The world below
adventure. This is the more likely because there is no evidence of
traffic to or from the entrance, but the whole aspect is of the
reservation of a peculiar and sacred place. I cannot tell which may be
best, but my inclination is to go down.”
I answered, “So is mine; and I can add to your reasons two at least
which you have not mentioned. The one is that while within the tunnel
you have lost the disability of the blindness which had hindered us in
the surrounding area; the other, which is more serious (because I
suppose that we could quickly reach the woods where you would presumably
see as before) is that, after this delay, it is doubtful whether we
could cross the hills before the night falls, and now that my last
remnants of clothing have left me, my body is ill-adapted to meet either
storm or frost, and I have less fear of the more even temperature of the
subterranean places.
“It is true that this passage is not like the one which I first
penetrated. Its slope is less. Its current of upward air is less
evident. Its floor is less easy to tread. Its roof does not give the
same measure of light. It may not be frequently used, and it may lack
the stores of food and water on which I subsisted. But beyond this, all
is conjecture. It is a choice of risks, and we agree as to the one to be
chosen.”
So we rose, and went down together.
CHAPTER VI
THE DOWNWARD PATH
I have often speculated as to what might have happened had we decided
differently, and had I survived the dangers of the surface world, and
attempted the penetration of one of the seaward tunnels. Knowing what I
do now, I suppose that it must have ended fatally for myself, if not for
my companion also. But so much is still mystery, so much conjecture,
that even that may not be certainly true.
As it was, we went on for some time in an eventless silence, the dark
green shadowy smoothness of the surface on which we trod sloping gently
downward, the glassy arch above us becoming gloomier as we left the
daylight. The idea oppressed me that we were actually traversing a
wave’s interior cavity. I think that I had been mentally exhausted by
the prolonged effort of conveying the scene through which we had passed
to my companion’s mind.
Once or twice I tried to establish connection with her, but her thoughts
were closed against me, and I gained no more than a knowledge that she
was abstracted and troubled, and indisposed for conversing. Then we came
to a place where we must needs pause and consult, for the straight path
ceased. The slope ceased. We stood on a level path that curved forward,
right and left, with a blank wall before us. Either side we might turn,
and the choice could scarcely be made in silence.
I questioned my companion with thought and eyes. It was too dark for me
to see hers, but mine may have been visible to her better sight. She
answered readily.
“Yes, we must choose; but I have been concerned with a greater urgency.
As we entered the tunnel my mind inquired for my own people, with whom I
had been disconnected since the encounter with the Dwellers which we
witnessed together, and though I have learnt nothing of their welfare I
found that an urgent message is being sent out to me
continually,--‘_Return at once. Further concealment useless. The animal
must go to the Dwellers, who have already dealt suitably with those he
Seeks. Do not reply._’
“That is the message, about which I am troubled. I cannot quickly tell
what is right to do. I conclude that no reply is desired because there
is either fear or certainty that it would be intercepted, and understood
by the Dwellers, and might do harm in ways which I cannot know, and
might not therefore avoid. It may be from the same cause that the
message contains no mention of the body of my Leader, though that is the
object for which I am here. It may be that this trouble is over; even
that it is returned already. Yet the objection to any reply being sent
indicates less than complete harmony, and there may be actual hostility
between the Dwellers and ourselves.
“From these thoughts two questions follow.
“If there be dissension between the Dwellers and ourselves, and
concealment be useless, how can I hope to return openly and in safety?
Possibly they may have agreed that I shall not be hindered, if you
remain, though there are some improbabilities in this supposition. So
far, I have thought of no other.
“The second question, which is greatly the more important, is this. Am I
right to leave you? Never, from the remotest memory, have I known such a
doubt to rise, nor can I tell how to resolve it. Always we have acted
together. Our Leaders have thought for all, and our will has been
single.”
The news which she gave had disconcerted me sufficiently for my thoughts
to be both confused and depressed at the first hearing, and I cannot say
to what protest or reproach they might otherwise have led me, but to
this appeal there could be only one answer possible.
“If you feel under the obligation of the promise that we should explore
the tunnels of the Dwellers together, there is no need for concern on
that point, for I release you from it. Even if I should not, I think
that your first duty must be to your own kind, and that the news which
your message gives has altered the whole position so radically that no
arrangement could be binding which was made in ignorance of it.”
She answered, “You confuse me with vague thoughts. Let us be silent,”
and for some minutes she closed her mind.
Then she continued, “Your thought is generous, and I should be unfair
not to recognise it, but it is born of conditions which are as alien
from ourselves as are the ways of the Frog-Mouths. If I be under
obligation to keep an undertaking to you which may have already altered
your course, and changed the experiences which you must now encounter,
how can it affect what is right for me to do, that you should accept my
desertion without protest? When you suppose that you can release me in
such a way, you assume a position of Deity--and of a Deity who could
alter the essentials of what is right and wrong. It is not your
willingness that I should go which concerns me--it is the verdict of my
own mind.”
I answered, “I have no doubt that you are right, and that you have
rebuked me justly. Yet, no less, I should like to feel that you have
decided with a mind untroubled by any thought of consequence to myself;
for the event, whether you stay or go, is beyond forecasting. Either way
may be the more dangerous for me. It is beyond knowing. But for
yourself, it seems evident that should you stay you will incur a
needless risk of the anger of the Dwellers, and must be troubled by the
additional fear that you will have disobeyed your Leaders, and may have
to face the consequences of their anger, should you escape the perils of
our present enterprise. It seems to me that your position would then be
worse even than my own, and I cannot willingly agree that you should
incur such dangers to aid me.”
“You think,” she answered, “after your own kind, and suppose a fear
which I could not feel, and a contingency which will not occur. If it be
evil that there should be discord of thought between me and my people,
is it reasonable that either side should desire to continue and perhaps
increase it, in a vain quarrel concerning what will have happened?
“Should I finally return, I shall give my reasons, and, should they be
found insufficient or otherwise, the event must be a source of wisdom
for all of us. But that must wait its time. In which direction shall we
go?”
We looked to right and left, along corridors that curved forward on
either hand, and which were more nearly of the kind that I had first
explored than was the tunnel behind us, excepting that they were
level-floored, and were not lighted in the same way.
The walls were vertical: the ceiling flat: the flooring was of the
material that looked like polished steel, and was soft to the feet, with
which I was already familiar. But in place of the dove-gray walls, and
the faint opalescence of the roof of my first experience, there was an
intermittent darkness, broken by moving fires that glowed, as it seemed,
deep within the substance of the walls, and changed, and faded, and
revived elsewhere.
It shows how dulled we had become to unfamiliar wonder, or how
concentrated our minds had been upon the new problem which had disturbed
us, that we had not observed these shifting lights when first our eyes
must have beheld them.
Now, as we gazed, the left-hand side of the leftward passage glowed with
a sudden redness not twenty yards away. The light spread, and spread,
along the glassy surface of the wall, until it had almost reached us. It
rose up till it neared the gloom of the distant roof, of which the
darkness was not pierced but was changed to a dusky red. The steel-gray
floor was stained also with a faint reflected redness. The glowing
colour showed the lofty passage before us till it curved out of view.
“Come,” she said, “while the light lasts,” and I knew that, with the
decision made, her mind had recovered all its buoyant serenity.
As we left the light, it was already fading, but others showed ahead,
and we went on in an ever-changing darkness, seldom far from some
luminosity which was sufficient to guide us on a plain and unimpeded
way.
The colours in the walls were various, not only in their kind, or in
their intensity, area, or duration, but they had an appearance of being
of varying distance from us, so that we would look at the dark wall, and
see the transient motion of some glowing splendour, as it seemed, a mile
within it, and then an interval of darkness and then a burst of light
and colour, like an open rose, that seemed to be scarcely covered by the
surface of the wall that held it.
So we went on until, in no great space of time, we came to an opening on
the left hand, wide and high as the passage in which we were, and on the
same level, but in an absolute blackness.
We were of one mind to explore it, for the thought had come to both of
us that if we continued to traverse that in which we were, we must
return to the point from which we started, should the curve continue. My
companion, whose judgment was far more accurate than my own on such
points, was definite that we had completed a quarter of the full circle
when this side-corridor was reached. So we decided; not doubting that it
would be lighted in the same manner, and foreseeing no obstacle. I have
little doubt, from our later experiences, that we were right on the
first point, as we were certainly wrong on the second, for we found at
the first step that we were confronted by the same withstanding force
that had obstructed our passage of the sleeping wood, but more instant
and urgent in its application, so that we did not attempt to hold our
ground, but fell back at the same impulse to consult whether we should
again adventure against it.
Recalling our previous decision, and our successful effort, I was
disposed to accept the challenge it gave us, but my companion differed.
She pointed out that it had then resisted the straightforward path which
we had resolved to take, but that now we should be turning aside to face
a needless difficulty, without knowing that the passage we left might
not be in every way the more direct to our purpose.
So we went on, and twice again, at similar intervals, did we come to
such a passage, and each time we attempted it for a few paces, and
recoiled from the resistance of the will that met us.
But the third time we did not accept defeat as we had done previously.
We considered that these passages had appeared at similar intervals, and