GIFT OF 
 
THEY WENT 
 
THEY WENT 
 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN DOUGLAS 
 
 Author of "Old Calabria," 
 "South Wind," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1921 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INO, 
 
 V * i . * 
 
 ''\TL/^:''' '' 
 
 VAIU-BALLOU COMPANY 
 BINCHAMTON AND NEW YORK 
 
TO HIS FRIEND 
 WILLIAM ARKWRIGHT 
 
 M126521 
 
THEY WENT 
 
THEY WENT 
 
 PAET I 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 YOU could hear the waves moaning, out 
 yonder. 
 There was no escaping from the sea. 
 It hung like a menace, they sometimes said, over 
 the low-lying city. Day and night that pungent 
 salty odour invaded the town; for the ocean 
 entered up a short river-channel into its very 
 
 heart, the docks; and billows dashed lustily 
 against the huge embankment or sea-wall which, 
 at this hour of the afternoon, would have been 
 crowded with folk but for those gusts of rain 
 that kept them indoors. A warm summer rain, 
 interspersed with flashes of merry sunshine. 
 Green things were sprouting on the plain; the 
 mountains, further back, had veiled themselves 
 in mists. Here, in the streets, moisture fell in 
 glad cataracts upon the pavements and spurted 
 up again, buffeted by the wind, against the gran- 
 ite shop-fagades or those polished marble fronts 
 of the nobler palaces that shone like mirrors with 
 
 the wetness. 
 
 i 
 
WENT 
 
 And a rainbow hung in the sky, an ordinary 
 one. Nobody paid much attention. It was " a 
 rainbowish sort of place/' as the old king was 
 often heard to remark. 
 
 Such were the splashings and drippings, and 
 such the din he made himself with his imple- 
 ments, that old Lelian, working with his back 
 to the half-opened door, kept on thinking him- 
 self quite alone. He was a cheery, muscular 
 mortal who knew his craft and had made fine 
 weapons in his day ; it was not for nothing that 
 he bore the title of Court-armourer. Who 
 wanted armour nowadays? They lay about in 
 corners, the old shields and swords and helmets 
 cunningly wrought with his own hand; there 
 they lay, a pitiful collection, rusting and forgot- 
 ten. Often he looked at them, and shook his 
 head dubiously. 
 
 He wore sandals and breeches of leather; his 
 gaiters were fastened with coloured straps. 
 There was a ring of copper in one of his ears, 
 and his bare arms, issuing out of that sleeveless 
 tunic, were encircled with bracelets of the same 
 metal common copper ! His mouth was al- 
 most hidden under a drooping grey moustache; 
 grey, too, was the long hair that tumbled from 
 either side of his head, whose summit was 
 cropped close, after the fashion of bygone days. 
 All of which proved him to belong to that older 
 
THEY WENT 3 
 
 generation, a generation of warriors. There 
 were not many of them left now. They used to 
 fight, in his time. They went to battle crowned 
 with garlands, as to a feast ; often enlarged their 
 wounds purposely ; always preferred death to dis- 
 honour. Those days were over. Nobody talked 
 about fighting any more. It was an era of 
 peace, of splendour and luxury, and wrong- 
 doing. Those fountains and coloured marbles; 
 the gold, the jewels, the steaming vapour-baths 
 and colonnades and pleasure-houses and dancing- 
 booths and and worse! All those tawny- 
 skinned merchants from foreign countries, clad 
 in glittering robes where would it end? No- 
 body, of course, could help liking the young prin- 
 cess who fostered these growths. Nobody could 
 refuse her anything. Yet Lelian, like everybody 
 else, had heard queer tales about her. 
 
 He shook his head more dubiously than ever, 
 and pondered awhile. 
 
 Queer tales ! If only her parents had seen fit 
 to bring her up more strictly to send her, for 
 instance, to that far-famed college on the Sacred 
 Rock 
 
 At this point of his meditations, he grew sud- 
 denly aware of a strange feeling. He was no 
 longer alone. Eyes were gazing upon him from 
 the doorway at his back. And before he had 
 time to turn round, he heard the words ; 
 
4 THEY WENT 
 
 " Make me a mask, my good Lelian. A mask 
 of copper. And greeting/' 
 
 It was the young lady herself. Wet with the 
 shower, she laughingly wrung out the drops from 
 the thick-clustering hair which fell in a ruddy 
 torrent over her shoulders. Her mantle of green 
 was clasped by a belt at the waist; breast and 
 arms were ablaze with precious stones, the envy 
 of other women. No man ever saw them. She 
 might wear what clothing or jewels she liked: 
 they only saw her face. Or if by chance their 
 eye lingered on such outward things, it was only 
 to divine the shapely curves of her limbs under- 
 neath. She had been standing at the door unper- 
 ceived for a short time, wondering what to say 
 and how to say it. As usual, she had gone 
 straight to the point. 
 
 There was nothing uncommon in the princess, 
 thus unattended, entering the shop of an artizan 
 or trader. It was a jovial, democratic place. 
 The royal family the two parents and their 
 only child were vastly popular, and the young 
 lady herself, when she pleased, was more demo- 
 cratic than any one else and moreover, though 
 only nineteen years of age nineteen years, or 
 perhaps a little more perfectly capable of tak- 
 ing care of herself. She was on familiar terms 
 with many merchants; in the case of a goodly 
 number of them, it was at her own request that 
 
THEY WENT 5 
 
 they had left their distant homes in South or 
 East and settled down here to do business. As 
 to old Lelian, she often consulted him about 
 metals and enamels, for she was passionately 
 fond of such things and had a workshop of her 
 own in her tower. Not long ago, out of sheer 
 caprice, she had even persuaded him to become a 
 member of the Goldsmiths' Guild, a collection 
 of foreign craftsmen who could poise an emerald 
 in a ring as though it hung in water and tease 
 the ductile gold into filagree work finer than a 
 spider's web men with whose aspirations he 
 had nothing in common, and whose womanly 
 delicacy of touch he neither wished nor tried to 
 rival. Yet he yielded; who could refuse the 
 princess anything? Had he not watched her 
 growth with a kind of scared joy, and fashioned 
 brooches and bracelets for her, in sport, when she 
 was still a little child? She always loved things 
 of price and beauty, though now, with growing 
 years, her tastes had expanded; no longer con- 
 tent to frolic with metals, she worked her will 
 upon men and houses and streets. The city had 
 become her plaything. 
 
 Often she came to see the armourer. She 
 liked him, above all, because he could hold his 
 tongue. The princess, like everybody else, had 
 a reputation to keep up. 
 
 " A mask," the old man began, hesitatingly. 
 
6 THEY WENT 
 
 What kind of mask, he wondered. For what 
 purpose? He moved his implements about with 
 an undecided gesture and then, suddenly mindful 
 of his duty, drew up that square stool of oaken 
 timber upon which the young lady had often 
 rested. She remained standing. She seemed to 
 be in a hurry. 
 
 " Like this," she explained once more, going 
 into its construction and mechanism. "And 
 with a screw at the back, like this you fol- 
 low?" 
 
 The armourer nodded thoughtfully. 
 
 " It can be made, my lady. And shall be 
 made. But " 
 
 " Oh, for fun." 
 
 Her notions of fun were not those of every- 
 body ; they were almost peculiar to herself. This 
 mask, for example it was quite an original 
 idea of hers. She was tired of poisons. 
 
 " Nothing easier, my lady," he began again. 
 " But, I was going to say, a screw of that kind, 
 if incautiously pressed, might hurt or even suf- 
 focate the wearer." 
 
 It is possible, though not likely, that she would 
 have answered, " that is precisely what I want 
 it for " : she stopped short in time. The door 
 opened wide and, together with a gust of warm 
 wind, a young boy entered the room. This was 
 Harre", aged about twelve, a sturdy imp who had 
 
THEY WENT 7 
 
 been bred among the remote and fierce tribe of 
 the Alloquisti. Nearly everybody disliked 
 Harre" save the princess, who had discovered him 
 in a curious manner and now found him useful 
 for household purposes. He was clothed at that 
 moment in a deerskin, and the rainwater ran 
 down his bare legs. What added considerably to 
 his picturesque appearance was the fact that he 
 was painted blue; blue from head to foot; blue 
 of a bright celestial tint, extracted from a cer- 
 tain variety of the colour-producing plant which 
 was found only in that distant territory. Like 
 the rest of his savage race, he wore a deerskin on 
 those rare occasions when he wore anything at 
 all; a garment which in his ca'se was made to 
 hold together across the shoulders by means of a 
 bow-shaped fibula of electron designed by the 
 princess herself; the thing looked well, and was 
 one of her earliest attempts in that composition. 
 
 He promptly unclasped it and, fumbling under- 
 neath, produced a package of some brown mate- 
 rial held together by a hempen cord. It gave 
 forth, on being opened, a shawl of finest texture, 
 an exquisite product that came from far, far 
 away from the regions known as the Koof of 
 the World. Some man of the East, some slender 
 and dusky princeling, had once laid it, together 
 with other gifts, at the queen's feet. 
 
 " Your mother sends this," he said. " She 
 
8 THEY WENT 
 
 fears you may get wet. She implores and com- 
 mands you to put it on. She also begs you " 
 
 " How did she know I was here? " 
 
 "I told her. I guessed it. I saw you go in 
 this direction." 
 
 To look at the young lady's face, nobody could 
 have divined at that moment how angry she was. 
 She went on, quite kindly: 
 
 " What more, my child? " 
 
 " She begs you to appear at the palace tonight. 
 There will be something of a feast. A wealthy 
 Greek merchant is arriving: I forget his name. 
 Yes, Theophilus! And also a new Christian 
 preacher." 
 
 " What, another one? " 
 
 " His ship is already sighted from the North- 
 West. And the quite-too-chaste-and-venerable 
 Mother Manthis has sailed across and will doubt- 
 less be there. I think your mother fears there 
 may be some dispute between her and the Chris- 
 tian. She always fears such little things." 
 
 " Bother that druidess," said the young lady, 
 who had other plans for the evening. 
 
 Harr6 always named the person in question by 
 her full title and with the deepest respect, ever 
 since one memorable occasion when the old lady 
 had proved to him that she, at all events, was 
 not to be trifled with. Manthis, the arch- 
 druidess, tolerated no nonsense, least of all from 
 
THEY WENT 9 
 
 what she called " mere males." She kept a kind 
 of college or seminary for young girls on the 
 Sacred Rock, the largest of a group of islands 
 which rose out of the sea a couple of miles off. 
 As a member of the highest aristocracy of the 
 land, and also in virtue of her sacerdotal and 
 political character, she put in an appearance at 
 court as often as she could ; as often, that is, as 
 she could spare time from her pupils. The girls 
 were uppermost in her mind; all else was sub- 
 ordinate to their welfare. She worked for them, 
 and them alone, out on that island. Not that 
 there was lack of evil-speaking in the town, even 
 in regard to so austere and transparently upright 
 a personality as Manthis. Men whispered that 
 she used to live on the borders of her little lake 
 in the character of a Groac'h or wicked fairy, 
 entrapping young men to her underground pal- 
 ace by means of a boat shaped like a sleeping 
 swan, and there transmuting them into fishes or 
 frogs for mysterious purposes of her own. 
 Others, equally ignorant or malicious, claimed 
 that she was the last survivor of a company of 
 nine abandoned women who, vowed (as they 
 said) to perpetual virginity, dwelt on that sea- 
 girt rock under the pretence of worshipping the 
 chaste moon; terrified sailormen had seen them, 
 each clad in a single garment, dancing nocturnal 
 rounds on the lonely beach or sailing landward 
 
10 THEY WENT 
 
 under the stars to meet their lovers. Whoever 
 set eyes on Manthis might well marvel how such 
 tales could ever have arisen. 
 
 The princess was not thinking of those legends 
 just then. She was thinking of herself. She 
 seldom thought of anything else. " That ex- 
 plains/' she mused, " why they want me at the 
 palace tonight." 
 
 The queen was always anxious to avoid trouble 
 and discussions; she hated what she called 
 " scenes/' especially at court. It was so easy, 
 she declared, to demean oneself in friendly wise 
 with everybody ! Perhaps she foresaw that there 
 might be words between the druidess and this 
 new Christian preacher, as in the case of his 
 predecessor. Manthis could doubtless be trusted 
 to do the right thing in every emergency; she 
 could keep her temper like any other high-born 
 lady. And all would have gone smoothly on 
 the first occasion but for that particular Chris- 
 tian missionary the only one, up till then, that 
 had ever set foot in the town who turned out 
 to be such a violent venerable that things had 
 ended, between himself on the one side, and the 
 druidess and court and citizens on the other, in 
 a complete misunderstanding. A complete mis- 
 understanding ! Which was a pity, for the 
 townsfolk, as well as the royal family, were noth- 
 ing if not well-disposed towards strangers. 
 
THEY WENT 11 
 
 " Scenes " of this kind, the queen decided, must 
 never occur again ; apart from all other reasons, 
 they were bad for the old king's health. And 
 hitherto they had been successfully avoided. 
 Such was the tact and innate kindliness of the 
 royal couple that no scandal ever occurred since 
 the days of that first Christian " peace at any 
 price " had become the watchword of the entire 
 court. 
 
 This, then, was the reason why the queen was 
 anxious for her daughter to appear that even- 
 ing. And also to enliven the assembly in gen- 
 eral. For life at the palace was dull, and it was 
 observed that whenever the princess showed her- 
 self and came away from her beloved tower 
 which was fairly often, seeing that, like a good 
 girl, she always gratified her parents when she 
 could spare time from her own occupations 
 there was more laughter and joy than usual in 
 that rather formal gathering. 
 
 " Go and wait outside the door," she now said 
 to Harre*. "And here! Take this dreadful 
 woollen contrivance with you. Fancy asking me 
 to wear it ! What next? " 
 
 She presently followed him, after a few final 
 words with the armourer about her new toy. 
 They stepped together into the street and soon 
 reached an open space with arches running 
 round it, and fountains and flower beds in the 
 
12 THEY WENT 
 
 centre it lay beside the harbour where count- 
 less ships were moored, one beside the other, in 
 the still green waters. The shower had ceased; 
 a gleam of evening sunshine was breaking 
 through the clouds. 
 
 The princess enquired : 
 
 " Did you hear, as you entered, what I was 
 saying about the brooch? " 
 
 " In that wind and rain? How could I hear 
 anything? " 
 
 " Now listen, Harre. Why did you tell my 
 mother where I was, since I have forbidden you 
 to do so? Why? Look at me." 
 
 She glanced so strangely into his eyes that he 
 began to tremble all over. It was not the first 
 time she had looked at him like this, and under 
 that scorching fire all his impudence seemed to 
 wither away. 
 
 " Why? " she persisted. 
 
 " I forgot. I also thought you would like 
 something to protect you from the wet." 
 
 She was wearing a necklace that hung loosely 
 over her bosom, a necklace of male carbuncles; 
 they glowed with a crimson light and were set 
 in massive gold. Now she raised her arms and 
 detached its clasp beneath the thick hair that 
 streamed down her back. Then, taking the jewel 
 in her hand, she began to count the stones along 
 one side. At the eleventh she paused, and 
 
THEY WENT 13 
 
 rubbed away the moisture on its surface. Lay- 
 ing her hand on the boy's shoulder, she said in 
 gentle fashion : 
 
 "You know something about pigs, don't you, 
 Harr6? " 
 
 ' Don't I? " he replied, his heart swelling with 
 Alloquistian pride. " Our pigs are the finest in 
 the world. They are so big and strong and fleet 
 of foot that no stranger can approach them, and 
 if " 
 
 " I thought so. Now look through that stone, 
 and tell me what you see. Hold it before your 
 eye. Close the other eye. Look into the sun." 
 
 He did so. 
 
 " All red," he replied. " Like blood." 
 
 " Look again. What do you see? " 
 
 " I see ah, how strange ! I see a little pig. 
 It is tied to a stake by one leg, and a man is 
 beating it with a crooked stick. It cries all the 
 time. I can hear it." 
 
 " Look more carefully. What else? " 
 
 Harr6 hesitated long before replying. At last 
 he said : 
 
 " I see nothing more. It is always tied to that 
 stake, and always being beaten, and always cry- 
 ing. The poor little pig! It cries very badly." 
 
 " That is what I shall do to you, Harre". I 
 shall turn you into a little pig like that one, and 
 lock you up in a stone like this one " 
 
I 
 14 THEY WENT 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Yes. But I shall not wear you round my 
 neck. I shall take you in a boat a three months' 
 sail beyond the Sacred Rock, and drop you to 
 the bottom of the sea. There you will lie deep 
 down, all alone among the weeds, always tied up 
 and always crying " 
 
 " Oh ! 
 
 " And always being beaten with a crooked 
 stick, if if ever you disobey me again," she 
 added in a more kindly tone of voice. " Now 
 look at me." 
 
 He looked, and saw that her wrath had fled. 
 The horror of the vision endured. He knew that 
 she could keep her word, and would. She was 
 well capable of such a deed, if only for fun. 
 There was no doubt whatever that the princess, 
 for all her youth, had drunk of the water of 
 Entri and was already a magician. Nobody but 
 she, thought Harre", could have talked over those 
 dwarfs and made them do her bidding. That 
 alone proved her power. 
 
 Then, remembering the dwarfs, he began to 
 smile once more. What a trick he played them ! 
 And how well everything had turned out! For 
 it was better, assuredly, serving this beautiful 
 lady than guarding swine with the Alloquisti, 
 among the damp woods and bracken and stand- 
 ing stones, and being beaten by a stern blue 
 
THEY WENT 15 
 
 father and a stern blue mother every single day 
 of his life. 
 
 Meanwhile they moved forth again along the 
 quays towards the great sea-wall or embankment 
 whereon stood the tower of the young lady, 
 Harr6 walking respectfully behind his mistress, 
 with the bundle underneath his deerskin. The 
 sun shone ; tall buildings still trickled with mois- 
 ture; it sped gleefully down the gutters and 
 found its way at last into the Great Drain that 
 masterpiece of engineering which had cost its 
 famous Roman builder, Ormidius Limpidus, 
 much anxious thought. It ran far out to sea, 
 close beneath the lady's tower, and some said 
 there was a secret stairway from her apartments 
 right down to its sullen black waters. Nobody 
 knew the truth of this, and the Great Drain it- 
 self told no tales. 
 
 And now they had climbed the embankment 
 against whose granite foundations the tide was 
 ramping and raging. 
 
 " Your lady mother will be sitting out yonder," 
 said Harre". 
 
 " Likely enough. And doing her embroidery. 
 And singing that venerable song. Poor old 
 thing! She never changes." 
 
 The sky was full of wetness and joy, and 
 streaked with gold like a lion's mane. Of such a 
 hue, like a flaming wisp torn down from the 
 
16 THEY WENT 
 
 glory of sunset, was the lady's hair; one would 
 have called it red, but for the fact that she hap- 
 pened to be a princess. It was a prodigy, this 
 hair, for that of all the other citizens was black 
 or brown by nature, though some ladies tried to 
 imitate her ruddy tint by means of soap made 
 from tallow and the ashes of a certain tree. And 
 her eyes were green ; green as moss, or as those 
 tangled ribbons of emerald that sway mirthfully 
 among their dun companions in the water of 
 rocky sea-clefts. There was something of the 
 untamed beauty of the ocean in her look and 
 carriage; something of the wildness of Aithryn 
 whom the countryfolk in their simplicity, believ- 
 ing everything distant or unknown to be mira- 
 culous, held to be a legendary sea-god. 
 
 For nobody in the town had ever beheld the 
 Aithryn of flesh and blood, that rather stupid 
 man Aithryn the menace, the predestined de- 
 stroyer; nobody save the queen, and that was 
 nineteen years ago nineteen years, or perhaps 
 a little more. 
 
 She, poor old thing, had taken him for a 
 friend ; for somewhat more than a friend. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IT was the business of Ando, the court pro- 
 phet, to " keep it up," that is to say, to pre- 
 vent the conversation at palace entertain- 
 ments from flagging, as it sometimes did. When 
 sufficiently sober, as he sometimes was, he might 
 be heard to descant on this wise: 
 
 " We have seen it in the land of the Chauci 
 " and there he generally paused, to gain at- 
 tention. 
 
 "What have we seen?" one of the guests 
 would ask, more out of politeness than for any 
 other reason. Ando's stories were fairly well 
 known; that of the Chauci in particular. He 
 was going to say something to flatter the king, 
 the founder of the city; something about that 
 stone embankment which he had built. 
 
 " How, from the dawn of time, there has been 
 sullen rivalry between land and water. They 
 are always stealing marches on one another. 
 The sea strives by force or guile to encroach 
 upon the earth; it engulfs whole cities beneath 
 the waves, and secretly, in days of summer calm, 
 gnaws away the foundations of headlands and 
 islets. They crash asunder, toppling down in 
 
 17 
 
18 THEY WENT 
 
 wintry gales, and water gleams where rock once 
 stood. Elsewhere the land thrusts forth prom- 
 ontories and spits, stealthily driving back 
 the sea from its old haunts. Then came man 
 " Here he would pause again. 
 
 " What of it? " the civil guest would ask. 
 
 " Man took sides with earth. He embittered 
 the strife. Long ago he went in simple-minded 
 hordes, armed to the teeth, to fight the tides 
 which threatened to roll over his fields; soon he 
 constructed ships that mocked the storms; he 
 built dykes and stole unnumbered leagues of 
 old ocean-meadows like those of the Chauci 
 which happen to be still unreclaimed; he drove 
 piles into the waves, planting towns and pleas- 
 ure-houses over their very heads. So the war- 
 fare proceeds. Like two bad neighbours, they 
 continue to shift one another's boundary-marks, 
 and the issue remains ever undecided. What 
 land gains here and today, the sea will snatch 
 yonder and tomorrow. But <" 
 
 "What of it?" 
 
 " With us, my friends, the case is different. 
 We are not Chauci, at the mercy of the floods. 
 Our sea is driven out for ever and ever. Granite 
 endures." 
 
 " Ah, that embankment ! You are eloquent to- 
 night, Ando." 
 
 "Eloquence and bravery: these be the two 
 
THEY WENT 19 
 
 gifts of our race. Eloquence is mine; bravery, 
 the king's." 
 
 " Enough, Ando, enough ! " the ancient mon- 
 arch (himself not remarkable for sobriety) 
 would often interpose on such occasions. 
 " Enough ! It is lucky you are generally too 
 drunk to be eloquent. Come, let us have an- 
 other game of chess. That will make you brave 
 and warlike for a change." 
 
 Manthis, the arch-druidess, called Ando an 
 untruthful parasite, who sacrificed everything 
 to his belly. She had not the slightest faith in 
 that embankment; it was one of several reasons 
 why she had moved her girls away from the 
 town, out of harm's way, to the Sacred Rock. 
 She had read the city's Awenn, or fate. It was 
 doomed. A certain section of the populace 
 known as " old believers " the armourer Lelian 
 was one of them agreed with her. They had 
 ceased to trust the embankment; they saw dan- 
 ger ahead ever since the death of that violent 
 venerable, the first Christian missionary, who 
 predicted ruin to the town in certain ominous 
 words about " retribution from the sea." 
 
 Meanwhile, it stood firm. . . . 
 
 The wide plain on whose furthermost and 
 westerly projection the city lay had all been 
 filched from the sea, inch by inch, in times of 
 yore, The waves used to lap against the very 
 
20 THEY WENT 
 
 hill-sides; now they broke five miles out, or 
 thereabouts. Those many streamlets descending 
 from the heights had brought down, in the lapse 
 of ages, their silt and sand and stones, driving 
 the ocean back from its old shore. So things 
 stood, ere yet the king had laid the foundations 
 of his new capital. If in those days you looked 
 from the heights toward the setting sun, you be- 
 held a marshy level intersected by sluggish rivu- 
 lets that crawled in wayward fashion about its 
 surface; tidal creeks, rising and falling mysteri- 
 ously as the sea, out yonder, drove its vital flood 
 into them or coaxed it back again. It was an 
 inhospitable tract, bearing nothing but grey 
 sedges and clumps of dismal tamarisk that 
 leaned landward and whistled sharply in the 
 wind. Ghostly sea-mists scurried across; a 
 mournful wail of curlew might be heard, and 
 the heron would flap its wings disconsolately 
 over the muddy expanse. No men dwelt here. 
 The soil was too poor. Moreover, at certain in- 
 tervals, when tides were unusually high and 
 westerly gales blowing their fiercest, the ocean, 
 as if resentful of this ancient insult, would re- 
 assert its right over the land. Then you might 
 see water invade the reed-beds, creeping about 
 stealthily till the whole plain was covered with a 
 lustrous coating like glass; soon the surface 
 would change into a weltering mass of billows 
 
THEY WENT 21 
 
 white-crested waves, rolling one over the other 
 and galloping in frantic glee against that old 
 hill-barrier of theirs. 
 
 " The horses of Aithryn," the countrymen 
 would then say, taking them to be the white 
 manes of the coursers of some sea-god that strove 
 to regain possession of his former domain, of 
 that land which had once been his. " Aithryn is 
 jealous," they would add. " He wants his own 
 back." 
 
 Ignorant folks, ready to believe anything! 
 They fabled of Aithryn's palace beneath the 
 waves, with columns of glowing amethyst and 
 beryl; they told of his minstrels, his wives, his 
 banquets; everything down there was much the 
 same as on earth, only fairer far fairer. . . . 
 
 Up to that time the king had dwelt in his 
 old town near the foot of the hills there, 
 where the largest of those rivulets emerged upon 
 the plain. He had constructed something of a 
 port; small, flat-bottomed craft used to crawl 
 up stream, their brown sails fluttering in the 
 breeze or, on days of calm, drawn by horses 
 that tugged them labouriously along the wind- 
 ing banks to that humble quay where the cargo, 
 such as it was, used to be discharged. That was 
 ended, now. Those days were gone and past. 
 The old town stood deserted, its houses over- 
 grown with ivy and bramble, its gardens merg- 
 
22 THEY WENT 
 
 ing into the woodland at their back woodland 
 through whose glades you could wander, a three 
 hours' march and ever up-hill, into the sacred 
 druidical forest. Then, however and that was 
 long ago, the king being in his fortieth year at 
 the time and the young princess not yet born 
 then it was the capital of a formidable realm. 
 For the monarch had been nothing if not a war- 
 rior. 
 
 In his fortieth year he grew tired of fighting; 
 tired, even, of hunting. His thoughts turned 
 towards the arts of peace. He would devote 
 himself henceforth to commerce and administra- 
 tion. How make his loving subjects wealthier 
 and happier? The land was not deficient in 
 riches; there were mines of copper and silver 
 and salt, but what, he often asked himself, 
 what was the use of these minerals? They 
 could not be exported to other countries in any 
 reasonable quantity owing to lack of means, of 
 transport and communications. There they lay 
 mere stones ! " I cannot feed my people on 
 stones," he often said. A harbour! He needed 
 a harbour. 
 
 It was about this period that news was brought 
 to court of a stupendous sea-wall erected by the 
 ruler of the Berovingians ; of the harbour which 
 had sprung up in its shelter, of the ships that 
 now called there, leaving a train of prosperity 
 
THEY WENT 23 
 
 in their rear. He made enquiries among the 
 few merchants who then frequented his capital, 
 and learnt that this building of embankments 
 was considered a fashionable occupation for 
 royal personages ; structures of such a kind were 
 then rising up in every part of the world, the 
 wisdom of their builders being immortalized by 
 bards and handed down in chronicles to posterity 
 without end. This gave him food for medita- 
 tion. It struck him that he would like to do 
 something of the same kind. Like all sensible 
 men, he had no objection to becoming, as it were, 
 immortal. 
 
 " I have it," he said one day. 
 
 Often had he looked down from his palace 
 upon the broad and ugly level of swamp; often 
 had he seen that bleak spit of land thrust into 
 the waves, five miles yonder, by the central and 
 largest of its streamlets. 
 
 " The place for a port ! " he cried. 
 
 It would be warfare, too! warfare of the kind 
 he liked best into the enemy's country, into 
 the realm of that domineering sea which on oc- 
 casion was wont to gallop with impunity up to 
 the very walls of this city. His terrestrial ad- 
 versaries had all yielded to his arm. Now the 
 sea should yield. 
 
 He mentioned the matter to his counsellors, 
 having, like all sensible men, no objection to 
 
24 THEY WENT 
 
 hearing advice, provided he could always do as 
 he liked afterwards. Whatever arguments may 
 have been employed, they agreed upon one point : 
 that the druids must first be consulted. 
 
 " By all means,' ' he replied. " Who would 
 dream of acting otherwise? " 
 
 They dispatched an embassy which returned in 
 due course, bearing a response to this effect: 
 Devour not salt with stones. 
 
 " That settles it," remarked the monarch joy- 
 fully, before anybody else had time to think what 
 the druids meant by those dark words. " That 
 settles it! What have I often said? My poor 
 people have nothing but salt and stones to eat. 
 This state of affairs cannot be allowed to con- 
 tine. You hear, now, what the Enlightened Ones 
 have commanded: devour not salt with stones. 
 Our miserable inland life must end. It seems to 
 me, friends, that all my previous exploits in 
 peace and war shall count as nothing in com- 
 parison with this new one. Let me be assured 
 of your hearty co-operation, and woe betide him 
 who endeavours to thwart our wishes! If we 
 cannot create an heir to the throne, (it was the 
 bitterest disappointment of his life that his mar- 
 ried union had hitherto not been blessed with 
 children) we can at least create a harbour, which, 
 as you will presently find out, is a great deal 
 
THEY WENT 25 
 
 better than nothing. We can; and will. So 
 help us, Belen." 
 
 As though to drive away the last shred of 
 doubt which may have lingered in the sovereign's 
 mind regarding the advisability of his enter- 
 prise, he was visited, while he lay that night in 
 sleep, by a strange and lovely omen. A pink 
 porpoise came flying into the window of his 
 chamber and, after whirling silently round the 
 room three or four times, sat down on the pillow 
 beside his head and began to laugh immoderately. 
 
 " What are you a king for? " it seemed to say. 
 
 He started up in blackest midnight with that 
 laughter still ringing in his ears. 
 
 What am I a king for? he wondered. Now: 
 what on earth does it mean? I give it up! 
 
 The queen was slumbering at his side. He 
 nudged her gently. 
 
 " Leave me alone," she said in that peculiar 
 voice, dead level and almost a whisper, which 
 he had often heard her use on such occasions of 
 nocturnal interruption. " Leave me alone. I 
 am asleep. Don't wake me. In the morn- 
 ing 
 
 " Won't I wake you? This is very important, 
 my dear, and not what you think." He began 
 to pull her hair with needless violence. " Tell 
 me, what am I a king for? " 
 
26 THEY WENT 
 
 "Why, to do what you please. Only let me 
 sleep again. I want to finish that pleasant 
 dream. Where was I? Ah, I shall never catch 
 it again " 
 
 " To do what I please. It is exactly what 
 I thought. The porpoise how it laughed! 
 Wake up. Perhaps it will laugh again. Wake 
 up; I like to converse. Are we never going to 
 have an heir to the throne? " 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 " In the morning. Always in the morning. 
 And this is what one calls a wife. Something 
 will have to be done about it. Well, well ! The 
 embankment shall make amends for your de- 
 ficiencies as spouse and mother. We purpose to 
 begin preparations without delay. We can ; and 
 will. So help us, Belen." 
 
 " In the morning. . . ." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WORKERS were required for that great 
 undertaking slaves; an army of 
 slaves. Preparations for a man-hunt 
 on a larger scale than usual were begun and 
 ended ; the cavalry had been completely reorgan- 
 ized; those savage dogs of wolfish strain, each 
 pack obedient to its own leader, were trained to 
 the uttermost of their strength ; old Lelian too 
 young Lelian, as he then was had invented 
 some wondrous new weapons for the occasion. 
 So they left the town, and never did the sov- 
 ereign's military talent shine forth with brighter 
 effulgence. 
 
 He led his troops first against the more im- 
 mediate neighbours, capturing, from one, seven 
 hundred men or thereabouts ; from another, four 
 hundred and thirty, together with over a thou- 
 sand women and children who had imprudently 
 been left exposed and were soon exchanged for 
 two hundred lusty men ; among the Brambigones, 
 further afield, he succeeded in taking, besides a 
 number of warriors, the king's own daughter, 
 an elderly girl who was ransomed for half a 
 thousand males; the Volusinians, yet more in- 
 
 27 
 
28 THEY WENT 
 
 land he was to see them again, the Volusini- 
 ans, forty years later ! they yielded, together 
 with a host of ordinary captives, one single in- 
 dividual worth an army in himself, to wit, the 
 Roman Ormidius Limpidus, an engineer of high- 
 est capacity who, after being detected in a dis- 
 reputable intrigue with some high-born dame in 
 the household of his own country's proconsul, 
 (he never could leave ladies alone) had fled for 
 protection to the ruler of these same Volusinians, 
 and was employed by him at the time of his cap- 
 ture as court butler and, in spare moments, tutor 
 to his twenty-three sons. 
 
 In fact, the raid was pursued to the very 
 boundaries of the distant and fierce Alloquisti. 
 Here the king drew in his victorious followers. 
 Those Alloquisti had the reputation of being 
 troublesome warriors " prickly people," they 
 called them. So little recked they of wounds 
 that, instead of covering their bodies with ar- 
 mour like other fighting men, they actually 
 doffed in battle their deerskins, the only garment 
 they (seldom) wore, and fought stark naked like 
 the blue savages they were they hated their 
 clothes being "hacked about"; so little cared 
 they for the refinements of life that, instead of 
 allowing their prisoners to be ransomed, they 
 gambled them away amid shrieks of laughter, 
 and tossed them into the cooking-pot. Here, 
 
THEY WENT 20 
 
 then, the monarch paused and, having counted 
 up the tale of his captives and discovered their 
 numbers to be sufficient for the purpose in hand, 
 turned homewards again. 
 
 " The Alloquisti can wait/' he decided. 
 " What do we want with blue monsters running 
 about our new town? Think of our women! " 
 
 This, his last, was the most glorious and profit- 
 able of all the sovereign's campaigns. 
 
 Now Ormidius Limpidus was not a Roman for 
 nothing. He knew his business. He rose to 
 the occasion. He performed wonders. He sur- 
 passed himself. After selecting a group of com- 
 petent subordinates and overseers, he opened 
 quarries into the granite entrails of the hills; 
 athwart the marshy plain was laid down a track 
 of wood along which you might see journeying, 
 day and night, an endless procession of bullocks 
 and horses that dragged the huge building blocks 
 to a certain piece of ground near the shore, where 
 a troop of several hundred masons was employed 
 in hewing them into shape. The work proceeded 
 rapidly; never fast enough for the king, who 
 now began to neglect all his other royal duties 
 in order to direct the operations, as he called it. 
 "If I am not on the spot," he would declare, 
 " nothing is ever done." He could be seen en- 
 thusiastically carrying the stones about, or 
 splashing himself with mortar; he swore that 
 
30 THEY WENT 
 
 architects were the slowest people on earth 
 anybody but this cursed clean-shaven Roman 
 would have finished the business in half the time. 
 On such occasions, the engineer would tremble 
 for his life, and implore the protection of his 
 family genius. What if the king one day should 
 lose his temper in good earnest? 
 
 Soon the great embankment and the walls of 
 the city stood in their place; a noble aqueduct, 
 bearing a river of water on its back, strode in 
 gallant arches across the plain; and calmly, 
 secure from every wind, the oval-shaped har- 
 bour lay in the centre of the town, replenished 
 by inrushing tides and the water of that old 
 streamlet which had been artificially deepened 
 and widened to allow the largest fleet of vessels 
 to rest at anchor within. Palaces had grown up, 
 the royal residence first of all; not to speak of 
 the Great Drain! Thus, in a remarkably short 
 space of time, a town arose on that sandy spit 
 where, in former times, not a blade of grass 
 would grow. On a fixed day, there took place a 
 transmigration of all the inhabitants from that 
 former capital on the hillside, thenceforward 
 abandoned to wolves and owlets. 
 
 Folks were delighted with the change of scene 
 all save the section known as the old be- 
 lievers no one more so than the monarch him- 
 self. For if Ormidius had proved of some little 
 
THEY WENT 31 
 
 use as executant, the idea of the town was un- 
 deniably his own from beginning to end. The 
 Koman, on the other hand, in proportion as his 
 task drew to its close, became less delighted. 
 He waxed thoughtful, and ever more thoughtful. 
 He was nothing but a captive ; a most unpleasant 
 state of affairs ! Ormidius loved his life. Often 
 he thanked Mercury and Jupiter Optimus Maxi- 
 mus and several other gods for allowing him to 
 survive a little longer and fall into the hands 
 of this race rather than into those, for example, 
 of the mirthful Alloquisti. What would now 
 happen? Would they sell him again and to 
 whom? Would they do him to death and 
 how? Boasted? Boiled? Or maybe, his term 
 of service ended, throw him into his own master- 
 piece, that Great Drain which told no tales? He 
 grew thin at the prospect; he took to skulking 
 about and trying to look like somebody else; he 
 was on the point of cultivating a moustache and 
 wearing checked breeches like a Volusinian, pre- 
 pared for anything save what actually happened 
 when, one day, the king slapped him on the 
 shoulder in jovial fashion and asked what re- 
 ward he would like. 
 
 "A hundred female slaves," he replied 
 modestly. 
 
 " You shall have them. And a house as well, 
 wherein you can abide permanently. We may 
 
32 THEY WENT 
 
 require your assistance on some later occasion. 
 Pray don't consider yourself a captive any 
 longer. I will not hear of such a thing. I 
 always thought," he added," I always thought 
 the Komans were solid people, from what I had 
 been told of them. Now I know it." 
 
 In this house, accordingly, Ormidius Limpidus 
 dwelt, giving advice on technical matters to all 
 who cared to ask for it, since, like everybody else, 
 he had a reputation to keep up; there he dwelt, 
 living on that same reputation and on the sov- 
 ereign's bounty and growing to be an old, old 
 man with love of life and ladies unimpaired, till 
 the day when he vanished mysteriously after a 
 little misunderstanding with the princess a 
 mere child at the time, but one who had already 
 developed architectural notions, and a temper, of 
 her own a misunderstanding about a certain 
 cornice to her tower. . . . 
 
 It was a moist site, that of the new town, 
 facing sunset and reeking with sea-mists. 
 Though situated under a northern sky, breaths 
 of warm wind and currents of warm water crept 
 up to the shore, borne landwards by some tepid 
 stream which flowed through the ocean from the 
 other end of the world. The plain at the back, 
 protected by a monstrous dyke, had meanwhile 
 put on a new and smiling face. It was green 
 with verdure, for the water-courses had been 
 
THEY WENT 33 
 
 banked up and straightened the soil drained 
 and manured; countryfolk, living in willow 
 cabins, planted on that once bare expanse their 
 fruit trees and corn and flax and madder, their 
 far-famed beetroots and cucumbers and every 
 other kind of crop for the delectation of the 
 citizens, and their own. 
 
 As for the town itself, it projected into the 
 waves at the furthermost extremity of the plain, 
 on either side of what had formerly been an un- 
 sightly creek, its streets and palaces enclosed 
 within their mighty granite bulwark like the eggs 
 in a blackbird's nest. To bar out the sea and 
 prevent its waters from flooding the houses at 
 exceptionally high tides, a massive wooden gate- 
 way had been let into the embankment at the 
 point where ships entered to reach the harbour; 
 it could be opened and closed by a simple con- 
 trivance, a kind of lock, of which the king kept 
 the key. At first he hung it at his girdle from 
 sheer caprice, and because he liked to watch the 
 water filtering into the docks as he opened the 
 gate with due ceremony; later on, he took to 
 wearing it always and regarding it as a symbol 
 or emblem of his royal power: could he not de- 
 stroy the place, even as he had raised it out of 
 nothing? 
 
 Such, then, was the city during that earlier 
 period a port, a thing of mere utility ; for the 
 
34 THEY WENT 
 
 princess, who transformed it into a thing of joy 
 and beauty, into a wonder, was not to be born 
 for twenty long years. Now was accomplished 
 the task of driving the sea back from this old 
 disputed territory. Vainly it ramped against 
 the barriers, and sighed and moaned and clashed, 
 striving to undermine their foundations. They 
 held fast. Their builder was a Kornan, who 
 knew the properties of stone and cement; not 
 for nothing had he studied, long ago, his Lucilius 
 Galba and Varro's Disciplinae and Fabianus and 
 Vitruvius Pollio and Quintus Niger and all the 
 rest of them. 
 
 Men no longer talked of the " horses of 
 Aithryn." They forgot his very name. 
 
 And yet, like many creatures reputed fabulous, 
 this Aithryn lived, something of a pirate by 
 hereditary instincts, a veritable king, human in 
 shape and failings. The realm of the man who 
 was to play so disastrous a part in the fortunes 
 of the city lay among certain dim and distant 
 northern islands, not unknown to the Phoeni- 
 cians and later races, who imported therefrom 
 their ingots of tin which crossed the ocean in 
 frail barques of ozier, covered with hides; in 
 later ages, again, there was commerce and riv- 
 alry and warfare between these same hyper- 
 boreans and those others on the mainland 
 warfare that lasted over a thousand years. In 
 
THEY WENT 35 
 
 the meantime, owing to piracy and the troubled 
 state of the world, old relations had been broken 
 off and even forgotten, though some memory of 
 former sea-raids may have lingered in that tradi- 
 tion of Aithryn's horses, of his being jealous and 
 " wanting his own back." He himself had grown 
 into a myth, a legend. So speedily are men 
 changed into gods. 
 
 It was a strange coincidence that the only 
 citizen of the town who knew of the existence of 
 this Aithryn of flesh and blood happened to be 
 the princess herself. She learnt a few details 
 about him not nearly as many as she would 
 have liked from the Greek merchant Theoph- 
 ilus, a provokingly reticent person, whom she 
 was to meet for the first time that very eve- 
 ning at her father's palace and who, later on, 
 gained so powerful an influence over her as to 
 become her closest friend and inspirer. It would 
 seem that Theophilus, a much-travelled man, had 
 actually visited the court of Aithryn more than 
 once, on some errand of business. How he 
 reached it, and what the nature of that errand 
 was, the young lady never discovered. She had 
 glimpses, however, from his talk, of a region of 
 sombre forest and moorland grazed by shaggy 
 cattle, of bleak estuaries where they tumbled the 
 fish in cataracts of silver out of the nets; she 
 saw, in imagination, that huge town or village 
 
36 THEY WENT 
 
 built of white fir-wood smeared with pitch, in 
 whose centre stood the castle, a rambling struc- 
 ture large enough to shelter an army, and painted 
 red and green the king, he said, was " very 
 fond of ornament " in mazy, crazy, zig-zag pat- 
 terns. As to Aithryn himself: 
 
 " His real name is Miliuc. There is nothing 
 mysterious or wonderful about him. A dissem- 
 bler, a worm of a man, and absurdly fond of 
 his children." 
 
 There had been Aithryns from time immemo- 
 rial, he went on; it was a kingly designation 
 which descended from father to son, and signified 
 nothing more than red or ruddy. All Aithryns 
 were alike, male and female; all were golden- 
 haired, of remarkable personal beauty, domineer- 
 ing, resourceful, cruel ; aspiring souls and men of 
 bold invention ; and this one, he explained, might 
 have been the greatest of his race had the promise 
 of his youth not been cut short by an accident. 
 
 So she pieced together the information which 
 Theophilus, at one time or another, was kind 
 enough to supply her. 
 
 She gathered that a stroke on the head from a 
 battle-ax during an encounter with some turbu- 
 lent neighbours had changed the king's whole 
 nature. Although the skull was trepanned, and 
 the wound, treated with fomentations of elder- 
 juice and the resin of pine-wood, healed up to 
 
THEY WENT 37 
 
 outward appearance in the most satisfactory 
 manner, Aithryn was observed to be never the 
 same as before. Something took place within 
 him; his creative force and independence oozed 
 away, as it were, with those few drops of blood. 
 He could still dissemble ; his charm of person re- 
 mained unimpaired; on the other hand, he grew 
 to be afraid of his own judgment grew to be 
 weak of will, and proportionately distrustful. 
 He did what no ruler of men should do. He be- 
 gan to lean on others. 
 
 The Christians had already made some prog- 
 ress in his realm; and up to the date of this 
 accident he had successfully played off their pre- 
 tensions against those of the druids, to his own 
 advantage. Now, losing all initiative, he fell 
 under the influence of the white-robed ones, and 
 of them alone. They duly flattered him, as the 
 Christians in their place would likewise have 
 done; they recognized his infirmity, and con- 
 trived to give him the same advice which the 
 Christians, had they been his favourites, would 
 also have given him. 
 
 " Be obscure," they hinted, " and men will 
 think you strong and wise like your fathers. 
 You have a reputation to keep up." 
 
 It was through certain spies of whom, like 
 all wavering monarchs, he had a considerable 
 supply that he heard of the construction of 
 
38 THEY WENT 
 
 the new town and its sea-wall on the distant 
 continent. The idea irked him; he suddenly re- 
 membered that he would have liked to build 
 something of the same kind himself, and men- 
 tioned the matter to his counsellors. Whatever 
 arguments may have been employed, they agreed 
 upon one point: that the druids must first be 
 consulted. 
 
 "By all means," he replied. "Who would 
 dream of acting otherwise? " 
 
 They dispatched an embassy which returned 
 in due course, bearing a response to this effect: 
 Devour not salt with stones. 
 
 " That settles it," remarked the monarch rue- 
 fully, before anybody else had time to think what 
 the druids meant by those dark words. " That 
 settles it ! The sea is salt. The sea may not be 
 devoured with stones, with structures of ma- 
 sonry. We must abandon the enterprise." 
 
 In short, he obeyed the druids, who therefore 
 said, as the Christians would have said in their 
 place (and actually did say, later on) : 
 
 " A good man, our Aithryn." 
 
 Yet the reports of his spies made him more 
 and more envious. In olden days, while still en- 
 joying full health, he could never have resisted 
 the temptation of sailing down with his fleet and 
 attempting to destroy the new city ; he could not 
 bear the thought that this land, formerly neither 
 
THEY WENT 39 
 
 earth nor sea, should now be converted into a 
 rich mart and threaten to engulf what little 
 trade his own country might do with regions 
 East and South. Ancestral astuteness came to 
 his aid. He thought : 
 
 " What cannot be done by force may be done 
 by guile. The place lies low; the sea may help 
 me. Meanwhile, I will find out things for my- 
 self. These spies are no more to be trusted 
 than anybody else. . . ." 
 
 It was a sunny afternoon when his spacious 
 green boat, after a two weeks' journey, came 
 within view of that town and its embankment. 
 Not a breath of wind was astir; the sails were 
 furled; they skirted the dyke with mighty oars, 
 and something drove Aithryn to say to the 
 rowers : 
 
 " Set me down yonder " 
 
 at a sequestered point, namely, where a hand- 
 some gentlewoman, dressed in a flowing robe of 
 blue, sat working at her embroidery, while a 
 maid stood at a respectful distance behind. 
 
 It happened to be the queen herself. Being 
 of a simple-minded, sentimental nature, she often 
 came to this spot to enjoy the view and a little 
 solitude after the trouble and din of the palace. 
 Just then she was singing, as she often did, 
 her favourite melody an old song about a 
 swan that came sailing on broad wings down 
 
40 THEY WENT 
 
 from the white North, and wondering, as she 
 often did, what the swan came for, out of those 
 dim and distant regions. 
 
 " I wish I knew," she thought. 
 
 As Aithryn stepped on shore and moved 
 towards her she raised her eyes gravely, puz- 
 zling who this glorious stranger might be. For 
 he looked more like a god than a man, with ruddy 
 lips and sparkling eyes, and curls that descended 
 to his shoulders like the fire in the setting sun. 
 And what charm of manner, what insinuating 
 grace in those words of frank greeting! Soon 
 he was telling her some untruthful tale about 
 himself and learning, in return, who she was, 
 which increased a thousandfold his seeming re- 
 spect and admiration. He gleaned much else 
 besides; of the town's resources, of Ormidius 
 Limpidus and his stout impregnable masonry, of 
 the key at the king's girdle, of their childlessness 
 and other troubles great and small ; then, having 
 garnered all the necessary information, he 
 added : 
 
 " Your silvery voice it drew us to the shore 
 from far away; we took it to be that of a mer- 
 maid ! And what pretty beads you are wearing ! 
 Amber, you call it? " (He possessed 174 chests 
 full of amber at his castle.) "How well they 
 match that exquisite blue robe which, in its turn, 
 tries vainly to rival your eyes in splendour. I 
 
THEY WENT 41 
 
 never saw such eyes; are they not carved out of 
 the sky of mid-day? You have made me love 
 that colour. My boat, you perceive, is not blue 
 not yet. But soon it will be! Everything 
 shall be blue henceforward everything ! " 
 
 The lady, unaccustomed to such bold adula- 
 tion, remarked almost shyly : 
 
 " It looks a brave vessel, wave-tinted, and fash- 
 ioned like a bird. Of uncommon build, I must 
 say." 
 
 " You seafaring folks are rightly concerned 
 about such things. Would it please you to step 
 on board and observe more at your ease? " 
 
 " Gladly." 
 
 Such blame as attaches to this freak of boreal 
 gallantry on the part of Aithryn should not be 
 withheld. It appears to his credit, none the 
 less, that instead of carrying off the lady to 
 ransom or murdering her outright, as would 
 have been considered legitimate by many a king 
 of his own and subsequent periods, he merely 
 offered her some refreshment and, after making 
 himself uncommonly pleasant and consoling hery 
 with many fair words and acts, for her childless- 
 ness and other troubles great and small, set her 
 on shore again. 
 
 Then he sailed away; back into the white 
 North. 
 
 " Now I know," thought the queen. 
 
42 THEY WENT 
 
 For a long while she watched his vessel as it 
 clove the water and receded from her sight, 
 growing smaller and smaller, and rounder and 
 rounder. " Like an apple," she fancied, and 
 then, after a long pause, she added sentiment- 
 ally : " More like a little green pea." Suddenly 
 it shrank away. She looked at the spot where 
 the ship had been ; nothing remained but a wide 
 watery expanse that mirrored the sunset-glow. 
 Then she felt a void in her heart, and a kind- 
 ness towards this winsome stranger. Would he 
 ever return? 
 
 Aithryn purposed to return in due course. 
 Like many of his race, he seldom did a good 
 action without calculating on some ulterior 
 profit. He had refrained from abducting the 
 lady, " for what," he asked, " would be the use 
 of a ransom? It will never destroy the city." 
 Better far, he argued, to sow the seeds of discord 
 within its very walls ; to rear up for himself an 
 ally on the spot, some Aithryn-like creature, 
 domineering, resourceful, cruel, on whose sym- 
 pathy and co-operation he could rely, when the 
 time was ripe, after revealing himself for what 
 he was . . . 
 
 The encounter of the queen with the handsome 
 sea-rover was pretty generally known in the 
 town, but nobody, not even the lady herself, spoke 
 of the matter to the king. They thought he 
 
THEY WENT 43 
 
 might possibly be angry, because his consort, like 
 everybody else, had a reputation to preserve, the 
 reputation of a loving and faithful spouse. 
 
 She lived up to it, for not very long afterwards 
 a daughter was born at court, an event which 
 caused boundless rejoicings among the citizens, 
 though the royal father himself was slightly dis- 
 appointed; he thought Belen might have given 
 him a boy, while he was about it, " after keeping 
 us waiting all these years." 
 
 " Better luck next time," said his lady, with 
 a fond smile. 
 
 The little one was regarded as a portent, not 
 only because she was amazingly beautiful and 
 had never no, not once been known to cry, 
 but also because her father at the time of her 
 birth was rather an old man, being then over 
 sixty years of age. As for the queen it was 
 noticed that she, from the day of that adventure 
 onwards, loved more than ever to sit on the em- 
 bankment during the afternoon, with her maid 
 and embroidery, returning wistfully to her royal 
 duties when the sun sank into the waves. It 
 was her brief hour of freedom, she used to say. 
 Here she rested, gazing upon the sea. Would he 
 ever come again? "He promised," she often 
 thought. "And yet, if he does, I shall faint 
 away I know I shall. I could never bear to 
 look into those eyes. I have seen them since, 
 
44 THEY WENT 
 
 every day of my life. I have touched those 
 ruddy locks. . . ." 
 
 Grown somewhat stouter and more faded of 
 complexion, with grey streaks in her hair, she 
 was reposing here at that very moment, twenty 
 years later, profiting by the gleam of sunshine 
 after the rain, and waiting to see whether the 
 princess would pass by on the way to her tower. 
 She would have liked to speak to her daughter 
 before evening, being ill at ease about the ar- 
 rival of the new Christian preacher and its pos- 
 sible complications. 
 
 The young lady, attended by Harr6, came in 
 sight. 
 
 " Always at the same spot, mother dear ! 
 And always in blue a tint, by the way, which 
 I rather dislike. And always those old-fash- 
 ioned amber beads ! I declare you are the only 
 person alive who still wears amber. Why 
 not a necklace of jet or lignite? Or an iron 
 bracelet? Or would you like some pearls of col- 
 oured glass? I think I can still find a string or 
 two in the rubbish market." 
 
 " Amber was good enough for my genera- 
 tion. . . . You received my message through 
 that painted terror, that little korigan of yours? 
 You are coming tonight? I beg of you, dear 
 girl, do not fail us. There is nothing I dread 
 more than scenes ; we should always avoid them, 
 
\ 
 THEY WENT 45 
 
 if only for the sake of your dear father. Eighty- 
 three years think of it ! He is a wonderful 
 old man. We may count on you? " 
 
 " Have you ever known me disobey my 
 mother? " 
 
 " You are a sensible girl, as a rule. But why 
 then, naughty child why are you not wearing 
 the shawl I sent? It comes from the Roof of 
 the World. You will catch cold." 
 
 " If you only knew how warm I was, without 
 shawls or anything else. Boiling all over, all 
 the time." 
 
 " Oh, hush, dear ! " said the queen. " Don't 
 talk like one of those dreadful creatures down 
 by the harbour. No princess is ever quite so 
 hot." 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 NIGHT drew on apace. The banquet was 
 ended; a savour of roasted meats and 
 stews hung about, mingling with harsh 
 breaths from the sea that invaded even the inner 
 regions of the palace. You could hear the waves 
 moaning, near at hand. 
 
 The guests, many-tinted and many-tongued, 
 were discoursing of this and that ; the king him- 
 self, having done his duty, sat in an interior 
 room, a mighty tankard at his side, playing chess. 
 It was his latest diversion. Some Oriental of 
 renown had introduced the game at court, de- 
 scribing it as a royal pastime much to the an- 
 noyance of all of them, for the monarch promptly 
 succumbed to its fascination and insisted on their 
 learning it and playing with him. An old man, 
 unaccustomed to be thwarted, he was liable to 
 grow grumpy when beaten. It was difficult to 
 avoid that result, the only person who almost 
 invariably succeeded in the feat being Ando, the 
 court prophet. 
 
 Here was the princess, smiling and glittering. 
 At her mother's urgent request, she had put in 
 an appearance; she always gratified her par- 
 
 46 
 
THEY WENT 47 
 
 ents nearly always. The queen moved about 
 with kindly words, trying to make everybody 
 feel at home, which nobody ever did. It was 
 lucky, they thought, that there was something to 
 look forward to later in the evening an enter- 
 tainment at the tower of the princess, due to be- 
 gin after the king had been safely put to bed in 
 his own apartment. A slightly different kind of 
 society was gathered yonder, and a slightly dif- 
 ferent atmosphere prevailed. 
 
 There was no avoiding these ceremonies. All 
 the distinguished citizens of the place were con- 
 strained, once a week or so, to pay their respects 
 at court, particularly on occasions like this, when 
 unusual strangers were expected. Neighbouring 
 princelings and chieftains, attended by one or 
 more of their wives, were also wont to grace these 
 halls; uncouth personages with stained limbs 
 who boozed their liquor through huge mous- 
 taches as through a sieve; they stalked and swag- 
 gered about in spears and shields and so little 
 else that the kindly queen often longed to lend 
 them a few woollen garments for the evening. 
 They could even be seen, some of the wilder of 
 them, gnawing their meat like lions, and if there 
 was any part they could not easily tear away, 
 they would cut it off with a small sword which 
 they wore in their belt for purposes such as 
 these. 
 
48 THEY WENT 
 
 That Greek merchant, Theophilus by name, 
 had arrived in time for supper a sulky-looking 
 man with curled grey beard that ended in two 
 points. He limped slightly, having once been 
 wounded in the toe, he explained, during a little 
 encounter with a dragon. Just then he was en- 
 gaged, together with old Lelian, in examining a 
 complicated old-fashioned buckler embossed with 
 coral. Presently, replying to some question on 
 the part of the armourer, he said : 
 
 "Theophilus? It means a friend of the All- 
 Highest. No name could be less appropriate for 
 me. Parents are queer folks. They seldom con- 
 sult the wishes of their children." He looked 
 sulkier than ever as he spoke. 
 
 " He is right," thought the princess who had 
 overheard the remark and who, in her heart, 
 had little affection for either her father or 
 mother. 
 
 The new Christian preacher was not yet in- 
 troduced. His ship had cast anchor after sun- 
 set, and it was reported that he had suffered con- 
 siderably from the sea, this being his first and, 
 as it happened, his last experience of ocean. 
 It led men to talk of the Christians in general, 
 and gave Ando an opportunity for telling a story 
 of a horrible marine monster in a distant coun- 
 try, which used to creep on shore at night and 
 devour the little children, till a Christian con- 
 
THEY WENT 49 
 
 trived to sprinkle a few drops of his holy water 
 on its tail, whereupon 
 
 Nobody was greatly interested in the event. 
 Ando's stories were always suited to the occa- 
 sion. He had been told to " keep it up " and 
 say kind things about the Christians, in order to 
 dispose the minds of the assembly in favour of 
 the new arrival and forestall possible scenes. . . . 
 
 The palace was a dull place, and austere. 
 Founded nearly forty years ago the first 
 structure, indeed, that rose upon the soil after 
 the completion of the city's bulwarks and docks, 
 and one of the few which had not been rebuilt 
 in the interval it was now, as the princess 
 often complained to her father, hopelessly bar- 
 baric and out of keeping with the rest of them. 
 
 " Do let me make it habitable,'' she would say. 
 
 The parent, dearly as he loved his child, and 
 almost invariably as he gave way to her wishes, 
 would never yield to this particular whim of hers. 
 A military man of the old school, he insisted 
 upon the simple martial character of his dwell- 
 ing. 
 
 " You have your tower to play with. Turn it 
 into solid bronze, if you like ; encrust it with onyx 
 and topaz. You are a young woman and such 
 triflings befit your age and sex. Now put your- 
 self in my place. I am an old fighting man and, 
 as some people think, not altogether an unsuc- 
 
50 THEY WENT 
 
 cessful one. I want my palace to look warlike. 
 The guests must overlook its little deficiencies, 
 as you call them. Your sweet face, my child, is 
 enough to make anybody overlook anything. 
 Come, don't you think this style of building 
 suitable? Ask your mother. We will abide by 
 what she says." 
 
 " Now where is my mother? " 
 
 The queen, on such occasions, was seldom to be 
 found. 
 
 "Only one storey ! " his daughter would insist. 
 " Full of draughts ! And so sombre with those 
 stone floors and bare walls and miserable pine 
 torches! We can hardly see each other's faces. 
 Tallow would be better. Or why not let me give 
 you some casks of that tree-oil from the Mas- 
 sillian province which I use myself? And the 
 banqueting hall with its uncomfortable benches, 
 and all those skins and horns and arms and 
 trophies. It is like a barn for buffaloes. Do 
 let me take it in hand! It needs silken hang- 
 ings and warm things underfoot and copper 
 panels and many-coloured marbles, and silver 
 mirrors to reflect the lights. My dwarfs could 
 do the whole work in a few days. You would 
 never recognize the place again." 
 
 " I dislike those dwarfs of yours. I wish they 
 had not come here. Are you never going to send 
 them away ? " 
 
THEY WENT 51 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 " Because oh, I am not blaming you, dear 
 child; far from it. Only let me tell you let 
 me tell you that long ago, twenty years before 
 you were born, while we were collecting slaves for 
 the building of this town, we happened to invade 
 the territory of the Alloquisti, those prickly blue 
 people who fight well, stark naked " 
 
 " Quite right," interrupted the princess. " I 
 like that spirit." 
 
 " So do I. And they fought well, I must say. 
 No harm in praising your foe, once you have 
 vanquished him. How we battled! And the 
 prisoners we took ! I remember what were we 
 saying? Yes; the dwarfs. There, among the 
 Alloquisti, I heard queer tales about your dwarfs 
 who used to inhabit that country. Queer tales 
 queer tales." 
 
 " My dear papa, I know them all." 
 
 So she did. She knew as much about the 
 dwarfs as they knew themselves, which was a 
 good deal more than enough for most people. 
 
 The only concession she managed to wring 
 from him was in the matter of eating and drink- 
 ing vessels. One by one, those ungainly wooden 
 platters and goblets of horn had been replaced, 
 in the interests of civilized guests, by delicate 
 ware of gold or even glass. She had begun by 
 making war on the largest of them all : 
 
52 THEY WENT 
 
 " That Auerochs-horn ! Its silver rim, I con- 
 fess, is daintly wrought, but you really cannot 
 expect a person like the Sultan of Babylonia, 
 who sips his wine like a quail, to drink out of 
 such a tub. The poor little man might fall into 
 it and be drowned. And what would he then 
 tell his people at home? He would say we were 
 savages. Such men should take back to their 
 country a glowing account of our wealth and 
 hospitality. It will encourage them to trade 
 with us. Trade will bring prosperity. And 
 prosperity, dear papa, will bring you credit. 
 Future ages will say you were even greater in 
 the arts of peace than in those of war. We shall 
 be more proud of you than ever." 
 
 The prosperity of the town signified pleasure 
 for the young lady herself. All she sought was 
 pleasure a refined form of pleasure, inter- 
 spersed with streaks of a more earthly tinge. So 
 long as she attained that end, her parents could 
 take the credit for her enlightened ideas. 
 
 " I have often said you were a sensible girl. 
 That Urushorn and the rest of them shall be 
 stored in the cellars. They shall: so help me, 
 Belen. Though I am rather anxious what your 
 mother will say about it. . . ." 
 
 Meanwhile Ando, who loved to hear his own 
 voice, was still inflicting edifying tales upon the 
 company. Every one knew him to be an im- 
 
THEY WENT 53 
 
 poster; even the king knew it; nobody knew it 
 better than himself. It was his merit, however, 
 to prevent the conversation from flagging. He 
 talked to excess; he ate to excess; to atone for 
 these defects as the princess once remarked 
 he also drank thrice as much as anybody else. 
 Ando was the last of his kind. The king in 
 former days used to have many such table-com- 
 panions about him and even take them on his 
 warlike expeditions, as other sovereigns of his 
 race took their favourite boys and girls. One 
 after the other they dropped out of sight. The 
 monarch was now too old for such company. All 
 he wanted was peace and a quiet life, and his 
 consort was not sorry to see them go, as she 
 could thereby effect what she was fond of 
 effecting a noteworthy reduction of expenses. 
 There had been jesters and funny men; the king 
 declared he knew all their jokes beforehand, and 
 that none of them were as good as his own. They 
 went. There had been minstrels and bards, with 
 harps and lyres of four or five strings ; the king 
 vowed that their music " set his nerves on edge," 
 a speech which he had picked up from his daugh- 
 ter and which invariably made the courtiers 
 laugh, knowing, as they did, that the old man 
 possessed no nerves worth mentioning. They 
 went. 
 
 "Besides," he would say, "what can these 
 
54 THEY WENT 
 
 folks sing about? One grows tired of hearing 
 one's own praises. I made a couple of wars 
 and founded a city. We all knew that." 
 
 "We all knew it!" 
 
 " In other words, I did my duty like every- 
 body else. Dozens of kings are doing the same 
 at this very moment, or ought to be doing it. 
 And as to music the only music I ever really 
 liked was the trumpet of war." Generally, on 
 such occasions, he was wont to add, in tones of 
 command : 
 
 " Bring hither a trumpet, straight or 
 curved " 
 
 This bringing forth of the trumpet had become 
 almost a rite at court; it signified that the sov- 
 ereign had reached a certain stage in the mat- 
 ter of tankards. Somebody would forthwith 
 descend into the truinpetry down below, a store- 
 room which contained trumpets and clarions of 
 many shapes, hoarse or shrill, of bronze and lead 
 and silver; and fetch up one of them. 
 
 " This," the king would say, raising the in- 
 strument to his mouth, " this is music to make 
 the world tremble. Let us blow a blast and see 
 whether it sounds the same as of old, when I 
 used to summon my enemies to the combat." 
 Then he blew fiercely and posed the traditional 
 question : 
 
 " Where is the enemy? " 
 
THEY WENT 55 
 
 No enemy was ever to be seen. 
 
 " Skulking, as usual. . . ." 
 
 Now, in regard to those minstrels, his daugh- 
 ter seemed to be not quite so averse to hearing 
 her own praises sung. It was observed, at all 
 events, that several of the younger and more 
 good-looking of them, those with pretty curls 
 and voices like nightingales, had been summoned 
 to her tower to perform at some midnight enter- 
 tainment or other observed, too, that they then 
 and there developed a trick of disappearing. 
 Nobody paid much attention. Minstrels were 
 cheap in the land. They went. 
 
 Ando survived them all. He had carefully 
 studied the court records ; he never spoke with- 
 out turning his tongue ten times round in his 
 cheek; out of everything that happened he man- 
 aged to extract a sure prophecy of the king's long 
 life and happiness a prophecy which had 
 hitherto proved remarkably correct. Just then 
 he was replying to somebody who had ventured 
 to disparage the present age and talk of the 
 " ripe old times," in an unusually sensible man- 
 ner, saying: 
 
 " The ripe old times, my friend, are here and 
 
 now " when the high-pitched voice of Harre 
 
 was heard interrupting the fine speech with an 
 unseemly observation about his own " ripe old 
 nose." 
 
56 THEY WENT 
 
 Everybody disliked this forward and trouble- 
 some child. But for the protection of the prin- 
 cess whom they feared, he would never have been 
 allowed the freedom of circulating about so grave 
 an assembly. He had now strolled in among 
 them, after spending an hour or two in the vast 
 kitchens, jesting with the cooks and teasing the 
 palace maids. 
 
 Ando disliked him more than anybody else. 
 On this occasion he said nothing, the lady her- 
 self being on the spot. Once, however, he had 
 enjoyed a brief moment of revenge only once 
 when, in her abence, Harr6 had surreptitiously 
 drawn away from under him the couch on which 
 he was reclining, thereby causing -the court 
 prophet to roll in undignified fashion on the 
 floor. Ando straightway prayed the king, of- 
 ficially, for protection against this " blue pest." 
 What was to be done? It was a problem; a 
 minor problem but a ticklish one, the blue pest 
 being his own daughter's favourite. He looked 
 around for his consort. 
 
 " Now where is our lady? " he enquired. 
 
 The queen, on such occasions, was seldom to 
 be found. 
 
 Unfortunately for Harr6, that arch-druidess 
 happened to be present that day. Manthis not 
 only never told a lie, but also feared nobody on 
 earth. 
 
THEY WENT 57 
 
 " We will talk to him/' she said. 
 
 Manthis had small use for boys, or even men. 
 In spite of this, she was often heard to remark : 
 
 " I make a point of talking to males as if they 
 were reasonable beings, though perhaps it is a 
 mistake. For they generally have a tail where 
 their head should be, and you may talk, and 
 talk, and talk, in fifty cases out of fifty-one, 
 without the slightest hope of success. Creatures 
 of impulse ! It seems to me, none the less, that 
 one should foster what little self-respect they 
 have. May I never be accused of partiality in 
 favour of my own sex ! " 
 
 She captured Harr6 and received, to all her 
 reasonable expostulation, nothing save what she 
 expected a succession of impudent answers. 
 It was then that the sinewy old dame laid hands 
 on the boy, both hands as well as her sacred and 
 solid staff of office, and therewith gave him a 
 terrible beating a beating in comparison with 
 which all those earlier ones of his childhood, 
 among the Alloquisti, seemed to merge into noth- 
 ing; a beating which hurt all the more, since he 
 happened just then to be clad in rather light 
 raiment. 
 
 "And now," she observed to them, "if you 
 follow my advice, you will deprive him of food 
 for three days. It works like magic with males, 
 and will ensure a complete cure." 
 
58 THEY WENT 
 
 It was observed that Harr6 for some time after- 
 wards insisted upon wearing his deerskin and, 
 oddly enough, never sat down at all, but remained 
 standing. He was too brave to complain to his 
 mistress who merely said: 
 
 "" I have often told you, my child, to be polite 
 to the old lady. Hearken to what I say ! Man- 
 this is a thistle. Never try to sit on thistles. 
 Not in that costume." 
 
 The words seemed to have sunk into Harre's 
 mind, for a few nights later, when the court 
 prophet, well satisfied with himself and crammed 
 with food and drink, had staggered to rest, a 
 hideous din was heard proceeding from his cham- 
 ber. They entered with torches and found him 
 writhing on the floor in his thin sleeping gar- 
 ments. His bed was discovered to be full of sea- 
 urchins which hurt, he declared, like ten thou- 
 sand thistles. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 IT grew late, and the Christian preacher had 
 not yet appeared. Many of the guests went 
 home; others were doing their best to look 
 cheerful, and wondering whether the princess 
 would ever take her departure and open the eve- 
 ning entertainment at her own tower. She 
 stayed on. She had promised her mother to see 
 the business through, and she always kept such 
 promises, when she could. No body of any par- 
 ticular importance was expected at her tower 
 that night. They could wait. Besides, she was 
 rather interested, herself, to see this Christian. 
 Would he be young and handsome? Or disagree- 
 ably old, like that other one long ago? 
 
 The king, sitting over his chess, was slightly 
 fuddled slightly " military " as, for obvious 
 reasons, they called it but not more. He was 
 never more than military; never save on those 
 rare occasions ^hen he began mixing his words 
 together and reaching what was known as high- 
 water mark, a state which invariably decided his 
 consort to intervene and have him put to bed. 
 The rule at every court, ancient or modern, was 
 that nobody might get drunk before the king, 
 and the difference between this court and others 
 
60 THEY WENT 
 
 was that here the king, however fuddled, how- 
 ever military, was never drunk. It was beneath 
 his dignity. The citizens were made to feel that 
 they were under the rule of a man who had left 
 his mark, as a leader in war and peace. Had he 
 not conquered the Alloquisti and bidden the town 
 rise out of nothing? Therefore, unlike other sov- 
 ereigns, he had a reputation to keep up. And 
 therefore everybody else was obliged to remain 
 sober. And therefore the court, unlike other 
 courts, was rather a dull place. 
 
 He was an ancient man, tough as an oak ; pot- 
 bellied, with hooked nose, white beard and 
 watery blue eyes out of which he could still look 
 with royal condescension upon the world. " It 
 is becoming difficult," the queen once confided to 
 Manthis, "to keep him clean. And yet, O Man- 
 this, if you could hear him sometimes chattering 
 at night, you would not believe your ears. He 
 makes me feel as if I were his great-grandmother. 
 How does it come about? " 
 
 " That is the result of a pure life/' replied the 
 druidess, adding to herself : " And now his brain 
 waxes soft. He babbles and grows fond. So we 
 fall into childhood once more! Cases of this 
 kind have been known even in our own sex. 
 Much might have been done with him, given that 
 proper female guidance which it was never his 
 good fortune to know ! " 
 
THEY WENT 61 
 
 " A pure life? " queried the queen. " I am 
 disposed to think, rather, that it is the result 
 of never having been tormented or contradicted 
 by his spouse. I have allowed him to keep his 
 youthful spirits." 
 
 A man who had done great things in his day ! 
 The key of the lock-gate, the visible symbol of his 
 power it hung at his girdle ; could he not bring 
 death to the" city, even as he had brought life? 
 Often the queen trembled to think of what might 
 happen if some enemy should snatch it from him. 
 She had so far kept a good eye on that key. It 
 was one of the many preoccupations of her life. 
 And a fine figure of a monarch, for all his years ; 
 never nobler than during that afternoon hour 
 when, his scarlet mantle fluttering in the breeze, 
 and followed by a comely page, he was wont to 
 canter sedately on a black stallion along the sea- 
 wall there to exchange a few pleasant words 
 (always the same) with his royal consort, who 
 reclined in blue robe and amber beads, intent 
 upon her needlework or glancing over the water 
 as it mirrored the fires of sunset. 
 
 Just then the sovereign's crown was slightly 
 aslant on his venerable head. He had chal- 
 lenged to a match of chess the Greek merchant 
 Theophilus, who foolishly claimed to possess a 
 competent knowledge of the game. The third 
 move was barely made when, the advent of the 
 
62 THEY WENT 
 
 Christian preacher being suddenly announced, 
 the king suspended warlike operation for the 
 moment. He was never too military to do his 
 duty. 
 
 " Welcome, friend ! " he said after the more 
 formal introduction was over. " All religions 
 are free here. Our lady will see that you lack 
 for nothing in the matter of food and personal 
 comfort. So you are a Christian! That is 
 charming of you. I like the Christians, what I 
 have seen of them. There was that predecessor 
 of yours a good man. He used to complain, 
 I remember, of our few resident Christian mer- 
 chants here. He called them tepid folk. But, 
 my good friend, please to note that everything 
 is tepid here; the air, the sea, and even the 
 wretched mixture they put in my tankard. Fill 
 it up again, you there! Yes; it is a luke-warm- 
 ish, afternoonish sort of place, full of mists and 
 clouds and you will soon find out what I mean 
 that river of warm water flowing in upon our 
 shores from the other side of the great ocean 
 everything is moist and sticky and what were 
 we saying? Yes; your predecessor. A good 
 man. Alas, he perished. It is a pity he died. 
 I wonder how he came by his end? " 
 
 " I often wondered," echoed the queen. 
 
 " We wondered very much indeed," said sev- 
 eral voices, 
 
THEY WENT 63 
 
 Manthis, who was standing by, also wondered 
 not why the missionary had died. She won- 
 dered what was the meaning of this idle talk. 
 Manthis loathed makebelief and every other 
 form of untruthfulness. This scene, she con- 
 cluded, had been arranged beforehand without 
 consulting her; for the benefit of the new arrival, 
 and to avoid possible discussions. The truth 
 was, nobody wondered in the least. They knew 
 all about the misunderstanding between the first 
 Christian preacher, that unreasonable old man, 
 and his enemy Manthis. 
 
 " They say he perished in a shipwreck," replied 
 Kenwyn, the new missionary from Ireland. 
 " That was the report which reached our shores." 
 
 " Ay ! Or perhaps he was captured by those 
 pirates, in which case we may yet see him again. 
 Belen grant it may be so! Those robbers 
 would you believe it? they used to come slave- 
 raiding along these very shores in the strange 
 boats they called sea-dragons. Well, we have 
 put an end to that scourge. You may now sail 
 about in perfect security. Our daughter, this 
 young lady here, has seen to that." 
 
 The preacher looked up, and encountered a 
 glance from two green eyes, a glance that smote 
 like lightning and seemed to pass through his 
 veins in streaks of fire. 
 
 " She is a good girl. Never cried, even as a 
 
64 THEY WENT 
 
 little child. She understands her duty, and 
 helps and loves her old parents. Their sails, I 
 think, are red, and striped with black; the sea- 
 dragons, I mean. Piracy is now ended. We im- 
 paled the last pirate when was it? I forget. 
 Not very long ago. It is a pity he died ! Your 
 predecessor, I mean." 
 
 " He was so dreadfully old," whispered the 
 princess to her mother. 
 
 " So is your dear father. Try not to forget it, 
 my dear child," she whispered back, adding 
 aloud : " It is a pity." One or two of the cour- 
 tiers also thought it a pity. Ando thought it a 
 great pity. 
 
 Manthis now opened her mouth to speak, with- 
 out even looking at the Christian. She said : 
 
 " It is never a pity to uproot a menace." 
 
 At these portentous words the royal mother 
 glanced around for the assistance of her child, 
 who unfortunately had drawn aside and was 
 deep in an argument about turquoises with some- 
 body from Bokhara. She still cared for stones, 
 though not so much as formerly. 
 
 " How are your dear little girls? " the queen 
 promptly enquired of Manthis. "Ah, and this 
 is the new babchick! A sweet child, in truth. 
 Prettily she hangs to your side. Come hither, 
 Babchick. Don't be afraid. Come and talk to 
 the queen. How old is it? " 
 
THEY WENT 65 
 
 The maiden looked terribly confused. It was 
 her first appearance in society. 
 
 " Hold your head up, little one," said Manthis 
 in gentle tones. " And try to answer clearly." 
 
 " Fourteen years," replied the babchick with 
 the courage of despair, and speaking from sheer 
 trepidation twice as loudly as was necessary. 
 "Fourteen years "and and five moons and 
 eight nights. No: nine." 
 
 " What a big girl. And now tell me about 
 your studies. Let me see. Do you know why 
 menhirs are upright, or ought to be? " 
 
 " Because, for one thing, they are otherwise 
 unavailing for their divine purpose." 
 
 The babchick ("the intermediary") was al- 
 ways at the side of Manthis. Wherever the 
 druidess happened to be, there was the bab- 
 chick also. 
 
 It was an admirable institution. The child 
 was selected for her good qualities and, during 
 a certain period of time, remained attached to 
 the person of Manthis in public and in private. 
 At the end of that period a new babchick was 
 picked. It was thus, through this "interme- 
 diary," that the other children learnt something 
 of the ways of the world. For the babchick, and 
 she alone, had the right, and even the duty, of 
 permanent access to that fountain of all knowl- 
 edge who was surrounded, so far as the rest of 
 
66 THEY WENT 
 
 them were concerned, by a halo of authority and 
 mystery ; the sacred character of the druidess, to 
 say nothing of the purity of her blood, prohibit- 
 ing her from conversing with her pupils save on 
 matters of pure instruction a fairly compre- 
 hensive term, as she understood it. She was 
 their teacher; of the other aspects of her per- 
 sonality, of Manthis the high priestess and ar- 
 bitrator and politician and woman of the world, 
 the babchick, and she alone, could obtain 
 glimpses. It was her privilege to observe man- 
 kind in the company of her mistress, to question 
 her upon any problem however intimate, how- 
 ever remote of life or conduct or religion, and 
 to impart to her fellow-pupils the knowledge and 
 experience thus gained. 
 
 The system worked well. It opened their eyes 
 and loosened their tongue. No child was ad- 
 mitted into the college over the age of ten, Man- 
 this preferring them still younger; they seldom 
 left before they were sixteen. Seeing that a 
 great many of the more promising girls had 
 passed in the course of time through the honor- 
 ary stage of babchick, the college as a whole 
 knew as much of the doings beyond their walls 
 and had gained as much freedom of conversation 
 with men and women of society as was good for 
 young people of their age; and this, too, without 
 incurring any of the risks attendant upon a more 
 
THEY WENT 67 
 
 promiscuous intercourse with grown-up people. 
 Things filtered through; even the tiniest child 
 had some notions of what was going on, while 
 the bigger ones were thoroughly equipped for 
 all the contingencies of that new worldly life 
 which lay before them, once they left the Sacred 
 Rock. 
 
 It was considered the right thing, whenever 
 Manthis happened to be present, to address a 
 civil enquiry to the babchick anent the state of 
 the tide or suchlike, to offer her some innocuous 
 refreshment and otherwise treat her as if she 
 were much older than she was. At one time in- 
 deed it was thought an amusing trick among 
 the younger courtiers to go further than this 
 in other words, to " make the babchick blush," a 
 trick which occasionally succeeded, for these chil- 
 dren could not be expected to know much of the 
 actual practice of the world. Though they 
 learnt, in a frank and straightforward manner, 
 many things which children of later ages were 
 not taught at school, they learnt them, obviously, 
 only in theory. Manthis put an end to the 
 scandal. 
 
 Some of them were quick at picking up ideas 
 and became pert and self-possessed in a remark- 
 ably brief space of time ; others were slower. It 
 was observed that, although the school con- 
 tained some uncommonly pretty children, the 
 
68 THEY WENT 
 
 druidess nearly always contrived to select a plain 
 one for the mundane office of babchick. She did 
 not like taking risks. She watched over her 
 pupils like a lioness over her cubs, and the col- 
 lege inmates would have been in great request 
 as virtuous and intelligent wives, if the citizens 
 of the town had set a higher price than they 
 did on those qualities. The present babchick 
 was a snub-nosed, good-natured kind of girl ; not 
 of the kind, as they used to say, to "set fire to the 
 sea," but truthful and willing a girl after the 
 mistress's own heart. The only visible differ- 
 ence between the babchick and the others was 
 that she, for the time being, wore her hair plaited 
 and not open. Hers, too, was the duty or priv- 
 ilege of saying what they called " grace " before 
 meals. 
 
 While the queen was overcoming the shyness 
 of this child by her motherly manner, Kenwyn, 
 the new Christian preacher, a stalwart and hand- 
 some man, walked boldly up to Manthis, pro- 
 voked by her ambiguous words. He knew that 
 white robe, that oaken chaplet and ivory staff, 
 the richly-set necklace of serpents' eggs, symbol 
 of eternity which floated so the fond fools 
 vowed against the current of the stream ; that 
 belt of steely scales. Had they not her like in 
 Ireland also? Was not the cult even then being 
 uprooted out of the land? For what reason had 
 
THEY WENT 69 
 
 the saintly Gwenulf chosen him, a man of barely 
 forty, out of many wise and reverent seniors, to 
 preach repentance to this god-abandoned city 
 for what reason, save his earnestness of purpose 
 and indomitable will? He had come here, tak- 
 ing his life in his hand. Kenwyn was not of the 
 kind to shirk his duty. 
 
 She stood there, a grave personage in snowy 
 linen, with snowy locks that drooped in curls 
 over her rounded forehead. Her complexion 
 was clear and rosy; her eyes looked serenely 
 upon the world. Something untroubled lay in 
 the aspect of the druidess something sword- 
 like, cleansing, unequivocal; she stood erect, for 
 all her years. The other drew near, a figure in 
 black; hair and short crisp beard like a raven's 
 wing; his dusky mantle trailing to the ground. 
 
 There was no hostility in her greeting. Far 
 from it. She must have discovered some reason 
 to change her mind, for she soon began talking 
 in such a kindly fashion that the Christian felt 
 as if a veil had been lifted between them, as ii 
 blood were speaking to blood. Each found the 
 other anxious to do right, the same kind of 
 right; the external methods, their opposing 
 creeds, seemed to be only the husk, the outward 
 shell, of this strong desire. A rare sense of ease 
 and familiarity crept over Kenwyn during those 
 few moments. On her part, too, there was a 
 
70 THEY WENT 
 
 complete absence of restraint. How had it coine 
 about? Why should they converse like friends? 
 However far apart in age or sex or race, they 
 were comrades in the spirit. Both thought only 
 of betterment. He told of his parents in that 
 green island far away; she listened attentively, 
 noting with what deep respect he spoke of them. 
 He had been a sad sinner in his youth, he said, 
 up to the day of his sudden conversion; now he 
 strove to reach the light. " One is always grop- 
 ing upward," she agreed; there was much to be 
 amended on earth; they might have worked to- 
 gether to that end she broke off, with a tinge 
 of sorrow in her voice. 
 
 She had observed him carefully, and arrived 
 at a favourable conclusion. He was different 
 from that obnoxious predecessor of his; if an 
 enemy, then an enemy not for long. For out of 
 those yearning eyes of Kenwyn she had read his 
 fate, his Awenn; this upright and well-inten- 
 tioned creature was doomed, in the flower of his 
 years. It made her sad; there was no evil in 
 him. Christian or otherwise, such men were the 
 best that could be expected of their blundering 
 sex. 
 
 Kenwyn was well pleased, not only with the 
 druidess, but with the whole atmosphere of the 
 court, for of the town touching shore, as he 
 did, late at night he had hitherto seen nothing 
 
THEY WENT 71 
 
 gave clusters of curious faces and a great blaze 
 of light. The rude furniture of this palace, its 
 patriarchal hospitality and the sovereign's cheery 
 manner they reminded him of the halls of 
 nobles in his own land. Then he thought of the 
 glance which the princess had given him. That 
 glance, too, 'called up memories memories of 
 other such glances he had known in earlier and 
 godless days; he strove to forget it. 
 
 The king, meanwhile, was in excellent good 
 humour. He had beaten Theophilus at chess, 
 beaten him soundly which demonstrated that 
 the Greek had either told a preposterous lie about 
 his knowledge of the game, or was even more 
 of a courtier than Ando. He now retired from 
 the contest with well-simulated fury, vowing he 
 would have revenge sooner or later. 
 
 " Well then," said the king, " I will give you 
 another beating this very minute! Ah, no. 
 Here is our Irish friend again, our preacher. 
 We will say a few more words to him, and tell 
 him a little something about ourselves and the 
 city. There are certain matters he ought to 
 know." 
 
 With becoming modesty and at considerable 
 length he recounted, as he had often done before 
 in military mood, some of his warlike exploits 
 and how, lastly and best, he had driven the sea 
 out, far away, with that huge embankment. 
 
72 THEY WENT 
 
 " He was the toughest enemy of all of them," 
 he concluded. " But now he moans at our gate. 
 Hark!" 
 
 The waves were heard, beating against the 
 stony rampart of the town. 
 
 " The old people used to say," added the queen, 
 desirous to take her share in the conversation 
 and make the newcomer feel thoroughly at home, 
 " the old people used to say, when the waves 
 came rushing over this land, that they were the 
 white horses of Aithryn. Simple folks! They 
 held Aithryn to be some sea-king, or what not." 
 
 " Why, so he is," replied the preacher. " A 
 sea-king in the North. His ancestors have made 
 many raids on our shores. I have never seen 
 him. A fine man, they say, with red beard and 
 hair which he calls golden. He sails in a boat 
 painted green and shaped like a bird." 
 
 " Sultry this evening," the queen suddenly re- 
 marked to Manthis. " Stifling ! I feel some- 
 what faint." 
 
 " It struck me as unusually cold for the sea- 
 son. But perhaps these linen garments, and 
 your draughty halls " 
 
 Nobody, fortunately, had observed the queen's 
 confusion when she heard about Aithryn, not 
 even her daughter, who was still discussing 
 jewellery with that good-looking stranger. Now 
 at last she knew the truth of the wonderful vis- 
 
THEY WENT 73 
 
 itor, though she knew him not for an enemy. 
 What if he should return? 
 
 Ando was seen to hold up his two hands, as 
 he always did when about to make some deep 
 pronouncement. He said: 
 
 "Make no friend of a red-haired man! It is 
 one of our oldest druidical sayings. Am I not 
 right, my good Mother Man this? " 
 
 "You are," she replied rather snappily. 
 " These simple speeches are worthy to be pon- 
 dered. I will tell you another of them. Truth 
 is the eldest daughter of God. 3 ' 
 
 This was a hit at the court-prophet, who at 
 once retorted, hinting at the well-known abstemi- 
 ousness of Manthis: 
 
 " I will tell you yet another, which is also not 
 unworthy of note in these days when the land is 
 full of hypocrisy and when many folks pretend 
 to be better than they are, or need be, or even 
 should be. Wine mingled with water is poison/' 
 
 " That is not a druidical saying," she replied, 
 "though I grant it is as old as any of ours. Sad 
 to think what drunkards our ancestors were! 
 Sadder still to realize that their few faults are 
 flourishing to this hour, while their many virtues 
 have been forgotten." 
 
 The preacher continued : 
 
 " This Aithryn, they say, is a good man, but 
 somewhat envious." 
 
74 THEY WENT 
 
 Theophilus was the only person present who 
 had any acquaintance with the Aithryn of flesh 
 and blood. He said nothing of that, but merely 
 remarked : 
 
 " The envy of good men has ever made this 
 world a bad place to inhabit. Your good man 
 sticks at nothing. He is a jest on the part of 
 the gods; their only jest, and a poor one." 
 
 " That sounds delightful ! " cried the king. 
 " You must explain it to me, one of these days. 
 And now, my Irish friend, can you play chess? 
 Theophilus shall have his revenge afterwards." 
 
 " Midnight is past," interposed his consort, 
 making heroic efforts to overcome her agitation. 
 " Our honourable guest is doubtless weary after 
 his long buffeting on that dreadful sea " 
 
 " Can you? " persisted the monarch. " Can 
 you? Fill up my tankard, you there! Can 
 you?" 
 
 " It seems to be a kind of game," replied Ken- 
 wyn, surveying the board in a bewildered fash- 
 ion. " No. I have never seen it." 
 
 " Then I will teach you," said the monarch, 
 and several of the onlookers were seen to wink 
 at each other. " Come ! This one, for instance, 
 is called a horseman. He moves look! like 
 this. Oh, it is wonderful sport, and you will 
 learn it quickly. You are a young man. As for 
 myself, I sometimes think I began almost too 
 
THEY WENT 75 
 
 late, though you saw the victory I gained just 
 now, did you not? One cannot do everything. 
 All my life, for the rest, has been a kind of chess, 
 particularly with that Aithryn of yours out yon- 
 der. Strange that he should be a living man. 
 We never heard him mentioned as such, and he 
 never approached these shores. Perhaps he will, 
 some day. Let him come ! This key I will 
 tell you about it tomorrow. Best assured, mean- 
 while, that your Aithryn is harmless; check- 
 mated, I should say. And here is the Vizier; he 
 moves in two ways ; he has all the hard work to 
 do; he must defend his king, you understand. 
 And this is the Fool. . . ." 
 
 " I am glad it is over," said the queen to her 
 daughter, when they were alone. She had re- 
 covered her composure. " The Christian seems 
 better than the last." 
 
 " I think so too. Manthis tells me she likes 
 him." 
 
 " How surprising ! And how relieved I am, 
 for Manthis would never say what she does not 
 think. I was afraid at one moment of a little 
 commotion, which would have been bad for your 
 dear father. Be sure, my child, to take the Irish- 
 man round the town tomorrow. That Greek can 
 look after himself; I dislike his face." 
 
 The duty of showing the sights of the place to 
 distinguished guests often devolved upon the 
 
76 THEY WENT 
 
 princess, who was not averse to it, provided they 
 were neither old nor ugly. 
 
 " I don't mind," she said, after a short reflec- 
 tion. " He is passable." 
 
 " And say kind things to him." 
 
 " Have you ever known me say anything else? " 
 
 " Only once or twice, in all these years. You 
 are a sensible girl, as a rule. Show him the 
 animals. And don't forget the unicorn family. 
 I doubt whether he has ever seen a unicorn." 
 
 " The unicorns have just had a new baby," ob- 
 served the princess. 
 
 " Let us hope they are taking proper care of 
 it this time. Young things should be warmly 
 wrapped up, and old things too. And now try 
 to get your father to bed. I wish that horrid 
 game had never been invented. It makes him 
 kick all night in his sleep." 
 
 " That is not chess, mother. That is the 
 tankard. Too much tankard. Too military," 
 declared the princess, who had little tolerance 
 for failings other than her own. 
 
 " May you never have a worse husband, my 
 child." 
 
 " I shall never have one at all." 
 
 " A caprice ! I wish you would learn to think 
 like the rest of the world. Everybody gets mar- 
 ried sooner or later. Ask your father." 
 
 " When he is sober." 
 
THEY WENT 77 
 
 " Do try to speak more kindly of him. Think 
 of his white hairs! Wait till you are eighty- 
 three ! You should have heard him talking last 
 night. Like a boy of your age." 
 
 " That is the tankard." 
 
 " Oh, hush, dear ! Tankard or no, he is a won- 
 derful old man." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE mellow light of afternoon was flood- 
 ing the streets. They had strolled for 
 a time beyond the city wall to view the 
 potteries, cucumber gardens and dwarfs' settle- 
 ment; now, returned to the centre of the town, 
 the princess was saying : 
 
 "And what think you, Kenwyn, of our har- 
 bour? 
 
 It lay there, oval in shape. Countless craft 
 were moored to its side, ships of every build 
 shallow river vessels, coast traders and others 
 from foreign lands far away. All was bustle and 
 confusion on that smooth expanse; rowing boats 
 plied hither and thither, sailors were gesticulat- 
 ing and calling to each other in many tongues, 
 while flocks of snowy sea-gulls hovered overhead 
 or plunged with wild cries into the water when 
 some piece of garbage was thrown overboard. 
 
 " I have never seen its like," replied the 
 preacher. " How strangely shaped. Like an 
 egg." 
 
 " True. And the streets, you see, converge 
 here. The whole town has this shape, more or 
 less. A Roman built it." 
 
 " The king told me yesterday that he him- 
 self " 
 
 78 
 
THEY WENT 79 
 
 " This Roman, you understand, worked under 
 his direction." 
 
 Not without a terrible wrench had Ormidius 
 Limpidus departed from his own tradition of a 
 square settlement with its four gateways. He 
 perpetrated this outrage on his feelings, artistic 
 and patriotic, in order to conciliate the druidess 
 who even then, young as she was, possessed an 
 all-powerful influence at court. He felt the need 
 of an ally in case the king should lose his temper 
 seriously and do him to death in a fit of impa- 
 tience at the slowness of his work. Manthis, he 
 thought, might be able to avert such a catas- 
 trophe. One day she had given him to under- 
 stand, in veiled language, that she had a passion- 
 ate cult of the egg-principle. The shape of the 
 harbour, of the town, was an insidious piece of 
 flattery on the part of the engineer who had a 
 passionate cult of his own skin, and of his hun- 
 dred female slaves. 
 
 "A Roman, you say? That explains the 
 solidity of everything. We have heard much of 
 the Romans." 
 
 " Solid indeed," she replied. " Our court 
 prophet says that granite endures. He means 
 that these walls and docks will last for all 
 time." 
 
 " Nothing endures for ever save the All-High- 
 est alone." 
 
80 THEY WENT 
 
 " Keally? Then Ando must be mistaken. I 
 often tell my father that he is no longer fit for 
 his business. He drinks too much. Only think ! 
 We have this fair mountain water, brought hither 
 by the aqueduct you saw. I have drunk nothing 
 else all my life. Ando refuses to touch it. He 
 says : ' What injures my sandals cannot fail to 
 injure my stomach.' He is also too old. Our 
 court is full of musty, moth-eaten people. I am 
 glad you are young and strong and altogether 
 different from that predecessor of yours," she 
 added with a smile. " Come ! We will look at 
 some of these warehouses." 
 
 In those immense vaulted chambers, dimly 
 lighted, the air was heavy with the scent of 
 spice. Sacks of foreign merchandise lay about 
 ostrich feathers, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, 
 dried fruits, bitumen, gums and resins; casks 
 of wine from Italy or the Levant ; bales of cotton 
 cloth from Turkestan, carpets, embroidered 
 silks from distant Cathay. There were sheds 
 full of porphyry and marble slabs of many kinds, 
 and metals from the interior, and rare woods for 
 inlaying. Alongside, Kenwyn noticed the tav- 
 erns where sailormen gambled over their cups, 
 some rank with saffron and garlic and assafoe- 
 tida and such seasoning as Orientals love, others 
 where Europeans could devour the fare of their 
 own country oysters from the neighbouring 
 
THEY WENT 81 
 
 beds, and ducks, and hams, and red cheeses and 
 radishes and liver sausages and savoury ragouts 
 of game or fish. Low dancing saloons were at- 
 tached thereto, brothels, adapted to every taste, 
 steaming vapour-baths full of ribald song and 
 laughter haunts of debauchery. 
 
 The preacher, observing these things, shook his 
 head. 
 
 " You should see my town by night," remarked 
 the princess. 
 
 " I hope I never may," he replied. During 
 this brief walk he had been growing ever more 
 taciturn. He was unpleasantly affected with the 
 exuberance of the place. 
 
 " Why not? " she enquired. " Are you afraid 
 of pleasure? " 
 
 They had left the water-side and were now 
 moving along one of those broad thoroughfares 
 lined with the palaces of the richer merchants. 
 These men lived in their upper stories. The 
 lower floors were dedicated to work, and utilized 
 as ateliers and showrooms where visitors could 
 inspect their wares and make purchases. 
 
 " Travellers have told me," said the princess, 
 " that there are things here such as you will find 
 in no other Western city." 
 
 They entered several of these buildings to ob- 
 serve how they manipulated the leather, burning 
 it into fair patterns and staining it to cobalt blue 
 
82 THEY WENT 
 
 and other shades. They saw the workers in 
 enamel, the dyers, gem-cutters and lapidaries, 
 magicians, druggists, embroiderers, and those 
 who blew glass into wondrous designs and col- 
 ours, while the brittle mass flowed like water un- 
 der their touch. A whole street was dedicated 
 to perfumers, sickly men, contriving unguents 
 and cosmetics with essences from many lands. 
 
 "Favourites of mine," said the princess.'' 
 " They distil odours of violet or quince or myrrh 
 or fenugreek or lilies anything you please! 
 Syrian roses, or from Cyprus or Campania! 
 And here are other favourites," she went on, 
 leading him towards the goldsmiths and jewel- 
 lers who vied with one another in fashioning 
 rings and pendants of precious metal and en- 
 crusting them with stones. Groups of Jews clus- 
 tered about the pavement, discussing the market 
 and appraising some pearl or other rarity ar- 
 rived from over the sea. 
 
 " Men of the East how they love handling 
 gems! And to reflect that up to a few years 
 ago this town had never seen any save our own 
 lustreless river-pearls and jade and coral and 
 trash of that kind ! They wore beads of glass or 
 copper armlets. My father actually forbade his 
 people, at first, to import gold. Well, we have 
 changed our minds since then. I also used to 
 play with chrysolite and what not. Now my 
 
THEY WENT 83 
 
 fancy has grown bolder. I frolic with the 
 streets." She looked up at the structures fac- 
 ing them, and continued : 
 
 " If only that paint on the house fronts were 
 not always being effaced by the moist sea air. 
 It looks disorderly. All the year round it has to 
 be renewed. What shall be done about it? Let 
 us have your advice, Kenwyn." 
 
 The preacher glanced upwards, in a wonder- 
 ing fashion. 
 
 " I know nothing of painting," he said. " I 
 never noticed it. Why paint the houses at all? 
 The stone underneath would be good enough 
 for me." 
 
 " Not for me." 
 
 The quays, the sea .wall and harbour, still bore 
 the massive imprint of Ormidius Limpidus. 
 Otherwise not much of the original austerity of 
 the town could be detected in its external appear- 
 ance. Those grey granite walls, though they had 
 begun to brighten themselves naturally with a 
 sulphur-tinted lichen, were too gloomy for the 
 princess. She had covered them with tiles or 
 marble or plaster plaster which was painted 
 either in one hue or else enlivened with barbaric 
 scenes of hunting and feasting and slaughter; 
 all of which, to the great annoyance of the young 
 lady, had to be repaired from time to time on 
 account of the rain and salt sea air which gnawed 
 
84 THEY WENT 
 
 away the colours. She had erected arches and 
 colonnades; cheery copper, the work of the 
 dwarfs, gleamed at the gateways and house en- 
 trances ; parterres of flowers and bold shop signs 
 diversified the roadways, and at nearly every 
 street-corner stood a turret encased in polished 
 brass and bearing, at night, a monstrous torch 
 whose beams, caught by the overhanging mists, 
 flared over the city like a lurid mantle, visible far 
 out at sea. 
 
 " I thought much of these colonnades," she 
 was saying, " when first they were built. Now 
 I find them clumsy." 
 
 " You must be hard to please." 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " Sometimes, my good Kenwyn. Only some- 
 times." 
 
 He wondered what she meant by those words. 
 
 It was a democratic mart, an emporium and 
 outpost of civilization; a gaudy place inhabited 
 by folks of the same kind exiled rulers and 
 generals, high-class reprobates, merchants, en- 
 riched slaves, artizans of uncommon capacity 
 who, for some reason or other, had been obliged 
 to leave their homes. Folks who had money 
 to spend! They flocked hither from every part 
 of the world, assured of the protection and en- 
 couragement of the princess. No questions were 
 asked how he or she lived. No one was discour- 
 
THEY WENT 85 
 
 aged from settling in this town, whose reputation 
 for vice was such that lovers of pleasure had 
 been known to desert even their Mediterranean 
 capitals for the sake of the peculiar attractions 
 which they found here. An air of good humour 
 pervaded those thronged streets. You could see 
 horsemen from the neighbouring hill-country, 
 wrapped in gaily-striped plaids, lazy Orientals 
 carried about by their slaves, women of many 
 kinds, apparelled in flashing silks, with scarlet 
 slippers and gilt parasols, moving freely among 
 the rest too freely, Kenwyn was disposed to 
 think. And this town, he reflected, would have 
 remained a mere unloading-place for a few dozen 
 ships but for the initiative of the lady walking at 
 his side, who fostered its strange growth and 
 gave it the impress of her own mind. 
 
 An impress altogether unfamiliar to him. 
 This thriving trade and luxury he contrasted 
 it with the green calm of Ireland. It was as if 
 one of those rank and glittering tales of the 
 East, which occasionally reached his shores, had 
 sprung into life at this spot. There would be 
 much ploughing and uprooting of weeds to be 
 done here before the good 'seed could be sown. 
 None the less, he was constrained to observe : 
 
 " I see no beggars." 
 
 " That is what your predecessor used to say. 
 There are no beggars here. We send objection- 
 
86 THEY WENT 
 
 able folk to work at the mines, or throw them 
 into the Great Drain. We have many thousand 
 labourers in the mines at this moment. I am 
 still rather fond of metals, though the dwarfs, I 
 must say, are beginning to set my nerves on 
 edge." 
 
 Kenwyn remarked gravely: 
 
 " Those dwarfs, my lady, are unbaptized and 
 unredeemed. They are held to be lost souls, by 
 our Church. I wish I had never set eyes on 
 them. If I could but persuade you to drive them 
 back into their wilderness! And where, by the 
 way, are your temples? I see none." 
 
 " That is what your predecessor used to say. 
 There are no temples here. That horrid old man 
 wished to keep us poor, in order that we might 
 build temples and pray inside them. But our 
 folks are not poor; they are happy. No happy 
 man ever prays. Why should he? There is 
 much misery, they tell me, in Borne and Byzance ; 
 and many temples. Perhaps the All-Highest 
 creates poor men in order to be able to do some- 
 thing for them, since he can do nothing for the 
 happy ones. Or perhaps they create him in 
 order to be able to ask him for something. They 
 seem to hang on one another; it must be an un- 
 pleasant state of affairs. ... I, too, would like 
 to visit Rome and Byzance. What would my old 
 parents do without me? One must think of one's 
 
THEY WENT 87 
 
 parents, Kenwyn. I dislike the thought of leav- 
 ing them." 
 
 The princess disliked the thought of leaving 
 her city 
 
 Eipe and rotten, said Kenwyn to himself. It 
 reeked of foulness; it seemed to have sprung up 
 like a fungus in the night, ready to crumble into 
 putrefaction. The devil might well look with an 
 auspicious eye upon its unhealthy flowering. 
 
 " Perhaps the devil dwells here," he ventured. 
 
 " That is what your predecessor used to say. 
 And we told him that the devil, obviously, knows 
 what is good. I think, Kenwyn, he is not as red 
 as he is painted, though I have never seen him. 
 Have you? Sometimes I wish he would dwell 
 here. He is a fine architect, they say, and there 
 are many little things I would like to ask him," 
 she added almost wistfully. 
 
 Once or twice already, when disappointed with 
 her own efforts or with what she called the in- 
 creasing stupidity of her assistants, she had been 
 on the point of summoning the devil to her aid. 
 Hitherto she had refrained. She was afraid of 
 passing under his power and losing that sense 
 of independence which she cherished more than 
 all else on earth. Yet often she longed for his 
 counsel how often ! 
 
 For she was never wholly satisfied, her pas- 
 sion for ornament having no fixed models. Her 
 
88 THEY WENT 
 
 own tastes were changing all the time; changing 
 and expanding; she forgot her earlier ideas as 
 soon as they were executed, and straightway 
 went on to something new and better. The re- 
 sults, wonderful as they were, never quite came 
 up to expectation. Her parents, meanwhile, 
 watched her doings in loving but anxious be- 
 wilderment, like two sparrows that have hatched 
 a cuckoo. One side of her genial nature was so 
 far hidden from them; they were sufficiently puz- 
 zled by what they saw of the other, and her fa- 
 ther, more particularly, often marvelled whence 
 she derived that imperious will, that restless 
 longing to mould and fashion anew. He con- 
 cluded that they were qualities of his own, which 
 the incidents of a busy military life had never 
 allowed him to develop to their full extent. For 
 the city was her creation; its pride had grown 
 with hers, and now there was no end to either. 
 
 All for the sake of pleasure, she told the 
 troubled Kenwyn; pleasure that relaxes the 
 mind ; pleasure an end in itself, and the 
 worthiest occuption for freeborn folk. And she 
 laughed, happy so long as she could work her 
 will upon men and things. 
 
 Pleasure. . . . He was inclined to call it by 
 another name. She seemed to have instincts dif- 
 ferent from those of most women. 
 
 " I remember now ! " she suddenly said. " We 
 
THEY WENT 89 
 
 have a temple here, and you shall see it. But 
 why look into my eyes so strangely? Is there 
 anything amiss? " 
 
 " Naught is amiss." 
 
 " Are they not to your taste? " 
 
 " They are greatly to my taste," he replied. 
 Then he bit his lips. The words had slipped 
 out, he knew not how. What made him utter 
 them? 
 
 " So come," she said, and laid a warm little 
 hand lightly on his wrist. There it remained, 
 awhile. 
 
 She led him through one of the narrowest 
 streets of the town into a wide, old-fashioned 
 court-yard paved with cobbles and surrounded 
 by tall buildings. 
 
 Here, leaning against one side of the enclosure, 
 stood a small shed of stones, all awry. 
 
 " This is the temple ; the temple of your prede- 
 cessor." 
 
 " A Christian temple? " 
 
 " He begged Ormidius Limpidus to construct 
 him a fitting place for worship. The wretch took 
 his money for drawing up the plans and then, 
 after talking it over with Manthis, came to the 
 conclusion that he was too old to begin building 
 Christian churches at his time of life. So he 
 reared this shed with his own hands, and called 
 it a humble beginning." 
 
90 THEY WENT 
 
 " A humble beginning. Such it is ! " 
 
 "And such it remained." 
 
 " Did he make many converts? " enquired the 
 preacher. " Pray tell me something about him." 
 
 " Folks listened at first out of curiosity. Then 
 they grew weary of his words and dropped off 
 again. He told them to repent, which they could 
 not do, seeing that they had no reason for re- 
 penting. He promised them good things after 
 death, which they did not want, seeing that they 
 wanted them during life. Only one low woman 
 remained always true to his teaching. Some 
 sailors had brought her from the provinces; she 
 was neither young, nor fair to see, nor in particu- 
 larly good health. Day after day she sat in this 
 shed and hearkened while he discoursed, and 
 after his death she went there for three more 
 days, waiting for him ; he had told her, she said, 
 that he would return on the third. Perhaps she 
 misinterpreted some part of his doctrine. As 
 he never came again, she went home and cried 
 awhile; then took to her old life once more, say- 
 ing that it mattered little what any woman be- 
 lieved so long as she supported herself by honest 
 work. You can still see her hobbling about the 
 harbour on clear nights." 
 
 " One convert ! " said Kenwyn sadly. " And 
 how did he really come by his end? " 
 
 " I wonder ! Everybody wondered. There 
 
THEY WENT 91 
 
 was certainly a little misunderstanding. He 
 was such a violent creature, always spitting and 
 scratching like a wild cat. That reminds me, my 
 good friend! You are to see the garden of the 
 beasts. My mother asked me to show you the 
 unicorn family, and I always obey my mother. 
 Is it not right to obey your parents? Besides, 
 this park is one of the sights of the town. All 
 our visitors are taken to see it." 
 
 Kenwyn persisted : 
 
 " Tell me, as we go along, something about 
 that misunderstanding ; how it began and ended.' 
 And also about his death, if you know anything. 
 The Pope of Rome sent us word to say, not long 
 ago, that he had perished in a shipwreck." 
 
 " I do not think the Pope of Rome knows much 
 of what happens here. He must be a funny old 
 man, though I have never seen him. Have you? 
 Does he really wear a ring in his nose, in order 
 to dream more pleasantly? " 
 
 " I think not," said Kenwyn. 
 
 They went. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE Pope of Eome knew a good deal 
 about the town more than he need 
 have known, though perhaps not every- 
 thing; more, at all events, than was altogether 
 to his liking. So did he of Byzance. They never 
 spoke of the place save in a hushed whisper; they 
 called it " the city of the plain," or Sodom, or 
 Gomorrah, or sometimes both; and there still 
 exists a brief correspondence between the two re- 
 garding the desirability of dispatching a mission- 
 ary to the spot in order to reclaim it from druid- 
 ism and vice. 
 
 He of Byzance surmised that the good work 
 was incumbent upon Rome. " The distance from 
 Rome being shorter/' he urged, " the task of send- 
 ing a preacher would therefore be easier." 
 
 He of Rome replied that his brother-pontiff 
 should undertake the business. " The distance 
 from Byzance being longer," he argued, " the 
 merit of sending a preacher would therefore be 
 greater." 
 
 Both agreed, meanwhile, that no city could 
 have risen to such opulence without the help of 
 the devil, forgetful of the fact that their own 
 
THEY WENT 93 
 
 capitals left nothing to be desired on the score 
 of luxury. Be that as it may, they were mis- 
 taken. For the devil had hitherto taken no in- 
 terest whatever in its growth, and for the simple 
 reason that his antagonist, the Christ, had taken 
 no interest either. Perhaps they confused his 
 craftsmanship with that of the dwarfs who, hum- 
 ble mountain-folk as they were, certainly pro- 
 duced a few things (notably mirrors) which, in 
 point of sheer artistry, were held by some of the 
 simpler to be almost beyond human contriving. 
 
 In the end, neither of these sluggish, worldly 
 dignitaries moved a finger. After a few more 
 mutual recriminations, they agreed to leave the 
 place "to the judgment of the All-Highest," 
 a decision which was afterwards acclaimed, and 
 justly acclaimed, as a sign of prophetic intuition 
 on their part. For the All-Highest not only had 
 a reputation to preserve like everybody else, but, 
 unlike many others, a knack of invariably pre- 
 serving it. ... 
 
 Gwenulf, that saintly man who, although not 
 an Irishman himself, was then at the head of the 
 Irish Church Gwenulf thought differently 
 from these two pontiffs. He was made of spir- 
 itual stuff. Inflamed with holy zeal for the 
 propagation of the true faith, he had already 
 dispatched many missionaries among the heathen 
 of the mainland ; now, on hearing of the sad state 
 
94 THEY WENT 
 
 of this town, he lost no time in sending hither 
 that first Christian preacher of his. 
 
 He came. 
 
 Nothing would have been easier for the 
 stranger than to have remained on friendly 
 terms with the court, with Manthis and all the 
 citizens of the town. It was such a jovial and 
 democratic place ; they only desired to be allowed 
 to live in peace peace at any price ! On his 
 arrival everybody wished him well. He was 
 treated as a distinguished guest by the king, and 
 although the little princess frankly confided to 
 him that he was a great deal too old for her 
 taste, the queen made ample amends for this 
 childish indiscretion by smothering him in com- 
 forts and cookery. He was encouraged to come 
 and go as he pleased and to preach to his heart's 
 content ; he might be preaching to this very hour, 
 had he cared to follow the advice of Ando, who 
 gave him his own mysterious and infallible recipe 
 for behaviour at court : 
 
 " Be pleasant to everybody, and everybody will 
 take you to be pleasant. And if you can be rea- 
 sonable at the same time why, so much the bet- 
 ter." 
 
 He failed to be either pleasant or reasonable. 
 Manthis, in particular, found frequent cause to 
 complain of his bad manners, his ignorance and 
 presumption. The druidess who had more wit 
 
THEY WENT 95 
 
 in her little finger than he in all his skinny anat- 
 omy better blood, better breeding, better 
 brains looked clean through him at their first 
 meeting. " A dry nut," she concluded, " meat- 
 less, and easily cracked." Such he proved to be. 
 
 Manthis was seldom wrong. . . . 
 
 It was not without a knowledge of her rare 
 capacities that the great central college in the 
 land of the Carnutes had chosen her, years ago, 
 to fill the important post she then occupied. 
 From that day onward Manthis had never taken 
 a false step. She was the repository of the lore 
 and learning of her time, and men were some- 
 times disposed to call her conservative, or even 
 reactionary, because in her quality of priestess 
 she refused to make any alteration in the old- 
 established ritual of druidism, any concession to 
 the changeful tastes of the vulgar. They called 
 her a stiff old dame. 
 
 Yet, like other stiff old dames, Manthis was 
 not quite so convinced about things as she pro- 
 fessed to be. " One gropes," she would often 
 admit to herself; sometimes even adding: "per- 
 haps one gropes in a groove." Though her inner 
 life remained undisclosed, and though she never 
 voiced her opinions openly, she saw that there 
 was much to be amended in the spirit of the cult. 
 She disliked its sanguinary practices; she was 
 not wholly persuaded of the divine properties 
 
96 THEY WENT 
 
 of serpents' eggs or the efficacy of lunar charms ; 
 she had good reasons to distrust the obligatory 
 eating of raw acorns for purposes of prophecy, 
 since the practice invariably gave her acute grip- 
 ing pains. Her robes, again they were far 
 too ornate; she would have them simpler. She 
 thought it a mistake that laymen had hitherto 
 been forbidden to learn science, and children 
 taught so many verses and so little reading and 
 writing. There was something to be amended 
 even in the secret doctrine. In fact, she found 
 herself in disaccord with many tenets of her 
 faith ; she had misgivings both in matters of re- 
 ligion and of politics, and would have introduced 
 many innovations had it been possible. " I have 
 no fair chance/' she often said to herself. Dan- 
 ger was looming ahead, unless druidism could be 
 invigorated with fresh blood, with fresh and 
 more liberal ideas Christian ideas or any 
 other, provided they were what she called 
 " wholesome." It had grown paralysed and un- 
 able to fend off the coming blow. She foresaw 
 its decline, its possible extinction, amid the tur- 
 bulent ambitions of kings and nobles. A gulf 
 was beginning to yawn between the spiritual and 
 worldly rulers of the race ; their ideals no longer 
 coincided as of old; they were trending apart. 
 
 Whither trending? 
 
 Towards a break-up of happy social life. 
 
THEY WENT 97 
 
 Why trending apart? 
 
 Because woman, owing to some momentary, 
 inexplicable and deplorable lapse of intelligence 
 had forfeited her power for good. Such lapses 
 should never occur again! For they gave the 
 male an opportunity of calling to mind his old 
 and only argument, strength of muscle. The 
 male the weakest of the weak, if women only 
 knew their business ! Her thoughts, on such oc- 
 casions, went sadly backwards to other times, 
 better times, when the whole race was under the 
 domination of her own sex, when women led men 
 into battle and rulers hearkened to the counsel 
 of their queens. She pondered upon her official 
 gods, Heus and Ogmius and the rest of them, 
 newcomers all all males ! She remembered 
 how, in olden days, the female was preponderant 
 in religious matters, the cult of male druids 
 being quite a recent invention ; and her musings 
 delved into dusky ages before the most ancient 
 oaks of the forest were yet acorns, when men 
 lived in caves, hunting the reindeer and sacri- 
 ficing to that all-powerful tattooed goddess, pre- 
 server of the race. The female had ever taken 
 a leading part. And now the world was grow- 
 ing masculine. The male, that necessary evil 
 and creature of excess, moving always at. the 
 outer edge of the circle coarse sensualist or 
 fatuous dreamer of dreams. The male, that 
 
98 THEY WENT 
 
 blind opinionated brute who thinks he is right, 
 because he can hit with his fists. . . . 
 
 She glanced at the daily life which moved 
 around her. The queen, drowsy and lackadaisi- 
 cal. ; . . What might not a woman in her posi- 
 tion have accomplished ! What chances she had 
 missed of imposing her will upon that doting old 
 husband and, through him, upon the country at 
 large! She had made nothing of those chances, 
 wrapped up, as she was, in fond domestic con- 
 cerns, in clothing, provisions, embroidery. Em- 
 broidery : a worthy occupation for high-born 
 dames ! Were there not enough men for triflings 
 of this kind? Was there not an entire street of 
 Oriental embroiderers in the town, all males, as- 
 was meet and proper? 
 
 She was wont to pause in her reflections, how- 
 ever, when she came to consider the princess. 
 She felt more respect for that lustrous young 
 person than she cared to show. True, the prin- 
 cess was somewhat too tolerant of the other sex 
 (Manthis had begun to forget her own youth), 
 and those notions of hers, which took shape in 
 the adornment of the city, were alien to her 
 own. Manthis loved not beauty, but betterment. 
 Nevertheless, she was sometimes forced to admit, 
 while passing through those fair streets : 
 
 " It shows what a woman can do when she 
 wants" 
 
THEY WENT 99 
 
 Woman need only want was a favourite axiom 
 of hers. She called it a " pleasant discovery." 
 
 Then again, that scarlet streak, that sheer 
 love of killing whence derived? For various 
 legends had reached her ears ; indeed, the matter 
 was beyond all doubt. Manthis who was deeply 
 versed, as became her rank, in the mysteries 
 of metempsychosis and who knew that the grey 
 interludes called death are the merest shadows, 
 passing shadows, in the sunshine of an endless 
 life, was apt to wonder whether the princess, 
 during some earlier state of being, had dwelt 
 within the painted hide of a tigress. Was that 
 the explanation? Or was this bloodthirstiness 
 an accessory to her fierce artistic cravings, a 
 part and parcel of her vital force her cold yet 
 feverish nature? However that might be, she 
 was disposed towards indulgence even on this 
 point. The princess was a woman, and those 
 sporadic mischiefs were as nothing when com- 
 pared to the widespread harm done by perverse 
 creatures of the other sex. Often, puzzling over 
 the origin of these ferocious traits, she likened 
 that charming young lady to Heussa, Queen of 
 Terrors. 
 
 What could be expected, she would then ask, 
 from parents such as hers? " The girl was not 
 given a fair chance." Had they but followed 
 her advice and sent her to the college, as they 
 
100 THEY WENT 
 
 were once on the point of doing! Her youthful 
 intelligence would then have been moulded on 
 more wholesome lines. For the duty of Manthis 
 as teacher was clear : to fit the coming genera- 
 tion of women for a more preponderating influ- 
 ence on human affairs. This was the base, the 
 fundamental idea of all her instruction at that 
 establishment which she regarded as the apple 
 of her eye and a sacred trust : the germ of better 
 things, the hope the only hope for the 
 future. 
 
 As to Christians and their doctrines, there 
 might be some merit in them. She understood 
 that they worshipped a Virgin, which pointed 
 obviously to a budding comprehension on their 
 part. It was also not without significance, she 
 mused, that her own faith had originally been 
 imported from those white islands over the sea; 
 now Christians were arriving from the same 
 quarter. Such a change of cult, she argued, 
 would not have taken place without good reason. 
 Something could probably be learnt from them : 
 something wholesome. So it came about that 
 she met Gwenulfs first missionary as, later 
 on, she met Kenwyn in a spirit of friendliest 
 conciliation. 
 
 There was nothing to be done with that unrea- 
 sonable and uncompromising old person. His 
 ordinary sermons would have passed without 
 
THEY WENT : it)i 
 
 comment. It was when he started raving about 
 the Council of Aries and the iniquity of lithola- 
 trous practices that he began to lose the respect 
 of the citizens, and to grow unpopular. " A vio- 
 lent venerable," they said, wondering what on 
 earth it mattered whether one did, or did not, 
 worship stones. Next he gave the king a bad 
 shock by remarking one day: 
 
 " I have now twenty-one listeners in my con- 
 gregation. I counted them this morning." 
 
 " Let me congratulate you ! " replied the mon- 
 arch with a smile. " That is charming of you. 
 I am sure they are hearing much wisdom from 
 your lips." 
 
 " It is a humble beginning. The seed is sown 
 all praise to Heaven. And the number now 
 strikes me as sufficient for the object in view. 
 Tomorrow we purpose, God willing, to hew down 
 that damnation of abomination of desolations up 
 yonder." 
 
 " To what do you refer, my good friend? " 
 
 " The dreadful druidical grove." 
 
 " Ho," remarked the king. 
 
 He was too astonished to say anything more 
 for two or three minutes. Then he found suf- 
 ficient breath to add : 
 
 " You would do well, I think, to disclose your 
 project to the quite-too-chaste-and-venerable 
 Mother Manthis." 
 
102 THEY WENT 
 
 The druidess, having been implored by the 
 / queen to avoid friction and scenes at all cost, 
 contrived with smooth words to calm down his 
 iconoclastic zeal for the time being. She ex- 
 plained that the grove had stood there for several 
 thousand years it could well wait a day or 
 so; it was thick and fairly extensive, further- 
 more, and would require much hewing; let him 
 preach a little longer and gain a few more con- 
 verts. She had already made up her mind about 
 him, but never dreamt to what lengths of bad 
 taste and injustice he would go till he told her, 
 soon afterwards, that his Church had laid it 
 down that woman was a necessary evil and a 
 creature of excess, a temptation of the devil, a 
 plague, a blight, a festering sore; and that the 
 only good thing which ever came out of such an 
 impure vessel, as he called it, was a male child 
 Christian, by preference. Manthis, whose opin- 
 ion on the subject of males was fairly well 
 known, did not even say ho! She swallowed 
 down her wrath like a well-born lady, and heaped 
 kindness on this grossest of insults by inviting 
 him to visit the college (they had not yet emi- 
 grated to the Sacred Rock), in order that he 
 might see with his own eyes whether there was 
 anything amiss with the several dozen impure 
 vessels there studying under her own charge and 
 that of her teachers. 
 
THEY WENT 103 
 
 He went, but had not a word of praise for the 
 dear little rosy-cheeked girls, their good manners, 
 their flawless deportment and recitation of runes 
 not a word. He spat on a sacred plant of 
 vervain which stood in the garden, poked his nose 
 into dormitories and kitchens 
 
 " Now what may this be? " he suddenly en- 
 quired, tapping with his finger an enormous 
 and strange-looking disc of bronze that hung in 
 the court-yard of the school. The instrument 
 gave forth, at that impact, an altogether un- 
 familiar sound a kind of shuddering groan. 
 " Doubtless some diabolical appliance for rais- 
 ing tempests, or other sorcery." 
 
 "No," said Manthis wearily. Then she set 
 forth in a few words the history of the thing; 
 how it came from a distant Eastern land and 
 how she received it as a gift from the king, who 
 had vainly tried to discover its purport. " We 
 use it for summoning the little children to their 
 midday meal. It shouts when smitten." 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt. It shouts when smitten 
 and is useful for summoning the little children 
 to their midday meal. That sounds extremely 
 likely. It might be useful, by the way, for sum- 
 moning the little devils to their midnight dances. 
 Eh, druidess? You seem to take me for a 
 precious fool." 
 
 " I do," said Manthis, who never told a lie. 
 
104 THEY WENT 
 
 So he criticized and sniffed about, trying to 
 find fault, and discovering at last nothing better 
 to say than this : 
 
 " Sad to think that these children should be 
 reared as Satans, though, thank God, they are 
 only girls! I will now meet you, old wench, in 
 a spirit of Christian reconciliation, and tell you 
 what is to be done. We two will hold classes 
 here on alternate days. You shall teach them 
 to wash and comb their heathen hair, and I will 
 endeavour to instil into their poor little minds 
 some notions of the true God. What say you? " 
 
 Bather than submit to such a proposal, the 
 druidess would have held her right arm in the 
 fire till it was burnt to the stump ; and then the 
 left one. This was the last straw. There was 
 nothing to 1 be done with the grey-haired horror. 
 
 " That settles it," she thought. 
 
 It was observed on the same evening that 
 Manthis had donned her girdle of pale-blue cal- 
 lais stones. " She means business," said the 
 townsfolk, who had seen her do the same on vari- 
 ous other solemn occasions. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IT happened in a twinkling. The king and 
 citizens were enchanted with the idea, and 
 so, strangely enough, was the queen herself 
 who, mild and compassionate as she was, had 
 realized that there would be no peace in the 
 realm so long as that lively source of apprehen- 
 sions was allowed to flow distractedly about the 
 country. As to the little princess she, al- 
 though only a child, had already formulated with 
 more than common precocity certain clear-cut 
 notions as to the kind of male she fancied, and 
 made up her mind that there was nothing what- 
 ever to be done with old ones, Christian or other- 
 wise. An hour's consultation among the chief 
 notabilities of the town sufficed to draw up all 
 the details for next day's festival. 
 
 On that blazing summer morning the proces- 
 sion left their homes early, on horseback, in 
 palanquin or afoot ; it would be a long march to 
 their destination in the old druidical forest. 
 They crossed the plain by the solid causeway 
 which Ormidius Limpidus had constructed to run 
 beside the stream, and not all the company could 
 recall the days when this now fertile plain was 
 
 105 
 
106 THEY WENT 
 
 nothing but a wind-swept marsh. The king, rid- 
 ing gravely along, thought of those times with 
 inward satisfaction; so did many of his nobles; 
 so did Ando. Lelian, the armourer, was not 
 wholly satisfied. He often regretted the recent 
 turn of events. The site of the capital, he de- 
 clared, should never have been changed. Then 
 there would be less commerce, less vice, less 
 effeminacy. 
 
 Manthis was there. She spoke little. At- 
 tended by her babchick and by three young male 
 druids who were sojourning in the town on a mis- 
 sion from the interior, she moved forwards, think- 
 ing less of the coming ceremony than of her 
 pupils whom she would not see again till the 
 evening. 
 
 Soon the strong scent of the sea was left be- 
 hind. Chaffinches were piping in the pear trees, 
 gaily coloured insects flashed among clusters of 
 yellow flag-lilies and other wayside blossoms that 
 glittered in the sunshine, and the eyes of all were 
 gladdened by cheery patches of culture leeks 
 and corn and flax and hemp. Many of the hum- 
 ble peasantry abandoned their rude conical huts 
 of willow or reed, or stone without plaster; they 
 gave themselves a holiday and joined the proces- 
 sion, which included nearly everybody of note in 
 the town. The queen alone refused to be pres- 
 ent, much to the annoyance of her consort. 
 
THEY WENT 107 
 
 "What shall I do all alone?" he had said. 
 " Besides, it would have been such a pleasant 
 change for you ! " 
 
 " I dislike scenes. Pray let me stay at home. 
 I have many things to do which have been over- 
 looked of late. There is also the great supper 
 to prepare. You will all be twice as hungry as 
 usual." 
 
 " I observe you have taken to thwarting my 
 wishes lately. I am not altogether pleased with 
 you. Well, well! See that supper makes 
 amends for your absence." 
 
 They marched without her, laughing and chat- 
 ting. 
 
 One voice was heard above all their lively 
 talk; it raved continuously. It was the voice 
 of the victim who, confined like a beast in a 
 wicker basket, was led forward on the back of a 
 bullock. Gwenulf s missionary had begun to 
 curse loudly as soon as hands were laid on his 
 person; from that moment he had never ceased 
 to vociferate maledictions and to call down the 
 vengeance of the All-Highest upon the druids 
 and their devil's work, upon the town and all it 
 contained ; his curses fell thicker and faster than 
 flakes of wintry snow. He had now been curs- 
 ing for thirteen hours, and his voice was not yet 
 husky. 
 
 A halt was made when they reached the ruins 
 
108 THEY WENT 
 
 of the former capital at the foot of the hills. 
 Here they dismounted to rest and refresh them- 
 selves in the dank old square, all overgrown with 
 docks and luscious forget-me-nots. Blue sky 
 peered down through gaps in the walls of those 
 dismantled buildings, out of whose doorways a 
 tangle of sweetly scented elder and privet were 
 thrusting their branches. The king could not 
 help saying, as they lifted him out of the saddle : 
 
 " And here we used to live ! Yonder is the 
 council-hall ! A hazel, I perceive, is growing 
 out of its wooden floor. It makes me feel 
 strange, and somewhat lonely. I wish the queen 
 were here. It makes me think of things old 
 things. What says Ando? " 
 
 " Me too," replied the prophet. " It makes me 
 feel strange. Strange, and somewhat thirsty." 
 
 " Me too. Thirsty." 
 
 They feasted awhile among those crumbling 
 ivy-clad mansions. There was jollity through- 
 out the company, and a universal sense of relief 
 at the thought that this nuisance, this menace to 
 the peace of mankind, was at last to be abated. 
 
 " Bring him hither," said some one, after they 
 had eaten and drunk their fill. 
 
 The bullock was driven into their midst, with 
 the preacher cursing furiously in his basket. 
 
 " He curses better than he preaches," observed 
 the little princess who had once or twice slipped 
 
THEY WENT 109 
 
 into the chapel to listen to his exhortations. " I 
 like that spirit," she added. " It is the only 
 thing I like about him." 
 
 Thence onward and upward through that for- 
 est where they used to lay pits for the mighty 
 urus and to hunt the stag and boar and lynx. 
 A few surprised woodcutters left their work and 
 joined the company. After a long march in the 
 hot hour of noon they reached the sacred grove. 
 The branches of those venerable oaks and beeches 
 and hollies were so thickly intertwined that 
 scarce a ray of sunlight could penetrate to earth. 
 No breeze stirred here; the leaves seemed to 
 flutter of their own accord. They moved in sin- 
 gle file, and a hush fell upon them all; nobody 
 spoke; nothing was heard save the maledictory 
 brawlings of the victim, which sounded louder 
 than ever in this silence. 
 
 Presently they entered an open green space, 
 surrounded by hoary trees. It was the Field of 
 Adoration. In its centre stood the old, grey 
 Stone of Destiny. 
 
 Manthis, the evening before, had made rather 
 a singular speech. 
 
 " It matters little," she said, " whether he 
 shall end by fire or water or steel; whether he 
 receive a sword-thrust in the back, or be pierced 
 by darts, or crucified or impaled; whether we 
 please Teutates by thrusting his vile head in a 
 
110 THEY WENT 
 
 pail of water, or burn him in honour of Taranis, 
 or conciliate the all-potent Hesus by hanging 
 that loathly carcase to a yew-tree. It matters 
 nothing! He is no man, that I should touch 
 him, or think of this or that regarding his fate. 
 Never will I sully my fingers with the blood of a 
 miscreant who attempts to tamper with the 
 young our hope, our only hope, of better 
 things! Choose for yourselves. Be it some- 
 thing simple and appropriate, in that sacred 
 grove which the godless one purposed to hew 
 down." 
 
 They chose something simple and appropriate. 
 
 The victim having been strapped as comfort- 
 ably as possible over the curved surface of the 
 stone, and sprinkled with salt, one of the young 
 druids made an aperture between his fourth and 
 fifth rib and drew out the heart and, later on, by 
 another incision, the liver and a few more things. 
 In this, his maiden effort, he acquitted himself 
 so creditably as to earn the praise of Manthis, 
 to whom the entrails were then submitted, reek- 
 ing hot, on the traditional platter of birch-wood. 
 Standing there, austere and black (she had 
 donned her dusky robes), with venerable curls 
 drooping over those calm grey eyes, she poked 
 delicately among the relics, while the onlookers 
 waited to hear her verdict. All her humanity 
 was laid aside. She was no longer a woman, but 
 
THEY WENT 111 
 
 the servant of God. She had a reputation to 
 keep up. 
 
 At last the duty was ended. And still she said 
 nothing. The sovereign could no longer control 
 his impatience. 
 
 " How about the omens? " he enquired, speak- 
 ing for everybody. 
 
 " These entrails are not pretty," said Manthis, 
 who never told a lie. " I see signs of woe." 
 
 " Dear me," replied the king. " How vexa- 
 tious!" 
 
 Ando promptly observed that he, for his part, 
 was not surprised; not in the least surprised. 
 Christians were necromancers and capable of 
 anything. They could easily twist their entrails 
 into so foul a shape, and impart to them such 
 a sinister hue, as to scare out of his wits anybody 
 who might have the temerity to inspect them. 
 
 "That is his revenge," he said. "Ha, ha! 
 He is trying to frighten us, the old witch- 
 monger. 77 
 
 Many of the spectators thought otherwise. 
 They were concerned ; none more so than Lelian 
 the armourer and his small group of old believers, 
 to whom the word of Manthis was the word of 
 God. A cloud of anxiety settled upon him from 
 that day onwards. Often in later days he called 
 to mind the scene. He remembered the last 
 words of the Christian preacher and his proph- 
 
112 THEY WENT 
 
 ecy of doom to the city, for he cursed almost up 
 to the minute when the knife entered his flesh. 
 Vengeance would come, he cried ; vengeance and 
 retribution. The devil would be driven hence. 
 The Cross would conquer. Retribution from the 
 
 Retribution from the sea - 
 
 Solemn and mysterious words. They were the 
 last they understood of his speech, for its final 
 phrases became unintelligible to them. Whether 
 he cursed himself to exhaustion, his powers of re- 
 sistance giving way from age and infirmity and 
 allowing him no longer to bear the torture of his 
 senses, or whatever else the cause might be, his 
 words all at once relapsed into a tongue which 
 nobody had ever heard and which sounded 
 doubly fateful for that reason some barbarous 
 idiom he had picked up from his mother's lips, 
 long years ago, while playing as a little boy 
 among the hawthorn dells of Ireland. Dim 
 stuff ! It troubled them. And there was worse 
 to come. For his maledictions were now at an 
 end; he seemed to be appealing to them as a 
 friend, and his anguished look melted into a 
 smile serene as that of an infant. Perhaps he 
 was forgiving them. That smile it sent a 
 shiver down the backs of the old believers and 
 disquieted them more than all his curses. Never 
 
THEY WENT 113 
 
 again could they drive that kindly, radiant look 
 from their memory. 
 
 " Racy talk, whatever it may mean," observed 
 the princess who was not much of an old be- 
 liever. "If he had always preached so brightly 
 and so feelingly, I might be a Christian by this 
 time." 
 
 Manthis said : 
 
 " He has a reputation to keep up, my child." 
 
 " He had, good Manthis." 
 
 What remained of Gwenulf s missionary was 
 thereafter burnt, for form's sake, in the com- 
 modious basket of willow branches. 
 
 He went. 
 
 There was an end to that misunderstanding. 
 
 The procession trudged homewards, Manthis 
 having departed a good hour before everybody 
 else, in order to superintend the evening classes 
 at her college. There, when all the children had 
 gone to bed, the babchick of the day, a quick- 
 witted maiden who had been vastly interested 
 in the ceremony, gave such a glowing account of 
 the day's proceedings to her fellow-pupils that 
 they envied her good luck. Thinking, in their 
 childish simplicity, that a new Christian 
 preacher might arrive at any moment from over 
 the sea and meet with the same fate, they strove 
 to become babchick in order not to miss the spec- 
 
114 THEY WENT 
 
 tacle, and Manthis, for all her wisdom and in- 
 sight, failed utterly to comprehend the reason 
 for the painful attention to dress and manner, 
 that breathless interest in music and astronomy 
 and medicine, which the older of her girls began 
 to display from the same moment onwards. 
 
 At court, meanwhile, a sombre atmosphere pre- 
 vailed. The king, preoccupied like many of his 
 subjects, was observed to grow proportionately 
 fuddled as evening wore on ; more fuddled, more 
 military, than usual. It was his approved 
 method of combating perturbation of mind and 
 unpleasant thoughts. In fact, he was on the 
 verge of high-water mark when the queen, as 
 usual, interfered and had him put to bed. On 
 reaching his chamber, the old man grew boy- 
 ishly obstreperous, vowing he would take off 
 nothing whatever, save his gold crown and the 
 key of the sluice-gate which hung at his girdle. 
 
 " The key? " anxiously enquired his consort 
 who, to set him a good example, had already 
 composed herself to slumber. " The key you 
 shall not take off. Certainly not! Especially 
 after those entrails; those omens and curses. 
 Certainly not. Now wear it, like a good man." 
 
 She meant to keep a sharper eye than ever on 
 that key. 
 
 " Certainly not ! The key is mine, my dear," 
 he replied. " How often have I told you that 
 
THEY WENT 115 
 
 I can do what I like with it! The stupid key, 
 always dangling here. It shall be thrown into 
 the Great Drain tomorrow. Perhaps then you 
 will understand that I can do what I please. I 
 can, and will. So help me, Belen." 
 
 " Close your eyes, old friend, and go to sleep. 
 It is past midnight." 
 
 " Certainly not. I observe you have taken to 
 thwarting my wishes lately. I am not altogether 
 pleased, let me tell you. Something will have to 
 be done about it." 
 
 " In the morning," said the queen. She pre- 
 tended to be asleep. It was an expedient she 
 had learnt to adopt, many years ago, whenever 
 her consort was seized with one of his nocturnal 
 talking fits. Otherwise he was liable to chatter 
 for ever. 
 
 " In the morning. Certainly not. You should 
 amuse me now, in the evening, after my terrible 
 day with those entrails. Sing me a song . . . 
 No? You women are all alike. You never en- 
 tertain your husbands. You never say funny 
 things, except when you are trying to be serious. 
 Look at that girl of ours. Has she ever made 
 any one laugh? Not me. Never even talks to 
 her old father unless she wants something from 
 him. I fear she is not a kind girl. And Man- 
 this what fun will you get out of Man this? 
 Tell me that." 
 
116 THEY WENT 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 "A crowd of moulting pelicans and puffins. 
 Something will have to be done about it. I 
 must change my habits. Belen alone knows 
 why a man ever marries. No more women for 
 me! A shipload of young sailorboys, who can 
 frolic and laugh. . . . Ando, the old sot. Bad 
 company for a king. Drunkards are a sorry 
 crew." 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 "Wake up. I want to be amused. The 
 council-chamber today, all in ruins and full of 
 green things it was not amusing. And that 
 preacher set my nerves on edge with his curses. 
 I wish you had been there to help me. You 
 never want to talk when I want to talk. I am 
 beginning to be seriously displeased with you. 
 Nobody loves me. The pink porpoise how it 
 laughed " 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 "A funny bird. Perhaps it will come back 
 some day, pinker than ever. It is now. swim- 
 ming about the water again, Belen knows where. 
 The sea is too big, and the tide too noisy. I can 
 hear it bump! against the embankment. It 
 shakes the bed each time. Suppose it came in 
 here? I am not a pink porpoise, let me tell 
 you. I shall dream of a flood tonight, if you ever 
 let me go to sleep. There bump ! Something 
 
THEY WENT 117 
 
 will have to be done about that tide. Always 
 bump bump What did you say? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 "Ah! I thought you were only pretend- 
 ing. . . ." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SEVERAL years elapsed ere the saintly 
 Gwenulf heard that his preacher had 
 perished in a shipwreck, it was said. 
 Filled with Christian zeal, he held this devil's 
 town to be worthy of another effort and dis- 
 patched, after anxious deliberation, a younger 
 and robuster man, one who could wrestle and 
 ride and swim and fight, if needful: Kenwyn, 
 his second missionary. Of Kenwyn's preaching 
 capacities, of his enthusiasm and uprightness 
 of soul, there was no doubt whatever. None the 
 less, Gwenulf felt misgivings. He knew some- 
 thing of his disciple's earlier and desperate 
 career, of his impulsive nature and how he had 
 been reclaimed by a miracle, and only by a mira- 
 cle, from his evil ways. He consoled himself by 
 reflecting that the first flush of Kenwyn's youth 
 was now over, that the converted sinner makes 
 the most ardent Christian and that the dreamy, 
 inflammable passions of Kenwyn, directed to a 
 worthy end, would kindle the fire in others who 
 might remain indifferent to an envoy of colder 
 mind. 
 
 The saintly man would have been surprised 
 to see his disciple just then, not preaching to a 
 
 118 
 
THEY WENT 119 
 
 crowded congregation of heathens, but walking 
 in friendly-wise under the trees of a garden so 
 fairly set that it might have passed for the Gar- 
 den of Eden, save for the fact that the beasts 
 it contained were not free but enclosed, like 
 Christian missionaries, within cages; walking 
 from one of those cages to the other, while a 
 strange and beautiful young lady, her hand rest- 
 ing lightly on his arm, told him a little something 
 (practically nothing at all) about his predeces- 
 sor's life in that God-abandoned city, and his con- 
 flict with a certain druidess, the quite-too-chaste- 
 and-venerable Mother Manthis. 
 
 Here were peacocks, and the strangely-horned 
 strepsichorus antelope, and sea-calves with gen- 
 tle eyes, and a valiant estriche bird from the 
 sandy wastes of Numidia. The princess re- 
 marked : 
 
 " If you ask the common folk about this un- 
 holy fowl they will say that not long ago it 
 kicked a man over the embankment into the sea, 
 where he was found three days afterwards, swim- 
 ming somewhere beyond the Sacred Rock. I tell 
 you this in order that you may learn not to be- 
 lieve everything you hear in the town. Try to 
 recollect what I say, my friend." 
 
 She spoke with a good deal of earnestness. 
 Maybe she was afraid lest certain legends con- 
 cerning herself should come to his ears. 
 
120 THEY WENT 
 
 The other merely observed : 
 
 " It is all strange these animals " 
 
 "Am I strange, Kenwyn?" 
 
 " She seemed a kind old lady, when I spoke 
 to her." 
 
 " Who? 
 
 He was still thinking of Manthis, concerning 
 whom the princess had given him to understand 
 only this much: that she was a person of pro- 
 nounced opinions, and not to be thwarted with 
 impunity. 
 
 " The druidess," he replied. 
 
 " So she is. I agree with most of what she 
 says; not with everything. For example, she 
 does not think much of your sex. Neither do I. 
 But my views are not so extreme as hers," she 
 added, with a smile. " Rest assured, Kenwyn, 
 that she had drunk deeply, as we say, of the 
 waters of Entri. Beware! She is a magician. 
 She can read the clouds, and dreams ; she knows 
 every man's Awenn. They say she can lay 
 eggs." 
 
 " Is it possible? " 
 
 " A kindly dame, none the less. But some- 
 thing of a thistle, especially in regard to her 
 pupils. Therefore I advise you, if you value 
 your life, to leave those children alone. Else 
 there will be another misunderstanding, and 
 then " 
 
THEY WENT 121 
 
 She ceased abruptly. The druidess herself 
 stood at a few yards' distance. She had not 
 yet observed them. 
 
 Surrounded by a group of her young people 
 (the babchick was there), she was gazing into 
 a grated receptacle that held a portentous baboon 
 captured in some stony African ravine a sav- 
 age and solitary beast of furrowed cheeks, tat- 
 tooed with bright colours on the wrong part of 
 that uncouth body whose hairy arms hung limply 
 downwards, resting on the in-turned fingers, 
 while his eyes stared out upon the world with an 
 air of low ferocity. 
 
 " How very like a man ! " the druidess was say- 
 ing, when she caught sight of the two. 
 
 She often took a dozen or so of her pupils to 
 see the animals, as a matter of " pure instruc- 
 tion." She held it to be part of a liberal school- 
 ing for women to learn something about the 
 wild creatures of the earth, in whose habits 
 and economy there was much of practical conse- 
 quence to be noted. In her quality of teacher, 
 the druidess had fairly comprehensive ideas of 
 what girls ought to know. 
 
 Now they greeted one another, and Manthis 
 whispered to the princess, alluding to Harre" 
 who, as usual, was following his mistress and 
 whom she was wont to contrast unfavourably 
 with young persons of her own sex. 
 
122 THEY WENT 
 
 " Keep that male of yours away from my chil- 
 dren. The small one, I mean; that blue thing. 
 He ought to be in the cage here, with his big 
 brother/' 
 
 It was another point on which the two ladies 
 did not agree. The princess also knew some- 
 thing about males. She often thought Manthis 
 unfair to her little boy, and unappreciative of 
 his rare qualities. But what, after all, could the 
 old lady know of these qualities? 
 
 The old lady knew a good deal she knew 
 more than she need have known, though perhaps 
 not everything. 
 
 Her children, as a matter of fact, seemed to 
 be far less afraid of the blue pest than of that 
 tall, grave man with the black beard and black 
 cloak. They had heard about him from the 
 new babchick. He was the second Christian 
 preacher. They kept away from him. When 
 would he be sacrificed and how? Roasted? 
 Boiled? Or would he turn them all into hedge- 
 hogs before Manthis had time to utter the neces- 
 sary counter-charm? 
 
 The druidess remarked: 
 
 " I want these young ones to see the Phoenix 
 bird." 
 
 Manthis disapproved of the Phoenix, a spurred 
 and crested prodigy, resplendent in feathers of 
 gold, who pecked in regal fashion at his food 
 
THEY WENT 123 
 
 amid a company of demurely coloured hens. 
 
 " Look at the Phoenix, girls, and tell me your 
 conclusions. Keflect before you open your 
 mouth, and speak distinctly." 
 
 " He is beautiful/' said one of them, at last. 
 
 " He struts about as if the world belonged to 
 him.' 7 
 
 " The lady birds appear to occupy a subordi- 
 nate position." 
 
 Man this enquired: 
 
 " And what says the babchick?" 
 
 " There is something altogether wrong about 
 him," declared the babchick. 
 
 " True. There is something wrong, we are 
 inclined to say, about many things. When, not 
 long ago, the sun was suddenly darkened at mid- 
 day, what did we say? We said: there is some- 
 thing wrong about it. If, at this moment, the 
 sea were to rush over the embankment and cover 
 the soil on which we stand, what should we say? 
 There is something wrong about it. That pecu- 
 liar gentleman yonder with the forked beard 
 you see him, children? He is limping in our 
 direction ; he has been wounded in one foot ; he 
 is lame. There is something wrong about him. 
 Yet these wrong things are ever before our eyes, 
 if we care to use them. They are there for our 
 enlightenment, in order to show us what ought 
 not to be. For the rule of nature is that the 
 
124 THEY WENT 
 
 sun shall shine by day, that the sea shall keep 
 to its appointed boundary, and that mankind, 
 even males, shall walk more or less straight. 
 This Phcenix bird is noteworthy, because it is ex- 
 ceptional. A contrarious creature! An exam- 
 ple not to be followed, but avoided. You grasp 
 my meaning? " 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "All of you?" 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " 
 
 The princess, repressing a smile, observed: 
 
 " Bother the Phoenix. I must see the dragon. 
 He comes from the Mountains of the Moon," she 
 exclaimed to Kenwyn. "A young Ethiopian 
 chieftain gave him to me. The poor dragon! 
 He was not well, a few days ago. Not at all 
 well." 
 
 " Dragons," said Manthis to her girls, " have 
 various shapes, and none are useful to mankind. 
 There is little to betearnt from them/ save by 
 way of warning. However, let us inspect the 
 nuisance." 
 
 He lay in his age, at the entrance of an arti- 
 ficial cavern, gasping, languishing. He was ill. 
 He suffered from the moist sea air, after the dry 
 warmth of his native rocks. His eyes were 
 closed. 
 
 " I fear he will die," said the princess sadly. 
 " He has eaten nothing for many weeks. Noth- 
 
THEY WENT . 125 
 
 ing! I brought him a white chicken, and clear 
 water, with my own hands. I brought him apri- 
 cots and salad, and cakes, and cream and honey. 
 There they lie, untasted. My poor dragon. . . ." 
 
 The preacher, who had hitherto spoken little, 
 now turned to Manthis : 
 
 " I cannot help admiring your pupils in their 
 cheerful red and whjte mantles. What bright 
 eyes, what rosy complexions ! They must lead a 
 healthy and happy life. They remind me of the 
 little ones in my own country. And all with 
 open hair save the babchick, who, I perceive, 
 wears it plaited. Doubtless a peculiar mark, 
 for the time being? " 
 
 " As you say ! It is also the babchick's priv- 
 ilege to pronounce what we call grace to in- 
 voke a blessing from the Lord of Light upon 
 our midday meal. You shall see them in their 
 home one of these days," she went on, " and 
 look over the college. Tlfe girls will row you 
 across in our own boat. They all learn to row 
 and sail. Would you care to talk to any of 
 them? 
 
 " I would, but for the fact that they seem to 
 be discomposed at my presence, I know not 
 why- 
 
 " No woman is ever discomposed," said Man- 
 this drily, adding, as she looked around, " Now 
 where is the babchick? " 
 
126 THEY WENT 
 
 That person was discovered hiding behind one 
 of the taller girls. 
 
 " Come, Babchick ! Address a few pleasant 
 words to our Christian friend. Listen carefully 
 if he happens to tell you anything of note, and 
 try to hold your head up when you speak. Now 
 try your best, my child." 
 
 The babchick stepped forward with great bold- 
 ness. 
 
 " You like dragons? " she began. 
 
 " Not much/' replied the preacher. " And 
 you?" 
 
 " Not much. We have no dragons on our 
 island," she went on. " Only sea-gulls." 
 
 "You like sea-gulls?" 
 
 " Better than dragons." 
 
 " So do I," said the preacher. " Now why do 
 you like them better? " 
 
 " Because, for one thing, they can lay 
 eggs. . . ." 
 
 The others, meanwhile, were still contemplat- 
 ing the invalid, and throwing pebbles at him to 
 " wake him up." At last they succeeded. 
 Painfully he opened an eye, with a malicious 
 leer, and closed it again. 
 
 " Look ! He is winking," said one of the chil- 
 dren who had an elder sister in the town. " He 
 knows something. I wonder what he knows. If 
 dragons could talk " 
 
THEY WENT 127 
 
 " They would perhaps tell lady-girls to mind 
 their own affairs," observed Manthis, who had 
 overheard the remark. 
 
 As for the princess, she turned aside. She was 
 suffering from one of her rare moments of melan- 
 choly. She called to mind a little episode. . . . 
 
 He had been so desperately in love, that young 
 Ethiopian, so brave in his feather-plumes, so 
 winsome of feature. Imprudently one day he 
 told her of dragons in his country. Straight- 
 way she yearned for a dragon. She must needs 
 have a dragon. She said : 
 
 " First a dragon. Then a kiss." 
 
 After twenty-three months he returned with 
 the monster which had been enticed out of its 
 cave with the lure of a plump negro-baby tied 
 to a tree hard by, and then emmeshed in the 
 folds of a mighty hunting-net ; he returned, look- 
 ing more attractive than before. No man had 
 ever pleased her better almost none. And the 
 dragon surpassed her wildest expectations. A 
 lordly worm! It clashed its teeth and rocked 
 about with rage, scattering the soil in a whirl- 
 pool of dust. 
 
 How they joked and frolicked, that afternoon ! 
 
 " I have kept my word/' he said. 
 
 " And I shall keep mine. Such a dragon is 
 well worth a kiss. Worth more than a kiss, I 
 fancy " 
 
128 THEY WENT 
 
 " More than a kiss is worth more than a 
 dragon," he replied gallantly. Then he laughed 
 outright. " I must up," he vowed, " and fetch 
 a bigger one. This is the merest suckling. Or 
 would you have a basilisk? " 
 
 " Stay with me," she whispered. " Stay ! I 
 love you better than a wilderness of dragons." 
 
 Late in the night Harre announced, as usual, 
 that a stranger craved admittance to her tower. 
 " The Ethiopian chieftain, I think." 
 
 " Inded? " she replied, as usual. " Now go to 
 bed, HarreV' And the devoted blue innocent, as 
 usual, tripped off. 
 
 As usual ah, well ! 
 
 A good deal of water had flowed down the 
 Great Drain since that evening; water and some 
 other things. The Great Drain told no tales. 
 
 He went. 
 
 And now the dragon was going too. . . . 
 
 "You are wistful, my lady," said a voice at 
 her side. " No wonder. A distempered dragon 
 is a horrid sight. The agonies of common beasts 
 and common men move us less than those of mon- 
 sters or of gods. Great things should be exempt 
 from pain." 
 
 It was Theophilus, the Greek merchant. 
 
 Was he a Greek, she wondered? He looked 
 more like a Jew, a dissatisfied kind of Jew, chaf- 
 ing under some perpetual and incurable griev- 
 
THEY WENT 129 
 
 ance. He seemed to have a quarrel with the 
 universe. She remembered exchanging a few 
 words with him on the previous evening. She 
 also remembered noticing, then, that he was in- 
 tent on Kenwyn's doings and speeches; he 
 watched him persistently all the time, even while 
 playing chess with the old king. And now a 
 singular idea flitted through her brain: had he 
 come to spy on the Christian preacher? They 
 had arrived in the town on the same afternoon. 
 That was odd, she thought. Here he was again, 
 close beside Kenwyn. Why else had he come 
 to this garden? Why else, save to spy? 
 
 " I came to this garden," continued the Greek, 
 "because they told me it was one of the sights of 
 the place. And so it is ! " 
 
 "You like dragons?" enquired the princess 
 politely but absentmindedly. Her heart was 
 still in the Great Drain. 
 
 "Not when they bite my toe," replied The- 
 ophilus with a wan smile. 
 
 Laughingly she said : 
 
 " I wish I had been there. I like to see such 
 little accidents. Did it hurt? " 
 
 The other took no notice of the question. He 
 said: 
 
 " Now this creature, look you, would be called 
 an unsightly brute by thoughtless men. We 
 two, princess, are not of that undiscerning kind. 
 
130 THEY WENT 
 
 Observe his scales how they shine, how they 
 flicker restlessly in green and gold and red and 
 blue with every movement of his lungs and mus- 
 cles. They look like living metal. They are 
 only the dragon's corslet. What would a fair 
 lady not give to have a corslet that should glister 
 as does that leathery hide, flashing while her 
 bosom heaves with breath ; a corslet that should 
 look like living dragon's scales and yet be only 
 metal? I have observed much metal in this 
 town. Nobody, it seems, can play with it so cun- 
 ningly ; nobody can make it sparkle ; nobody can 
 tease it into shapely grains and blow them full 
 of rainbow tints that throb and mingle like the 
 jewels on a butterfly's wing " 
 
 He seemed to " wake up," like the dragon. A 
 new light, a look of inspiration, came into his 
 eyes. The plain man, while uttering those few 
 words, grew almost/ fair to see. 
 
 Still only half listening, she agreed: 
 
 " It would be a pretty dress." 
 
 " I happen to know the art " 
 
 " Let us now visit the unicorns," interrupted 
 Manthis. " Our time is fast running out, and 
 unicorns are unquestionably more instructive 
 than dragons." 
 
 They moved on. The princess turned to seek 
 Theophilus, who had contrived to hit upon one 
 of her weak points; on reflection, she would have 
 
THEY WENT 131 
 
 liked to hear more about this strange art of 
 playing with metal an art of which her dwarfs, 
 evidently, knew nothing. The Greek was no 
 longer to be seen. He must have withdrawn 
 himself while Manthis was speaking. 
 
 The unicorn family dwelt on a spacious tri- 
 angular enclosure of grass. 
 
 In one corner of this verdant mead, all by it- 
 self, lay the little baby, dead, with stiffened 
 limbs ; it had succumbed the night before to neg- 
 lect and exposure, like the last one. In the next 
 corner, with her back turned to it, reclined the 
 female parent, thinking obviously of other con- 
 cerns. In a third corner, with his back turned 
 to both of them, stood the male face downwards, 
 sulkily polishing against a stone that marvellous 
 horn of his, which glowed like a crystal in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 " This is what I wished you to see, children," 
 said Manthis. " Unicorns are lonely things and 
 notoriously scarce. Now you know the reason 
 why. They have no sense of family life; they 
 never take care of their offspring. They forget 
 their parents, their children ; their wives and 
 husbands. They only think of those wonderful 
 horns. Look at him ! " 
 
 " How truly pitiful," observed the babchick. 
 
 " We are the lonely unicorns, princess," said a 
 voice at that young person's side, 
 
132 THEY WENT 
 
 It was TheopMlus again. 
 
 " Tell me, Theophilus tell me about those 
 dragon's scales, and how we may be able to copy 
 them out of such metal as the town contains. I 
 would gladly learn your process and, if it be a 
 secret, I will pay what price you ask. Our old 
 armourer, Lelian " 
 
 " Let us talk about it, princess, on some other 
 occasion. I must, alas, leave you this very mo- 
 ment, having given my word to certain friends, to 
 meet them within an hour." He spoke in cour- 
 teous tones, but with an uncommon show of de- 
 cision. Bowing respectfully, he hobbled away, 
 then and there. 
 
 The princess looked after him, amazed at his 
 conduct. She was not accustomed to being 
 treated after this fashion. An ungracious for- 
 eigner ! " He knows what he wants," she pre- 
 sently concluded not without a faint trace of 
 approval at his marked independence of spirit. 
 " Or perhaps he dislikes the neighbourhood of 
 Kenwyn." Now what had he meant by compar- 
 ing her, and himself, to lonely unicorns? And 
 where, by the way, had she seen his face before? 
 For it suddenly dawned upon her that Theophi- 
 lus was not wholly the stranger he appeared to 
 be. Those weary eyes they were familiar ; 
 had they not gazed into her own long, long ago, 
 
THEY WENT 133 
 
 beckoning to her, as it were, from another world? 
 Where when? 
 
 He was gone. She forgot the incident. 
 
 " We too must depart,' 7 said Manthis, viewing 
 the sun and measuring its distance above the 
 horizon by means of her outstretched hand. 
 " We must hence, or we shall miss the tide. The 
 tide is marching to its head." 
 
 Manthis had made an exhaustice study of the 
 tides, and taught her girls all there was to be 
 learnt concerning them. She could tell their 
 condition at any moment of the year. Many a 
 time and oft she pondered upon this useless com- 
 ing and going of the watery mass. It struck 
 her as a remarkable instance of that brutal mis- 
 directed force which was exemplified through- 
 out nature, by the male principle. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 KENWYN and his conductress were alone. 
 Day drew to a close. Yet they lingered 
 in that garden, loth to quit its ordered 
 paths and flowers and strange inhabitants. On 
 issuing at last, the princess said : 
 
 " Those animals have made me hungry. I 
 
 must eat some plums, here " pointing to a 
 
 gaudy tavern hung with flags, which she entered 
 in her free, democratic manner. The proprietor 
 seemed to know her tastes, for a large basket of 
 fruit was straightway set before her. She took 
 one, and then another, and another, saying: 
 
 " I could live on such fare. Meat and wine 
 they are not for me. What makes men devour 
 such things? ... I taught these folks a good 
 deal about plums and forced them to cultivate 
 several new kinds on the plain yonder. The 
 young trees of this plant were brought in their 
 own earth from Susa; the fruit is smaller, you 
 see, than the common kind, but far sweeter. 
 Follow my example ! Try one, or two, or three." 
 
 " Sweeter," he agreed. 
 
 " I reward the successful gardeners, and 
 banish those that fail. It is a wonderful sys- 
 
 134 
 
THEY WENT 135 
 
 tern. . . . We have now many kinds, black and 
 red and yellow. We try to graft them on 
 almonds. We have the Armenian plum, the best 
 scented of all, and perdrigon and harvest and 
 cherry plums, and those from Damascus with the 
 large stone and little flesh. And now I hear of 
 an Egyptian plum which ripens in winter, and 
 whose leaves never fall off. Doubtless you know 
 about it." 
 
 " I know nothing of such matters," said the 
 preacher. " I wish I did," he added. He would 
 have given much to fall in with her humour. 
 She only laughed. 
 
 " You know nothing of painting. You know 
 nothing of plums. Tell me, Kenwyn, what do 
 you know? " 
 
 Now is the time, he thought, to speak of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Where was it gone, that old eloquence? Dried 
 up; parched. He was mute; his very thoughts 
 had strayed away and refused to be marshalled 
 back into their order. In the fibre of her being 
 lay something which filled him with horror. Her 
 intelligence, which he could not but observe, was 
 chained to the service of perverse ideals. Not 
 an ounce of goodness cruel, resourceful, aspir- 
 ing ! That mind of hers he seemed to be look 
 ing into an abyss. Yet her form, her face . . . 
 there rose up, before his eyes, memories of cer- 
 
136 THEY WENT 
 
 tain moments during those unregenerate days, 
 moments of godless felicity, of contact with the 
 flesh. Buried moments. What if they awoke 
 from the dead? 
 
 He could only look on, meanwhile, as she de- 
 voured the fruit with childish glee. 
 
 " How many have I eaten? " 
 
 " Twenty-five/' he replied, counting the stones. 
 " And I thirteen." 
 
 "Enough," she said. Then, as they issued 
 once more into the street: 
 
 " That horrid old predecessor of yours he 
 talked too much. And you, Kenwyn you 
 talk too little. What are you thinking of, so 
 gravely? " 
 
 , " I was thinking I cannot tell you my 
 thoughts. Why do you collect those animals? " 
 
 " For fun. It was not my idea. The Sultan 
 of Babylonia told me he had a garden like this 
 one. It was he who gave me the notion, and 
 laid out the grounds. I always try to discover 
 fresh kinds of pleasure." 
 
 Fun. Fun and pleasure. . . . 
 
 He said with a desperate effort, and the words 
 rang false even while he spoke : 
 
 " One day, princess, I would like to give you 
 notions of another kind of pleasure. That is 
 what I came for." 
 
 "Assuredly! Christian notions, you mean? 
 
THEY WENT 137 
 
 If all Christians were like you, there would not 
 be much amiss with them. And if you could 
 tell me how to make those walls of one tint in 
 such a manner that their colour should never 
 fade ah, Kenwyn, if you could tell me that, I 
 might well become a Christian like you." 
 
 " I know nothing of colours. I can only 
 preach/ 7 he said in an almost dejected tone. 
 
 " Then preach to me ! Let me listen to your 
 words while the sun goes down, for your voice 
 is softer than you think. You are altogether 
 passable, my friend. I like your black curly 
 hair and those blue eyes, so tender and pleading. 
 You are not like me. You are a dreamer, Ken- 
 wyn; a strong dreamer, a weak man. I am of 
 the other kind. I never dream hardly ever," 
 she added, while her thoughts flitted dragon- 
 wards awhile. " Tell me, how many women have 
 already^ fooled you? " 
 
 " It was a woman, my lady, who wrought a 
 miracle and led me into the path of righteous- 
 ness." 
 
 " I warrant she was ugly." 
 
 Kenwyn said nothing. 
 
 " Was she? " 
 
 " Her soul was fair." 
 
 " No doubt. . . . See ! " she went on. " There 
 is not much fun or pleasure in yonder building. 
 It is the old girls' college. The druidess used 
 
138 THEY WENT 
 
 to keep her school there till she realized, one 
 day, that the air of this town and the customs 
 of its citizens were not wholesome for growing 
 children, and took them off to her island. A 
 mildewy place. That Eoman built it. We use it 
 as a kind of armoury nowadays. Old times! 
 Let us glance within." 
 
 Here, in those vaulted chambers, were stored 
 weapons and martial ornaments of every shape, 
 and standards picturing horse and boar and 
 other beasts the accoutrements of an entire 
 army. They lay about haphazard, mouldering in 
 the damp sea air. The bronze spears and buck- 
 lers and armlets were encrusted with bright ver- 
 digris ; stacks of iron swords had melted into one 
 another under a thick coating of rust. In the 
 largest of these rooms, which had once been the 
 girls' Hall of Assembly, stood an array of war- 
 chariots, their wheels rotting from beneath them, 
 and delicate leather-work crumbling to earth. 
 Old times! All these military things, she de- 
 clared, would never be used again. Let them 
 rot and rust! There was no fighting done. 
 Peace at any price was the watchword nowadays. 
 
 The preacher was troubled at this speech. 
 
 "We Irish fight," he said, "and gladly lay 
 down our lives. There are no such cowards in 
 our country." 
 
 " I am not surprised. ' You live so miserably ! 
 
THEY WENT 139 
 
 Anybody can be brave in a land like yours. It 
 is better to suffer a thousand deaths than to 
 endure such a state of affairs. A poor man is 
 ever ready to die; he has nothing to lose. The 
 coward is he who finds life worth living. There 
 is pleasure on earth, Kenwyn. Why miss it? " 
 
 Troublesome neighbours, she continued, were 
 compensated or set against each other. The city 
 was rich enough for everybody. Trade was 
 good; commerce thriving. In olden days it was 
 fashionable and even honourable to wreck ships ; 
 to lure them on the rocks by means of false 
 lights, and then plunder the sailormen. Such a 
 system would soon have scared away merchants, 
 and therefore she that is, her father had 
 stopped the mischief. The corporation of the 
 pilots could also now be relied upon. For those 
 pilots, she said, were at first unsatisfactory ; they 
 drank too much, just as if they were ordinary 
 men, and sometimes lost the vessels they were 
 paid to conduct landwards, since it was a dan- 
 gerous sea to navigate, the entrance to the town 
 being full of reefs. She her father soon 
 put an end to that scandal. 
 
 " Would you like to inspect the last pilot who 
 drank too much? " 
 
 Willingly." 
 
 " He is only a few paces from here, on the 
 embankment. He has been there for some little 
 
140 THEY WENT 
 
 time. . . . Observe him," she said, as they 
 reached the spot. " I have no tolerance for 
 drunkards." 
 
 The man had been crucified, and his whiten- 
 ing bones and poor relics of flesh were held to 
 the cross by means of a chain. There he hung, 
 facing the ocean at the harbour entrance, where 
 every ship that sailed into that narrow sluice- 
 gate must needs pass under his shadow. 
 
 " We have been obliged to chain him up, you 
 see, for fear of his running away and taking to 
 his old bad habits again. There he will stay so 
 long as I live, an encouragement to honest 
 traders. I know what I want my father does. 
 This town, Kenwyn, has a reputation to keep up. 
 We are not Irishmen here, poverty-stricken and 
 turbulent and " 
 
 " And brave." 
 
 " And brave ! And passable into the bargain," 
 she added with a smile. 
 
 Crowds of citizens moved about this embank- 
 ment in the gloaming, or rested on its rampart 
 of stone. Nobody took notice of them ; it was a 
 cosmopolitan place. The princess discerned 
 Theophilus, the Greek merchant, reclining on a 
 rock down below. He contrived, as she passed, 
 to turn his back upon her. She was not sur- 
 prised ; " another little act of rudeness," she con- 
 
THEY WENT 141 
 
 eluded. What did surprise her was that the 
 man was not alone, but discoursing with three 
 or four of her dwarfs in a playful fashion, as a 
 father might dally with his children ; they, on the 
 other hand, seemed to be full of deep respect 
 towards him. Were these the " certain friends " 
 he had promised to meet? She wondered how he 
 had made their acquaintance, and what he could 
 possibly want with those little people who, as a 
 rule, kept so strictly to themselves. She thought 
 of calling down to interrupt the talk and dis- 
 cover its meaning. No! The Christian's com- 
 pany was more to her taste just then. 
 
 She forgot the incident. 
 
 At their back lay the city. Night-life was 
 already beginning in that cup-shaped hollow. 
 Torches blazed into the sky, and a confused 
 murmur of song and merriment rose up from 
 the streets. The reek of taverns- mingled with 
 a harsh odour of slime and sea-wrack left un- 
 covered by the out-gone tide. 
 
 It was an hour of calm, of happy oblivion. 
 Kenwyn, the dreamer, succumbed to its witch- 
 ery. His bitter reflections concerning the prin- 
 cess had faded away for the moment ; he thought 
 only of her beauty. They were friends, it 
 seemed; drawn towards each other, and maybe 
 never to be parted their hearts were striving 
 
142 THEY WENT 
 
 to merge together. Often, later on, he recalled 
 il^ith a pang that brief spell of untroubled sweet- 
 ness which he would fain have held fast for ever. 
 
 " Pleasant here," she said. 
 
 " Pleasant.'' 
 
 They looked seaward, where gleams of light 
 still flickered about the firmament. Before 
 them, dappled with stranded fishing boats, lay 
 an expanse of ooze and mud ; it shone like molten 
 ore. The ocean beyond was flecked with islets 
 of many shapes, some of them mere fragments 
 of rock submerged daily under the inrushing 
 element ; others so spacious that families of hum- 
 ble folk dwelt on them all the year round, herd- 
 ing cattle and sheep on their grassy slopes. She 
 pointed out the Sacred Rock of Manthis, partly 
 hidden by another island which lay in the fore- 
 ground. A poor sterile place, she said, with a 
 small lake and pasturage for a few cows. The 
 druidess and her girls had done wonders in mak- 
 ing it habitable. The college itself lay secluded 
 in a stony vale 
 
 " But from that corner of her domain Manthis 
 can always see the city. It is where her garden 
 lies, and where she loves to rest on her favourite 
 seat overlooking the sea. Perhaps she is watch- 
 ing us now." 
 
 " She could never see so far." 
 
THEY WENT 143 
 
 " Who knows? And why are the beacons not 
 lighted? " A cloud settled on her face. Lights 
 were kindled on two of those outer rocks, she ex- 
 plained, for the security of traders. " They 
 ought to be aflame at this hour. What are those 
 men about? " 
 
 While she yet spoke, an angry red fire broke 
 out far away; it seemed to leap from the water. 
 The second one followed. 
 
 " Commerce is safe," she said. " All is well." 
 
 " Strange," remarked the preacher, " that this 
 sea, now so distant, w r ill be back again in a short 
 while, gnawing at your foundations. You must 
 have a sense, here, of ever-present menace. 
 There is no escaping from the sea." 
 
 " It does not trouble me greatly. Look !" she 
 exclaimed. " I perceive a little boat with white 
 sails, ever so far off. It is making for the north. 
 Do you see it, out yonder? Not our build. 
 Some coasting vessel, if I am not mistaken." 
 
 The princess was mistaken. 
 
 The boat which left with the out-going tide 
 bore homewards one of Aithryn's numerous spies 
 who had lived in the city for a month or more, 
 garnering information. He was now returning 
 to his master with queer tales about the town and 
 about the doings of a certain young lady in re- 
 gard to whom Aithryn nineteen years older, 
 
144 THEY WENT 
 
 now, than when he himself set foot on that em- 
 bankment had begun to feel a kind of paternal 
 tenderness and anxiety. 
 Queer tales. . . . 
 
PART II 
 
 CHAPTEE XI 
 
 SO wonderful a rainbow, they all declared, 
 had never yet been seen. 
 It hung over the city in the tepid sky, 
 among low and luminous mists, drenching all 
 things in a halo of beauty. There it hovered, 
 and its splendour refused to wane. The place 
 was glorified, transfigured. Men came forth 
 from their houses to view the marvel; business 
 was at a standstill; groups of children were 
 laughing and dancing in its radiance. Had it 
 come to stay? 
 
 " Now I know," thought the princess as, hud- 
 dled in a thick cloak, she walked unattended to 
 the workshop of Lelian the armourer. " Now I 
 know ! This is how my town should look. This 
 rainbow is my dream. If it would only last for 
 ever! " 
 
 The old man was standing at his house- 
 entrance gazing, like all the rest, at the spectacle 
 overhead. 
 
 " The mask, Lelian. And greeting." 
 
 " It is finished, my lady, according to your in- 
 
 145 
 
146 THEY WENT 
 
 structions. A somewhat ghastly contrivance." 
 
 " Let me see " 
 
 She was tired of poisons. 
 
 Tired, just then, of everything ; and filled with 
 an unwonted sense of trouble and insecurity. 
 She felt herself driven fatefully along, she knew 
 not whither. She had lately seen much of Ken- 
 wyn, whose earnest but incoherent phrases had 
 touched her heart, if not her head. They made 
 her look within. Then she looked without again. 
 This fair city, her creation: would she ever be 
 able to complete the task she set herself? Never 
 had she desired so ardently to impress her own 
 imaginings upon it, and never felt more helpless, 
 unbefriended, almost menaced. 
 
 Tales were rife, queer tales ; she had known it 
 for long. Men wondered how he, and he, had 
 met his end. They spoke in whispers of her 
 tower and of what happened there in the murky 
 light of dawn, when sea-swallows begin to skim 
 and circle over the waves. They fabled of a 
 black cavalier, her ghostly attendant, who threw 
 the bodies of the victims into some foaming whirl- 
 pool near at hand ; or bore them further afield 
 into a dank forest region, where a brown stream- 
 let dashes itself to spray and glides sullenly into 
 the depths of the earth, amid royal ferns and 
 boulders hoary with moss. The wailings of 
 these poor folk, they vowed, could still be heard. 
 
THEY WENT 147 
 
 Queer tales ! She gleaned them herself from the 
 lips of revellers at her tower when, overcome with 
 wine, they poured into her ears the chatter of 
 the town. She used to think : 
 
 " That shows what men will believe. Is there 
 not the Great Drain, that masterpiece of engi- 
 neering, which tells no tales? " 
 
 She cared little about gossip, though latterly 
 ever since the death of Ormidius Limpidus 
 she had grown more wary. 
 
 For the Roman likewise vanished mysteri- 
 ously, and his occultation caused more than the 
 common amount of scandal. It was not that 
 this was the first and unique case of an elderly 
 man disappearing a man indeed well stricken 
 in years; the engineer happened to be a citizen, 
 and a person of renown. She had laughed, at the 
 time. She was glad to be rid of that tiresome 
 old woman-lover. He was in her way. True, 
 she learnt a good deal from his teaching; she 
 made him toil outrageously to satisfy her whims. 
 He used to say : " You are a nail in my coffin, for 
 all your sweet eyes." But his work was done. 
 She had exhausted or outgrown his learning, and 
 developed tastes of her own; this Roman, she 
 decided, had his limitations like everybody else. 
 Moreover, he knew too much. Had he not helped 
 to build her residence? Did he not know its 
 secret? And always interfering! A wave of 
 
148 THEY WENT 
 
 indignant rage swept over her when, one day, 
 he actually presumed to override her opinion in 
 the matter of a certain cornice which she had 
 designed for her tower, and otherwise to treat her 
 as if she were an ignorant child. It was a com- 
 plete misunderstanding. 
 
 " It should be thus, my fascinating young lady ; 
 thus, and not otherwise. I have built more 
 cornices than you will ever live to see. Long 
 years before you were born, I studied Licinius on 
 stucco-decoration, and Jupiter only knows how 
 many more of them, and got them all by heart. 
 Yes, yes! Permit me, an old man and a friend 
 of your venerated father's permit me to ob- 
 serve that your notions are often in hopeless dis- 
 accord with the principles of true art. There is 
 a curiously barbaric strain well no matter. 
 So much is certain : you have still something to 
 learn. Yes, yes! Even now there is room for 
 improvement inside that pretty little head of 
 yours." 
 
 She thought: Yes, yes! Much to learn! We 
 must learn, first and foremost, whether there be 
 room for an engineer inside that pretty little 
 masterpiece of his. You are easily caught, my 
 friend. Yes, yes. 
 
 Late in the night Harr6 announced, as usual 
 that a stranger craved admittance to her tower. 
 " The Roman architect, I think." 
 
THEY WENT 149 
 
 " Indeed ?" she said, as usual. "Now go to 
 bed, Harre." And the devoted blue innocent, 
 as usual, tripped off. 
 
 As usual ah, well ! 
 
 He went. 
 
 There was an end to that misunderstanding. 
 
 And yet the cornice, her cornice the 
 wretched contrivance never looked well. It 
 was an unsatisfactory ornament to the tower 
 facade; something was wrong with its propor- 
 tions. Who would now help her? 
 
 The dwarfs? They were useless for stone- 
 work, useless for painting or inlaying or model- 
 ling in plaster, or for anything except metals; 
 and it seemed as if from them, too, she had 
 learnt all there was to learn. 
 
 Kenwyn, her new friend! His gentle but 
 ardent figure arose before her mind's eye what 
 did he know of such things? Could he design 
 a cornice? Had he not spoken with frank dis- 
 approval of her worldly notions of beauty and 
 gone so far as to declare that this city should be 
 razed to the ground, telling her, at the same 
 time, of another kind of beauty and another city, 
 all paved with gold and jasper; a pleasant place, 
 maybe, but rather far away? 
 
 Meanwhile, as these thoughts and memories 
 flitted through her brain, the princess was care- 
 fully testing the mask. Satisfied with its 
 
150 THEY WENT 
 
 mechanism, she placed it beneath her mantle. 
 
 Who would be the first, she wondered? 
 
 "Kenwyn, the Christian preacher " she 
 
 began. 
 
 The armourer looked up. He too had been 
 lost in a brief reverie. Ever since the death of 
 that first Christian missionary he had grown 
 thoughtful, and even fearful, for he belonged to 
 the school of those who believe in omens and 
 entrails. He remembered that preacher's last 
 moments; his divinely radiant glance and those 
 dim words about retribution from the sea. Like 
 certain other citizens, he saw danger looming 
 ahead a watery danger which he connected, 
 vaguely, with the personality of the charming 
 young lady at his side. Her presence made him 
 feel uneasy, nowadays. She said: 
 
 " Kenwyn, the Christian preacher, declares the 
 rainbow to have been set in the sky by the All- 
 Highest as a sign that there shall be no more 
 floods on earth." 
 
 "Perhaps you misinterpret some part of his 
 doctrine." 
 
 " So Kenwyn says. Our town, then, is safe 
 from the sea." 
 
 " Likely enough. And the first one, that 
 frantic ancient, prophesied it should be swept 
 away. These Christians will fetch anything you 
 please out of their holy books. They are not to 
 
THEY WENT 151 
 
 be taken seriously. Let the good Mother Man- 
 this convince your Kenwyn as she did the last." 
 
 " Always the same, Lelian ! " 
 
 " Always the same. Adore the gods, be brave, 
 and do no harm. What more do you want? " 
 
 " What more? If you knew Lelian, how much 
 more I wanted, not for myself, but only for this 
 city ! I want the blue of Heaven and glittering 
 stars to play with, and all the silvery beams 
 of moonlight. Have you no eyes, man, to see 
 how much there is still amiss? " 
 
 " Your Christian, I take it, will promise to 
 supply these things." 
 
 " You are unfair to him. He has a kindly face, 
 and means well." 
 
 " Foolish men, my lady, always mean well. 
 As to his face, I have not yet beheld it. But 
 another stranger came here yesterday, a Greek 
 merchant with whom I once had a few words at 
 the palace. He wished to inspect these old 
 weapons of mine. He sat on this bench and 
 talked awhile. A lame man, and ugly; but 
 shrewd " 
 
 " And impolite," added the princess, who rec- 
 ognized Theophilus from this description. She 
 had almost forgotten his existence, not having 
 met him since that day at the dragon's den. 
 Now she said: 
 
 "I thought he had left the town. Did he 
 
152 THEY WENT 
 
 speak about the art of shattering metal into fine 
 flakes and filling them with colour like a but- 
 terfly's wing? " 
 
 " Not a word of that." 
 
 " Not a word? " 
 
 " Not a word. But he told me many things 
 I had never heard before, even about my own 
 work. And he knows much of our old customs 
 and beliefs ; he spoke of mankind, of liberty and 
 of light, those three primordial existences, and 
 when he came to explain what was truly meant 
 by that word light why then, princess, I 
 thought I was listening to the wisest of our 
 druids. It was light indeed ! I have not heard 
 such good talk for many long days. And of 
 other matters too. This ancient ax of stone 
 which I dug myself out of the earth : he said it 
 was made not here, but in the mountains of 
 Khsetia far away. And those swords, those bent 
 swords which we find in tombs, he said . . . all 
 this, my lady, is of no account to you." 
 
 The princess in truth had small use for rusty 
 blades, though she would doubtless have been 
 interested in the original processes of their man- 
 ufacture. Wishful to please the old man, she 
 observed : 
 
 " Tell me about them, Lelian. What did he 
 say?" 
 
THEY WENT 153 
 
 * 
 
 " Men used to believe that those swords were 
 bent double in the fight by reason of their bad 
 composition. In this I always thought they were 
 wrong, since our ancestors were crafty folks ; be 
 sure they understood the art of forging and tem- 
 pering blades as well as any one who now lives. 
 And that is what the Greek told me. He said 
 that such weapons had not been damaged in the 
 battle at all, but purposely bent, as a kind of 
 farewell rite, and then reverently laid in the 
 tomb beside that dead warrior whose hand should 
 wield them no more. Some of those swords, he 
 told me, were even made of two kinds of iron 
 cunningly welded together; the central part of 
 sinewy material, and the edge itself of softer 
 but more trenchant stuff, which was then beaten 
 sharp as a razor and could be hammered straight 
 again after every fight. I always thought so! 
 They knew, the old ones they knew! And 
 these arrow-heads, he declared, were doubtless 
 once tipped with limeum or white hellebore. A 
 poor concoction, he called it. Even trychnon 
 would be better, and it grew everywhere! He 
 thought a clever young lady like the princess 
 might invent some really potent poison, if we 
 people ever came to fighting again. It does not 
 look much like it," he added regretfully. 
 
 Poison. . What did this Greek know? 
 
154 THEY WENT 
 
 " Strange !" she now said. " I have seen that 
 man's face before. I must have dreamt about 
 him long ago, when I was a little child." 
 
 " It is not a handsome face, my lady. I would 
 like you to have fairer visions at night." 
 
 "I often dream ugly things," she replied, and 
 her face grew slightly harder. " Tell me more, 
 Lelian. Tell me exactly, from beginning to end." 
 
 The old man scratched his grey hairs thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " Let me see. . . . We talked about the city. 
 He said it was full of incongruous notions picked 
 up here and there. All colour, no shape. More 
 strange than beautiful. A gay place, but some- 
 what disordered and with a curious barbaric 
 strain running through it. A lack of reverence, 
 he said. As to the dwarfs they had done won- 
 ders. And so they have, my lady! Those mir- 
 rors, especially, they sometimes make me feel 
 almost afraid, as if " 
 
 " Bother the mirrors. What more? " 
 
 " He spoke of those walls tinted in one shade, 
 which was always being effaced by the sea air; 
 they looked unsightly. He thought a clever 
 young lady like the princess " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Might have hit upon the method of mixing 
 the paint with the plaster ere it is laid on. It 
 would then last as long as the plaster itself. A 
 
THEY WENT 155 
 
 costly plan, he said, but no lover of beauty heeds 
 the price. Those were his words. No lover of 
 beauty heeds the price. See! That wondrous 
 rainbow has melted away." 
 
 " Let it melt ! " she exclaimed in an access 
 of delight. " What do we want with rainbows, 
 now that my colours will endure? He is right, 
 Lelian. To think that all these years I have 
 racked my brain, and never discovered that sim- 
 ple device. If only I could now hold fast those 
 painted figures of men on horseback and other 
 scenes ! " 
 
 " Ay, a shrewd man. He seems to have trav- 
 elled far and wide. I could not help laughing 
 when he said you ought to have been born a 
 boy." 
 
 " He is right. Many a time have I said the 
 same. And what think you, Lelian? Ought I 
 to be what I am?" 
 
 The armourer hesitated awhile. He was at a 
 loss how to answer this straightforward and em- 
 barrassing question. Finally he remarked: 
 
 " We have heard, ere now, of wilful girls, and 
 masterful ones " 
 
 " I masterful? That may be because I have 
 not yet found my master." 
 
 Nor ever will, thought the old man; adding 
 aloud : 
 
 " You have been too masterful, my lady, 
 
156 THEY WENT 
 
 with those dwarfs. Forgive my frankness ! The 
 head-man came to see me two or three days ago. 
 He is poorly. I conjecture you have been over- 
 working him. They are frail, delicate folk." 
 
 It was true. Whoever came in contact with 
 the princess and could be turned to account was 
 sure to pay the price sooner or later. She made 
 them do things for her. She made them toil 
 and moil. Ever dissatisfied with results, ever 
 yearning for new forms of artistic beauty, she 
 had a gift of wearing her subordinates " to the 
 bone," as they said. 
 
 " Poorly," she echoed. " I know." 
 
 "Worse than poorly. His wits seem to have 
 given way under the strain. He cackled and 
 squeaked about a screw, a screw in his head. 
 6 Fix it tighter, Lelian. You are the king's ar- 
 mourer. You do these things. It rattles and 
 rattles and rattles and rattles. Not a word of 
 this ! Fix it fast, that I may do my work. We 
 have a reputation to keep up, and I would not let 
 the princess blame me. Fix it, fix it, fix it, fix 
 it '" 
 
 " I have often heard him babbling about that 
 screw. What does he mean? " 
 
 " Belen alone knows what he means. A nerv- 
 ous little fellow, my lady, and easily dislocated. 
 I fear he is done for. How will you proceed 
 with the rest of them? For they are useless 
 
THEY WENT 157 
 
 without Mm. He has the brains of the whole 
 tribe." 
 
 " He had, good Lelian." 
 
 Mountain folk! She was not satisfied with 
 their latest efforts. Her aspirations had out- 
 grown their talents. Their ideas were small, 
 like their bodies. She was tired of their metal- 
 tricks, even as, long before, she grew tired of the 
 stone-tricks of Ormidius Limpidus. She was 
 more in the mood for painting. . . . 
 
 And now the head-man had gone daft. 
 
 " That settles it," she thought, as she rose to 
 depart. " I disapprove of them. Kenwyn dis- 
 approves of them. And so, by the way, does my 
 dear papa. Bother those dwarfs! They must 
 go/' 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 YET how glad she had been when they sud- 
 denly appeared in the town, dropped 
 from the clouds, or sent hither by some 
 kindly god who took pity on her state at the very 
 moment when that troublesome old engineer was 
 beginning to grow not only useless, but posi- 
 tively intolerable. So they came, and replen- 
 ished her mind with fresh ideas. And now she 
 had exhausted the dwarfs, even as she exhausted 
 the Roman. Who would be the next helper? 
 When would he arrive? And from what quar- 
 ter of the sky? 
 
 For the dwarfs had come from far, far away. 
 They used to live in the territory of the remote 
 Alloquisti. There, amid a region of cold stand- 
 ing stones, they dwelt and suffered, having been 
 hunted out of their earlier homesteads by some 
 heartless Christian bishop who, because thqy 
 worked in metal, called them Teuz and Poulpi- 
 kans and Associates of the Evil One, and forbade 
 his flock to have any intercourse with them. 
 Among those blue savages they lived miserably, 
 having little work to do. It was long since they 
 had danced or sung. They were fast unlearning 
 
 158 
 
THEY WENT 159 
 
 their old arts and accomplishments. " We are 
 running to seed, like thistles of last autumn," 
 they said among each other. Some of the 
 meeker ones sat at home, and cried their eyes 
 out. 
 
 Every full moon they used to hold a General 
 Council on the summit of one of those grisly dol- 
 men that strewed the sad landscape. It was on 
 the last of these occasions, when they had just 
 taken their seats to discuss the question : " How 
 life is to be endured any longer," that they sud- 
 denly started to their feet again, with shrieks 
 of pain and anguish. The rock was discovered 
 to be burning hot. Their little backs were 
 badly scorched. 
 
 " Oh, wicked world ! " they cried ; " that set- 
 tles it " and forthwith departed moodily in 
 search of some happier abode. Chance took 
 them, after long and weary wanderings, to the 
 neighbourhood of this town, where the princess, 
 ever alert and anxious to pick up new notions, 
 soon heard of their arrival and summoned the 
 head-man to her presence. He was a bright 
 fellow. He told of their peculiar aptitudes 
 told her, in fact, the whole story from beginning 
 to end, not omitting that incident of the burnt 
 dolmen. It hurt very much, he said. 
 
 " And who scorched your little backs? " she 
 enquired compassionately. 
 
160 THEY WENT 
 
 " A horrid boy. . . ." 
 
 It was the blue pest. 
 
 This naked young savage knew all about the 
 dwarfs and their evening assemblies every month, 
 for he used to herd his father's pigs at the same 
 spot, among the same circles and avenues of 
 upright boulders. Dull work, guarding those 
 stolid, grunting beasts; but Harre was still too 
 small to be entrusted with the goad for cattle. 
 With the pigs he remained, and received from 
 his parents more beating than bread that 
 being the local method of rearing children. And 
 one day of full moon, when the little lad was 
 more than usually bored with singing and 
 whistling, and making daisy-chains and catching 
 frogs and throwing stones at the yellow-ham- 
 mers, he bethought him of something new. He 
 covered the dwarfs' dolmen with many handfuls 
 of dry bracken and gorse, and then set fire to 
 them. The mass blazed lustily while he heaped 
 on more and more. Just before summoning his 
 pigs to their homeward march with his leaden 
 trumpet, he carefully brushed away every trace 
 of ashes. The rock was bare as before; bare 
 and burning hot. Laughing, he thought: 
 
 " I wonder what those people will do when 
 they come to sit down. They will perhaps get 
 up again. . . ." 
 
 " We believe he did it for fun," added the head- 
 
THEY WENT 161 
 
 man bitterly. " Some boys have dreadful no- 
 tions of fun." 
 
 The princess liked such notions of fun; they 
 coincided with her own. It struck her that a 
 lively child of this kind, a foreigner to the town, 
 might be of use for certain purposes of her own. 
 
 " Catch him for me," she said. " Catch him, 
 and bring him hither. Then I will take your 
 whole tribe into my service." 
 
 The head-man vowed he remembered the tracks 
 and straightway volunteered to fetch Harr6, 
 bearing, in exchange for him, a couple of rosy 
 sea-shells (the Alloquisti were inland folks). 
 The bargain was concluded in due course, and 
 Harr6 departed in the dwarf's company with a 
 cask of blue paint, his only luggage, slung over 
 his shoulder. " Don't forget your clothes, my 
 little man," his mother said gravely, handing 
 him the preparation. " Never deny your race 
 among strangers. You have now a reputation 
 to keep up." For two and a half moons they 
 tramped over hills and bogs and finally arrived 
 at the king's palace where, amid that crowd of 
 courtiers and noble dames, Harr6 lost no time in 
 living up to the parental standard and display- 
 ing the Alloquistian blood that flowed in his 
 veins. He treated them like dirt, glaring fero- 
 ciously at everybody from the old monarch down- 
 wards; he bit and scratched like a demon when 
 
162 THEY WENT 
 
 they tried to make him change his native cos- 
 tume into something more appropriate to the 
 surroundings. 
 
 " Let him be," said the princess. " I like that 
 spirit, though I wish they had dyed him some 
 other tint." 
 
 This is how the blue pest came to enter her 
 service, and his devotion was soon made mani- 
 fest. He was now far from home; she was his 
 protectress, his only real friend among all those 
 other people. He followed and obeyed. And 
 the princess, whose knowledge of human nature 
 was remarkable for one of her tender years, 
 quickly learnt to appreciate his merits. His 
 very forwardness recommended him ; he was not 
 of the thoughtful or reserved kind; no girl, she 
 reflected, would have been quite so simple of 
 heart, so incurious. All too soon, she knew, she 
 would have to find another Harre\ It was one 
 of many little troubles at this period. 
 
 Meanwhile, good had come of evil. The 
 tragedy of the scorched dolmen proved a bless- 
 ing in disguise, for it would be hard to say which 
 of the three was made happiest by this new state 
 of affairs whether the princess, the dwarfs, 
 or the Alloquistian stranger. The lady was en- 
 raptured with all the things she learnt from 
 those crafty wanderers ; the whole town, she de- 
 clared, would have to be built anew and en- 
 
THEY WENT 163 
 
 crusted with shimmering 1 metal. Harr6 blos- 
 somed like a flower under her kindly treatment, 
 he grew plump and pretty, and his eyes laughed 
 more mischievously than ever; as to the dwarfs, 
 they too, at first, grew plump. At first they lost 
 that scared and harassed look. They were quite 
 blissful, at first blissful as in the olden days 
 before that meddlesome Christian had poked his 
 nose into their concerns and driven them out of 
 their pleasant haunts of long ago. 
 
 They could work once more at their beloved 
 metals and call to mind a thousand half-forgot- 
 ten artifices, teaching the princess, among other 
 things, a wondrous method of coating copper 
 with lead so as to make it look exactly like silver 
 a method discovered by one of their fore- 
 fathers, and kept a secret ever since his day. 
 Their hammerings and rivetings and furbishings 
 could be heard at all hours by those who walked 
 abroad in the fields beyond the Eastern Gate 
 where under a grove of moist apple trees, the 
 young lady had set apart a piece of ground for 
 their village. Here they lived, cheery, con- 
 tented, ever industrious. They liked nothing 
 better than work they called it "play," and 
 their gratitude to the benefactress seemed to 
 know no bounds. A singular little people, who 
 did everything differently from other folks. 
 They kept to themselves, with incomprehensible 
 
164 THEY WENT 
 
 rites of their own; nothing definite was known 
 about their food or habits save that they danced 
 and sung and worked in relays, and that, on 
 certain festivals, they chanted a squeaky hymn 
 to their god, the Great Woodlouse, amid sacri- 
 fices of mushrooms and gold dust. 
 
 " Let them worship whom they please," said 
 the king, when this piece of news was brought 
 to him, " although I confess I am not altogether 
 satisfied with them in other respects. Mean- 
 while, let them worship whom they please! 
 What have I often said? All religions are free 
 here. I see no harm in a woodlouse. What 
 says Ando? " 
 
 " No harm whatever," rejoined the prophet. 
 " A woodlouse is an inoffensive and unimportant 
 worm, as every god should be. The worship of 
 small things, and of beasts, has the sanctity of 
 immemorial custom. There is the god Gwion, 
 a mere dwarf; there is the pig-god Moccos and 
 the bear-god Artaios or Malunos; the goddess 
 Badb will sometimes take the form of a crow; 
 there is a rat-god, the horse-goddess Epona and 
 a worm-god and the scaly Tarask and Boulianus 
 and " 
 
 "Enough, Ando, enough! Have pity on my 
 old ears. We know you have studied the rec- 
 ords." 
 
 " I have/' said Ando. 
 
THEY WENT 165 
 
 Soon the city, and the lady's tower more espe- 
 cially, began to put on a fresh face. It shone, 
 it glittered. Like Ormidius Limpidus of old, 
 the dwarfs in their turn wrought miracles. 
 They knew their business. They rose to the 
 occasion. They performed wonders. They sur- 
 passed themselves. 
 
 The princess might well have been pleased with 
 this glowing creation, the fruit of their labours. 
 So she was; pleased, not satisfied; never quite 
 satisfied. She wanted more things, different 
 things, new things. Hardly was one piece of 
 work completed before she felt inclined to dis- 
 card it. Nothing was ever quite up to the stand- 
 ard of how it should be; each effort of the 
 dwarfs contained the germ of some conception 
 hitherto unrevealed, and bore a crop of fresh 
 projects, which she pressed them to realize with- 
 out delay. " I am learning all the time," she 
 joyfully confessed to herself, while her execu- 
 tants tried in vain to keep pace with her com- 
 mands and imaginative energy. Labouring thus, 
 like slaves, they began to grow weak and emaci- 
 ated once more. They lost appetite; they com- 
 plained of headache; that old hunted look came 
 back into their eyes. She was working the sen- 
 sitive and grateful little fellows to the bone. 
 Yet they toiled on day and night. Some of the 
 more conscientious ones actually pined away 
 
166 THEY WENT 
 
 from worry and long hours; they died, and it 
 was rather fortunate that no one, save the prin- 
 cess, found out what the others did to the bodies 
 of these, their dead companions. 
 
 The head-man in particular, on whom devolved 
 full responsibility of everything, waxed almost 
 unrecognizable. That bright manner was gone; 
 those elf-locks of brown hair turned to white in 
 the course of a single month. His features grew 
 pale and peaky; he took to wearing a cool rhu- 
 barb-leaf on the back of his person, and con- 
 tracted a kind of nervous twitch that pulled one 
 side of his face all awry when he talked. 
 
 " Never sleep nowadays," he declared in 
 reply to the friendly enquiries of the princess. 
 " Ouch ! My head. Always thinking things. 
 Mirrors and mirrors and mirrors. Ouch! Are 
 they going to make me sit on a hot stone? " 
 
 Then began that nonsense about the screw. 
 And all the while, he never gave way or even 
 complained, zealous only to please his bene- 
 factress. 
 
 The benefactress, after she left old Lelian on 
 that morning and had climbed to the upper- 
 most storey of her tower to admire the view 
 she loved to contemplate her work the bene- 
 factress happened to feel less pleased with the 
 dwarfs than she had ever yet felt. Unambitious, 
 unresourcef ul ! Everlastingly repeating the 
 
THEY WENT 167 
 
 same familiar patterns! Devoid of all daring 
 and originality! They had their limitations, 
 plainly, like the Roman; like everybody else. 
 And now little Yuxo had gone crazy. Who 
 cared! There was nothing more to be learnt 
 from that tribe. Their work was done. They 
 must go. 
 
 Yet she needed counsel and help at that 
 moment, she thought, more than ever. Who 
 would now impregnate her with fresh ideas and 
 nourish her imagination? Where would she find 
 the inspirer? When would he arrive? And 
 from what quarter of the sky? 
 
 She looked down upon the many-tinted city at 
 her feet, splashed with the recent shower and 
 throbbing in the light of noon. How much re- 
 mained to be done! How full of flaws and un- 
 ripe caprices! The place was barely sketched 
 out. 
 
 Not for the first time a loneliness and de- 
 spondency crept over her the loneliness of a 
 creative mind that looks around vainly for sym- 
 pathy and encouragement. It weighed upon her. 
 She was unbefriended in regard to those striv- 
 ings which were dearest to her. She saw her- 
 self surrounded by creatures that knew nothing 
 of her nature mean, ignoble, unenlightened 
 and indifferent folks. They ate and drank. 
 They crawled about. They lived; they died. 
 
168 THEY WENT 
 
 They infested the earth and befouled it with their 
 coarse lives, following their impulses, their 
 "hearts." All heart, no brain. How live with- 
 out brain? She wanted a world to herself, to 
 play with. . . . And everybody wrong! What 
 rapture to be in contact with some one who un- 
 derstood what she endured and desired, and 
 whose judgment she could respect; some one 
 who was not wrong, but right. 
 
 " I suffer more," she mused despairingly, 
 " than one who has lost a limb, or a parent. 
 Who would believe it? They suffer, maybe, 
 about other things. If so, they comprehend at 
 least each other's joys and griefs. No one com- 
 prehends mine." And she felt an ache within 
 her, that old familiar ache at the back of her 
 forehead which assailed her in times of mental 
 anguish something that strove to break loose. 
 
 More than once, on such occasions, had she 
 thought of summoning the devil to her aid. 
 Nothing was easier: what the princess did not 
 know about incantations was not worth know- 
 ing. Hitherto she refrained, for an all-sufficient 
 reason. You could abolish your other friends 
 and helpers ; the devil had a trick of remaining. 
 He chained you to himself and turned you into 
 a slave. He came to stay. He laughed at 
 poisons and Great Drains. 
 
 There was one thing which the princess 
 
THEY WENT 160 
 
 dreaded more than all else on earth to lose 
 her sovereign spell. Never would she forfeit 
 that sense of dominion; none should wrest it 
 from her. She would be a law unto herself; 
 independent of all men; self-possessed and self- 
 contained. She would rule, even over parents 
 and lovers. Such was the law of her nature. 
 It explained traits trivial and otherwise her 
 childish horror, for example, of succumbing to 
 the gentle persuasion of wine, or those blacker 
 mysteries which the vaulted cellars of her tower 
 might have revealed. Manthis the druidess was 
 therefore groping in a groove, and judging other 
 women by herself, when she compared the young 
 lady to Heussa, Queen of Terrors. For Manthis 
 knew no fear. The princess did. She feared to 
 lose her sway; to succumb to the influence of 
 this one, or that one. It was fear, craven fear, 
 that turned her into a tigress. None should en- 
 croach upon her will not even the dearest of 
 friends! For lovers were likely to gain influ- 
 ence, to wax presumptuous or menacing. They 
 must go. They went. A reluctance, a kind of 
 wistfulness, would sometimes invade her mind on 
 such occasions . . . the thing must be done. 
 Kisses, and the raptures of the flesh they were 
 sweet. Passion was sweet, and power sweeter. 
 Never had the temptation been strong as then. 
 She was on the verge of yielding in sight of those 
 
170 THEY WENT 
 
 houses and streets that displayed so much un- 
 tutored taste, so much that was amiss and no 
 longer to her liking. The devil, she thought, 
 would soon put that right ! 
 
 " No," she decided. " I will stumble forwards 
 alone and be slave to none. The devil, if he is 
 worth anything, will know of my plight and ap- 
 pear of his own accord. Never shall I summon 
 him. A wise devil comes without being called." 
 
 It pleased her, that last thought. It made her 
 smile. Curiously assuaged in mind, she de- 
 scended to the lower storey of her tower to rest 
 awhile. Later on, she would go to the palace to 
 inform the king of her decision to dismiss the 
 dwarfs. It would make the old man happy, for 
 he misliked those little people Belen alone 
 knew why. 
 
 She was a good girl. She gratified her par- 
 ents whenever she could. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ISSUING heedlessly out of that gateway of 
 ruddy copper, she almost collided with one 
 of several persons who were taking the air 
 on the embankment. It was the lame Theophi- 
 lus. He drew back a pace and saluted her 
 solemnly, without proffering a word. He looked 
 gloomier than ever. 
 
 " You are sad, Theophilus," she remarked, in 
 that charmingly impulsive manner of hers. 
 
 He glanced at her in a forlorn fashion, and 
 said : 
 
 " No wonder. I have just seen a sight which 
 would draw tears from a dead buffalo." 
 
 " What may it be? " 
 
 " Yonder cornice. A scandalous production. 
 It has spoilt my dinner for me." 
 
 Her own cornice! She was all the more net- 
 tled at these words, as she divined them to be 
 true. 
 
 " You think so? " she enquired, not without a 
 tinge of malice in her voice. " Maybe you can 
 devise something better? " 
 
 " It would be difficult, princess, to devise any- 
 thing worse. Look at this. . . . How fortunate ! 
 
 171 
 
172 THEY WENT 
 
 I happen to have some charcoal in my pocket." 
 
 Out of the recesses of his long cloak he ex- 
 tracted a pointed black fragment and there- 
 with began to draw a design, complicated and 
 yet graceful, on the white marble step of her 
 tower, merely remarking, while his hand moved 
 along with incredible rapidity : " Your propor- 
 tions, you see, are at fault. One should be fas- 
 tidious and reverent in such matters yes, rev- 
 erent please note that word " the thing was 
 completed, before she had time to think of a re- 
 joinder to this speech. She looked in amaze- 
 ment at the marvellous drawing. 
 
 " Only a sketch/ 7 he said. 
 
 On many later occasions she noticed that The- 
 ophilus, however brusque and opinionated and 
 cantankerous, invariably assumed a humble tone 
 when talking of art, as though oppressed with 
 the burden of its possibilities, or diffident of his 
 own talents. 
 
 At this juncture she found nothing more to 
 say. 
 
 She glanced at him swiftly, wondering yet 
 again who this stranger might be. Was he 
 really a Greek? That beard and pale complex- 
 ion and wrinkled forehead they seemed Jew- 
 ish. She knew the Hebrews; the wealthy mer- 
 chants, as well as certain less reputable members 
 of the tribe of whom she had crucified six or 
 
THEY WENT 173 
 
 seven for extorting outrageous interest from her 
 pet cultivators of fruit. His manner was dif- 
 ficult to define: his clothing unquestionably 
 Oriental, sumptuous and reaching to the ground, 
 of the finest quality, but without ostentation. A 
 curious dagger hung at his girdle of green silk. 
 He had a weary aspect, as of one who despairs 
 of mankind ; yet, when he talked of his favourite 
 subjects, a kind of flame seemed to burn within 
 those restless, deep-set eyes. She knew that 
 scorching flame. It had hovered about her, 
 sometimes, in the dead hour before dawn. 
 
 She would have enquired point-blank about his 
 nation, his business, had local tradition not stood 
 in the way. To respect anonymity, to show no 
 interest in a man's calling or antecedents, was 
 an unwritten law of the town and considered, by 
 many, to be its principal attraction. Folks came 
 here for such different purposes; the place was 
 full of mysterious and ambiguous characters. 
 Theophilus might be anything a potentate in 
 disgrace, a voluptuary, an assassin, an honest 
 trader. Or had he merely come to spy on Ken- 
 wyn, as she thought that day when they met 
 at the dragon's den? She would find out sooner 
 or later ! Meanwhile she could not help observ- 
 ing, as her eye flitted back to the charcoal sketch : 
 
 "Yours is a practiced hand. Doubtless you 
 have studied the arts of construction." 
 
174 THEY WENT 
 
 " I have built some things in my day. 
 Towers and bridges; also a few churches. Ay! 
 Churches for Christians/' he said, with a glum 
 smile. " Only a short while ago I raised a belfry 
 in this very land. I have also done a little work 
 out there," and he pointed vaguely northwards, 
 in the direction of Aithryn's realm. " When you 
 go to Byzance, princess, do not omit to view the 
 dome of Saint Sophia. Your humble servant 
 he reared it, though the fact has been maliciously 
 expunged from the registers." 
 
 " I shall not go to Byzance just yet," she re- 
 plied. " I dislike the thought of leaving my old 
 parents." 
 
 " Indeed? Tell that to your friend." 
 
 " You said, Theophilus? " 
 
 " Tell that to Kenwyn. Unicorns have no par- 
 ents." 
 
 She understood. It was idle to prevaricate 
 with this man. 
 
 " You are right. They have no parents. They 
 only think of beauty. We have some fine struc- 
 tures here," she went on, " built by a Roman." 
 
 " By a Roman ! What beauty ever came out 
 of Rome? What does Rome stand for? Useful- 
 ness. What have we to do with usefulness? 
 The Romans end, where we begin." 
 
 " You are right. That is a noble dagger of 
 
THEY WENT 175 
 
 yours. I never saw its like. I love to see new 
 things, and always new things." 
 
 He drew the weapon out of his girdle. The 
 blade was wavy, flawless; the hilt, terminating 
 in the figure of a parrot's beak, had been wrought 
 of steel and inlaid with tangled arabesques and 
 spirals of flowery gold. 
 
 " Persian stuff," he said. " An elaborate af- 
 fair ! Pray accept it as a gift. I happen to have 
 its exact counterpart at my lodging. Oh, my 
 wealth is considerable," he added, noticing her 
 hesitation. " It will bear the strain. Oblige 
 me." 
 
 She held it awhile musingly. It was thus with 
 every new product of art, great or small, which 
 hand could touch or eye survey; she yearned to 
 unravel its meaning and to explore the processes 
 whereby it justified its title to her admiration; 
 she felt drawn towards such objects as other men 
 feel drawn towards friends or blood-relations. 
 This little dagger ! How much thought and cun- 
 ning, she now reflected, and what a world of pa- 
 tient experimentation, lay enfolded in this trifle 
 of double purpose. . . . The blue blade, fash- 
 ioned for sinister practical needs and wedded, 
 none the less, to that purely ornamental ad- 
 junct. . . . Thus life should be; a dagger, a 
 beauteous dagger. . . . The grip, bent into a 
 
176 THEY WENT 
 
 shapely curve, the bird's beak outlined in slender 
 strips of gold, while layers of the same material, 
 diverging from its eyes, invaded the black steel 
 with their glitter . . . how crafty, how pleasing ! 
 Only metal-work, but of a kind to which her 
 dwarfs could never aspire. Well, their day was 
 over. They were about to be dismissed from her 
 service. 
 
 " It is a fair implement, and you greatly tempt 
 me ! " she confessed. " But I do not like to feel 
 indebted to you." 
 
 " Make me your debtor in return. You are 
 about to dismiss your dwarfs " 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 " Be gentle with them, princess. They are 
 good little people and doubtless, not long ago, 
 made you happy with their lore. It is not sur- 
 prising that you should now have reached the 
 limit of their powers. We are apt to outgrow 
 our teachers in wisdom, but whoever has helped 
 us to a larger understanding is entitled to our 
 gratitude for all time. That strikes me as hon- 
 est dealing. It would be strange if they could 
 still fulfil your desires in every respect; if, for 
 instance, they could paint scenes on plaster " 
 
 " That reminds me of what you told our ar- 
 mourer Lelian about the walls of one tint, and 
 how their colour may be made to endure by mix- 
 ing it with the plaster. An admirable idea! 
 
THEY WENT 177 
 
 Belen alone knows why I never thought of it." 
 
 " Belen is old. He has forgotten all he ever 
 knew." 
 
 " But those variegated pictures on white 
 walls/ 7 she went on, " those scenes of hunting 
 and revelry and old-fashioned worship you 
 must have observed, Theophilus, how ill they 
 look when their black and red and blue begins 
 to run down the white surface with rain or sea 
 moisture " 
 
 " They always look ill. A positive eyesore ! 
 Why bedaub the streets in this barbaric fash- 
 ion?" 
 
 She did not allow herself to be troubled by 
 this outburst, but proceeded calmly : 
 
 " Can they ever be held fast? I fear you will 
 not succeed in this feat." 
 
 " If it comes to that, won't I? " said the other 
 gaily. " See," he continued, " here is a wall of 
 fresh plaster which your clumsy masons have 
 just left. Already a little too dry," he remarked, 
 running his hand over the surface which he then 
 splashed with a brush from a pail of water, " and 
 badly worked over it should be smoother 
 some marble dust would not have been amiss . . . 
 however, rather than blame your people, I will 
 draw a little scene from my own country ; merely 
 a sketch, to show the process." 
 
 And his hand that held the charcoal began 
 
178 THEY WENT 
 
 to trace upon the wet expanse certain outlines 
 of a group of festal figures, draped and naked, 
 wending upwards under an avenue of trees 
 towards some grandiose structure on a hill- 
 top; a joyous company, fair to see, and in a 
 style altogether new to the princess. " Now for 
 a few tints. Here are my brushes/' he pursued, 
 diving once more into the folds of his cloak. 
 " That is lucky. I thought I had left them at 
 home, And how considerate of you, princess, to 
 have placed these pots of colours at my feet, just 
 when we needed them ! " 
 
 " Those colours, I vow, were not there a mo- 
 ment ago." 
 
 " Where else should they have been? Pray ob- 
 serve how they conduct themselves," he added, 
 proceeding to fill in the black outlines with flesh 
 tints and verdant green and the blue of midday 
 and silvery marbles tones. She watched. As by 
 enchantment there grew up before her eyes a 
 wondrous spectacle; the figures came to life; they 
 breathed and moved in radiant sunshine, while he 
 said, still continuing at his task in a mood of 
 ardent exaltation: 
 
 " Drawn downwards, you see, into the moist 
 plaster, and looking all the more mellow in con- 
 sequence. They will not fade quite so soon as 
 those harsh miserable daubs of which you spoke. 
 I know another method which is far more durable 
 
THEY WENT 179 
 
 and which I will explain to you on some future 
 occasion " his hand suddenly left the wall. 
 
 " Ah, finish it ! That young warrior's arm 
 fill it in " 
 
 " Enough for today," he replied. 
 
 Theophilus, plainly, was not going to be 
 " worked to the bone," like the rest of them. 
 
 " Now tell me," she cried, " tell me why I 
 have never thought of that simple plan." 
 
 " You were waiting for me to teach you. Per- 
 haps there is still room for improvement inside 
 that pretty little head of yours." 
 
 She was about to say : " You are right, The- 
 ophilus." She refrained and grew pensive. 
 What did this man know? Things flashed 
 through her mind. ... A rare sense of ease and 
 familiarity had crept over her while talking dur- 
 ing those few moments. On his part, too, there 
 was a complete absence of restraint. How came 
 it about? It was as if a veil had been lifted 
 between them, as if blood were speaking to blood. 
 Why should they converse like friends? How- 
 ever far apart in age or sex or race, they were 
 comrades in the spirit. Neither though of bet- 
 terment. 
 
 What did this Greek know? It mattered not 
 one jot what he knew! Such trivial considera- 
 tions were swept aside in the immensity of her 
 joy and relief at having at last come in contact 
 
180 THEY WENT 
 
 with a man whose views she could respect ; a man 
 who was not wrong, but right. It was an ex- 
 hilarating state of affairs, " like wine," she 
 thought, " for those that drink it." Who cared 
 what he knew! Yet something drove her to 
 say: 
 
 " You are teaching me. You will put me 
 under an obligation which is not to my taste, 
 unless I can compensate you in some fashion. 
 Why do you fall in with my fancies? " 
 
 " For fun," he replied rather grumpily, his 
 artistic humour having taken flight once more. 
 " Nevertheless," he went on, "I respect your 
 scruples. I would not have you feel indebted 
 to me, and if, on any future occasion, I can be 
 of service to you and I would like nothing 
 
 better rest assured of that " He sighed, 
 
 seeming to grow slightly embarrassed as he 
 spoke. And he took out of his pocket certain 
 beads of Indian cornelian, a string of them, and 
 began to count them thoughtfully. She had 
 already seen him handling those beads; it was 
 at her father's palace, when old Lelian had asked 
 some question which may have caused pain or 
 annoyance. " He is trying to calm himself," she 
 concluded. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Then by all means let us come to some ar- 
 rangement," he said. " You are such a sensible 
 
THEY WENT 181 
 
 young lady that there can be no fear of any con- 
 flict between us. I have several other notions in 
 my head," he pursued, more fluently, while the 
 old aspiring look came back into his eyes. 
 " That colonnade by the harbour, for example 
 it is a mockery. I cannot bear to pass that way. 
 I was also thinking, just now, of a portico to this 
 tower, and marvelling that your old Roman mud- 
 dler allowed such a chance to escape him. In 
 fact, to be perfectly frank, this town of yours is 
 apt to make me shudder. Fantastic! Barely 
 sketched out/' 
 
 " Barely sketched out," she echoed. " And 
 now, let us settle our terms. I declare you are 
 looking positively bashful ! " she laughed. "You 
 need not be shy with me. I have talked all my 
 life to men of business, and to others. Hundreds 
 of them! I hate misunderstandings." 
 
 " And I I hate talking business," answered 
 the Greek. " I was always absurdly sensitive, 
 even as a little boy. Come now! Do I look 
 like a person who wants payment, or needs it? " 
 He spoke with obvious sincerity. 
 
 " You are not pretty, Theophilus. But you 
 look honest. Honest men are sometimes hard to 
 please. I have met two or three." 
 
 He sighed again, and said : 
 
 " As you wish. Let us be just to one another, 
 for such is the basis of lasting friendship. We 
 
182 THEY WENT 
 
 will make a clear contract as soon as you have 
 had a little time to judge of my work and my 
 ideas. Meanwhile, I shall consider myself amply 
 repaid if you are tender to those dwarfs and 
 allow me, in my spare time, to do what I can for 
 them. We should be kind to workers in metal. 
 That poor little Yuxo is pretty far gone " 
 
 Yuxo, she thought. He knows his very name ! 
 
 " And they have certain enemies in this town 
 who would incite you to deal harshly with them. 
 You know?" 
 
 " I know," she replied. 
 
 Kenwyn hated the dwarfs; he called them 
 deviPs folk and implored her to drive them into 
 the wilderness whence they had come. Ken- 
 wyn . . . how far away he seemed, just then! 
 That spiritual kind of beauty, that goodness, 
 of which he had spoken how far away! His 
 drowsy twilight phrases about a revelation. . . . 
 Here, before her eyes, was a revelation of another 
 kind, tangible, and not to be denied. She gazed 
 at the glowing composition on the wall and 
 thought : one inch of this beauty is worth a league 
 of Kenwyn's. He had now been preaching in 
 the town for some little time ; it was uphill work, 
 he declared, making men strive after goodness; 
 they greatly preferred striving after pleasure, 
 " or beauty, as you call it." He had endeavoured 
 to make the princess strive in the same direction, 
 
THEY WENT 183 
 
 the only result of his ministrations being to fan 
 a flame of unrighteous desire between them. 
 Never for a moment had he touched her fiery in- 
 tellect, but only that outward thing, its fiery com- 
 plement, her senses. She often thought of him, 
 not aware of the furiously restrained passion 
 which lay beneath that calm exterior. He would 
 yield at a touch ! She was sometimes tempted to 
 try the experiment. For the princess was not 
 tepid; she disliked shawls, even those from the 
 Roof of the World, and even on rainy afternoons. 
 
 " Kenwyn," said Theophilus, who seemed to 
 have tracked her musings further and further 
 back, into their dusky hiding-place, " he would 
 have you ill-treat the dwarfs. No wonder. 
 They give pleasure to men. They teach fair 
 artifices. It is enough to make a Christian fear 
 them. ... A handsome person, I must say, with 
 those dreamy blue eyes. If I were a young 
 woman, I would try to forget that he has no 
 brains behind them. And probably succeed," he 
 added, " for he would yield at a touch, and make 
 an ardent lover. He is none too old " 
 
 " My father dislikes them too." 
 
 " That ridiculous young person is no longer 
 answerable for his opinions. He is often dis- 
 gracefully drunk." 
 
 " You said, Theophilus? " 
 
 " Hopelessly drunk, your venerable father. 
 
184 THEY WENT 
 
 He babbles. He is fast growing into a tankard, 
 a barrel. Too military." 
 
 "You are right. I have said so more than 
 once." 
 
 "Which reminds me of the key at his girdle, 
 the key of the sluice-gate, and of what might 
 happen to this low-lying city if some enemy 
 should filch it from him while he is chattering 
 fondly about his martial exploits. That key, 
 princess, should be in your hands. Mark my 
 words." 
 
 " Many a time have I attempted to take it 
 from him! You cannot think how obstinate he 
 is on that point. Parents are often strangely 
 hard-hearted." 
 
 The other pondered awhile, -and then said : 
 
 " Try again. You may find him amenable this 
 evening." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THEOPHILUS happened to be right. 
 The princess caught her father in an 
 uncommonly favourable mood. He be- 
 gan, of course, by saying : 
 
 " Another day, my little one, another day. 
 
 Ask your mother " who, as usual on such 
 
 occasions, was nowhere to be seen. Then, slowly, 
 he gave way to her entreaties. 
 
 " The dear child ! " he said at last. " Let her 
 have it. What do I want with that stupid key, 
 always dangling here? And here it is " 
 
 At this moment, for an unexplained reason, 
 contrary to all precedent, and as though a demon 
 had guided her footsteps, the royal mother sud- 
 denly appeared on the scene. 
 
 "You are giving the child that key?" she 
 enquired. " Certainly not ! I am surprised at 
 you. Certainly not." 
 
 Dearly as she loved her daughter, and almost 
 invariably as she gave way to her wishes, she 
 now assumed an unwonted air of decision. Some 
 blind force seemed to impel or inspire her to 
 speak as she did. 
 
 "Such a sensible girl " the father began. 
 
 185 
 
186 THEY WENT 
 
 " Certainly not. After all those entrails ! 
 Have, you forgotten? Here is our good Ando. 
 He shall favour us with his opinion. Now, 
 Ando? 
 
 The court prophet wished himself in some 
 other place. He disliked family arguments and 
 adjudications. While cherishing small affection 
 for the protectress of his enemy the blue pest 
 " make no friend of a red-haired woman," he 
 often said to himself he had no desire, on the 
 other hand, to vex her father, nor yet to disoblige 
 her mother. He was in a fix. " Why was I 
 born? " he wondered, and held his peace. 
 
 " Speak up, man," said the king. 
 
 " It is a problem requiring anxious thought." 
 
 " Try, my friend," objected the monarch, " try 
 not to think too anxiously. You are a prophet. 
 Try to prophesy, for a change. Now, Ando? " 
 
 " Prophets are like peaches never to be 
 squeezed until they are ripe. Otherwise they are 
 liable to give sour juice. Let me sleep over it," 
 he said, hoping that they would have solved the 
 problem between themselves by next morning. 
 
 " Now, Ando? " asked the royal couple in one 
 breath. 
 
 " The key has hung at that girdle for long, 
 with eminent success to the city. May it hang 
 there for ever ! But note this : had you allowed 
 me to sleep over it, I might have attained to some 
 
THEY WENT 187 
 
 inspiration on the matter and advised differently. 
 Fresh counsel is like fresh water never to be 
 swallowed with impunity/' 
 
 Whereupon the king turned to the young lady : 
 
 " You hear? Another day, my child, another 
 day." 
 
 Theophilus, when she brought him this news, 
 seemed to take it with extraordinary calmness. 
 
 " I Relieve you are glad," she said to him. " I 
 believe you knew beforehand." 
 
 " Not glad, princess, but only resigned. I am 
 quite seasoned to such little disappointments, I 
 never expect anything else. No harm, by the 
 way, in trying again," he added wearily. 
 
 That explains his dissatisfied look, she thought. 
 
 So it came about that the queen, by one single 
 act of opposition to her daughter's wishes, sealed 
 her own fate and that of the city. Or was it her 
 punishment for yielding, twenty years earlier, to 
 the blandishments of Aithryn, when he stepped 
 out of his pea-green boat? 
 
 That boat, it was afterwards discovered, kept 
 its old colour, the owner having never dreamt of 
 painting it blue, a tint he rather disliked. He 
 had often dreamt, however, of returning to the 
 scene of his gallant exploit, when the time was 
 ripe. And the time was mow ripe. For, among 
 other things, the news which those spies succes- 
 sively brought from over the water had raised 
 
188 THEY WENT 
 
 his perplexity and envy to an intolerable pitch. 
 The city, they vowed, was opulent and fair to 
 see: its trade had thriven beyond belief . . . 
 
 Now Aithryn, as it happened, was not the only 
 person on earth to avail himself of spies. The- 
 ophilus, whether he employed such agents or 
 whatever other means of garnering news he may 
 have possessed, was remarkably well informed of 
 all that took place in those distant regions of the 
 North. Not long afterwards he imparted to the 
 princess a few details not nearly as many as 
 he might have imparted concerning the doings 
 of what, for some reason of his own, he con- 
 temptuously called " that funny little man, that 
 red-haired papa of yours." 
 
 It appeared that Aithryn, like other folks, had 
 grown twenty years older in the interval; 
 older, and possibly wiser ; certainly sadder. His 
 golden beard was streaked with threads of silver, 
 and though that strange and almost god-like 
 beauty still hung about him, a harassed look had 
 settled on his face. There was trouble and grief 
 in yonder rambling hyperborean castle, whose 
 very embellishments the crazy zigzag patterns 
 of which the king had been so proud were fad- 
 ing away from sheer neglect. He was too un- 
 happy to concern himself with such matters. 
 
 He had begun to suffer a good deal of pain 
 from his old wound ; pain, too, of another kind. 
 
THEY WENT 189 
 
 Things had gone ill with him. His consort had 
 died. Of his two sons, one had been killed in 
 battle, while the other was a prisoner in the 
 hands of the painted Picts and never likely to 
 escape from chains. Uswida, his only daughter, 
 lay smitten with a terrible creeping malady 
 which gnawed away her powers of speech and 
 mocked all the arts of medicine. The thought 
 of this progeny destroyed filled him with anguish 
 unspeakable, for it was the mark and merit of 
 this king to be " absurdly fond of his children,'' 
 as Theophilus had said. He was alone. He 
 looked around and saw nothing but mischief at 
 home, mischief abroad. And here he lived, the 
 last of the Aithryns. He glanced back upon the 
 long line of his ancestors . . . the last of the 
 Aithryns ! 
 
 Now he was punished. 
 
 Punished: for what? 
 
 For hearkening to the druids. Something 
 must be wrong with their counsel or their creed, 
 otherwise such a torrent of evils could never 
 have overwhelmed him. 
 
 Musing thus, he began to veer round to the 
 Christians, who had meanwhile prospered in the 
 land. They were enchanted. " He is at last 
 coming to his senses," they said. They began 
 to teach him things, and he began to give them 
 things parcels of soil and money for pious pur- 
 
190 THEY WENT 
 
 poses. "A good man, our Aithryn," they de- 
 clared, as the white-robed one would have said 
 in their place, and actually had said, twenty 
 years earlier. Instead of that, they now sadly 
 observed : " Alack, the fellow is taking leave of 
 his wits. He grows imbecile. We feared he 
 would." That was because the king had learnt 
 to pray fervently and to repent of his sins. 
 Owing to age and the pain from his wound, he 
 was a slower pupil than the Christians might 
 have wished ; certain doctrines which those others 
 had failed to teach him concerning Paradise 
 and Hellfire, for instance puzzled him so 
 greatly that he was obliged to give them several 
 large tracts of land before they would declare 
 themselves satisfied with his progress. Even 
 then, he understood their teachings but imper- 
 fectly. 
 
 Another spy returned. He told of the dwarfs, 
 of all they had wrought for the adornment of the 
 city, which caused his new-found Christian ad- 
 visers, who misliked that race, to shake their 
 heads. He told also of the princess, describing 
 her tower, her charm of person and ardent activi- 
 ties ; there was no mistaking those signs, thought 
 Aithryn. Here was the predestined helper and 
 confederate his own blood. If only the All- 
 Highest had seen fit to make her a boy, while he 
 about it! For the idea had promptly en- 
 
THEY WENT 191 
 
 tered his head a sign, maybe, of that growing 
 imbecility which the druids had noticed that 
 she must be his own child. He would have been 
 pleased at the discovery but for certain queer 
 tales which he learnt anent her behaviour. 
 Those tales they gave him food for thought. 
 Aithryn, who had grown good, was not edified by 
 them; he wanted to do something, he knew not 
 what. 
 
 " If she were somebody else's daughter," he 
 argued in dull fashion, "it would be somebody 
 else's affair. Whose affair is it now? " 
 
 So he brooded. For it was the peculiar 
 strength of his race to cling to their offspring, 
 their blood, however fortuitously gotten; family 
 union had been the secret of their worldly suc- 
 cess in an age when other great clans lost their 
 rule through internal dissensions. At last he 
 took the Christian advisers into his confidence 
 and told them, somewhat shyly, the whole truth. 
 
 " Whose affair is it now? " he asked. 
 
 "Yours," they said. Trifling irregularities 
 such as these, they then explained, could be com- 
 pounded by means of gifts to the Church. Then 
 he gave a few more miles of territory, and began 
 to feel at ease again. 
 
 Another spy returned. His report was clear 
 and convincing. The city had grown so sinful, 
 it flourished so exceedingly, that there could be 
 
192 THEY WENT 
 
 only one interpretation : the princess, its patron 
 and creator, had sold herself to the devil. 
 
 " They do tell me/' said Aithryn to his counsel- 
 lors, " that she has >sold herself to the devil." 
 
 The Christians held up their hands in horror. 
 
 " Her soul ! " they cried. " Her immortal soul 
 is imperilled. This is no trifling irregularity, 
 O king." 
 
 " Is it possible? You alarm me. Please ex- 
 plain once more, slowly, what you said about 
 Hell and Paradise." 
 
 They explained. They worked on his imagina- 
 tion and paternal feelings to a painful extent. 
 
 " That settles it," he thought. 
 
 Other crimes, they went on, could be com- 
 pounded; this one, never! Moreover, the god- 
 abandoned city must be destroyed burnt, and 
 razed to the ground. 
 
 " I know something better," said Aithryn. 
 
 ",It will be a meritorious deed," they con- 
 cluded. " You will gain Paradise." 
 
 " I care less about Paradise than about that 
 girl " a singular speech, which set his advisers 
 wondering whether the druids, after all, were 
 not right in what they said as to his wits. 
 
 Preparations were begun. There was much to 
 be considered, in order that the enterprise should 
 go off happily calculations to be made con- 
 cerning the season and tides and other contin- 
 
THEY WENT t 193 
 
 gencies. The spacious wave-coloured boat must 
 be overhauled and rendered seaworthy once 
 more. And all the time Aithryn was nerving 
 himself for this final effort. Some demon seemed 
 to have entered his being, for his health and 
 spirits were observed to improve wondrously 
 under the influence of this great hope ; the ardent 
 energy of his race descended upon him. The 
 pain in that wound ceased to give trouble; he 
 was now engaged upon a good work. He would 
 overwhelm the town ; he would restore his daugh- 
 ter and bring her home, to carry on his dominion. 
 
 " And gain Paradise," said his counsellors. 
 
 " True," he replied. . . . 
 
 What could the old king, as he lay in bed that 
 evening, know of all these happenings in the dim 
 regions of the white North? Nothing whatever. 
 Yet an omen appeared to him in the night; a 
 strange, unlovely omen. He saw before his eyes 
 a watery expanse leagues and leagues of green 
 ocean, weltering right up to the foot of the dis- 
 tant hills. While gazing in astonishment upon 
 this dream-spectacle, he became aware of an un- 
 usual scratching sound. Suddenly that pink 
 porpoise, that fateful fish of forty years ago, 
 came flying into the window of his chamber. 
 The beast was changed. It was flushed to an 
 almost hectic hue, pinker than ever, though 
 sickly-looking, and dwindled to the size of a 
 
194 THEY WENO? 
 
 mackerel. After whirling silently round the 
 room three or four times, it sat down on the 
 pillow beside his head and, instead of laughing 
 as of old, began to croak disconsolately : 
 
 " More water, more water, more water " 
 
 More water, thought the monarch. Now: 
 what on earth does it mean? I give it up! 
 
 He nudged his consort, who was slumbering 
 at his side. 
 
 " The porpoise ! Wake up ! Perhapk it will 
 talk again." 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 " The porpoise, I say." 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 "In the morning. Always in the morning. 
 Nobody wants to talk to me. Certainly not.. 
 Wake up! I like to converse, and I shall. . . . 
 No talk? Then sing a song. The old song about 
 the swan that came flying out of the North. 
 What did the swan come for, I wonder? Belen 
 alone knows. . . . No song? Then bring me a 
 trumpet, straight or curved " 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 " In the morning. Nobody loves me. . . . No- 
 body ! That daughter of ours what a portent. 
 You say she is hot. I find her mighty cold; cold 
 as a stone. A metallic girl. She says she will 
 dismiss the dwarfs to please her old father. I 
 say : to please herself. How came I ever to have 
 
THEY WENT 195 
 
 such a child? Belen alone knows. And Belen 
 never tells. Did you see her face when I re- 
 fused her the key? Did you? It made me 
 shiver. ... I used to play with her and make 
 her toys. If she knew how often I thought about 
 her. All brain, no heart. Can one live without 
 heart? Certainly not. I could cry about it. I 
 am a little older than I used to be. Old men 
 should be treated kindly. Can't you do some- 
 thing to make her love me? Can't you? " 
 
 " In the morning " 
 
 " In the morning. And this is what one calls 
 a wife. Well, well! Nobody loves me. Cer- 
 tainly not. I always thought so. Now I know. 
 Now I know. Now I know. . . ." 
 
 The news of the king's dream created a sense 
 of disquietude in the town, chiefly among the old 
 believers who were always " prepared for the 
 worst," as they said, having never forgotten that 
 first Christian preacher's curses, and how he 
 prophesied a watery fate to their city in certain 
 ominous words about retribution from the sea. 
 At the palace, too, everybody felt more or less 
 oppressed and ill at ease. The court prophet 
 alone was seen to smile. He had a reputation 
 to keep up. 
 
 " What says Ando? " enquired the king. 
 
 " I distrust these subtle far-fetched interpreta- 
 tions," he replied. " It is the summer season, 
 
196 THEY WENT 
 
 when creatures of many shapes are wont to start 
 up from their slimy depths, and writhe and crawl 
 and scramble and flutter about with strange 
 antics. Now what have we here? We have a 
 kind of sea-beast in the royal sleeping apartment. 
 This beast, good sirs, is not like me. It wants 
 more water. It wants to return to the ocean. 
 No wonder! A bedroom is not the place for a 
 fish." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SHE thought it singular that Theophilus 
 should be wearing a dagger alike down 
 to the minutest details of workmanship to 
 the one he had given her. It was one of many 
 odd things about him. Sometimes she was 
 tempted to beg for this one too, in order to see 
 whether he could produce a third. It would not 
 have astonished her. The man was full of sur- 
 prises. 
 
 She refrained, wishful not to place herself 
 under more obligations than necessary. 
 
 Obligations were they veritable obligations, 
 or only marks of friendship on his part? 
 She could not make up her mind; it was 
 a troublesome question. She would say to her- 
 self : " Tomorrow, tomorrow. I will think about 
 it tomorrow." The next day came, and the next, 
 and still she drifted along in blissful heedless- 
 ness. It was so much more enjoyable to discuss 
 matters of art, to listen to his views on men and 
 things, or to watch his marvellous hand at work. 
 Yet there were moments when she felt dissatis- 
 fied and on the verge of demanding how she 
 could requite him for his pains. He had placed 
 
 197 
 
198 THEY WENT 
 
 his time, his ideas, his entire person at her dis- 
 posal. So much was certain. 
 
 How set about it? How approach the sub- 
 ject? For Theophilus was different from earlier 
 helpers. The strange sense of comradeship and 
 familiarity which had grown up between them 
 made it hard for her to touch upon the mundane 
 theme of remuneration. He was so evidently a 
 travelled man of the world, accustomed to ease 
 and the life of courts; more like a brother, some 
 wise elder brother. How could she suggest pay- 
 ing for his teaching? He took much manifest 
 pleasure in filling her mind with fresh notions 
 and explaining new processes of construction or 
 painting. It seemed as if he had nothing what- 
 ever to do save to fall in with her fancies. He 
 relished work ; it was one of the points in which 
 he resembled the now neglected dwarfs, who used 
 to call it "play." Unlike them, however, and 
 unlike the defunct Ormidius Limpidus, he never 
 allowed himself to be " worked to the bone." 
 No. He had been so firm, and even impolite, on 
 those occasions when she had striven to make him 
 produce something beyond his inclination that 
 nowadays she never attempted the feat. There 
 was nothing to be done with Theophilus when 
 he was not in his creative mood. He would grow 
 sombre and discontented once more, while that 
 sparkle, that inner light, faded out of his eyes. 
 
THEY WENT 199 
 
 He would begin playing with those beads like 
 any other sulky merchant, Greek or Jew. " No 
 wonder he is morose," she then thought, " and 
 irritable, and even contradictory with talents 
 like his." 
 
 There was another difference between him and 
 those former teachers. They had their limita- 
 tions : he had none. His fancy could rise to the 
 clouds, and his craftsmanship keep pace with it. 
 Nothing seemed impossible to this man. Doubt- 
 less, if so disposed, he could throw ah arch from 
 earth to the stars. And it was the same in quite 
 small matters. One day he painted an admirable 
 portrait of Harre" in his blue costume, a costume 
 of which, by the way, he strongly disapproved. 
 (Though not much of a prude, Theophilus had 
 certain violent prejudices of his own.) It 
 amused the princess greatly. And what amused 
 her even more was a caricature of the poor old 
 king, so unflattering a likeness that in olden days 
 she might have professed to feel annoyed. Now 
 she laughed. She was changing. Her parents 
 had grown into objects of mirth. 
 
 " Hit off to the life," she declared. " He is 
 trying to look royal, but cannot. No wonder, 
 with that nose ! And now make me a picture of 
 my other one of the red-haired little man in 
 the North, you know, about whom you have told 
 me." 
 
200 THEY WENT 
 
 Whereupon lie did a sketch of Aithryn seated 
 gravely on his throne, with a tall silver crown, 
 and that golden beard flowing majestically over 
 sea-green robes an imposing apparition but for 
 the eyes, into which the artist contrived to put 
 an almost imbecile look. 
 
 " A handsome man, you perceive," he said. 
 " He would have been intelligent like yourself, 
 had his skull not been injured in that accident/' 
 
 Ah, Theophilus he was different from all the 
 rest of them ! " At last," she often thought, " I 
 am truly learning. Up to this moment I have 
 stumbled forwards in the dark. Now I see the 
 light ahead. All my life I have waited for this 
 man. He is my beacon." 
 
 One of the first things the Greek had taken 
 in hand was a portico to her tower. Hitherto the 
 citizens who walked along the embankment 
 would pass in the open before the door of that 
 house, which stood on the inner side of the vast 
 sea-wall. " Let them walk through a covered 
 porch," said Theophilus " a porch whose arches 
 shall bestride the entire embankment and plant 
 their feet in the sea. Overhead we will repeat 
 the pattern," he explained, " and rear a breezy 
 chamber beautified with paintings. Its roof 
 shall be supported on dainty columns. Thereto 
 you will step from your middle storey to take 
 your pleasure on summer evenings, to listen to 
 
THEY WENT 201 
 
 conversation and sweet music, and enjoy the 
 prospect over the ocean." 
 
 It struck her as an excellent idea. She won- 
 dered, as usual, why she had never thought of 
 it herself. 
 
 And now the structure drew towards comple- 
 tion. Her friend was engaged at that moment 
 in etching upon its inner wall a wonderful col- 
 our-design according to that more complicated 
 and durable system which he had meanwhile 
 made clear to her. She watched admiringly. 
 He was in rare good humour. 
 
 " You are gay, Theophilus." 
 
 " Joy lies in creation, not in the thing created. 
 All life should be thus building, and unbuild- 
 ing, and building anew with ever fresh en- 
 thusiasm and ever deeper insight. If this city 
 should one day be swept away, we will found a 
 new one in another place, a better place. The 
 site of this flat town has grave defects; it does 
 not give full scope to our talents." 
 
 He had touched upon that subject once or 
 twice before, as though preparing her mind for 
 some possible catastrophe. At first she was sad 
 at the thought that her dream might be de- 
 stroyed. Latterly she had grown more accus- 
 tomed to the idea. Here or elsewhere what 
 mattered it, so long as Theophilus remained at 
 her side; so long as she was learning and seeing 
 
202 THEY WENT 
 
 new things, always new things? None the less, 
 she observed : 
 
 " The All-Highest will permit no more floods. 
 So Kenwyn says. He placed the rainbow in the 
 sky " 
 
 " He is old. Yet that rainbow was there be- 
 fore he was born. Believe me, princess, he works 
 by spasms nowadays. He fumbles and gropes. 
 Talking of rainbows, for example: not long ago 
 he drowned everybody in a fit of bad temper at 
 one of his own blunders. Then he repented of 
 his rage, and sent some one to save them again. 
 He is liable to repeat such frolics. You must be 
 prepared for anything, my lady, where he is con- 
 cerned.'' 
 
 " But Kenwyn says " 
 
 " Fancy listening to Kenwyn ! And that re- 
 minds me " 
 
 Theophilus seemed to grow suddenly thought- 
 ful and embarrassed. He laid down his brushes 
 with a sigh. 
 
 " Reminds you of what? " she enquired. 
 
 " Nothing. . . . Another day ! I hate that 
 subject." 
 
 She guessed his thoughts. 
 
 " I am glad you mentioned it. Now don't be 
 timid, like last time. Come, let us talk frankly. 
 Tell me what your recompense should be. You 
 shall have it! Fifty pounds of minted gold is 
 
THEY WENT 203 
 
 none too much for what you have done. I will 
 give you a hundred, and another hundred when 
 this portico and the colonnade by the harbour 
 is completed. Are you content? " 
 
 " My wealth, princess, is considerable. No 
 gold for me." 
 
 "No gold? You are perplexing, Theophilus. 
 What would you have then? Me?" she added 
 with a laugh. 
 
 The man looked uncommonly grumpy at this 
 jocular suggestion. He said : 
 
 " I am not an Ethiopian chieftain. Or even a 
 Roman engineer." 
 
 Once again, as often before, the thought 
 flashed through her mind; what did he know? 
 She was well aware that there had been some 
 talk in the town regarding the disappearance 
 of certain prominent folks. It was astonishing, 
 nevertheless, how he had been able to pick it 
 all up. 
 
 Who cared what he knew ! His knowledge of 
 this or that incident in her life mattered nothing 
 whatever, provided he went on with the portico 
 and those other projects. All the rest was of no 
 account. Let him unravel all her little secrets! 
 She replied, quite simply: 
 
 " True. You are not as pretty as that Ethi- 
 opian, nor as meddlesome as the Eoman. Your 
 price? " 
 
204 THEY WENT 
 
 He sighed jet again and appeared to be nerv- 
 ing himself for an unpleasant task. 
 
 " There are some subjects,'' he began, " which 
 one feels a kind of delicacy in approaching " 
 
 " You are going to be coy again. This will 
 never do. Out with it ! " 
 
 He leaned his head on one side, whimsically, 
 as though listening to something underground, 
 and remarked : 
 
 " Water flowing.'' 
 
 " Is there? " she enquired in her airiest man- 
 ner. " You must have good ears, Theophilus." 
 
 " The gods have favoured me in this respect, 
 and I am duly grateful. It must be a terrible 
 affliction to be deaf! Have you ever thought, 
 princess, what it would mean to be unable to 
 hearken to pleadings of love or words of wisdom, 
 to music, the blithe carollings of birds and all 
 those sweet mysterious voices of nature " 
 
 " You are wandering from the point, my good 
 friend. Your price? " 
 
 " To be sure. What a disagreeable topic ! I 
 wish I were a thousand miles from here. I have 
 always been ridiculously shy; it is the curse of 
 my existence. He must go." 
 
 "He must go. He? Who?" 
 
 " Beauty is manifold, and inexhaustible, and 
 hard of attainment," he began again. " Good- 
 ness is ever the same. There is only one kind 
 
THEY WENT 205 
 
 of goodness to a myriad forms of beauty. You 
 flattered me, the other day, by saying that I 
 could build a roadway from this earth of ours 
 to the stars. Perhaps I could. Perhaps who 
 knows? I have already built it, for certain 
 ardent ones " 
 
 " Ah, Theophilus, help me to step that way ! " 
 
 "Between goodness and beauty there yawns 
 a gulf which none can bridge over. Uphill work, 
 princess, trying to make men strive after beauty 
 and rise aloft. It is so much easier to make them 
 good, to keep them grovelling earthwards, that 
 sometimes I think that I, too, will grow into a 
 preacher in my old age. Can you picture me 
 preaching and endeavouring to instil into your 
 poor little heathen mind some notions of the 
 true God and v 
 
 " Your price? " 
 
 " Oh, I have good friends among the Chris- 
 tians; men of a different stamp; men who sym- 
 pathize with my aspirations. As to this one 
 pray don't make me go into details. Pray take 
 my meaning." 
 
 She took his meaning. It was idle to prevari- 
 cate with Theophilus. 
 
 " Why that one? " she asked. " It seems a 
 pity." 
 
 " It is never a pity to uproot a menace. Has 
 he not spoken disparagingly of your work? 
 
206 THEY WENT 
 
 Would lie not destroy this city if he could? " 
 
 "He would. He thinks differently from us. 
 His right is not our right, and his wrong is not 
 our wrong. But he means well." 
 
 " Foolish men, my lady, always mean well. 
 He would overturn our work, and say he meant 
 well. We have enemies enough without him ; the 
 All-Highest, I mean, and that red-haired papa of 
 yours. They are leagued together, like all good 
 folks, for the destruction of beauty. Envy makes 
 strange bed-fellows." 
 
 The princess did not know what more to say. 
 A wave of perplexed sadness was sweeping over 
 her. She had ceased a good while since to pay 
 any heed to the exhortations of Kenwyn; she 
 was deaf to his arguments. She could not be 
 blind to his spirit, his reserve. The Christian 
 was different from all those other men who had 
 hitherto laid their hearts at her feet. He suf- 
 fered in silence. For the first time in her life 
 there mingled, with that disdainful sensuality of 
 hers, a strain of something purer and akin to 
 affection. She knew, and began to respect, the 
 anguish which lay behind his speechlessness, 
 though even now even at that very moment, 
 while thinking of these things she was tempted 
 by that coarse demon of the flesh which hung 
 about her 
 
 " To make him yield by a touch," observed 
 
THEY WENT 207 
 
 Theophilus, interrupting the current of her medi- 
 tations and striving, as once before, to reach that 
 dark, defective chord in the caverns of her soul, 
 "it would be no hard matter. Dry as tinder! 
 
 Touch him, and then " Once more he 
 
 leaned his head on one side, whimsically. 
 
 She gazed for a long time over the sea before 
 replying. How calm it lay there! Something 
 of its luminous tranquillity entered into her 
 being, for she said : 
 
 " I know not how it is ; I have changed of late. 
 Try to believe what I say. I am purging my- 
 self of earthly humours. I care more for your 
 teaching than for a thousand lovers. This por- 
 tico is my dream. As to doing what you say 
 I cannot. He has gained a place, a small place 
 apart for himself. It is the truth." 
 
 Theophilus merely remarked : 
 
 " You asked me to name my price. I obeyed 
 your commands." 
 
 " I cannot. You taught me to be reverent and 
 sensitive, and to think of other matters. It is 
 your fault." 
 
 " My fault ! It has always been my fault, ever 
 since I was a little boy. So be it. I am seasoned 
 to such disappointments oh, quite ! I never 
 expect anything else. I will now seek another 
 princess, a more reasonable one, and begin build- 
 ing afresh." 
 
208 THEY WENT 
 
 She could not help laughing at this speech. 
 
 "Another princess? You will never find 
 her." 
 
 " Won't I? " said Theophilus. " They are not 
 nearly as scarce as one thinks. Loth as I am to 
 leave this portico undone, I depart today." 
 
 " Depart? " she cried anxiously. " You de- 
 part this day, leaving your work undone? Tha,t 
 is wrong." 
 
 " Your lover would call it right." 
 
 " Besides, you promised " 
 
 Theophilus broke in, and never had he spoken 
 so sternly: 
 
 " I promised nothing. Be good enough to 
 leave me what I hold dearer than life itself 
 my reputation for honest dealing. This is a 
 town for monks. I depart. Farewell." 
 
 " Depart," she echoed. She could hardly be- 
 lieve her ears. The enormity of her loss re- 
 vealed itself, all at once, in that single word. 
 Depart! It was the death-sentence of her am- 
 bitions. 
 
 "You break me in two," she said, and her 
 voice sunk to a whisper. " Ah, how you make 
 me suffer! You are my master, my inspirer. 
 All undone, like this? " 
 
 " All undone ! Come now," he added in more 
 jovial tones, " are you going to let him stand in 
 
THEY WENT 209 
 
 your way? Think it over. A portico is worth 
 a preacher." 
 
 She surveyed the structure dearer to her heart 
 than mortal man had ever been. A wrong, a 
 foul wrong would be done if this thing of beauty, 
 destined to grow harmoniously to its close, 
 should now be snapped asunder. And while her 
 eyes ran over the fair outlines she began to feel 
 an ache within her, that old familiar ache at the 
 back of her forehead which assailed her in times 
 of mental anguish something striving to break 
 loose. An ache, and then a mist 
 
 Tears, hot tears : they welled forth and rolled 
 down her cheeks; the first of all her life. She 
 raised a hand in marvelling fashion to her face, 
 and felt their moisture. She said : 
 
 " Strange ! Wet ! Now I know what they 
 feel, those who cry. How I suffer ! . . . All un- 
 done? Can you bear the thought of it? Then 
 I too am undone, for it is part of myself. Speak, 
 Theophilus." 
 
 The other was no longer at her side. 
 
 She glanced down and saw him limping away, 
 far below, in the direction of the harbour. " I 
 must follow," she thought. 
 
 It was the hour before midday. 
 
 There, on the placid green water, a boat was 
 seen moving away from the quay the boat of 
 
210 THEY WENT 
 
 Man this. Four of her elder girls rowed; in the 
 stern, holding the rudder, sat Kenwyn who was 
 now on his way to the Sacred Rock, rather re- 
 luctantly, in response to an oft-repeated invita- 
 tion on the part of the kindly old dame. He 
 looked landwards and, recognizing the princess, 
 waved his arm. She waved back ; she smiled in- 
 stinctively as often before ; her smile soon melted 
 into something different. 
 
 A voice at her side remarked : 
 
 " Our enemy." 
 
 " You are right, Theophilus. I have come to 
 see your point of view. Would you delay your 
 departure if " 
 
 " I desire nothing better. And now we will 
 go back to the portico and do a little painting. 
 An idea has just occurred to me. And oh, 
 princess, never let us talk business again. It dis- 
 tresses me more than I can say." 
 
 " Never again. It distresses both of us. You 
 made me cry, Theophilus. No man has ever done 
 that before. It was rather unpleasant." 
 
 " It seems to be my fate to make people cry. 
 A most vexatious state of affairs," he declared, 
 in a tone of genuine annoyance. " I wish some- 
 thing could be done about it." 
 
 "Don't take it to heart, my good friend. 
 Bother that preacher! I was altogether in the 
 
THEY WENT 211 
 
 wrong. Make me cry again, as often as you 
 please. Only help me to learn." 
 
 How soft she had grown so far, at least, as 
 this foreigner and his art caprices were con- 
 cerned ! 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE boat of Manthis glided outward, her 
 children rowing in sailorly fashion. It 
 was a windless summer day; deep blue 
 sky overhead. They skirted a few rock-islets 
 against which the waves were lapping with 
 scarcely a ripple. 
 
 Kenwyn said nothing. He saw nothing of the 
 landscape. He had caught her smile; not the 
 look that followed. He mused distractedly : 
 
 " I am not myself. I am somebody else. 
 Happy Gwenulf! Happy Manthis! It is easy 
 to be pure at their age." 
 
 Then the visions began again; tormenting 
 visions of contact with the flesh. Her influence 
 upon him was of the lowest and strongest kind. 
 There was no reasoning with it. A desire 
 haunted him by day and by night, a burning 
 desire not vague but definite, and one which no 
 holy texts could quench. As in a dream he 
 watched the mainland receding from view, and 
 wondered whether he would encounter her on 
 his return to the town in the evening. He feared 
 he would. He hoped he would. " For this can 
 endure no longer/' he thought. 
 
 212 
 
THEY WENT 213 
 
 In the college, meanwhile, a great calm pre- 
 vailed. Morning lessons were over; it was the 
 brief spell of relaxation before the midday meal. 
 Manthis, all alone, had walked a few paces up 
 the winding path to that garden which her chil- 
 dren and herself had laboriously wrested from 
 the bleak soil. There, on her favourite wooden 
 bench, she reposed awhile, looking over the tree 
 tops of a young plantation and rows of trim 
 vegetables in the direction of the city, one corner 
 of whose mighty embankment and brazen tur- 
 rets could be seen far away, gleaming across the 
 water and overhung, on these summer mornings, 
 by a roseate canopy of sea mist and ascending 
 smoke. 
 
 She was awaiting Kenwyn, due to arrive for 
 the midday meal. 
 
 All around were rocks; a cirque of ancient 
 grey boulders. Some cattle were pasturing over- 
 head on a green sunshiny meadow near the lake. 
 They belonged to that small farm which supplied 
 the inmates of the college with dairy produce, 
 and where they learnt the rudiments of hus- 
 bandry. Ranged in a row beside her seat stood 
 the beehives. She loved to watch the busy com- 
 ing and going of the insects, and many an object 
 lesson in domestic economy had her children 
 gleaned from their habits, particularly in regard 
 to the treatment of the male. 
 
214 THEY WENT 
 
 They tired her, those young ones, more than 
 she cared to confess. Manthis was growing old. 
 She needed rest and solitude at times. Today, 
 as often before, she yearned not for solitude but 
 for companionship, the companionship of some 
 thoughtful woman like herself. 
 
 It was not to be. The friends she knew were 
 her equals in no respect. Manthis was alone in 
 the world; she had ever been alone. There was 
 a gulf between her and the rest of mankind. 
 True, she taught her girls history, mythology, 
 botany, medicine and other subjects; she could 
 influence their development up to a point. Even 
 here, as teacher, she was hampered by inexorable 
 precedent, and that perfect frankness of speech, 
 which she held to be the greatest good, was 
 denied her in regard to them. Tradition, and 
 public opinion, and parents they had all to 
 be taken into account. Not that these latter ven- 
 tured to approach her personally. There was no 
 approaching Manthis. They contrived, none the 
 less, to make their peculiar wishes and whims 
 known through her under-teachers and even 
 through the queen, whom she could not wholly 
 disregard;, the nobles and old believers insist- 
 ing upon a rigid adherence to methods of bygone 
 centuries, while certain pushful merchants sug- 
 gested innovations which she dared not intro- 
 duce, " not yet," she would say to herself. A 
 
THEY WENT 215 
 
 difficult ship to steer! Often she wished her 
 college stood far away from the town, in some 
 spot where she could have a " fair chance/' and 
 mould the children as they deserved to be 
 moulded. Her status of priestess completed the 
 isolation. She was an oracle ; she moved among 
 formulas and rites. "I am an old granite 
 island," she thought, " all alone in the sea. It is 
 not well to be a granite island. It is not well to 
 grope alone. One gropes in a groove. I would 
 purge myself of dross to my dying day. De- 
 prived of the clash, the sword grows rusty. I 
 need a friend, a helper." 
 
 To some such friend she would then have said, 
 speaking of the subject which was nearest her 
 heart : 
 
 " We must strive after betterment and happy 
 social conditions, is it not so? What makes for 
 betterment? Justice, peaceful rule. What is 
 the hinge of peaceful rule? Family life. The 
 hinge of family life? Woman." 
 
 " How true ! " the imaginary friend would 
 reply. 
 
 " The male is not deficient in a kind of animal 
 docility. He only needs proper guidance, for 
 the good of his country and his own. He is the 
 irrigating or fertilizing element ; a torrent which, 
 left to itself, would devastate the land. This 
 necessary but rugged force must be tamed, 
 
216 THEY WENT 
 
 banked up, and diverted from its natural im- 
 pulses to serve the welfare of mankind. It must 
 learn to turn the mill." 
 
 " It must." 
 
 " It must. All that strength and energy 
 wasted, owing to lack of sound direction ! What 
 has our race not achieved by means of the intelli- 
 gence, such as it is, of dogs or horses? And is 
 the intelligence of our own male not immeasura- 
 bly superior to theirs? May I never be thought 
 to dispraise his natural virtues, or to lay undue 
 stress upon those infirmities which clog his foot- 
 steps ! To speak quite frankly, I see no limit to 
 the results which could be obtained from men, 
 if our own sex were properly brought up. The 
 capture and exploitation of the male, my friend, 
 is a grave, urgent, practical matter. It is no 
 dream." 
 
 " Quite the reverse ! It is the most pleasant 
 of all your discoveries. You leave your age be- 
 hind, O Manthis, gasping for breath." 
 
 The exploitation of the male : it was the cream 
 of her doctrine, her enduring legacy to posterity ; 
 and if the women of her country are to this day 
 intent upon the same ideal, and upon nothing else 
 whatever, it is entirely due to the teaching of that 
 delightful old druidess and pioneer, the quite- 
 too-chaste-and-venerable Mother Manthis, whose 
 " chance " came shortly afterwards. 
 
THEY WENT 217 
 
 For the rest, she had not always been quite 
 too chaste. Men thought differently once upon 
 a time, and the great central college at Karnut, 
 in particular, confessed to a rooted prejudice 
 against the virginal state on the part of those 
 who were destined to instruct others in the ways 
 of the world. Wisely, perhaps. For who, igno- 
 rant in knowledge of mankind, shall be able to 
 instil notions of right conduct into the minds of 
 the young? It was thus that Man this, though 
 aloof from passions nowadays, remained tinged 
 with mellow sympathy, as the clouds of evening 
 wear their rosy livery after the sun has set. 
 She had not lacked the necessary experience 
 long ago. Far from it! A certain of her love 
 affairs, with a young nobleman from Tarragona, 
 proved to be as she once told the sentimental 
 old queen " a liberal education." 
 
 "Ah," she had added, in a burst of confi- 
 dence, "if all men were like that! They are 
 not." 
 
 " Or like my wonderful stranger on the em- 
 bankment," thought the other. " I wonder 
 where he now is. He promised to come again. 
 What will happen if he does? And I wonder 
 I wonder whether he ever painted his boat 
 blue?" 
 
 Aithryn's boat, at that moment, was being 
 overhauled with a view to putting to sea; over- 
 
218 THEY WENT 
 
 hauled and repainted bright green, blue being a 
 colour which the sovereign rather disliked. 
 
 The druidess, for all her wisdom and insight, 
 knew nothing of these matters. Yet, as she 
 glanced towards the distant city, she realized 
 that a change was taking place within its walls. 
 The influence of Theophilus over the princess had 
 become a common subject of talk. Little cared 
 Manthis who this Greek might be, provided he 
 left her girls alone ! She regarded him as a man 
 of considerable talent who, like all too many of 
 his kind, misused his natural gifts. Somehow or 
 other, she found herself unable to read his 
 Aivenn. That of the city, however, was plain 
 to her understanding; it was doomed. Partly 
 for this reason she had moved the college hither, 
 out of the way of harm; and partly by reason 
 of the growing viciousness of the place. What- 
 ever happened out yonder, her children, the em- 
 bodiment of her aspirations, should survive to 
 form the nucleus of a better community. 
 
 And her thoughts went back to the pupils. 
 Of those things which lay nearest her heart she 
 often spoke to the more advanced of them with a 
 fair amount of freedom ; it was part of a " pure 
 instruction " ; never had she dared to put her 
 thoughts as clearly as she would have liked, on 
 this wise: 
 
 "Women in recent times have made a mis- 
 
THEY WENT 219 
 
 take. They have tried to be useful. The useful 
 woman is the worst of all. Take your choice, 
 children: be useless or indispensable. Be in- 
 dispensable! Catch your male and put him in 
 harness. Make him forget his dreams, his 
 quarrelling and loafing habits; keep him on 
 earth and tire him out. Then appear as his re- 
 ward, his friend, his saviour. That is the way 
 to make him healthy and grateful. Never forget 
 that he is a mere incident in your lives; a bul- 
 lock to draw your cart docile or obstinate ac- 
 cording as he is treated. Appeal to his feelings, 
 children, and restrain your own. Where woman 
 masters her feelings, there the family prospers. 
 The gods, in their great wisdom, have given to 
 man one sense too many. Touch that sense; 
 touch it with artful moderation, as you are 
 taught to touch a lyre, and you have him! He 
 is the weakest of the weak " 
 
 At this point of her meditations she raised her 
 eyes and saw, as if in answer to her thoughts, the 
 figure of Kenwyn approaching in her direction. 
 He stumbled absent-mindedly up the hill. 
 
 The weakest of the weak! 
 
 Beside him went the babchick, who had been 
 deputed to meet the visitor and was doing her 
 utmost to make herself agreeable. The bab- 
 chick had pleasant memories of their conversa- 
 tion in the garden of the beasts. How charm- 
 
220 THEY WENT 
 
 ingly he then talked of dragons and sea-gulls! 
 She was disappointed to find him so dull. 
 
 Yet at one moment it seemed as if the pent-up 
 soul of Kenwyn was to find relief. His lips had 
 been sealed since his arrival in the town ; he had 
 made no confidences; now something drove him 
 to trust in this child and to utter certain burn- 
 ing words about love and how that a man should 
 follow the bright flame whithersoever it led, see- 
 ing that in sweet union, and nowhere else, could 
 peace be found on earth 
 
 " He is trying to make me blush," thought the 
 babchick. She said: 
 
 " I think we should hasten our steps to join 
 the good Mother Manthis." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because, for one thing, she told me to." 
 
 The druidess was not disappointed. She was 
 prepared for his dejection; she knew the cause. 
 Yet she marvelled at his lack of self-restraint. 
 Irresponsible creatures of sense! What an ob- 
 ject lesson, she suddenly thought, for her girls! 
 She would have liked to call together the wiser 
 of them and set forth the case of Kenwyn, ex- 
 hibiting him dispassionately as though he were 
 a unicorn, or suchlike. 
 
 " This is what I wished you to see, children. 
 Look at him, and tell me your conclusions. 
 This is the male of our species; there are un- 
 
THEY WENT 221 
 
 numbered multitudes of them, and they are all 
 alike, or nearly all (she thought of Tarragona). 
 They want to rule the world these feathers, 
 tossed by the wind! And when you have in- 
 spected him, turn your eyes yonder." 
 
 "Whither, O wise one?" 
 
 " Towards the beehives. All sweetness and 
 order, and all subordinate to the common good. 
 Have you ever seen bees wrangling, or loafing, or 
 absent-minded? " 
 
 " No, never ! " 
 
 There was great friendliness in her words of 
 greeting to Kenwyn, and a smile on her old face. 
 Soon she was telling him of the difficulties she 
 had encountered in settling the school upon this 
 sterile rock ; after dinner, she added, they would 
 inspect the whole establishment within and with- 
 out. Kenwyn uttered a few commonplace re- 
 marks. 
 
 " You have wrought a miracle," he said, " judg- 
 ing by what I have already seen. In those few 
 years! It shows what one can do when one's 
 heart is in the work." 
 
 " I had many willing helpers. But the gar- 
 den has suffered somewhat from drought this 
 year. Those radishes," she went on, with that 
 eye for detail which befits all rulers of men, 
 " they have not thriven as they should." 
 
 " They seem to have too many leaves," 
 
222 THEY WENT 
 
 " And small roots. It is their nature. They 
 are the ancient Armorican kind. I must really 
 ask the princess if she does not know of a worth- 
 ier variety from, some other province. She is 
 wondrously well informed about such things; 
 nobody understands more than she does about 
 fruit and vegetables." 
 
 " I know," said Kenwyn. 
 
 He thought of the calm evening on the em- 
 bankment when she told about her experiments 
 in grafting. It came back to him, how they con- 
 versed during that moment of untroubled sweet- 
 ness while looking into the sunset-glow. The 
 scent of sea-wrack, the oozy shore dappled with 
 stranded fishing-boats, the islets great and small, 
 the beacon-lights that leapt suddenly out of the 
 water to guide home-coming vessels he remem- 
 bered it all, all save her ferocious treatment of 
 that poor pilot. "Pleasant here. . . . Com- 
 merce is safe. . . ." How happy he had been! 
 And now he was full of perplexity and bitter- 
 ness. A wave of poignant grief swept over 
 him. 
 
 There reached his ears, at that moment, an 
 awe-inspiring sound, a strident clangour that 
 rose and sank in a wail of anguish among the 
 cirque of granite rocks and filled his soul with 
 terror. 
 
 "It is nothing," said Manthis, observing his 
 
THEY WENT 223 
 
 perturbation. " Nothing ! The call to the mid- 
 day meal; an Oriental thing; it shouts when 
 smitten. My little ones amuse themselves with 
 beating it wildly at this hour, and I have not 
 the heart to forbid them." 
 
 Then, as they descended, she went fully into 
 the history of that disc of bronze. Many years 
 ago, she said, some man of the East, some grave 
 gaff ron-hued merchant clad in shining silks, had 
 laid the huge contrivance, together with other 
 more intelligible gifts, at the king's feet. After 
 the departure of the slit-eyed stranger the mon- 
 arch puzzled and puzzled as to its purport, fail- 
 ing at last to turn it to any use whatever. " I 
 give it up ! " he said. 
 
 He therefore presented the concern to Manthis, 
 as a plaything for her girls. " They can roll it 
 up and down; it will strengthen their muscle," 
 he suggested, knowing that she attached impor- 
 tance to such exercises. 
 
 " As for myself," she continued, " I realized 
 that such instruments are not made for nothing, 
 and determined to unravel its meaning. We 
 have only to want, Kenwyn, and sooner or later 
 we achieve. It was thus that, pondering, I ob- 
 served it to be pierced at the rim. A pleasant 
 discovery! For it gave me the idea that the 
 disc was to be hung up by a leathern thong and 
 employed, I conjecture, as an agricultural ad- 
 
224 THEY WENT 
 
 junct, to frighten away birds from the crops with 
 its awful voice. Well, we have changed its ob- 
 ject! Little dreamt the men who fashioned it 
 that, instead of scaring their own little birds 
 from dinner, it now summons other little birds, 
 in a distant country, to theirs. . . ." 
 
 Altogether an unsatisfactory visit, although 
 the druidess talked herself weary while trying 
 to interest her guest. As Kenwyn, late in the 
 afternoon, rose to leave, he said something polite 
 about the modest manners of her pupils and 
 their pretty faces, adding : 
 
 "Your little babchick, I fear, has found me 
 rather dull today." 
 
 " Children are not always easy to please," she 
 replied. 
 
 It was true. That young person took occa- 
 sion, after his departure, to tell the others her 
 opinion of the Christian. 
 
 "He is stupider than I thought," she de- 
 clared. 
 
 " They often are," said Manthis, who had over- 
 heard the remark. " It rests with you, children, 
 to improve their minds." 
 
 Whereupon the babchick, presuming on her ex- 
 ceptional status, drew nigh to the druidess and, 
 whispering in her ear, posed a direct question. 
 She asked: 
 
 " When will he be sacrificed? " 
 
THEY WENT 225 
 
 " Tonight," said Manthis, who never told a 
 lie. 
 
 "Oh,Belen!" 
 
 " Now run away, child." 
 
 Left to herself, the druidess reflected awhile 
 upon the situation. She thought of Kenwyn 
 with neither pity nor contempt, but a kind of 
 deep despair. He might have been a friend, a 
 helper ; they might have worked together for the 
 common cause of mankind, had he not been one 
 of those impulsive ones. Feathers! Creatures 
 of violence, or wrapped in fond illusions! She 
 remembered Kenwyn's predecessor, that grey- 
 haired horror; she thought of certain prominent 
 males of the doting king, of Ando the men- 
 dacious parasite, and Lelian hide-bound in prej- 
 udice and many other of the highest nobles in 
 the land drunkards, boasters, wife-beaters: 
 what an assemblage ! And these things want to 
 rule the world! Grimly she set her teeth, more 
 determined than ever to do her duty by the chil- 
 dren. . . . 
 
 Day, meanwhile, was declining. The boat ap- 
 proached the shore. Would he see her? 
 
 She stood on the embankment, with Harre" at 
 her side. One would almost have said she was 
 awaiting his arrival, had she not been a princess. 
 She laid her hand on his arm, and smiled. Never 
 had she spoken so endearingly. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 NIGHT descended hot, moonless night. 
 The princess was reclining on a couch 
 at the summit of her tower and watch- 
 ing a star, one single star, which had begun to 
 shine overhead with steady flame. On earth, 
 meanwhile, arose a merry twinkling of lights; 
 they radiated from the harbour region, gleaming 
 brightest at street corners where those turrets 
 of brass threw their fiery reflection into the sky. 
 The familiar sounds of nightfall climbed up to 
 her ears in confused laughter and song loudest 
 of all, a chorus of drunken sailors hard by, on the 
 embankment. Beyond the town walls every- 
 thing lay shrouded. Grey mists were crawling 
 about the plain. 
 
 She glanced down upon the water that 
 breathed softly against the sea-wall. Far away, 
 ever so far, were discernible a pair of dusky red 
 spots on two sister islets, light-houses whose bea- 
 cons, fed through the hours of darkness, guided 
 home-coming vessels towards the entrance of the 
 channel. She was pleased at the sight. 
 
 "Commerce is safe," she thought. "All is 
 well." 
 
 226 
 
THEY WENT 227 
 
 She listened awhile to the waves; that old, 
 old music which had often lulled her to sleep. 
 Would there be much sleep tonight? 
 
 Impossible that this tranquil ocean should ever 
 grow into a monster threatening the security of 
 the land. How calm it lay there! Yet The- 
 ophilus had of late dwelt upon the hazards of 
 the embankment, and implored her to obtain pos- 
 session of that key at the king's girdle. She 
 invariably put him off; "tomorrow," she would 
 say. Her friend appeared to have grown more 
 timorous than formerly. He talked in dark 
 words about Aithryn and the All-Highest, as 
 though they were in league together for the de- 
 struction of all that lay at her feet of those 
 buildings in which she took such pride. Let 
 them come ! she thought. Theophilus would deal 
 with them. She had blind confidence in her mas- 
 ter. All was well. 
 
 Then, only a few days ago, he had once more 
 spoken earnestly of founding another city else- 
 where. 
 
 " Sometimes I think we are wasting our time 
 here," he had said. " What can one do with a 
 site like this? All flat! We need hills and 
 woodlands and rivulets and waterfalls to play 
 with. Only under such conditions can we hope 
 to rear a town that shall be worthy of our efforts. 
 Nothing will ever avail to diversify this scene. 
 
228 THEY WENT 
 
 We need winding ways, and unexpected vistas 
 and a luminous river and sunshine, more sun- 
 shine, glinting sunshine, to light up the bravery 
 of our ideas. This place is past redemption. 
 Fogs and mists ! It is beginning to sicken me." 
 
 There were moments when the prospect of 
 leaving her creation tormented the princess 
 acutely. At other times she was in calmer mood. 
 She felt the weight of his argument; she beheld 
 visions of that more splendid abode which he con- 
 jured up before her eyes; she called to mind his 
 words about building anew " with ever fresh en- 
 thusiasm and ever deeper insight." Here or else- 
 where what mattered it, so long as he re- 
 mained at her side? 
 
 " I am ready to go when you are," she had 
 replied, wondering none the less why Theophilus, 
 who took such manifest pleasure in his work here, 
 should be ready to relinquish it at a moment's 
 notice. The man was full of contradictions! 
 " He seems to be so attached to this town. . . . 
 It sounds as if he were trying to convince not me, 
 but himself," she decided. 
 
 " I know a most favourable spot," he had said, 
 as though speaking to himself. 
 
 "Is it far off?" 
 
 " My boat could take us there." 
 
 Perhaps on yonder star, she now thought. 
 Why not? Everything seemed to be possible in 
 
THEY WENT 229 
 
 her present state of exaltation. She was losing 
 touch with reality. She lived in a dream, learn- 
 ing and creating. 
 
 Then he had spoken again : 
 
 "The All-Highest I distrust him. He 
 thinks of usefulness. He moves in a mysterious 
 way and chooses disreputable implements to do 
 his bidding. I could tell you queer tales about 
 him. Queer tales." 
 
 " My dear friend, I know them all." 
 
 So she did. Kenwyn had told her as much 
 about the All-Highest as he knew himself, which 
 was more than enough for most people. 
 
 " Yet sometimes," said Theophilus, " I feel 
 almost sorry for him. He is so old ! It must be 
 disheartening to have done good work once upon 
 a time, and now to be laughed at. I only wish 
 he were not so fond of goodness, like that red- 
 haired papa of yours, who has gone over to the 
 Christians. They are very intimate just now, 
 in consequence. What says Ando? Make no 
 friend of a red-haired man. He has been a men- 
 ace ever since that accident to his skull. I wish 
 it had been cloven outright ! " 
 
 She was astonished at this savage remark. 
 It was the first bitter word she had heard from 
 his lips. She said : 
 
 " That funny little man? Really, Theophilus, 
 I do not know which of the two is the more 
 
230 THEY WENT 
 
 ridiculous. Neither is worth talking about." 
 
 " Pardon me. Everything is worth talking 
 about." 
 
 " Then tell me a little more concerning those 
 pillars of Carystian marble " 
 
 He interrupted grumpily : 
 
 " I am not in the mood for discussing mar- 
 bles." 
 
 Decidedly, her friend was growing somewhat 
 nervous. . . . 
 
 Midnight came and went. Not a breath of 
 wind. The air became sultrier than ever, and 
 still she waited. Sounds from below were fewer, 
 fainter; that band of tipsy sailors had not yet 
 made an end of their revel. She leaned over, try- 
 ing to catch the sense of their words. 
 
 " Something about love about women," she 
 concluded, with disgust. Drunkards and singers 
 of low songs beasts of the earth ! What forms 
 of happiness men sought! She thought of a 
 newly-planned suburb beyond the northern gate, 
 and found pleasure in contrasting her own re- 
 fined strivings with those of the vile brutes down 
 below. What did they know of such things? 
 Bawling their coarse natures into the night! 
 The ideas men have of love and life! She was 
 shocked at their c rudeness. 
 
 Beside her, on the parapet, lay the bronze 
 thing which Lelian had wrought. 
 
THEY WENT 231 
 
 A pretty toy ; it worked well. " I must say," 
 she mused, " that old fellow with his long hair 
 and laughable breeches he is not such a sim- 
 pleton as he looks." 
 
 Some lights went out ; soon a few more. Those 
 two ruddy flames were still ablaze, far at sea. 
 They appeared to have grown in size; they glared 
 angrily out of the gloom, like the red eyes of a 
 wolf. Suddenly she remembered eyes of another 
 kind, eyes tender and pleading; would she see 
 them before the murky dawn, when sea-swallows 
 begin to twitter and skim over the waves? Then 
 indeed then all would be well. 
 
 He was passable. Whether that grain of per- 
 sonal attraction, thrown into the balance, might 
 have helped, as Theophilus fancied, to guide her 
 conduct? No. Her friend was mistaken. The 
 deed must be done in every case; nevermore 
 could she lose her master, her inspirer. If he 
 were to depart it was unthinkable ! None the 
 less 
 
 " I am purging myself and changing," she de- 
 cided. " I am changed. He is the last." 
 
 The reign of Heussa, Queen of Terrors, was 
 drawing to its close. 
 
 And now a breeze sprang up, fraught with 
 chilly moisture from the low-lying plain. She 
 shivered, thinking, perhaps, of all the comforts 
 in that chamber down below. And still she 
 
232 THEY WENT 
 
 waited, with eyes fixed upon that door which led, 
 by a stairway of cedar-wood, into the lower 
 regions of her tower. Dawn was at hand. . . . 
 
 " The Christian preacher, I think." 
 
 "Indeed? Go to bed, Harr6." The devoted 
 blue innocent, as usual, tripped off. 
 
 Filled with a wave of deep content, she picked 
 up the bronze thing which Lelian had made, and 
 descended the steps, as usual. 
 
 As usual ah, well ! 
 
 He went. 
 
 A portico was worth a preacher. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 NOW the town took wings, and soared 
 aloft. It happened none knew how. 
 Yet all proceeded naturally, despite the 
 feverish bustle and movement in the streets and, 
 above all, down by the harbour. There, on those 
 congested quays, was a ceaseless unloading of 
 foreign merchandise ebony and other rare 
 woods for veneering, ivory and tortoiseshell, 
 metals of many kinds, dyes, ornamental stones 
 such as had never been seen in the land before. 
 Foreign craftsmen, too, began to appear on the 
 scene ; they worked in mosaics and statuary, they 
 laid down complicated pavements and encrusted 
 the buildings with alabaster traceries or fairy- 
 like devices in gypsum. 
 
 Whence had all these things come? They ar- 
 rived on one knew how. They seemed to 
 arrive quite naturally. It was inferred that The- 
 ophilus had ties of friendship and business con- 
 nections in many countries, his messengers going 
 to and fro, while he himself remained on the spot, 
 superintending matters of detail, of interior dec- 
 oration, as well as far-reaching changes that were 
 already giving the place a new aspect. Those 
 
 233 
 
234 THEY WENT 
 
 clumsy colonnades and savage wall-paintings 
 they went. A suburb was laid out beyond the 
 northern gate, shady promenades grew up on the 
 outer side of the ramparts, musty old courtyards 
 were replaced by gardens and trim fountains; 
 there was a watch-tower now, half completed, at 
 the harbour entrance and a new aqueduct, a 
 stilted monster more wondrous than the first, 
 began to stride like a giant across the plain. 
 Ah, Theophilus! He was different he was 
 altogether different from those earlier helpers. 
 So thought the princess. He was ever-present 
 and had lost all his sulkiness and nervousness. 
 He had the gift of inspiring others with his own 
 zeal ; he kept pace with her ideas, and his army 
 of workmen kept pace with him. There was no 
 doubt about it: Theophilus knew his business. 
 He rose to the occasion. He performed wonders. 
 He surpassed himself. 
 
 The citizens, all save that cantankerous con- 
 servative section to which Lelian belonged, were 
 delighted with this blossoming. They looked 
 with joy at those temporary sawmills and marble 
 mills, the factories of cement, the smoking kilns 
 where they wrought tiles of many glazes blue 
 or green or fire-tinted like brass, the smithies 
 sputtering flame ; they gladly endured the streets 
 obstructed, for the while, with mortar-troughs 
 and mountains of building blocks and masons' 
 
THEY WENT 235 
 
 gear and scaffoldings and ladders. It was all for 
 the adornment of their city ; that city whose like 
 was not to be found in the West. The princess 
 watched this transformation in ecstasy, wonder- 
 ing whether it could be real. " I shall wake up 
 presently from my dream," she would say 
 " with what sadness ! " For everything went as 
 she desired it; nearly everything; not quite 
 everything. 
 
 She would have wished, for example, to im- 
 prove the fagade of that massive old structure, 
 the former college of Manthis, lumber-room of 
 rusty armour, in order to make it harmonize with 
 the rest of them, beautified, as they now were, 
 with snowy fronts and a line of graceful balus- 
 trades. It stood there all forlorn and out of 
 place in its new surroundings, as though it had 
 been unaccountably overlooked in the general re- 
 juvenation of the street. Theophilus, to her sur- 
 prise, refused to have it altered and, on her in- 
 sisting, became so rude as to call her a " tasteless 
 young woman," a speech which nearly made her 
 cry, so obsequious had she grown to his praise 
 or blame. Then she began to wonder at this 
 singular whim on his part. "He is trying to 
 please the druidess," she concluded. 
 
 Now it was true that Manthis never took 
 kindly to Theophilus, although he left her girls 
 severely alone. Maybe she was secretly vexed at 
 
236 THEY WENT 
 
 herself for not being able to read his Awenn a 
 thing which had never happened to her before. 
 Whatever may have been the reason for her an- 
 tipathy to him, the princess, in this case, was mis- 
 taken. Manthis was not easily pleased or dis- 
 pleased about matters of architecture ; she strove 
 to mould the heart of man, not stones. The- 
 ophilus and his notions were no concern of hers. 
 She told the young lady that she cared nothing 
 what happened to that building; the place had 
 served its end ; she had no further use for it, see- 
 ing that her children, thank Belen, were safe on 
 their island. Then she took occasion to drop 
 some guarded but weighty words . . . ivhither 
 trending? 
 
 Whither trending? 
 
 Manthis being the only person on earth, save 
 Theophilus, for whom the princess felt a certain 
 awe, those words caused her so much anxiety 
 that she finally repeated them to her friend. 
 
 Whereupon the Greek, for the first time since 
 she had known him, burst into a fit of genuine 
 laughter. He cried : 
 
 " Fancy listening to that unmentionable old 
 she-fool ! " 
 
 " You said, Theophilus? " 
 
 " Manthis would clip your wings. She would 
 make you bear children." 
 
 The princess shuddered. 
 
THEY WENT 237 
 
 " I believe you are right," she replied, after a 
 pause. " Children. . . . The things she teaches 
 those girls! That poem, of which nobody has 
 ever understood a single word, and which takes 
 twenty years to learn " 
 
 " While we rear a city in twenty days." 
 
 " I have heard them chanting parts of it, 
 Only think ! My parents were once on the point 
 of sending me to her college. What a prospect ! 
 Manthis wants us to be like ants, who spend their 
 lives in collecting food for their offspring, and 
 then make more offspring in order to be able 
 to collect more food. Toiling for eternity to 
 nourish creatures yet unborn, and all exactly 
 alike. What a prospect. She says women need 
 only want " 
 
 " Women want all the time." 
 
 " She knows nothing of women," replied the 
 princess. " She thinks they should be like her- 
 self." 
 
 " She thinks of usefulness. What have we to 
 do with usefulness? She ends, where we begin. 
 Manthis is the herd that procreates. We are 
 the lonely ones, who create." 
 
 " You are right, Theophilus." 
 
 She had accustomed herself of late to say 
 " you are right " even on those occasions when 
 her friend was manifestly in the wrong. 
 
 If the external character of that building re-" 
 
238 THEY WENT 
 
 mained as it was, its interior underwent a 
 change. A handful of those once-despised 
 dwarfs were ordered to cleanse the place, to 
 furbish up the mildewy weapons and range them 
 in good order. They finished the work in a sin- 
 gle night ; it was little short of a miracle. Those 
 bucklers and war-chariots and other forgotten 
 military implements they gleamed as in the 
 fighting days of yore. Then Theophilus bought 
 many more things from the citizens, ancient 
 tapestries and enamels and jewellery and gar- 
 ments, and stored them within. 
 
 " On sunny days," he told the princess, " our 
 visitors may inspect your garden of beasts. 
 When it rains, they shall come hither to read 
 within these walls the history of the town and 
 extract therefrom a noble pleasure." 
 
 " A happy idea," she replied musingly. " I be- 
 gin to understand." 
 
 " Lelian the armourer shall live here. He can 
 explain the meaning of these objects better than 
 any one." 
 
 She hazarded : 
 
 " Are you trying to please the old man? " 
 
 " There is no pleasing Lelian. He thinks the 
 end of the world is at hand." 
 
 Theophilus happened to be right. There was 
 no pleasing Lelian. He agreed to the proposal 
 who could refuse the princess anything? Had 
 
THEY WENT 239 
 
 lie not watched her growth with a kind of sacred 
 joy, and fashioned brooches and bracelets for 
 her, in sport, when she was still a little child? 
 He therefore accepted the position, but fulfilled 
 his duties in a half-hearted, gloomy, and indeed 
 unsatisfactory manner, moping and mumbling 
 about the place, or fondling the old arrows and 
 then shaking his head dolefully. He spoke lit- 
 tle; his hand shook; a palsied lethargy sat in 
 his bones. It was as if the associations of that 
 spot filled him with unutterable grief. He grew 
 ever more silent, more dejected, sitting there for 
 long hours, with bowed head and one finger laid 
 along his nose. " Let me think," he would say. 
 
 They were on the point of sending him home 
 to his workshop when one day, on entering, they 
 beheld a sorrowful sight. Lelian stood in the 
 centre of what had once been the girls' Hall of 
 Assembly, upright as though rooted to earth, 
 with eyes fiercely staring. An apparition of the 
 past ! He was crowned with a garland of flowers 
 and decked in armour from top to toe; a sword 
 hung at his side, a shield on his arm, and in 
 either hand he grasped a mighty lance, firm- 
 planted on the ground. There he stood plumb, 
 with legs apart like a warrior of bygone ages - 
 stark mad. 
 
 Theophilus turned aside. The spectacle 
 seemed to cause him pain. 
 
240 THEY WENT 
 
 " Old times," said the princess, while a shad- 
 owy recollection of Kenwyn's visit to the ar- 
 moury flitted through her mind. Then as her 
 eye, more trained to beauty than in the days of 
 that Christian, lingered admiringly on Lelian's 
 mail-clad form, she added : 
 
 " I must say, he looks well. He is the fairest 
 object in this building. If all men lost their 
 wits so prettily, the world would be a brighter 
 place." 
 
 Her companion observed : 
 
 " He has a reputation to keep up." 
 
 " He had, my good friend." 
 
 It was the same with the king's palace. The- 
 ophilus refused to touch a stone of that struc- 
 ture, which therefore remained (so the princess 
 vowed) hopelessly barbaric and out of keeping 
 with the rest of the city. Many a time had she 
 tried to impress her own notions upon the build- 
 ing; her father insisted upon leaving it un- 
 touched. Now she counted on the Greek, and he 
 also failed her. Again she marvelled at his de- 
 cision. " He is trying to please the old man," 
 she concluded, remembering how sternly her par- 
 ent had forbidden any alterations in the simple 
 military character of his dwelling, ^gain she 
 was mistaken. The monarch appeared to be in- 
 different to what happened to his own or any 
 other house; almost dazed, in fact, with the re- 
 

 THEY WENT 241 
 
 cent turn of events, though he still took delight 
 in " directing the operations " as he called it, 
 and splashing himself with mortar and ordering 
 the masons about. Maybe he fancied he was 
 building the town as in the days of that Koman 
 engineer who, forty years earlier, in fear and 
 trembling, had laid out those quays and road- 
 ways under his superintendence. 
 
 The princess implored Theophilus to let her 
 have her way. 
 
 " So dingy and full of draughts ! And only 
 one storey ! Do let us make it habitable ! That 
 banqueting hall, with its uncomfortable benches ! 
 I beseech you, Theophilus, in the name of 
 beauty " 
 
 " Is there no beauty in its grim outlines? 
 Must everything be new and glittering? Must 
 I violate my feelings in order to humour your 
 mischievous caprices? Come now! Have you 
 no respect for such memorials, for those wonder- 
 ful grey blocks with their tawny lichen, and the 
 story they tell? Are you never going to grow 
 up? I am shocked at your lack of reverence." 
 
 " Forgive me ! Help me to understand. I 
 think I see your point of view." 
 
 " I fear not." 
 
 " Now I have grieved you. Oh, Theophilus 
 why are you so sensitive? " 
 
 The monarch remained indifferent. That ven- 
 
242 THEY WENT 
 
 erable personage had changed considerably. His 
 face was now fat and rosy and smiling ; men said 
 he had grown younger younger and fonder. 
 He still rode along the sea-wall; he still befud- 
 dled himself and played chess; he still talked 
 abundantly more abundantly than ever, they 
 declared, and to less purpose. Sometimes he 
 said bitter and dark words. As to altering his 
 palace 
 
 " It's all one to the king," he remarked cheer- 
 ily. "All one! I made a couple of wars and 
 founded a city, and now they may do what they 
 please. The stupid old house, always standing 
 there! Let them pull it over my head. Let 
 them paint it green, inside and out, and them- 
 selves too. I will direct the operations as usual, 
 though these workmen, I must say, are apt to set 
 my nerves on edge. There is only one thing I 
 still desire, and it never comes. . . . Old men are 
 sometimes unhappy. . . . She could have it this 
 very moment, if she cared to ask for it. What 
 says Ando? " 
 
 Ando wagged his head and said a good deal; 
 nothing to the point. 
 
 " You are a dull dog, Ando ; a moulting peli- 
 can. Bad company for a king." 
 
 In this respect the court prophet was neither 
 better nor worse than the rest of them. They 
 
THEY WENT 243 
 
 were all dull dogs ; no one understood what was 
 weighing on his mind save possibly the queen, 
 who kept her own counsel. She, poor lady, had 
 not grown younger; she was sadly aged. She 
 wandered about the house in tremulous and be- 
 wildered fashion, and spent long hours counting 
 the spoons, even those of wood and horn, " for 
 who knows what will happen next? " she said. 
 There was often a tear in the corner of her eye, 
 while she begged her daughter to visit the palace 
 "not for myself, dear child, oh, not for my- 
 self! Only to give pleasure to your poor old 
 father." In vain. The princess always had 
 something else to do. She kept out of the way 
 of her parents, and seemed to have forgotten 
 their very existence. She never gratified them, 
 nowadays. 
 
 How hard she had grown so far, at least, as 
 these old folks and their wishes were concerned ! 
 
 The only thing she cared for was the good 
 opinion of Theophilus, whose slightest word 
 of reproach would make her wince and feel 
 ashamed. Yet there was no cause for shame. 
 Everything proceeded as by a miracle. The town 
 was putting on a fresh and definite face ; doubts 
 and hesitations and experiments were at an end. 
 Would it ever be completed? Sometimes, in- 
 flamed with a fateful sense of hurry, she de- 
 
244 THEY WENT 
 
 spaired of that result. Still so much to do! 
 She had found it granite ; she would leave it gold. 
 
 Gold. . . . 
 
 Those dwarfs it was almost past belief. 
 She smiled at her folly remembering how, not 
 long ago, she thought to have exhausted their 
 capacities and had actually been on the verge of 
 dismissing them. What would she now do with- 
 out their aid? For Theophilus woke them up; 
 stirred their ambitions and wheedled new tricks 
 and secrets out of them, among other things, the 
 art of crushing gold into powder and therewith 
 overlaying rock or marble, or even glass and 
 woodwork, with a coat of shining metal. The 
 town, in consequence of this discovery, glowed 
 more beauteously than ever. Yes; she would 
 leave it gold. The dwarfs' work! And their 
 health and spirits were altogether restored. 
 How joyously they danced now, and how their 
 songs resounded, in that queer village beyond the 
 eastern gate where, under a grove of moist apple 
 trees, the princess had set apart a piece of ground 
 for their habitation! With what strange obei- 
 sances, bending low to earth, they used to wel- 
 come Theophilus whenever he deigned to accept 
 their hospitality at one of those little moonlight 
 feasts! The young lady indeed never quite un- 
 derstood the reason for these signs of profound 
 adoration; often, on witnessing them, a certain 
 
THEY WENT 245 
 
 thought would obtrude itself, a thought she 
 dared not formulate and which Kenwyn, with his 
 dying breath, had contrived to instil into her 
 mind " tomorrow, tomorrow/' she would then 
 say, adding to calm hesrelf : " No wonder they 
 venerate him, with talents like his." It had be- 
 come her habit of late to put off all troublesome 
 reflections. 
 
 What happened to Yuxo was amazing. He 
 was a bright little fellow once more, young and 
 lively as in the days when he volunteered to 
 tramp over the hills and fetch Harr away from 
 his blue parents, bearing, in exchange for him, 
 a couple of rosy sea-shells (the Alloquisti were 
 inland folk) . It was the greatest miracle of all. 
 
 " You are a wizard, Theophilus," she cried. 
 How did you do it ?" 
 
 " By kindness." 
 
 " Kindness ... I remember now ! You once 
 said we must be kind to workers in metal." 
 
 She surveyed the head-man and pondered upon 
 his case. She called to mind that harassed, 
 demon-haunted imp, that caricature of a dwarf, 
 chattering nonsense and convulsed with nervous 
 twitchings and quakings. The same Yuxo. . . . 
 Blithely he sang now, and frolicked, and ham- 
 mered first at the revel, first at the forge! 
 His hair had grown brown and glossy; that im- 
 pediment of speech was healed. There was an 
 
246 THEY WENT 
 
 end to babble about screws, and the cool rhu- 
 barb leaf was seen no more. 
 
 Kindness 
 
 It was then that the princess realized, for the 
 first time in her life, what kindness could do. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE sun had gone to rest. Workmen 
 trooped in boisterous crowds to their 
 homes; a calm fell upon the city. The 
 princess and her friend were in the newly 
 finished portico, discussing multitudinous proj- 
 ects. They sat overlooking the sea, whose waves 
 broke with unwonted violence against the founda- 
 tions of that wonderful structure. A veil of twi- 
 light was falling; the full moon rose up grandly 
 over mountain tops in the East. 
 
 The young lady found herself in excellent 
 humour. Her companion, on the other hand, 
 seemed to be more preoccupied than usual. 
 
 Suddenly he said : 
 
 " The key, princess." 
 
 " I know. You have often asked me to take 
 it from him. So I will." 
 
 " You could have it this very moment, if you 
 cared to ask for it." He added, tentatively : " No 
 harm, by the way, in giving pleasure to that old 
 man. It is ever so long since you have seen him. 
 And you are the only person to whom he would 
 give it." 
 
 Bother the old man, thought the princess. 
 
 247 
 
248 THEY WENT 
 
 " Therefore ask, and it is yours." 
 
 Tomorrow, tomorrow, she thought. 
 
 " Tomorrow may never come," observed the 
 Greek, as though in answer to her unspoken 
 words. 
 
 " Tonight, then. I promise." 
 
 Even while uttering those words, she meant 
 to break her promise. Much as she liked to 
 oblige her friend, she had already made up her 
 mind not to visit the palace, and this, in spite of 
 another undertaking she had given her mother 
 to appear in the course of that very evening. 
 Why? She knew not why. Sheer wrongness: 
 wrongness and pride ! It was not those dancers 
 from the far East who had just arrived and were 
 to present an exhibition of their skill at her tower 
 tonight ; such folks often came nowadays, and she 
 could have made arrangements for their per- 
 formance to take place at any hour she pleased. 
 No. Something else had entered her being and 
 impelled or inspired her not to ask for that key. 
 She wondered herself what it was, this spirit of 
 perversity, this force which drove her to act as 
 she did. 
 
 " The All-Highest " Theophilus began. 
 
 " Still thinking about the All-Highest? " 
 
 " He cares little what means he employs, so 
 long as he attains his end. The key ! " 
 
 " Tonight. I promise." 
 
THEY WENT 249 
 
 The subject was beginning to weary her; it 
 was setting her nerves on edge. To change the 
 theme of conversation, she remarked : 
 
 " How high the tide is ! And vapours are 
 rising up. We shall have a downpour shortly. 
 Did you ever notice that the weather is apt to 
 turn at full moon? " 
 
 " I did. I have also made a little calculation, 
 princess. The tide will not be full for a good 
 while ; it will then be higher than it has been for 
 many long years. If the sluice-gate should be 
 opened ! The key " 
 
 " Look ! I perceive a small boat, ever so far 
 away. It is making for the harbour. Do you see 
 it, out yonder? A singular build, and painted 
 green, like a little pea. More like an apple," she 
 said, after a pause. " Bringing wine from the 
 Narbonnensian province, if I am not mistaken." 
 
 The princess was mistaken. 
 
 Theophilus knew the vessel. He merely ob- 
 served, as though speaking to himself: 
 
 " They are great friends just now Aithryn 
 and the All-Highest. When two good folks put 
 their heads together, you may be prepared for 
 the worst." 
 
 " Still thinking about that funny little man? 
 How distrustful you are! We have got rid of 
 the Christian, anyhow. He would have been a 
 third/' 
 
250 THEY WENT 
 
 Her friend said nothing, while the young 
 lady's musings wandered backwards awhile to 
 that evening, that sultry evening in her tower, 
 and to what followed. She shuddered as a cer- 
 tain thought, which she dared not formulate, 
 passed through her mind. 
 
 " It was rather unpleasant," she said. " He 
 cursed you ere he died, and called you " 
 
 " Pray don't distress me by going into details," 
 .Tie interrupted hastily. " I am sufficiently trou- 
 bled. It is a most annoying state of affairs, and 
 enough to make any one low spirited, I assure 
 you." 
 
 He buried his face in his hands. 
 
 " Why be sad? Follow my example. I don't 
 care a pin about him; not a pin. What do we 
 want with monks here? Good riddance! " 
 
 " You are rather a callous girl." 
 
 " Now I have grieved you again. Oh, 
 Theophilus will you never grow less sen- 
 sitive? " 
 
 He shook his head despondingly, and said : 
 
 " The key." 
 
 That settles it, she thought. Nevermore will 
 I ask for that key. . . . 
 
 She never asked for it. She never approached 
 the palace at all, despite her promise. Had she 
 done so, her nerves would certainly have been set 
 on edge. For a sense of unusual gloom and un- j 
 
THEY WENT 251 
 
 easiness reigned in those halls; the queen could 
 do little to enliven the company, and nothing 
 whatever to make them feel really at home. 
 There was a scared look in her eye ; she wandered 
 about like a ghost. 
 
 The king kept his dazed disappointment to 
 himself. He drank deep. It was his approved 
 method of combating perturbation of mind and 
 unpleasant thoughts. All agreed that he had 
 seldom been quite so fuddled, quite so military; 
 that he was well-nigh drunk. It was almost im- 
 possible to avoid beating him at chess Ando 
 beat him twice, which made him moodier than 
 ever. So the evening wore on. And still he 
 dipped his nose in the tankard, chattering mirth- 
 lessly, meanwhile, of porpoises ; of porpoises and 
 daughters. It was soon observed that he could 
 no longer pronounce his words correctly. He 
 had reached high-water mark, and ought to have 
 been put to bed. The queen, for some unex- 
 plained reason, contrary to all precedent, and 
 as though some demon inspired her, refused to 
 interpose her authority to that end. Suddenly 
 a familiar idea seized the old man. He cried, in 
 tones of command : 
 
 " Bring hither a strumpet a trumpet, 
 straight or curved." 
 
 They went down, as often before, into the 
 trumpetry, and fetched up an old instrument of 
 
252 THEY WENT 
 
 Tyrrhenian make, bent in the shape of a swan's 
 neck its mouth opening savagely like the gul- 
 let of some wild beast. 
 
 " This is music to make the world tremble. 
 Let us blast a blow and see whether it sounds the 
 same as of yore, when I used to summon my 
 enemies " 
 
 He puffed out those old cheeks and blew his 
 hardest. Nothing came out of the relic save an 
 inauspicious, melancholy, wheezing note. None 
 the less he repeated, word for word the tradi- 
 tional formula: 
 
 " Now, where is the enemy? Skulking, as 
 usual?" 
 
 It was at this moment that a stranger entered 
 as if in answer to the challenge. 
 
 Nobody took notice of him at first ; men came 
 and went; it was an easy-going, cosmopolitan 
 place. None the less, it became plain from his 
 manner and appearance that he was of a rank 
 high enough to be introduced to the sovereign, 
 to whom he was soon telling some untruthful 
 tale about himself. The newcomer evidently un- 
 derstood how to make himself agreeable, for a 
 smile came into the old man's face. " Where," 
 he wondered hazily, "where have I seen those 
 eyes before? Belen alone can tell! Strangely 
 familiar. . . ." 
 
 He was more fuddled than he had yet been. 
 
THEY WENT 253 
 
 Not too fuddled, however, to do his duty. Eight 
 royally he pulled himself together. 
 
 " You play chess? " 
 
 " Not very well, I fear." 
 
 " Then I will teach you. This one, for exam- 
 ple, is the Fool " 
 
 " But I can drink/' said the other, modestly. 
 
 What drove him, that abstemious man, to utter 
 those words? 
 
 He drank, and seemed to grow younger and 
 ever more witty; he sported and told tales, his 
 eyes flashing with merriment ; he was like a man 
 possessed. They formed a circle round him; 
 everybody listened. And still he drank and 
 jested, while the hours passed. An infection 
 caught them all; they did as he did, laughing 
 and drinking uproariously. The stranger alone 
 seemed to have his wits still about him the 
 rest of them were soon sprawling about. It was 
 the first time in the history of the court that such 
 a thing had happened. As for the king, a wave 
 of rollicking mirth swept over him, and drowned 
 him. The last they understood of his talk was 
 when he likened his handsome and amusing guest 
 to a " shipload of young sailor boys " one of 
 those many dark utterances in which he had in- 
 dulged of late and which nobody, not even Ando, 
 could interpret. After that, he grew speechless. 
 
 Where was the queen? 
 
254 THEY WENT 
 
 She had disappeared. Somebody noticed her, 
 tottering out of the room as in a dream, on the 
 appearance of the stranger. 
 
 Only one person saw what then took place. 
 It was the blue pest who, after spending the 
 greater part of the evening in the kitchens, pok- 
 ing his nose into everything and teasing the 
 maids and scullions, had strolled in among the 
 assembly, as usual, to see what was going on. 
 And when the stranger left the building he fol- 
 lowed into the night, unseen and unheard, as he 
 thought. For waves were clashing never had 
 they clashed so loudly, and the moon strove 
 vainly to pierce those vapour-laden clouds. . . . 
 
 At the tower of the princess, meanwhile, a 
 slightly different kind of society had gathered 
 together, and a different atmosphere prevailed. 
 The air was heavy with the cloying scent of 
 malobathrum ; lamps of glass, dangling from the 
 ceiling in ruby-tinted globes, threw a soft light 
 upon carpets and tapestries, and coaxed mellow 
 gleams out of the silvery panels that lined the 
 doorways. A water-organ was droning drowsily, 
 all to itself, in some inner chamber. 
 
 They were watching certain dancers from the 
 East who had grouped themselves on a raised 
 platform; slender figures with towering head- 
 dress, swathed in citron-hued robes and a cascade 
 
THEY WENT 255 
 
 of jewels. Their naked arms and feet were the 
 colour of gold gold that has lain untouched 
 for ages. They swayed to and fro, while the 
 faces, bedaubed with thick layers of paint, re- 
 mained impassive as waxen masks. So they 
 swayed lithely, gravely, ceremoniously, like 
 windflowers touched by the breeze, or like the 
 stems of water-lilies when the startled pike 
 shoots by, troubling the green slumber of the 
 mere. The princess was absorbed in the spec- 
 tacle. On many other occasions had there been 
 dancers at her tower; none such as these. They 
 were clowns and posturers, those others. This 
 was a rite. Their arms and hands, especially 
 those pointed fingers with tapering nails stained 
 scarlet they moved in enigmatic, compelling 
 fashion. She could not help remarking to The- 
 ophilus : 
 
 " What gracious attitudes ! Like idols full 
 of mystery. And those hands there is witch- 
 craft and purpose in them. Up to this evening, 
 my friend, I thought ill of the hand of man; 
 little I dreamt what a revelation of beauty it 
 might become. How good it is to see new things, 
 and ever new things! I took our hands and 
 fingers to be mere implements for taking or 
 throwing imperfect, unsightly implements. 
 Now I know better. What say you? " 
 
256 THEY WENT 
 
 The other glanced up from his couch. He was 
 counting those beads of his, in an agitated man- 
 ner. He replied grumpily : 
 
 " I am not in the mood for discussing dancers." 
 
 " Still thinking about that key? " 
 
 At this moment she saw Harre" standing at her 
 side. The blue pest was dripping wet. She was 
 not surprised at this; he was often in such a 
 state, although never yet at this hour of the day, 
 for the Alloquisti, inland folk as they were, had 
 a great fondness for splashing themselves with 
 water in summertime. What did surprise her, 
 what astonished and enraged her, was that he 
 should be there at all. He had been forbidden 
 to enter those apartments in the evening, and 
 had hitherto always obeyed the injunction. He 
 might circulate freely and take what liberties he 
 pleased at her father's palace; it was a dull 
 place; the guests there assembled could not pos- 
 sibly do him harm. Here it was different. 
 Things were to be seen (such as these dancers) 
 and things heard which, she thought, might dis- 
 quiet his imagination and be injurious to his 
 youthful mind. The princess was severe on such 
 matters. And therefore, without waiting for an 
 explanation, she glanced sternly into his eyes 
 and said : 
 
 " Look at me. The older you grow, the more 
 disobedient. I shall now do what I threatened. 
 
THEY WENT 257 
 
 I shall turn you into a little pig, and take you 
 a three months' sail beyond the Sacred Kock 
 and throw you into the sea." 
 
 " I have just been thrown into the sea." 
 
 Theophilus observed: 
 
 " He looks uncommonly wet. Ask him to ex- 
 plain, princess, and turn him into a pig after- 
 wards. I should like to see a blue pig." 
 
 Harr6 was not clever at explaining. He had 
 come from the palace, he said; everybody was 
 drunk and sprawling about, even the king him- 
 self 
 
 "High- water mark," said the young lady 
 angrily. " He ought to have been put to bed 
 before that stage. What was the old woman 
 doing? " 
 
 "The queen? She fainted away." 
 
 "Let her faint!" 
 
 Harre opened his eyes wide never would he 
 have dared to speak of his blue mother in such 
 words: as to Theophilus he shut his own. 
 Perhaps he was shocked. 
 
 The princess went on, in a softer voice: 
 "What more, my child? Tell me everything 
 exactly, from beginning to end. And first of 
 all, why are you pressing your elbow to your 
 side in that unbecoming fashion? It is not a 
 gracious attitude for a young person." 
 
 " Only to prevent the blood from flowing out," 
 
258 THEY WENT 
 
 said Harre\ " That man he tried to kill me 
 with his knife. Then he threw me into the har- 
 bour. He must have eyes behind his head; 
 otherwise he could never have known I was fol- 
 lowing him. It is nothing!" he added with a 
 laugh. " You should see my father's wounds ! 
 We are prickly people." 
 
 There was a hideous gash on the left side of 
 his breast. 
 
 " How fortunate," remarked Theophilus, delv- 
 ing down into his deep pocket. " I happen to 
 have some liniment and balsam with me. What 
 it is to be an old traveller. One never knows 
 when one may not need these things." 
 
 " I am glad I was not wearing my deerskin," 
 said Harr6, while the Greek was bandaging his 
 wound. "It. might have got hacked about." 
 
 " Whom were you following? " the princess 
 enquired. " And why? " 
 
 " Because I saw him take the key." 
 
 " What key? " 
 
 " He means the little red-haired man," said 
 Theophilus, who thereupon went out, all alone. 
 
 It was true. The sluice-gate had been opened ; 
 Aithryn had done his work. Water was pour- 
 ing in, and the tide not yet full! There was 
 wild confusion down by the harbour ; ships clash- 
 ing against one another, and half the population 
 endeavouring to scramble into them and escape 
 
THEY WENT 259 
 
 the disaster. He did not linger long, but re- 
 traced his steps towards the tower. 
 
 There, beside that gateway of ruddy copper, 
 .stood a tall solitary figure, huddled in a long 
 cape. 
 
 It was Aithryn, the father, waiting for his 
 child. 
 
 The other went up to him in friendly fashion 
 and, after a civil enquiry anent the state of the 
 tide or suchlike, delicately planted that Persian 
 > stuff, that elaborate affair, that dagger, into 
 his midriff. " One mischief maker the less," 
 thought the Greek who, being a lonely unicorn 
 i like his charming disciple, could not bring him- 
 self to sympathize with the feelings of those that 
 belonged to another and more respectable cate- 
 gory. 
 
 The guests at the tower were scattered in the 
 meantime, news of the catastrophe having leaked 
 through. Accompanied only by Harre, the prin- 
 1 cess was gazing from the summit of that building 
 upon the scene at her feet. It was different from 
 what it used to be! Yet she was calm and 
 unmoved; almost cheerful. Theophilus would 
 never desert her. She saw the lower regions of 
 the town already submerged; it would be some 
 time, however, before the level of the embank- 
 ment could be reached. Scared groups of folk 
 'were scurrying about with lighted torches, and 
 
260 THEY WENT 
 
 calling to each other in many tongues. All 
 around was darkness, and wetness, and a hungry 
 lapping of ocean ; the moon peered out of clouds 
 upon this watery desolation. She saw, or 
 thought she saw, the monarch her father can- 
 tering distractedly along the sea-wall on the 
 black stallion Morvark, his mantle all aflutter in 
 the wind. The sight brought her neither joy 
 nor grief ; she merely reflected : 
 
 " Perhaps he is looking for me, or for his old 
 woman. He seems to ride pretty straight. I 
 must say, he is a wonderful old man. Almost 
 sober." 
 
 Not so Ando. He was not almost sober. He 
 kept it up; he drank to excess that night. Un- 
 fortunately it was water, which accounted for 
 the fact that he was never seen again. Nor was 
 the queen discoverable for a long while. They 
 told an unpleasant tale about her; they said that, 
 losing sight of her consort while trying to save 
 some object out of the cellars, she had been 
 treacherously carried off in a Moorish vessel, sold 
 to the Prince of Mogador, and thereafter em- 
 ployed by him as housemaid and, in spare mo- 
 ments, governess to his twenty-three daughters. 
 The report was untrue. She lived to the end 
 of her days with her husband, far afield, at the 
 court of his former enemies the Volusinians, 
 where he had taken refuge. A marvellous coin- 
 
THEY WENT 261 
 
 cidence! For the ruler of these same Volusi- 
 nians, forty years earlier, had afforded protec- 
 tion to yet another noble fugitive to wit, the 
 Roman Ormidius Limpidus, an engineer of high- 
 est capacity who, after being detected in a dis- 
 reputable intrigue with some high-born dame in 
 the household of his country's proconsul, had fled 
 thither for safety and, after other adventures, 
 lived to build that great embankment which was 
 even then cracking to pieces under the onslaught 
 of the waves. 
 
 Gazing thus calmly over a prospect all sea and 
 moonlight, the princess became aware of a patch 
 of dusky spots, somewhere beyond the eastern 
 gate. They were the crowns of a certain grove 
 of apple trees, emerging above the flood. She 
 knew them. 
 
 " My poor little dwarfs ! " she cried. 
 
 It was the first kind word she had ever spoken. 
 
 A voice at her side remarked : 
 
 " I dismissed them an hour before sunset. 
 They are safe on the hills." 
 
 " I am glad. On the hills. . . . Tramping 
 about the hills again, like when they first came 
 here. I wonder in which direction? " 
 
 Involuntarily her glance turned towards the 
 mountains. There she beheld a wondrous spec- 
 tacle. A rainbow hung in the sky, a wan, noc- 
 turnal thing of mist and moonshine with colours 
 
262 THEY WENT 
 
 feebly glimmering the veriest ghost of a rain 
 bow. She had never seen its like before. It 
 drove her thoughts backwards backwards to 
 Kenwyn and his Christian doctrines. She said : 
 
 " Now I know. The All-Highest dislikes por- 
 ticoes. He likes preachers. Confess, my friend, 
 that he has been too much for us. You need no 
 longer be sorry for him. He will not drown the 
 whole world, but only our city. It is rather in- 
 telligent of him ! He is old, but none too old to 
 laugh. I think I think he is laughing at us 
 now. And that funny little red-haired man is 
 also cleverer than we imagined." 
 
 She was more than resigned to her loss; look- 
 ing forward, indeed, to rearing the new city of 
 which he had often spoken. The Greek, to her 
 astonishment, did not share this tranquillity by 
 any means. His brow contracted at her words, 
 and he exclaimed, in a sudden access of rage : 
 
 " Bother that envious adulterer, who destroys 
 his own daughter's work and drowns a few thou- 
 sand folk that have never done him any harm. 
 A pretty trick; retribution, they call it. I did 
 my best to improve your town, and this is what 
 happens. And bother the All-Highest! Always 
 meddling and muddling! As if there were not 
 things enough to be amended in his own depart- 
 ment " 
 
 "What an outburst, Theophilus. I have 
 
THEY WENT 263 
 
 never seen you in such a state before. You are 
 not rising to the occasion; in fact, if I may say 
 so, you seem to be losing your temper seriously. 
 Calm yourself. Play with your beads." 
 
 " Bother my beads ! " 
 
 The princess did not know what more to say at 
 the moment. Presently she enquired : 
 
 " Tell me, what became of the little red-haired 
 man?" 
 
 " He went," said Theophilus savagely. 
 
 " I am glad. Parents are queer folk, as you 
 have already observed. And you listen to me. 
 Have you forgotten what you told me about that 
 other site for a town? Let us be off. This is no 
 place for us. I also understood," she ventured 
 to add, "I understood you were accustomed to 
 such little disappointments. Seasoned, I mean. 
 Have you forgotten? " 
 
 Her friend did not reply at once. He seemed 
 to be lost in thought ; rueful and wrestling with 
 his spirit. After a long, despairing glance at 
 the drowned city, he said : 
 
 " You are right, princess. This is no place for 
 us. Hard, none the less, to see one's handicraft 
 annihilated. I am quite seasoned, as you say 
 quite! At least, I ought to be. I ought never 
 to expect anything else, no, never. I have been 
 through so much trouble of this kind if you 
 only knew ! And yet ah, princess, why was I 
 
264 THEY WENT 
 
 not born with a stony heart like yours? It has 
 been denied me; and therein lies the bitterness. 
 Do what I will, I grow attached to my work. It 
 breaks me, to watch the agony of fair things. I 
 would give all my wealth, down to the last farth- 
 ing, if such shocks could be avoided; truly I 
 would. A positive wrench, every time " 
 
 " Don't cry over it, my good friend. I also 
 know something about shocks and wrenches. I 
 had a little one not long ago." She was think- 
 ing of that Christian, and of the copper con- 
 trivance which Lelian had made. 
 
 " You are right," he replied in calmer mood. 
 " The embankment is about to crack. The sea 
 will sweep over it in an hour or less. Look at 
 the water rising. . . . All in vain! Can you 
 bear the thought of it? And things were doing 
 so splendidly; it is indeed discouraging. It 
 hurts! . . . Well, let us be off then. No harm, 
 by the way, in taking this little nightmare of 
 yours with us. I like his spirit. But " 
 
 He turned to Harre* with a faint smile : 
 
 " My young friend will have to learn that the 
 human body looks better without blue paint. He 
 might also begin wearing a shirt, or something." 
 
 " My mother," said Harre", " she told me I 
 had a reputation to keep up." 
 
 " A young man can live without a reputation, 
 but not without a shirt." 
 
THEY WENT 265 
 
 The princess observed : 
 
 "You will never persuade him to change his 
 clothes." 
 
 " That you won't," said Harre. 
 
 " Won't I? And now come. My boat is wait- 
 ing. We will go to the place I mentioned, where 
 there are no disagreeable rainbows " 
 
 " No rainbows? " 
 
 " I think not," said Theophilus. 
 
 They went. 
 
CHAPTEE XX 
 
 THE drnidess was stirring at daybreak; 
 moving upwards by that garden path to 
 where, close beside her favourite seat, 
 she was wont to perform certain eastward-glanc- 
 ing rites in honour of Belen the Sun, fructifier 
 of seeds, lord of light. Arrived at the spot, she 
 looked down as always over the tree tops of a 
 young plantation and rows of trim vegetables in 
 the direction of the city, one corner of whose 
 mighty embankment and brazen turrets could be 
 seen far away, gleaming across the water and 
 overhung, on these summer mornings, by a 
 roseate canopy of sea-mist and ascending smoke. 
 
 The city : where was it gone? 
 
 Nothing met her eye; nothing save a watery 
 expanse leagues and leagues of green ocean, 
 weltering right up to the foot of the distant hills. 
 Nothing ! 
 
 The city was drowned. 
 
 Manthis was not unprepared for what she saw. 
 None the less, she staggered under the blow, and 
 a multitude of questions began to assail her. 
 Then, mindful of her duty, she raised aloft her 
 arms in that customary intercourse with the 
 
 266 
 
THEY WENT 267 
 
 Great Fire. Straightway an immeasurable calm 
 fell upon her. After another glance at the site 
 of the doomed town, she descended slowly to the 
 college to begin the day's work. 
 
 The pupils, when she entered the Hall of As- 
 sembly, observed that she had donned her girdle 
 of pale-blue callais stones. They nudged one 
 another, thinking, as often before: 
 
 " She is going to make a speech, a big one." 
 
 "Not a big one today," said Manthis, who 
 could always guess their thoughts nearly 
 always. " My heart is too full." Then, in the 
 fewest possible words, she told of the catas- 
 trophe; likely enough, she explained, their par- 
 ents, their brothers and sisters and all the in- 
 habitants of the town had perished. As for 
 herself, the unseen powers would doubtless 
 vouchsafe to her some enlightenment. Hence- 
 forth, perhaps, she must be mother to them all. 
 It would be a heavy charge, she added, and her 
 voice became almost inaudible. She was old, and 
 soon to grow infirm ! Such was the fate of man ! 
 She would implore counsel of the gods! A de- 
 cision would be taken in due course. " Then the 
 big speech will follow," she concluded, outwardly 
 unmoved. 
 
 The younger ones, some of them, appeared to 
 be unable to grasp the meaning of their loss. 
 Others began to cry. 
 
268 THEY WENT 
 
 " Let me see no tears on your cheeks," said 
 Manthis. " Woman bends ; she never breaks. 
 Now think awhile, children, of what I have told 
 you and ask, on this exceptional and distressing 
 occasion, any questions you please." 
 
 There was no movement among them at first. 
 Then two or three of the girls were seen to hold 
 a consultation. Presently one of them enquired : 
 
 " If all the men are drowned, and even the 
 young ones, and even the tiny little boys, how 
 shall we ever " 
 
 She seemed to hesitate. 
 
 " Hold your head up, child, and try to speak 
 distinctly. What do you mean? " 
 
 " I mean, when the time comes to leave the 
 Sacred Rock, and enter upon the duties of life, 
 how shall we " 
 
 " Belen will provide," said Manthis gravely. 
 " And now lessons will take place as usual. Our 
 morning must not be wasted. After dinner we 
 purpose to row across and view the mischief. Or 
 perhaps sail," she added, " since the breeze is 
 freshening. Meanwhile, disperse ! " 
 
 They dispersed. When her own class was as- 
 sembled, she said : 
 
 " Our task today includes dancing and meta- 
 physics and a little Ogham. First of all, we will 
 rehearse what you learnt yesterday concerning 
 
THEY WENT 269 
 
 the virtues of selago and samole. Selago! It 
 must be plucked how? " 
 
 " Without the use of iron/' replied one of the 
 pupils. "And the right hand must be passed 
 through the left sleeve of the tunic, as though 
 the gatherer were committing a theft. And the 
 clothing must be white. And the feet bare and 
 washed clean. And a sacrifice of bread and wine 
 shall first be made. Furthermore, it may not be 
 carried otherwise than in a new napkin." 
 
 Manthis nodded approval. 
 
 " And samole : how gathered? " 
 
 "Fasting," said another one. "And with the 
 left hand. And whoso plucks it shall not look 
 behind her or him. Furthermore, it may not be 
 laid elsewhere save in the troughs from which the 
 cattle drink." 
 
 The druidess enquired : 
 
 " You have understood the significance of 
 these injunctions? " 
 
 " Oh, yes." 
 
 "All of you?" 
 
 "Yes, yes!" 
 
 " Why then," she pursued, " why pluck 
 samole with the left hand? " 
 
 There was silence. Nobody knew the reason. 
 
 "What says the babchick?" 
 
 " Because " 
 
270 THEY WENT 
 
 Even the babchick had forgotten. 
 
 Manthis again set forth why the right hand 
 was unfitted for so solemn a duty, to the com- 
 plete satisfaction of her pupils. 
 
 Not to her own. 
 
 Later on, when lessons were over, she moved 
 aloft once more, in order to commune with her 
 thoughts. To the babchick, who was preparing 
 to follow, she said : 
 
 " Now run away, child. Play with the others 
 and bid them be cheerful. Help them to under- 
 stand. Say : we shall know the truth this after- 
 noon." 
 
 The child obeyed, wistful and somewhat dis- 
 appointed. She had a thousand questions to ask. 
 Manthis foresaw those questions; she could not 
 be troubled with them at that moment. 
 
 Having reached the seat, Manthis loosened her 
 girdle, disburdening herself of authority. There 
 she reposed, hands folded on lap, no longer 
 teacher or priestess but only an ancient dame 
 striving to see aright. Often, on similar occa- 
 sions, she had yearned for the company of some 
 friend. She was glad, now, to be alone to col- 
 lect herself and recover, if possible, from the 
 blow. It had been too sudden. Enlightenment 
 would come, she knew ; serenity and perhaps even 
 joy yes, there was some small ray of pleasure, 
 she felt, in store for her; what could it be? 
 
THEY WENT 271 
 
 Meanwhile, all kinds of scattered ideas flitted 
 through her brain, which refused to bend itself 
 to the purpose in hand. She was wearier than 
 usual; opprssed, and almost dazed. "If I were 
 younger," she mused, "I might confront this 
 calamity with greater boldness." 
 
 She looked around. . . . All the familiar 
 things, the gay flowers, the rows of beehives . . . 
 overhead, above that cirque of grey rocks, a sun- 
 shiny meadow where the cows were pasturing. 
 She could see their friendly forms outlined 
 against the blue sky of midday. 
 
 She gave a long look seaward. It was true 
 then ; no dream. 
 
 And her eye, roving towards the foreground, 
 fell upon a bare patch among the vegetables at 
 her feet. It was where the radishes had been; 
 those with many leaves and small root. She re- s 
 membered the visit of Kenwyn, that love-dis- 
 tracted Christian his wild appealing look and 
 foolish speech; she called to mind that other 
 Christian, that violent venerable of long ago. 
 Much might have been learnt from either of 
 them, had they been reasonable. Both sacrificed 
 a singular fatality in a conflict with the 
 female sex. The first one clashed with her own 
 moral notions; the other, with the artistic ones 
 of Heussa, Queen of Terrors. It showed, at 
 least, what women could do, when they wanted. 
 
272 THEY WENT 
 
 Women need only want. How teach them to 
 want? Selago? You will never teach women to 
 want, with selago. 
 
 Then, still nearer at hand, she caught sight 
 of the hem of her white robe. Often had it 
 vexed her; strange, none the less, that such 
 trivial matters should intrude themselves at a 
 moment like this. Too much gold, she thought ; 
 I would have it simpler. Alas, the breadth of 
 the embroidery was fixed by tradition, iron rules. 
 " I might as well ask for that wondrous moon of 
 last night ! Everything prescribed ! I may not 
 wear nor eat what I, please; I may neither say 
 nor do what I think truly becoming." Whether 
 priests and teachers of future ages would be sim- 
 ilarly hampered? Would they stumble forwards 
 like herself, in shackles, and alone? If so, might 
 one well despair of mankind. Uphill work, 
 under such conditions, trying to make girls not 
 useful but indispensable; trying to fit them for 
 their task in life the capture and exploitation 
 of the male. Samole: are these the things that 
 women ought to know? " It must be plucked 
 fasting, and with the left hand." Why with the 
 left hand? Miserable, worthless herbs why 
 pluck them at all? Why teach such rules? Tra- 
 dition ! And yet and yet . . . you will never 
 catch your male with samole, pluck it as you 
 please, 
 
THEY WENT 273 
 
 All the while the honey-gathering insects 
 flashed around her like specks of burnished 
 bronze, on their myriad voyages from rosemary 
 bush to hive, and back again. How full of 
 happy, wholesome purpose! Would mankind 
 ever arrive at their perfection? 
 
 And now a sound reached her ears, an oft- 
 heard clangour from that lustily-smitten Ori- 
 ental thing the call to the midday meal. 
 Manthis clasped her girdle and prepared to de- 
 scend. At that moment, suddenly, came the 
 small ray of pleasure. The sinful city was gone ; 
 no great loss, she opined; perhaps even a bless- 
 ing. Manifestly a blessing! For it dawned 
 upon her that she would now be free from many 
 kinds of annoyances, free to develop her own 
 ideas of betterment, free to introduce or abolish 
 as she saw fit. Farewell to selago . . . more 
 reading and writing . . . happy social life. . . . 
 The ray had grown brighter; so bright that its 
 effulgence almost dazzled her. She felt like 
 some sagacious gardener who holds in his hand 
 a seed scarce visible, and already contemplates, 
 with the mind's eyes, the tall and seemly growth 
 which must inevitably spring therefrom. 
 
 " My chance/' she thought, " has at last ar- 
 rived." 
 
 Her pupils, when she entered the dining-hall, 
 were surprised and pleased to see a smile upon 
 
274 THEY WENT 
 
 her face, and the wiser of them nudged each 
 
 other, thinking, as often before : 
 
 " She has made some pleasant discovery." 
 "An unusually pleasant one," said Manthis, 
 
 who could very often read their thoughts. 
 
 " Meanwhile, let us give thanks to Belen for what 
 
 we are about to receive. Now, Babchick " 
 
 THE END 
 
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