
wills could contend against my own so stubbornly. But it is in my
thought that if we accept defeat here we may as well abandon our attempt
at once. It is your nature to depend upon weapons for your protection,
and you have none. It is mine to depend upon the assertion of my own
will, and if, at the first challenge, we confess defeat without effort,
in what confidence may we continue? We have this to think also. The
Dwellers have much knowledge which is not ours, and many powers, but of
the issue of such a conflict neither we nor they have had any
experience.
“I supposed that the meeting of last night would resolve it, for I
believed that my own people had determined to go straight forward, and
that the Dwellers were resolute not to move aside to allow it. But the
appearance of the lizards between them caused my people to halt of their
own will, and the issue was not contested in that way.”
Then she went forward, and I followed closely behind her. Peace was
round us, and a dream-like beauty, golden-green, and deep blue sky where
the trees showed it. The stillness could be felt.
As the body feels when a great wind meets it, so that, though it stoop
against it, it can make no headway, so was the pressure against my mind
to hold me backward.
My companion gave me no thought, and I saw her go on slowly, but with no
sign of effort.
As the pressure increased against me, my heart began to beat very
violently. I became sick with terror. I forced each limb forward with
difficulty, as though there were a weight that dragged it backward. I
concentrated my thought on the fear that if she should leave me I should
be lost entirely, and strove with a despairing energy to lessen the gap
between us, as it threatened to widen. And then, suddenly, I knew that
the pressure ceased, and she looked back with laughing eyes, and a mind
which was elate with victory.
The trees here became very dense, so that we could not see far ahead,
and there were many of the fruit-bearing bushes, such as that on which I
had fed before, that grew between them. I had a sense of great
exhaustion, which I think she shared also, and we sat down and rested.
I saw that she was elate that we had not been turned by this obstacle,
but I found myself less responsive to her mood than usual. I felt that
we were confronted by powers which were entirely beyond our calculation,
and against which we could make no effectual provision. I even doubted
our present success.
“Suppose,” I suggested suddenly, “that while we think we are victors, we
are caught in a trap which we cannot break? Suppose a new danger were to
confront us, how could we flee backward through the stubborn wall we
have passed? Suppose that it is a circle through which return may be
more difficult than the entrance?”
“We may suppose what we will,” she answered happily, “and we may be
right one time in a hundred, but what use is there in that? And such
thoughts seem to me to be of a great folly, for by such means you make
those against whom you should contend the more formidable. You defeat
yourself. You are frightened by a new thing. It is new to me also, but
it is no more wonderful than are many of the invisible powers of which
you have told me, which are known to your own kind, and of which even
the Dwellers--for all I know--may be ignorant.”
I answered, though still unable to rise to her own mood, “I know that
you are right when you say that I defeat myself, for it is the weakness
of my kind to do so. Even in our wars, it is only rarely that a battle
is fought out to the extremity of either side, but a moment comes when
the spirit of confidence dies in one side or the other, and it retires
or surrenders. Often, it is found afterwards that its opponents were
dispirited also, and that the defeated could have been the victors had
they endured for a short time longer.
“But your comparison with the powers of my own world gives me little
encouragement. In our last war it was considered necessary to prevent
people from crossing from one country to another. To effect this a wire
fence was erected along the boundary. It looked harmless, and easy to
pass. Those who touched it died instantly, as by lightning. To an
earlier generation it would have seemed incredible. How can we tell by
what incredible-seeming horrors the Dwellers may be able to protect
their territories?”
She answered buoyantly, “I agree with what you think, though not with
the mood it induces. You are exactly right that we cannot tell, and it
is useless to speculate. But the moment is ours, and I am content to
have a mind untroubled.
“Why is it that your mind and body are alike in this, that they will
fear when there is no cause, or a doubt only, but will rise above it
when a cause confronts them? You are at least clear from the barbarisms
of your own time, which appear to be such by your own telling that it is
a marvel that any of you remain alive to endure them. And you can take
courage from the thought that the Dwellers are not of your kind.”
I did not answer further, for I was now rested, and had eaten freely,
and with the physical comfort the mood was passing, but I had less
confidence than she in the Dwellers, and a greater fear than I had felt
before.
CHAPTER V
THE TEMPLE
Now the trees were thinner again, and of a changing character. They
appeared to be a larger variety of those which we had encountered during
the previous night. Light and graceful they rose around us, with a crown
of spreading boughs from which long ribbon-leaves fell thickly. These
leaves were many yards in length, of the width of a finger, and of an
almost incredible lightness. The air was quiet, but not with the
unreasonable stillness of the area of that forbidding will, and when a
light wind moved, the leaves were lifted like a woman’s hair, and blown
aside, so that the straight slim trunks showed nakedly between them.
Always these light leaves murmured with a stealthy whispering sound, so
like to speech that I had a feeling that there were words which I almost
heard, which I should catch if I should listen more carefully. I began
to imagine that they were urgent to warn or threaten.
I turned to my companion’s mind to break the spell they were casting,
and found her receiving it with a like pleasure to that with which she
bathed in the cold springs of the lake-floor.
Her mind paused reluctantly from its enjoyment to answer me when I
queried in wonder how she should find a delight which approached to
ecstasy in such a way, when I had understood that the sounds of speech,
and (I supposed) all noise, were a barbarism that repelled her.
She answered, “You confuse things the most opposite. Is the beauty of
bird or beast increased if it be torn open? The sea is full of sound,
and like the wind it has many voices, which it contains within itself,
as the air contains them. These voices are as the very basis of life to
every sea-born thing. Even a dead shell cannot forget them. The unending
murmur of these leaves soothes me with delight, while it arouses longing
to return to the ocean-depths where there is neither noise nor
stillness. Do you not hear that it is at once monotonous and many-toned,