It was like turning into a hothouse from a keen winter walk, our arrival at the beautiful but nerveless city after my life amongst the woodmen.
As for the people, they were delighted to have their princess back, but with the delight of children, fawning about her, singing, clapping hands, yet asking no questions as to where she had been, showing no appreciation of our adventures--a serious offence in my eyes--and, perhaps most important of all, no understanding of what I may call the political bearings of Heru's restoration, and how far their arch enemies beyond the sea might be inclined to attempt her recovery.
They were just delighted to have the princess back, and that was the end of it. Theirs was the joy of a vast nursery let loose. Flower processions were organised, garlands woven by the mile, a general order issued that the nation might stay up for an hour after bedtime, and in the vortex of that gentle rejoicing Heru was taken from me, and I saw her no more, till there happened the wildest scene of all you have shared with me so patiently.
Overlooked, unthanked, I turned sulky, and when this mood, one I can never maintain for long, wore off, I threw myself into the dissipation about me with angry zeal. I am frankly ashamed of the confession, but I was "a sailor ashore," and can only claim the indulgences proper to the situation. I laughed, danced, drank, through the night; Idrank deep of a dozen rosy ways to forgetfulness, till my mind was a great confusion, full of flitting pictures of love-liness, till life itself was an illusive pantomime, and my will but thistle-down on the folly of the moment. I drank with those gentle roisterers all through their starlit night, and if we stopped when morning came it was more from weariness than virtue. Then the yellow-robed slaves gave us the wine of recovery--alas! my faithful An was not amongst them--and all through the day we lay about in sodden happiness.
Towards nightfall I was myself again, not unfortunately with the headache well earned, but sufficiently remorseful to be in a vein to make good resolutions for the future.
In this mood I mingled with a happy crowd, all purpose-less and cheerful as usual, but before long began to feel the influence of one of those drifts, a universal turning in one direction, as seaweed turns when the tide changes, so char-acteristic of Martian society. It was dusk, a lovely soft velvet dusk, but not dark yet, and I said to a yellow-robed fairy at my side:
"Whither away, comrade? It is not eight bells yet. Surely we are not going to be put to bed so early as this?""No," said that smiling individual, "it is the princess.
We are going to listen to Princess Heru in the palace square. She reads the globe on the terrace again tonight, to see if omens are propitious for her marriage. She MUSTmarry, and you know the ceremony has been unavoidably postponed so far.""Unavoidably postponed?" Yes, Heaven wotted I was aware of the fact. And was Heru going to marry black Hath in such a hurry? And after all I had done for her?
It was scarcely decent, and I tried to rouse myself to rage over it, but somehow the seductive Martian contentment with any fate was getting into my veins. I was not yet altogether sunk in their slothful acceptance of the inevitable, but there was not the slightest doubt the hot red blood in me was turn-ing to vapid stuff such as did duty for the article in their veins. I mustered up a half-hearted frown at this unwelcome intelligence, turning with it on my face towards the slave girl; but she had slipped away into the throng, so the frown evaporated, and shrugging my shoulders I said to myself, "What does it matter? There are twenty others will do as well for me. If not one, why then obviously an-other, 'tis the only rational way to think, and at all events there is the magic globe. That may tell us something." And slipping my arm round the waist of the first disengaged girl--we were not then, mind you, in Atlantic City--I kissed her dimpling cheek unreproached, and gaily followed in the drift of humanity, trending with a low hum of pleasure towards the great white terraces under the palace porch.
How well I knew them! It was just such an evening Heru had consulted Fate in the same place once before; how much had happened since then! But there was little time or in-clination to think of those things now. The whole phantom city's population had drifted to one common centre. The crumbling seaward ramparts were all deserted; no soldier watch was kept to note if angry woodmen came from over seas; a soft wind blew in from off the brine, but told no tales;the streets were empty, and, when as we waited far away in the southern sky the earth planet presently got up, by its light Heru, herself again, came tripping down the steps to read her fate.
They had placed another magic globe under a shroud on a tripod for her. It stood within the charmed circle upon the terrace, and I was close by, although the princess did not see me.
Again that weird, fantastic dance commenced, the princess working herself up from the drowsiest undulations to a hur-ricane of emotion. Then she stopped close by the orb, and seized the corner of the web covering it. We saw the globe begin to beam with veiled magnificence at her touch.
Not an eye wavered, not a thought wandered from her in all that silent multitude. It was a moment of the keenest suspense, and just when it was at its height there came a strange sound of hurrying feet behind the outermost crowd, a murmur such as a great pack of wolves might make rushing through snow, while a soft long wail went up from the darkness.
Whether Heru understood it or not I cannot say, but she hesitated a moment, then swept the cloth from the orb of her fate.
And as its ghostly, self-emitting light beamed up in the darkness with weird brilliancy, there by it, in gold and furs and war panoply, huge, fierce, and lowering, stood--AR-HAPHIMSELF!
