A Voyage to Arcturus, David Lindsay [book recommendations for teens TXT] 📗

know you had your ear to the keyhole. But you could join the assembly, the music was not playing for you, my friend.”

Maskull smiled rather bitterly. “At all events, I listen through no more keyholes. I have finished with life. I belong to nobody and nothing any more, from this time forward.”

“Brave words, brave words! We shall see. Perhaps Crystalman will make one more attempt on you. There is still time for one more.”

“Now I don’t understand you.”

“You think you are thoroughly disillusioned, don’t you? Well, that may prove to be the last and strongest illusion of all.”

The conversation ceased. They reached the foot of the landslip an hour later. Branchspell was steadily mounting the cloudless sky. It was approaching Sarclash, and it was an open question whether or not it would clear its peak. The heat was sweltering. The long, massive, saucer-shaped ridge behind them, with its terrific precipices, was glowing with bright morning colours. Adage, towering up many thousands of feet higher still, guarded the end of it like a lonely Colossus. In front of them, starting from where they stood, was a cool and enchanting wilderness of little lakes and forests. The water of the lakes was dark green; the forests were asleep, waiting for the rising of Alppain.

“Are we now in Barey?” asked Maskull.

“Yes—and there is one of the natives.”

There was an ugly glint in his eye as he spoke the words, but Maskull did not see it.

A man was leaning in the shade against one of the first trees, apparently waiting for them to come up. He was small, dark, and beardless, and was still in early manhood. He was clothed in a dark blue, loosely flowing robe, and wore a broad-brimmed slouch hat. His face, which was not disfigured by any special organs, was pale, earnest, and grave, yet somehow remarkably pleasing.

Before a word was spoken, he warmly grasped Maskull’s hand, but even while he was in the act of doing so he threw a queer frown at Krag. The latter responded with a scowling grin.

When he opened his mouth to speak, his voice was a vibrating baritone, but it was at the same time strangely womanish in its modulations and variety of tone.

“I’ve been waiting for you here since sunrise,” he said. “Welcome to Barey, Maskull! Let’s hope you’ll forget your sorrows here, you over-tested man.”

Maskull stared at him, not without friendliness. “What made you expect me, and how do you know my name?”

The stranger smiled, which made his face very handsome. “I’m Gangnet. I know most things.”

“Haven’t you a greeting for me too—Gangnet?” asked Krag, thrusting his forbidding features almost into the other’s face.

“I know you, Krag. There are few places where you are welcome.”

“And I know you, Gangnet—you man-woman.... Well, we are here together, and you must make what you can of it. We are going down to the Ocean.”

The smile faded from Gangnet’s face. “I can’t drive you away, Krag—but I can make you the unwelcome third.”

Krag threw back his head, and gave a loud, grating laugh. “That bargain suits me all right. As long as I have the substance, you may have the shadow, and much good may it do you.”

“Now that it’s all arranged so satisfactorily,” said Maskull, with a hard smile, “permit me to say that I don’t desire any society at all at present.... You take too much for granted, Krag. You have played the false friend once already.... I presume I’m a free agent?”

“To be a free man, one must have a universe of one’s own,” said Krag, with a jeering look. “What do you say, Gangnet—is this a free world?”

“Freedom from pain and ugliness should be every man’s privilege,” returned Gangnet tranquilly. “Maskull is quite within his rights, and if you’ll engage to leave him I’ll do the same.”

“Maskull can change face as often as he likes, but he won’t get rid of me so easily. Be easy on that point, Maskull.”

“It doesn’t matter,” muttered Maskull. “Let everyone join in the procession. In a few hours I shall finally be free, anyhow, if what they say is true.”

“I’ll lead the way,” said Gangnet. “You don’t know this country, of course, Maskull. When we get to the flat lands some miles farther down, we shall be able to travel by water, but at present we must walk, I fear.”

“Yes, you fear—you fear!” broke out Krag, in a highpitched, scraping voice. “You eternal loller!”

Maskull kept looking from one to the other in amazement. There seemed to be a determined hostility between the two, which indicated an intimate previous acquaintance.

They set off through a wood, keeping close to its border, so that for a mile or more they were within sight of the long, narrow lake that flowed beside it. The trees were low and thin; their dolm-coloured leaves were all folded. There was no underbrush—they walked on clean, brown earth, A distant waterfall sounded. They were in shade, but the air was pleasantly warm. There were no insects to irritate them. The bright lake outside looked cool and poetic.

Gangnet pressed Maskull’s arm affectionately. “If the bringing of you from your world had fallen to me, Maskull, it is here I would have brought you, and not to the scarlet desert. Then you would have escaped the dark spots, and Tormance would have appeared beautiful to you.”

“And what then, Gangnet? The dark spots would have existed all the same.”

“You could have seen them afterward. It makes all the difference whether one sees darkness through the light, or brightness through the shadows.”

“A clear eye is the best. Tormance is an ugly world, and I greatly prefer to know it as it really is.”

“The devil made it ugly, not Crystalman. These are Crystalman’s thoughts, which you see around you. He is nothing but Beauty and Pleasantness. Even Krag won’t have the effrontery to deny that.”

“It’s very nice here,” said Krag, looking around him malignantly. “One only wants a cushion and half a dozen houris to complete it.”

Maskull disengaged himself from Gangnet. “Last night, when I was struggling through the mud in the ghastly moonlight—then I thought the world beautiful.”

“Poor Sullenbode!” said Gangnet, sighing.

“What! You knew her?”

“I know her through you. By mourning for a noble woman, you show your own nobility. I think all women are noble.”

“There may be millions of noble women, but there’s only one Sullenbode.”

“If Sullenbode can exist,” said Gangnet, “the