On the Lightship Part 17

"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 older man, whose name, it seems, was Pop, sat down upon a stone and laughed.

"Gos.h.!.+ 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 relations.

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 a 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sage 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 circ.u.mspect. 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?--

THE UNEXPECTED LETTER

As much as I dislike superlatives, I must confess that nothing in my life has given me greater surprise than that letter addressed to me in a firm but unfamiliar hand, face upward on the counter of a small curiosity shop in an insignificant by-street of a strange city.