Chapter 14

There were many others, so many I can not begin to enumerate them. Some had written books and were known all over the planet, and some who were not known at all had done things because there was nobody else to do them. And some were singers and some were actors, and some were rich and some were poor to the outside world, but in the Council Room they met and laughed and matched experiences and made jokes; from the one who had built a battle ship so terrible that all the other ships were burnt on condition that his should be also, to the ordinary helpers who applaud stupid plays till intelligent human beings become thoroughly disgusted with bad art.

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

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

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

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

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

We had a lovely dance, and while we rested Marlow called on some of us for specialties. Mrs. Mopes did a paragraph by a man named Henry James, translated into action, which seemed quite difficult, and then a person called Parker externalized a violin and gave the Laocoon in terms of sound. To me his rendering of marble resembled terra-cotta until I learned that the copy of the statue here is awfully weatherstained. After this three pretty girls gave the Aurora Borealis by telepathic suggestion rather well, and then I sang "Love Lives Everywhere"--just plain so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE FOURTH RECORD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I swan, I like your cheek."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who said you was goin' to get up at all?" inquired the biter, disagreeably, but the other answered for me.

"I said it, that's who, you consarned jay," he announced, reprovingly.

When I had made them both climb up first and give me each a hand, I had no difficulty at all in mounting, but I was very careful not to thank the Jay, which seemed to make him more morose than ever. Then they slid down again, and off we started.

Once when we came to some lovely blue flowers growing in water near the roadside I told the Jay to stop and wade in and pick them for me.

"I'll be dogged if I do," he answered; so I said:

"I don't know what being 'dogged' means, but if it is a reward for being nice and kind and polite, I hope you will be."

Whereupon he bit at me once and waded in, while the other man, whose name, it seems, was Pop, sat down upon a stone and laughed.

"Gosh! If this don't beat the cats," he said, slapping his knee, which was his way of making himself laugh harder.

I put the flowers in my hair and in my belt and wherever I could stick them. But there was still a lot left over, and whenever we met people I threw them some, which appeared to please Pop, but made the Jay still more bite-y.

Presently we came to a very narrow place and there, as luck would have it, we met an automobile.--Thank goodness, I need not explain automobile.--And who should be at the lever all alone but--the Astorian.

I recognized him instantly, and he recognized me, which was, I suppose, his reason for forgetting to stop till he had nearly run us down. In a moment we were in the wildest tangle, though nothing need have happened had not the Jay completely lost his temper.

"Hang your picture!" he called out, savagely, "What do you want?--The Earth?"

And with that he struck the animals--the wagon was not self-propelling--a violent blow, and they sprang forward with a lurch which made the hay begin to slip. I tried to save myself, but there was nothing to catch hold of, so off I slid and--oh, my dear, my dear, just fancy it!--I landed directly in his lap.--No, not the Jay's.--Of course, I stayed there as short a time as possible, for he was very nice about moving up to make room for me on the seat, but I am afraid it did seem frightfully informal just at first.

"It was all the fault of that consarned Jay," I explained, as soon as I had recovered my composure, "and I shall never ride in his goll-darned wagon again."

"I sincerely hope you will not," replied Astoria, looking at me with the most curious expression. "It would be much better to let me take you wherever you wish to go."

"That's awfully kind of you," I said, "but I don't care to go anywhere in particular this afternoon, except as far as possible from that objectionable young man."

The Astorian did not speak again till he had turned something in the machine to make it back and jerk, and, once free from the upset hay, go on again.

"Say, Sissy, I thought you was comin' to take dinner," Pop called out from under the wagon, where he had crawled for safety, and when I replied as nicely as I could, "No, thank you, not to-day," he said again, quite sadly as I thought, "Gosh blim me, if that don't beat the cats!" and also several other things I could not hear because we were moving away so rapidly.

When we had gone about a hundred miles--or yards, or inches, whichever it was--the Astorian, who had been sitting very straight, inquired if those gentlemen--meaning Pop and Jay--were near relatives.

I showed him plainly that I thought his question Uranian, and explained that I had not a relative on Earth. Then I told him exactly how I had come to be with them, and about my picnic and the egg. I am afraid I did not take great pains to make the story very clear, for it was such fun to perplex him. He is not at all like the Venus people, who have become so superlatively clever that they are always bored to death.

"Were you surprised to see me flying through the air?" I asked.

"Oh, no," he said; "I have always thought of you as coming to Earth in some such way from some far-distant planet."

"Oh, then, you know!" I gasped.

The Astorian laughed.

"I know you are the one perfect being in the world, and that is quite enough," he said, and I saw at once that whatever he had guessed about me he knew nothing at all of the Settlement.

"Miss Aura," he went on,--he has called me that ever since that little embryonic made his stupid blunder, and I have not corrected him--here it is almost necessary to have some sort of a name--"Miss Aura, don't you think we have been mere acquaintances long enough? I'm only human--"

"Yes, of course," I interrupted, "but then that is not your fault--"

"I'm glad you look upon my misfortune so charitably," he said, a trifle more puzzled than usual, as I fancied.

"It is my duty," I replied. "I want to elevate you; to brighten your existence."

"My Aura!" he whispered; and I was not quite sure whether he meant me or not.

We were moving rapidly along the broad road beside a river. There were hills in the distance and the air from them was in the key of the Pleiades. There were gardens everywhere full of sunlight translated into flowers, and without an effort one divined the harmony of growing things. I felt that something was about to happen; I knew it, but I did not care to ask what it might be. Perhaps if I had tried I could not have known; perhaps for that hour I was only an Earth girl and could only know things as they know them, but I did not care.

We were going faster, faster every moment.

"Was it you who willed me to come out into the country?" I asked. "Have you been watching for me and expecting me?"

We were moving now as clouds that rush across a moon.

"I think I have been watching for you all my life and willing you to come," he said, which shows how dreadfully unjust we sometimes are to humans.

"While I was on another planet?" I inquired. "While we were millions and millions of miles apart? Suppose that I had never come to Earth?"

We were moving like the falling stars one journeys to the Dark Hemisphere to see.

"I should have found you all the same," he whispered, half laughing, but his blue eyes glistened. "I do not think that space itself could separate us."

"Oh, do you realize that?" I asked, "and do you really know?"

"I know I have you with me now," he said, "and that is all I care to know."

We were flying now, flying as comets fly to perihelion. The world about was slipping from us, disintegrating and dissolving into cosmic thoughts expressed in color. Only his eyes were actual, and the blue hills far away, and the wind from them in the key of the Pleiades.

"There shall never any more be time or space for us," he said.

"But," I protested, "we must not overlook the fundamental facts."

"In all the universe there is just one fact," he cried, catching my hand in his, and then--

(NOTE: _Here a portion of the logogram becomes indecipherable, owing, perhaps, to the passage of some large bird across the line of projection. What follows is the last recorded vibragraph to date._)

--Yes, dear, I know I should have been more circumspect. I should have remembered my position, but I didn't. And that's why I'm engaged to be married.--You have to here, when you reach a certain point--I know you will think it a great come-down for one of us, but after all do we not owe something to our sister planets?--

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