Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 Part 7

"Yes--I was watching you."

"I thought you were a boy."

"Yes. My father told me to keep away. I wanted to meet you, so I came to wake you up."

"He may be watching us now."

"No. He is sleeping. Listen--you can hear him snore."

I could, indeed. The silence of the garden was broken now by a distant, choking snore.

We both laughed. She sat on the little mossy seat in the pergola doorway And on the side away from the snore. (I had the wit to be sure of that.)

"I wanted to meet you," she repeated. "Was it too bold?"

I think that what we said sitting there with the slanting moonlight on us, could not have amounted to much. Yet for us, it was so important!

Vital. Building memories which I knew--and I think that she knew, even then--we would never forget.

"I will be here a week, Jetta."

"I want--I want very much to know you. I want you to tell me about the world of the Highlands. I have a few books. I can't read very well, but I can look at the pictures."

"Oh, I see--"

"A traveler gave them to me. I've got them hidden. But he was an old man: all men seem to be old--except those in the pictures, and you, Philip."

I laughed. "Well, that's too bad. I'm mighty glad I'm young."

Ah, in that moment, with blessed youth surging in my veins, I was glad indeed!

"Young. I don't remember ever seeing anyone like you. The man I am to marry is not like you. He is old, like father--"

I drew back from her, startled.

"Marry?"

"Yes. When I am seventeen. The law of Nareda--your Highland law, too, father says--will not let a girl be married until she is that age. In a month I am seventeen."

"Oh!" And I stammered, "But why are you going to marry?"

"Because father tells me to. And then I shall have fine clothes: it is promised me. And go to live in the Highlands, perhaps. And see things; and be a woman, not a ragged boy forbidden to show myself; and--"

I was barely touching her. It seemed as though something--some vision of happiness which had been given me--were fading, were being s.n.a.t.c.hed away. I was conscious of my hand moving to touch hers.

"Why do you marry--unless you're in love? Are you?"

Her gaze like a child came up to meet mine. "I never thought much about that. I have tried not to. It frightened me--until to-night."

She pushed me gently away. "Don't. Let's not talk of him. I'd rather not."

"But why are you dressed as a boy?"

I gazed at her slim but rounded figure in tattered boy's garb--but the woman's lines were unmistakable. And her face, with cl.u.s.tering curls.

Gentle girlhood. A face of dark, wild beauty.

"My father hates women. He says they are all bad. It is a sin to wear woman's finery; or it breeds sin in women. Let's not talk of that.

Philip, tell me--oh, if you could only realize all the things I want to know. In Great New York, there are theatres and music?"

"Yes," I said. And began telling her about them.

The witching of this moonlit garden! But the moon had presently sunk, and to the east the stars were fading.

"Philip! Look! Why, it's dawn already. I've got to leave you."

I held her just a moment by the hand.

"May I meet you here to-morrow night?" I asked.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Good night--Jetta."

"Good night. You--you've made me very happy."

She was gone, into a doorway of the opposite wing. The silent, empty garden sounded with the distant, rea.s.suring snores of the still sleeping Sp.a.w.n.

I went back to my room and lay on my bed. And drifted off on a sea of magic memories. The world--my world before this night--now seemed to have been so drab. Empty. Lifeless. But now there was pulsing, living magic in it for me.

I drifted into sleep, thinking of it.

CHAPTER IV

_The Mine in the Cauldron Depths_

I was awakened by the tinkling, buzzing call of the radio-diaphragm beneath my shirt. I had left the call open.

It was Hanley. I lay down, eyeing my window which now was illumined by the flat light of dawn.

Hanley's microscopic voice: