CHAPTER IX

THE WOMAN OF MYSTERY

I stared at the great wheeling, swooping forms till I thought my eyes would have dropped out of my head. We moved on, but I was still gazing when the low gable of a building came between and shut them from our view, yet not by any manner of means could I bring myself to believe I'd been looking at men. That could only mean men flying on artificial wings. The flight of those creatures was, on a grand scale, the graceful, easy, perfectly poised flight of a gull or a swallow, which no human ingenuity could imitate. Clearly Poyning had mistaken what the attendant said to him--an explanation credible enough when I remembered that he himself admitted there were words in the language of this people that he could merely guess. And there, for the time being, I had to be content to let the mystery rest.

The crowd had steadily grown denser as we advanced, and our bodyguard had more and more difficulty in screening us from close scrutiny. The cumulative effect of these ranks upon ranks of gigantic folk was most peculiar: it gave me the impression that I was of dumpy stature, while Poyning, as I noticed from my place on the litter, looked a downright dwarf against such a background. In all that throng I saw no full-grown man under six feet, many stood well above, and giants of seven feet were by no means rare. Everywhere we saw the bare heads of dark brown or black hair, the wonderfully chiselled clean-shaven faces, and the penetrating black eyes of the men who had first met us on the hillside. There were women in the crowd, too, clad not greatly unlike the men, but whereas the hair of the latter usually reached no lower than the shoulders and was sometimes even shorter, the women wore theirs in luxuriant coils bound over the nape of the neck. It was impressive and profoundly fascinating to watch these people. Not only was there on every face a dignity which, while it never became solemn, broke into lighter shades very seldom indeed, but the whole concourse moved with a superb, willowy grace that to my mind was poetry itself.

At length we came to a halt. Philipson's litter detached itself from the procession and disappeared through the pillared portals of a broad-faced building that reminded me of "restorations" of the Erechtheum of Athens, while we passed on to a house of similar cast, but smaller and plainly of less importance. The building was of one tallish storey, approached by a flight of low steps in white marble; Ionic columns supported the massive portico, with its blank cornice and gently gabled roof, and behind this, in the wall proper, a door of some dark wood gave entrance to the interior.

The tall greyhead, whose name we had discovered to be Kalliboas--that is the nearest I can get in our letters to the very musical way we always heard it pronounced--now led through to rooms that had been made ready for us. They were severe and undecorated, these chambers, but after the barbarisms of camp life in the Tibetan mountains they seemed absolutely luxurious. The walls were all plain marble, built in great blocks beautifully smoothed and united by a white cream-like mortar, very little of which appeared, however, as the blocks fitted almost face to face. The floor was likewise marble, bare except for here and there a rug about half an inch thick, made of a fabric that was put to a variety of uses in the valley. It seemed to me to be a sort of linen, extremely soft and fine in texture, and so woven and interwoven as to give it the stoutness of felt. This same lawn-like material was used to upholster the couches, the only furniture, which were built of the same dark wood as the house door. We discovered afterwards that chairs were unknown, and that the tables used for meals consisted of low platforms placed between the couches, the diners always reclining to take their food.

It seemed strange there should be no tables of our pattern, if only for writing purposes, but the explanation was stranger than the fact. Writing was comparatively neglected. I found out before I had been in the valley long that there was a drama among that community, and an exuberant literary art, but these were practised for the greater part orally and in public; and so keen were the powers of memory commonly possessed, that writing for the sake of recording accurately was hardly necessary. What writing was done mainly took the form of decorative carving on stone. We had passed close by several examples of this on our way into the city, and if we still harboured any doubt as to the true origin of the language, those inscriptions finally dispelled it. The styles of chisel-writing were many, from straight-lined majuscules to the most ornate and flowing hand, but the base of it all was unquestionably the alphabet known to the world at large as Greek.

Two sandalled attendants appeared, crossing the marble floor with scarcely a sound, and to these Kalliboas turned us over with orders to see to our wants. We were taken to one side of the building, where we found a row of baths, each built into the floor and filled with enough warm water to float a grown man--even one of the giants of the valley--comfortably. The attendants relieved us of the rest of our travel-smirched rags, laid down a pile of towels of the ubiquitous linen-like stuff, and with a word to Poyning, whom they had discovered to be our linguist, they went.

Poyning crowed with delight as he stared at the water. I am open to admit that I was grinning--at Poyning. I couldn't help it. When I remembered the dandy figure he'd cut during the earlier stages of the expedition, and saw him now after weeks of forced abstention from washing, the contrast was irresistibly absurd. His hide was scaly with filth.

Poyning glared at me. 'They don't appear to go in for mirrors here, Mirlees,' he said rather severely, 'or you'd see you are in a pretty loathsome condition yourself.'

I looked round the bathing chamber. 'They don't seem to go in for soap either,' I said, 'and that's worse.'

'Eh? No, apparently not. The fellow made no mention of what we were to wash with. I suppose the idea is to lie and soak. Here goes!'

He flung himself into the water and stretched his limbs with renewed crows of delight.

I watched him for a moment or two, until something in his appearance attracted my gaze more insistently, and I stared with such intentness that Poyning demanded what was up.

'What does the water feel like?' said I.

'Gorgeous. Why?'

'Look at yourself, man!'

Poyning looked. He jumped out of the water as if he had been stung, then stared down at his own limbs and up at me in bewilderment.

Ye gods!' he gasped. 'You saw me before I got in, Mirlees. I'm not dreaming, am I?'

'If you are, I am too. You were filthy as any Tibetan. It must be something in the water.'

I got into one of the other baths, and saw the same startling purification overtake my own grimy limbs. I am convinced, too, the water had not only the trick of cleansing like magic, but some strange healing virtue; it left the body with a sense of supreme comfort, the skin soft and smooth; and if there was any unpleasant after-effect, I never observed it, though I used these baths daily from that time on. As I lay there, the dull throb of my injured ankle melted gradually away, not to return. And perhaps the queerest part of it all was that the water looked as clean when we got out as when we got in.

At the very moment we had dried ourselves the attendants reappeared without being summoned, in a way that reminded me strongly of the way the litter-bearers turned up on the hillside; and we were taken into an adjoining chamber and helped off with the formidable stubble then disfiguring our chins. Here again that strange healing water took the place of soap. A white marble basin of it was given us, together with a curious sort of vegetable sponge and half a dozen razors with straight handles of rock crystal, looking more like surgical knives than an outfit to shave with. Yet we had to admit that the operation, which one of the attendants performed for us, was swift, painless, and effective. The servants now brought us each a suit of the very simple lawn garments and sandals we had seen everywhere, which having put on, we were taken back to the main hall to eat.

The meal was simple in the extreme, consisting only of delicate white birds and plain vegetables, yet I had never in my life eaten tastier food. The birds were rather larger than pigeons, and the vegetables, though I couldn't give a name to one of them, seemed not greatly unlike the lettuces and artichokes and what not that figure in our European bills of fare. In the method of cooking, however, there must have been a wide divergence, for though the stuff was presented quite plain, somehow or other a most exquisite flavour had been imparted to it. I may say here that every meal we afterwards ate in the valley was hardly less simple than this one, and that we throve mightily on the plain diet. The natives themselves regarded anything in the way of elaborate food with absolute detestation, and even their banquets were what we should call Spartan in their simplicity.

After the discomforts of camp life we made no bones about eating a meal lying down, but it took us aback to find nothing was given us to eat with. Even in the roughest stages of our tramp across the mountains we'd never been reduced to less than a clasp-knife. The food now laid before us, however, had already been divided into handy mouthfuls, and was moreover totally free from grease, and we soon got over our scruples at adopting what appeared to be the custom of the valley--to eat with the fingers. We ate, and continued eating in a fashion that must have startled the attendants, for they had to reload our platters three or four times before we were satisfied. There was no other course, or anything else at all except a white wine, which was mildly intoxicating but didn't arouse, so far as I could ever detect, any inclination to drink more.

Poyning pushed away his platter with a long sigh. 'So much for the belly-need,' he said. 'I would the hunger for knowledge could be as easily sated. It's about time the elderly gentleman who calls himself Kalliboas came back to enlighten us a little on this valley of the Grecians.'

'I can't get it comfortably settled in my mind they are Greek,' said I, 'or how in Hades they got here, or how long they've been in residence.'

'For that matter,' replied Poyning, 'I can't altogether rid myself of an idea that we shall wake up on those ghastly mountains in a minute. But if it is real, these people are certainly Greek. I'm an honours man, Mirlees, but I may tell you I little expected ever to meet my old Olympians in the flesh. We must ply the ancient Kalliboas when he comes. I'd also be glad to hear how Philipson finds himself.'

But we were to make no more discoveries that day. The long-delayed reaction against our tremendous exertions and perils of the past few days was hard upon us. We must have fallen asleep simultaneously, and been carried to bed by the attendants, in a log-like insensibility; and then we slept the clock round _twice_. Whether it was wholly a natural sleep, or in part prolonged by artificial means for our benefit, I don't know; I have a very shadowy recollection of coming half awake once and seeing Kalliboas beside my couch and hearing him speak to me, but I didn't wake fully till the sun was high, and then I learned on the indisputable testimony of the servants that it was the third day from our falling asleep.

We were now both as full of energy as we had been at the beginning of the expedition, to say nothing of ravenously hungry again; and we breakfasted on food similar to that of our first meal. Hardly had we finished eating when Kalliboas appeared.

The old man saluted us with the stern courtesy he invariably showed, and began to talk to Poyning, slowly, in the language of the valley. The conversation had to be translated to me sentence by sentence, but by the end of it I was already beginning to get a hint of the modifications I must make in _my_ Greek to follow the speech of these people. I may say that within a week I was able to stumble along with it myself a little, and before the month was out I could understand most of what was said to me.

Our first inquiry was, of course, for Philipson.

'You will see him to-day,' said Kalliboas.

'Is he well?' demanded Poyning.

The old man made some answer at which Poyning started slightly.

'What does he say?' I cried.

'Philipson's perfectly well, according to him. But I notice _he speaks of him as the Prince_.'

We remained staring at one another for an instant. 'And I have more than a notion the old gentleman does not welcome questions on the subject,' continued Poyning quietly. 'We must go slow.'

I too had noticed an enhanced stiffness in the old man's manner, as if he was a little scandalised, and he had certainly looked very straight at us when the name Philipson caught his ear. Why this should be so I couldn't guess, but there was very palpably something about him that warned us to drop the subject. Poyning accordingly did so, and began asking the old man questions about himself and the city in general. He answered frankly enough for the most part, though we didn't take long to grasp that there was a point beyond which we weren't going to get enlightenment from him. What we did learn was this.

All the people of the valley bore names which, like his own, would be recognised easily enough as Grecian by any student of classical antiquity. Kalliboas was headman of a ward of the city, and as such wielded considerable power. He was responsible to the rulers--Poyning told me he used a plural here, but omitted to specify who the rulers were--for the education of all children and for the administration of the laws. It was astonishing to us to hear him describe this legal system. No copy of the statutes, said Kalliboas, existed in writing. They were carried in the memories of the people--not only of the rulers and headmen of wards, but also of the common people, being taught to children as soon as they came to a comprehending age, so that most citizens could repeat the laws of the city by heart. It seemed incredible that any state, however small, could be run on such lines, but Kalliboas assured us the system worked smoothly and well. The laws, he said, were not a whit the less existent for being unwritten, and they were backed by a very strong public opinion; each child received such education and training in matters of conduct that when he grew up he knew better than to transgress against what the general sense held to be fitting behaviour. If he did, officers were detailed to remonstrate with him, and Kalliboas told us that on more than one occasion in the history of the community the delinquent had been able to bring forward such valid reasons for his unorthodox act as to cause the law to be altered. From a sort of grim horror the old fellow betrayed when he spoke of wrong-doing I inferred that crime in our sense of the word was very rare; and he left on our minds a vague, fearful impression as to what happened when the state was driven, in the last resort, to enforce its will.

I had at first been inclined to picture Kalliboas as a priest, but I soon found that was a misconception. In this community there was no priesthood strictly on all fours with that of the outer world, for the very simple reason that there was no religion--or at least nothing in the way of religious dogma imposed upon the people. Absolute free thought regarding the position of man in the universe was enjoyed and encouraged, and though, as we found when we were able to go into the subject more deeply, the great mass of the people held unanimous views on such matters, it was only because the wonderful knowledge possessed by their scientists and commonly shared by the whole community tended to lead them in the one direction. I shall write more about that scientific knowledge later on.

Kalliboas startled us a good deal when he told us he was ninety-seven years old, but there could be no doubt about the figure, for Poyning got him to repeat it. Though grey-haired, he stood as straight and moved as supply as an active man of middle age.

'There were many old men among the people you saw when you were brought here,' he said. 'Some well beyond one hundred years. We are born into this valley in health, and live in harmony with nature, and are without sickness.'

It occurred to me afterwards to wonder why the people, if they were such a healthy race as Kalliboas represented, had never overflowed the margins of the valley; and I hadn't studied them long before I came to suspect they had some very effective method of keeping the population stationary, though what it actually was I never discovered.

'What do you call your state?' inquired Poyning.

'We call it Hellas.'

'That is what in our country we call Greece. But there is still a Greece, far beyond the mountains, which is the same country as the Hellas of old.'

I saw Poyning's face suddenly fixed in a gape of amazement.

'What is it?' I cried.

'He says,' replied Stephen Poyning, '_that they are well aware of that_.'

There were two of us open-mouthed now. It was our first inkling that this hidden race had knowledge of the outer world. Had we known then how that knowledge was obtained, I make no doubt we should have gaped more.

'How did your people come here in the first place?' asked Poyning at length.

'Our forefathers came over the mountains,' replied Kalliboas.

'And are we the first strangers who have ever penetrated into the valley?'

It seemed to me that Kalliboas was looking very queerly into Poyning's face when he said this. Also, the old man's manner had grown suddenly stiff, and he now rose as if ignoring the question or not hearing it at all.

'Come,' he said. 'It is commanded that to-day you shall witness an important event in our history. We will depart.'

It was a day of brilliant sunshine. Outside the guest-house we found the broad streets thickly lined with city folk, who presented a distinctly imposing effect with their universal white robes and bare heads. The crowd was plainly excited, yet there was always that air of grave restraint about them, and though conversation was general it never rose above a loud hum. We followed Kalliboas to a point where the buildings fell away on all sides, leaving a big circular space paved with marble and ornamented in the centre by a statue I took to represent the Winged Victory. Thus far, but not a step farther, the crowd came. I saw no cordon barring the way, and heard no order given: they simply seemed to stop of their own accord, and I could only suppose it was one of those strange unwritten laws we had heard about that forbade them to advance. We ourselves passed on into a neighbourhood where the architecture increased in size and splendour, and at last came to a halt before the largest, certainly the most magnificent building we had yet seen. Like all the others, it was pure white marble, of perfect proportion and design, yet the carving of its Corinthian capitals and friezes in high relief distinguished it even in a city of superb architecture. I would say, without fear of exaggeration, that it was the greatest masterpiece of chisel-work now extant upon this earth.

A large throng had ranged themselves on the steps before the building, and from their age and imposing mien I inferred these men to be the dignitaries of the city; yet even among persons of such obvious consideration the arrival of Kalliboas created a stir. Our coming was the signal for the whole body to mount the steps and into the building. We found ourselves in a large hall filled with soft light from windows of wonderful carven tracery at the sides, and floored with marble slabs so broad that for some time I couldn't detect a join. There was a solemn hush in this chamber, where all remained in perfect stillness. Never have I felt so lost as then, when we stood, Poyning and I, in the midst of this levée of giants, many of whom topped me by a head, while Poyning could hardly have reached to the level of their breasts. There was a long wait, then, at some sign I couldn't see, the assembly moved forward with a curious whisper of soft leather sandals over the marble floor.

We filtered through a cloister of marble pillars into an inner hall, larger than the first and dimmer. Each man now dropped to his knees, whereupon we, at a sign from Kalliboas, did likewise; and as everybody remained kneeling, I was able by leaning to one side to see across the hall where two thrones, both occupied, faced us. There advanced from one side an immensely tall figure, whom I shall call the high priest, though as I have already noted in the case of Kalliboas the term priest is really a misnomer. The seated forms rose and knelt before the thrones, still facing us. I caught the gleam of something bright against one of the dark heads. It was a circlet of gold. The man who wore it raised both hands and removed this from his head, handing it to the high priest, who straightway laid it on the brow of the other. There could be no doubt what we were looking at. It was a ceremony of abdication.

At this point the scene became wrapped in a curious mistiness, to which for some moments I couldn't assign a cause. Then I saw it was a very fine gauze curtain that had swung silently across the building between us and the two thrones. I was so engrossed in this that I didn't notice what was happening behind, but when I looked again, one of the figures had vanished, leaving the throne empty. The high priest now withdrew to the side of the hall, whence he returned leading by the hand a woman, tall and queenly, as could be seen even at that distance and in that twilight, who mounted the vacant throne. The pair stood together, then knelt, when once again I saw the gleaming circlet of gold removed and proffered to the high priest, who laid it on the brow of the woman. Then came across the dead silence a mutter of words solemnly intoned, which continued for some minutes, after which the kneeling pair resumed their thrones.

Of that much I have written confidently, but of what followed I cannot be so sure, though I have striven my hardest to extract a coherent picture of it from my jumbled recollection. Somewhere in the great hall arose an elusive, solemn music, like instruments played with muted strings. Then not only did the scene before us grow clearer by reason of the lifting of the gauze curtain, but in some mysterious way the whole place was suffused with brighter light. For perhaps ten seconds those two magnificent figures were clearly visible to our eyes. I remained staring, fascinated, until I realised that all the rest of the assembly had laid their foreheads on the cold marble floor.

I have a confused sense of pacing back towards the doorway and the brilliant outer sunlight, and of Poyning's dumbfounded look as he walked beside me in the middle of the crowd. I knew that he, like myself, had recognised the newly throned prince as the man we had known as Saunders Philipson, but the other and more startling recognition he couldn't have made. It was that, I imagine, that caused me to need Poyning's supporting arm on the way out: things were swimming round me. In the brief interval of light, before I bowed my head with the rest, I had looked upon and remembered the countenance of that glorious woman. And unless I had gone blind or mad, _she was Philipson's mysterious visitor of Nanking_.