On the Lightship Part 16

I understand that the upper portions of the edifice are used for study of the Stars, but we were made welcome on the lower story by a stately being, who conducted us to honorable seats in an inner court. There were small trees growing here, green, of course, but rather pretty for all that; the people, gathered under their shade in little groups, were much more cheerful and sustaining than any I had seen so far, and an elemental intelligence detailed to minister to our wants seemed well-trained and docile.

"Here you have a glimpse of High Life," announced Tuck, when he had written something on a paper.

"The Higher Life?" I inquired, eagerly, and I did not like the flippant tone in which he answered:

"No, not quite--just high enough."

I was beginning to be so bored by his conceit and self-complacency that I cast my eyes about and smiled at several pleasant-looking persons, who returned the smile and nodded in a friendly fashion, till I could perceive Tuck's aura bristle and turn greenish-brown.

"You can't possibly see anyone you know here," he protested, crossly.

"All the better reason why I should reach out in search of affinities,"

I retorted. But after that, though I was careful to keep my eyes lowered most of the time, I resolved to come some day to the Astoria alone and smile at every one I liked. I don't believe I should ever know a human if Tuck could have his way.

Presently the elemental brought us delicious things, and while we ate them Tuck talked about himself. It appears he has produced an opera here which is a success. People throng to hear it and consider him a great composer. At all of which, you may believe, I was astonished--just fancy our Tuck posing as a genius!--but presently when he became elated by the theme and hummed a bar or two, I understood. The wretch had simply actualized a few essential harmonies--and done it very badly. I see now why he likes so much being here, and understand why his a.s.sociates are almost altogether human. I don't remember ever meeting with such deceit and effrontery before. I was so indignant that I could feel my astral fingers tremble. I could not bear to look at him, and as by that time I had eaten all I could, I rose and walked directly from the court without another word. I am sure he would have pursued me had not the elemental, divining my wish to escape, detained him forcibly.

Once in the street again, I immediately hypnotized an old lady, willing her to go direct to Bloomer's Boarding-House while I followed behind. It may not have been convenient for her, I am afraid, but I knew of no other way to get back.--Dear me, the light is growing dim, and I must be dressing for the evening. Good-by!--By the way, I forgot to tell you something else that happened--remind me of it next time!

THE THIRD RECORD

--Yes, I remember, and you shall hear all about it before I describe an evening at the Settlement, but it doesn't amount to much.--I told you how cross and over-bearing Tuck was at the Astoria tower, and of the mean way in which he restricted my observations. Well, of all the people in the grove that day there was only one whom I could see without being criticized, and he sat all alone and facing me, just behind Tuck's back.

Some green leaves hung between us, and whenever I moved my head to note what he was doing he moved his, too, to look at me. He seemed so lonely that I was sorry for him, but his atmosphere showed him to be neither sullen nor Uranian, and I could not help it if I was just a little bit responsive. Besides, Tuck, once on the subject of his opera, grew so self-engrossed and dominant that one had either to a.s.sert one's own mentality or become subjective.

--No, dear, that is not the _only_ reason. There may be such a thing as an isolated reason, but I have never met one--they always go in packs. I confess to a feeling of interest in the stranger. n.o.body can look at you with round blue eyes for half an hour steadily without exercising some attraction, either positive or negative, and I felt, too, that he was trying to tell me something which would have been a great deal more interesting than Tuck's opera, and I believe had I remained a little longer we could have understood each other between the trees just as you and I can understand each other across the intervals of s.p.a.ce. But then it is so easy to be mistaken.--I had to pa.s.s quite close to him in going out, and I am not sure I did not drop a rose.

--There may be just a weenie little bit more about the Astorian, but that will come in its proper place. Now I must get on to the evening.--It was not much of an occasion, merely the usual gathering of our crowd, or rather of those of us who have no special a.s.signment for the time in the large Council Room I have described to you.

The President of the Board of Control at present is Marlow, Marlow the Great, as he is called, the painter whose pictures did so much to elevate the Patagonians.--No, dear, I never heard of Patagonia before, but I'm almost sure it's not a planet.--With Marlow came a Mrs. Mopes, who is engaged in creating schools of fiction by writing stories under different names and then reviewing them in her own seven magazines.

Next, taking the guests at random, was Baxter, a deadly person in his human incarnation, whose business it is to make stocks fly up or tumble down.--I don't know what stocks are, but they must be something very easily frightened.--Then there was a Mr. Waller, nicknamed the Reverend, whom the Council allows to speak the truth occasionally, while the rest of the time he tells people anything they want to hear to win their confidence. And the two Miss Dooleys, who sing so badly that thousands who cannot sing at all leave off singing altogether when they once hear them. And Mr. Flick, who misbehaves at funerals to distract mourners from their grief, and a Mr. O'Brien, whose duty it is to fly into violent pa.s.sions in public places just to show how unbecoming temper is.

There were many others, so many I cannot begin to enumerate them. Some had written books and were known all over the planet, and some who were not known at all had done things because there was n.o.body else to do them. And some were singers and some were actors, and some were rich and some were poor to the outside world, but in the Council Room they met and laughed and matched experiences and made jokes; from the one who had built a battleship so terrible that all the other ships were burnt on condition that his should be also, to the ordinary helpers who applaud stupid plays till intelligent human beings become thoroughly disgusted with bad art.

In the world, of course, they are all serious enough, and often know each other only by secret signs, while every day and night and minute our poor earth-brothers come a little nearer the light--pushed toward it, pulled toward it, wheedled and tricked and bullied and coaxed, and thinking all the while how immensely clever they are, and what a wonderful progressive, glorious age they have brought about for themselves.--At all events, this is the rather vague composite impression I have received of the plans and purposes of the Board of Directors, and doubtless it is wrong.

I suppose with a little trouble I might have recognized nearly everyone, but the fancy took me to suspend intuition just to see how Earth girls feel, and you know when one is hearing a lot of pleasant things one does not much care who happens to be saying them.

I fancy Marlow thought less of me when I confessed that I am here only; for the lark, and really do not care a meteor whether the planet is ever elevated or not. But he is a charming old fellow all the same, and the only one of the lot who has not grown the least bit smudgy.

Marlow announced that the evening would be spent in harmony with the vibrations of Orion, and set us all at work to get in touch. I love Orion light myself, for none other suits my aura quite so well, and I was glad to find they had not taken up the Vega fad.--The light here? My dear, it is not even filtered.--Some of us, no doubt for want of practice, were rather slow about perfecting, but finally we all caught on, and when O'Brien, no longer fat and florid, and the elder Miss Dooley, no longer scrawny, moved out to start the dance, there was only one who had not a.s.sumed an astral personality. Poor fellow, though I pitied him, I did admire his s.p.u.n.k in holding back. It seems that as an editor he took to telling falsehoods on his own account so often that the Syndicate is packing him off as Special Correspondent to a tailless comet.

Tuck never came at all; either he realizes how honest people must regard him and his opera, or else the elementals at the Astoria are still detaining him.

We had a lovely dance, and while we rested Marlow called on some of us for specialties. Mrs. Mopes did a paragraph by a man named Henry James, translated into action, which seemed quite difficult, and then a person called Parker externalized a violin and gave the Laoc.o.o.n in terms of sound. To me his rendering of marble resembled terra-cotta until I learned that the copy of the statue here is awfully weather-stained.

After this three pretty girls gave the Aurora Borealis by telepathic suggestion rather well, and then I sang "Love Lives Everywhere"--just plain song.

--I know this must all sound dreadfully flat to you, quite like "Pastimes for the Rainy Season in Neptune," but Bloomer says she doesn't know what would happen if we should ever give a really characteristic jolly party.

We wound up with an Earth dance called the Virginia Reel, the quickest means you ever saw for descending to a lower psychic plane. That's all I have to tell, and quite enough, I'm sure you'll think.--What? The Astorian? I have not seen him since.--But there is a little more, a very little, if you are not tired.--This morning I received a gift of roses, just like the one I dropped yesterday, brought me by the same small embryonic I had seen in the flower shop. I asked the child in whose intelligence the impulse had originated, and he replied:

"A blue-eyed feller with a mustache, but he gave me a plunk not to tell."

I understood a plunk to be a token of confidence, and I at once expressed displeasure at the boy's betrayal of his trust. I told him such an act would make dark lines upon his aura which might not fade for several days.

"Say, ain't you got some message to send back?" he asked.

"Boy!" said I, "don't forget your little aura."

"All right," he answered, "I'll tell him 'Don't forget your little Aura.' I'll bet he coughs up another plunk."

I don't know what he meant, but I am very much afraid there may be some mistake.--Oh, yes, I am quite sure to be back in time for the Solstice.--Or at least for the Eclipse.

THE FOURTH RECORD

(NOTE.--Between this logogram and the last the Long's Peak Receptive Pulsator was unfortunately not in operation for the s.p.a.ce of a fortnight, as the electrician who took the instrument apart for adjustment found it necessary to return to Denver for oil.)

--Yes, dear, it's me, though if I did not know personality to be indestructible I should begin to have my doubts. I have not made any more mistakes, that is, not any bad ones, since I went to the Astoria alone for lunch, and the elementals were so very disagreeable just because I had no money. I know all about money now, except exactly how you get it, and Tuck a.s.sures me that is really of no importance. I never told Ooma how the blue-eyed Astorian paid my bill for me, and her perceptive faculties have grown too dull to apprehend a thing she is not told. Fresh roses still come regularly every day, and of course I can do no less than express my grat.i.tude now and then.--Oh, I don't know how often, I don't remember.--But it is ever so much pleasanter to have some one you like to show you the way about than to depend on hypnotizing strangers, who may have something else to do.

--I told you last week about the picnic, did I not? The day, I mean, when Bloomer took me into the country, and Tuck so far forgave my rudeness to him as to come with us to carry the basket.--Oh, yes, indeed, I am becoming thoroughly domesticated on Earth. And, my dear, these humans are docility itself when you once acquire the knack of making them do exactly as you wish, which is as easy as falling off a log.--A _log_ is the external evidence of a pre-existent tree, cylindrical in form, and though often sticky, not sufficiently so to be adhesive.

--That picnic was so pleasant--or would have been but for Bloomer's anxiety that I should behave myself, and Tuck's anxiety that I should not--that I determined to have another all by myself--and I have had it.

I traveled to the same little dell I described before, and I put my feet in the water just as I wasn't allowed to do the other day. And I built a fire and almost cooked an egg and ate cake (an egg is the bud of a bird, and cake is edible poetry) sitting on a fence.--Fences grow horizontally and have no leaves.--Don't ask so many questions!

After a while, however, I became tired of being alone, so I started off across some beautiful green meadows toward a hillside, where I had observed a human walking about and waving a forked wand. He proved the strangest-looking being I have met with yet, more like those wild and woolly s.p.a.ce-dwellers who tumbled out when that tramp comet b.u.mped against our second moon. But he was a considerate person, for when he saw me coming and divined that I should be tired, he piled up a quant.i.ty of delicious-scented herbage for me to sit on.

"Good-morning, mister," I said, plumping myself down upon the mound he had made, and he, being much more impressionable than you would suppose from his Uranian appearance, replied.

"I swan, I like your cheek."

"It's a pleasant day," I said, because one is always expected to announce some result of observation of the atmosphere. It shows at once whether or not one is an idiot.

"I call it pretty danged hot," he returned, intelligently.

"Then why don't you get out of the sun?" I suggested, more to keep the conversation fluid than because I cared a bit.

"I'm a-goin' to," he answered, "just as soon as that goll-darned wagon comes." (A "goll-darned" wagon is, I think, a wagon without springs.)

"What are you going to do then?" I asked, beginning to fear I should be left alone again after all my trouble.

"Goin' home to dinner," he replied, and I at once said I would go with him.--You see, I had placed a little too much reliance on the egg.

"I dunno about that, but I guess it will be all right," he urged, hospitably, and presently the goll-darned wagon arrived with another man, who turned out to be the first one's son and who looked as though he bit.

Together the two threw all the herbage into the wagon till it was heaped far above their heads.

"How am I ever to get up?" I asked, for I had no idea of walking any farther, and I could see the man's white house ever so far away.