“But what is reality?”
asked the gnomelike man. He gestured at the tall
banks of buildings that loomed around Central Park,
with their countless windows glowing like the cave
fires of a city of Cro-Magnon people. “All
is dream, all is illusion; I am your vision as you
are mine.”
Dan Burke, struggling for clarity
of thought through the fumes of liquor, stared without
comprehension at the tiny figure of his companion.
He began to regret the impulse that had driven him
to leave the party to seek fresh air in the park,
and to fall by chance into the company of this diminutive
old madman. But he had needed escape; this was
one party too many, and not even the presence of Claire
with her trim ankles could hold him there. He
felt an angry desire to go home not to
his hotel, but home to Chicago and to the comparative
peace of the Board of Trade. But he was leaving
tomorrow anyway.
“You drink,” said the
elfin, bearded face, “to make real a dream.
Is it not so? Either to dream that what you seek
is yours, or else to dream that what you hate is conquered.
You drink to escape reality, and the irony is that
even reality is a dream.”
“Cracked!” thought Dan again.
“Or so,” concluded the other, “says
the philosopher Berkeley.”
“Berkeley?” echoed Dan.
His head was clearing; memories of a Sophomore course
in Elementary Philosophy drifted back. “Bishop
Berkeley, eh?”
“You know him, then? The
philosopher of Idealism no? the
one who argues that we do not see, feel, hear, taste
the object, but that we have only the sensation of
seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting.”
“I sort of recall it.”
“Hah! But sensations are
mental phenomena. They exist in our minds.
How, then, do we know that the objects themselves do
not exist only in our minds?” He waved again
at the light-flecked buildings. “You do
not see that wall of masonry; you perceive only a
sensation, a feeling of sight. The rest
you interpret.”
“You see the same thing,” retorted Dan.
“How do you know I do?
Even if you knew that what I call red would not be
green could you see through my eyes even
if you knew that, how do you know that I too am not
a dream of yours?”
Dan laughed. “Of course
nobody knows anything. You just get what
information you can through the windows of your five
senses, and then make your guesses. When they’re
wrong, you pay the penalty.” His mind was
clear now save for a mild headache. “Listen,”
he said suddenly. “You can argue a reality
away to an illusion; that’s easy. But if
your friend Berkeley is right, why can’t you
take a dream and make it real? If it works one
way, it must work the other.”
The beard waggled; elf-bright eyes
glittered queerly at him. “All artists
do that,” said the old man softly. Dan felt
that something more quivered on the verge of utterance.
“That’s an evasion,”
he grunted. “Anybody can tell the difference
between a picture and the real thing, or between a
movie and life.”
“But,” whispered the other,
“the realer the better, no? And if one could
make a a movie very real
indeed, what would you say then?”
“Nobody can, though.”
The eyes glittered strangely again. “I
can!” he whispered. “I did!”
“Did what?”
“Made real a dream.”
The voice turned angry. “Fools! I bring
it here to sell to Westman, the camera people, and
what do they say? ’It isn’t clear.
Only one person can use it at a time. It’s
too expensive.’ Fools! Fools!”
“Huh?”
“Listen! I’m Albert
Ludwig Professor Ludwig.”
As Dan was silent, he continued, “It means nothing
to you, eh? But listen a movie that
gives one sight and sound. Suppose now I add
taste, smell, even touch, if your interest is taken
by the story. Suppose I make it so that you are
in the story, you speak to the shadows, and the shadows
reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story
is all about you, and you are in it. Would that
be to make real a dream?”
“How the devil could you do that?”
“How? How? But simply!
First my liquid positive, then my magic spectacles.
I photograph the story in a liquid with light-sensitive
chromates. I build up a complex solution do
you see? I add taste chemically and sound electrically.
And when the story is recorded, then I put the solution
in my spectacle my movie projector.
I electrolyze the solution, break it down; the older
chromates go first, and out comes the story,
sight, sound, smell, taste all!”
“Touch?”
“If your interest is taken,
your mind supplies that.” Eagerness crept
into his voice. “You will look at it, Mr. ?”
“Burke,” said Dan.
“A swindle!” he thought. Then a spark
of recklessness glowed out of the vanishing fumes
of alcohol. “Why not?” he grunted.
He rose; Ludwig, standing, came scarcely
to his shoulder. A queer gnomelike old man, Dan
thought as he followed him across the park and into
one of the scores of apartment hotels in the vicinity.
In his room Ludwig fumbled in a bag,
producing a device vaguely reminiscent of a gas mask.
There were goggles and a rubber mouthpiece; Dan examined
it curiously, while the little bearded professor brandished
a bottle of watery liquid.
“Here it is!” he gloated.
“My liquid positive, the story. Hard photography infernally
hard, therefore the simplest story. A Utopia just
two characters and you, the audience. Now, put
the spectacles on. Put them on and tell me what
fools the Westman people are!” He decanted some
of the liquid into the mask, and trailed a twisted
wire to a device on the table. “A rectifier,”
he explained. “For the electrolysis.”
“Must you use all the liquid?”
asked Dan. “If you use part, do you see
only part of the story? And which part?”
“Every drop has all of it, but
you must fill the eye-pieces.” Then as
Dan slipped the device gingerly on, “So!
Now what do you see?”
“Not a damn’ thing.
Just the windows and the lights across the street.”
“Of course. But now I start the electrolysis.
Now!”
There was a moment of chaos.
The liquid before Dan’s eyes clouded suddenly
white, and formless sounds buzzed. He moved to
tear the device from his head, but emerging forms
in the mistiness caught his interest. Giant things
were writhing there.
The scene steadied; the whiteness
was dissipating like mist in summer. Unbelieving,
still gripping the arms of that unseen chair, he was
staring at a forest. But what a forest! Incredible,
unearthly, beautiful! Smooth boles ascended inconceivably
toward a brightening sky, trees bizarre as the forests
of the Carboniferous age. Infinitely overhead
swayed misty fronds, and the verdure showed brown and
green in the heights. And there were birds at
least, curiously lovely pipings and twitterings were
all about him though he saw no creatures thin
elfin whistlings like fairy bugles sounded softly.
He sat frozen, entranced. A louder
fragment of melody drifted down to him, mounting in
exquisite, ecstatic bursts, now clear as sounding
metal, now soft as remembered music. For a moment
he forgot the chair whose arms he gripped, the miserable
hotel room invisibly about him, old Ludwig, his aching
head. He imagined himself alone in the midst of
that lovely glade. “Eden!” he muttered,
and the swelling music of unseen voices answered.
Some measure of reason returned.
“Illusion!” he told himself. Clever
optical devices, not reality. He groped for the
chair’s arm, found it, and clung to it; he scraped
his feet and found again an inconsistency. To
his eyes the ground was mossy verdure; to his touch
it was merely a thin hotel carpet.
The elfin buglings sounded gently.
A faint, deliciously sweet perfume breathed against
him; he glanced up to watch the opening of a great
crimson blossom on the nearest tree, and a tiny reddish
sun edged into the circle of sky above him. The
fairy orchestra swelled louder in its light, and the
notes sent a thrill of wistfulness through him.
Illusion? If it were, it made reality almost
unbearable; he wanted to believe that somewhere somewhere
this side of dreams, there actually existed this region
of loveliness. An outpost of Paradise? Perhaps.
And then far through the
softening mists, he caught a movement that was not
the swaying of verdure, a shimmer of silver more solid
than mist. Something approached. He watched
the figure as it moved, now visible, now hidden by
trees; very soon he perceived that it was human, but
it was almost upon him before he realized that it
was a girl.
She wore a robe of silvery, half-translucent
stuff, luminous as starbeams; a thin band of silver
bound glowing black hair about her forehead, and other
garment or ornament she had none. Her tiny white
feet were bare to the mossy forest floor as she stood
no more than a pace from him, staring dark-eyed.
The thin music sounded again; she smiled.
Dan summoned stumbling thoughts.
Was this being also illusion? Had she
no more reality than the loveliness of the forest?
He opened his lips to speak, but a strained excited
voice sounded in his ears. “Who are you?”
Had he spoken? The voice had come as if from another,
like the sound of one’s words in fever.
The girl smiled again. “English!”
she said in queer soft tones. “I can speak
a little English.” She spoke slowly, carefully.
“I learned it from” she hesitated “my
mother’s father, whom they call the Grey Weaver.”
Again came the voice in Dan’s ears. “Who
are you?”
“I am called Galatea,” she said.
“I came to find you.”
“To find me?” echoed the voice that was
Dan’s.
“Leucon, who is called the Grey
Weaver, told me,” she explained smiling.
“He said you will stay with us until the second
noon from this.” She cast a quick slanting
glance at the pale sun now full above the clearing,
then stepped closer. “What are you called?”
“Dan,” he muttered. His voice sounded
oddly different.
“What a strange name!”
said the girl. She stretched out her bare arm.
“Come,” she smiled.
Dan touched her extended hand, feeling
without any surprise the living warmth of her fingers.
He had forgotten the paradoxes of illusion; this was
no longer illusion to him, but reality itself.
It seemed to him that he followed her, walking over
the shadowed turf that gave with springy crunch beneath
his tread, though Galatea left hardly an imprint.
He glanced down, noting that he himself wore a silver
garment, and that his feet were bare; with the glance
he felt a feathery breeze on his body and a sense
of mossy earth on his feet.
“Galatea,” said his voice.
“Galatea, what place is this? What language
do you speak?”
She glanced back laughing. “Why,
this is Paracosma, of course, and this is our language.”
“Paracosma,” muttered
Dan. “Para cosma!” A fragment
of Greek that had survived somehow from a Sophomore
course a decade in the past came strangely back to
him. Paracosma! Land-beyond-the-world!
Galatea cast a smiling glance at him.
“Does the real world seem strange,” she
queried, “after that shadow land of yours?”
“Shadow land?” echoed
Dan, bewildered. “This is shadow, not
my world.”
The girl’s smile turned quizzical.
“Poof!” she retorted with an impudently
lovely pout. “And I suppose, then, that
I am the phantom instead of you!” She
laughed. “Do I seem ghostlike?”
Dan made no reply; he was puzzling
over unanswerable questions as he trod behind the
lithe figure of his guide. The aisle between the
unearthly trees widened, and the giants were fewer.
It seemed a mile, perhaps, before a sound of tinkling
water obscured that other strange music; they emerged
on the bank of a little river, swift and crystalline,
that rippled and gurgled its way from glowing pool
to flashing rapids, sparkling under the pale sun.
Galatea bent over the brink and cupped her hands,
raising a few mouthfuls of water to her lips; Dan
followed her example, finding the liquid stinging cold.
“How do we cross?” he asked.
“You can wade up there,” the
dryad who led him gestured to a sun-lit shallows above
a tiny falls “but I always cross here.”
She poised herself for a moment on the green bank,
then dove like a silver arrow into the pool.
Dan followed; the water stung his body like champagne,
but a stroke or two carried him across to where Galatea
had already emerged with a glistening of creamy bare
limbs. Her garment clung tight as a metal sheath
to her wet body; he felt a breath-taking thrill at
the sight of her. And then, miraculously, the
silver cloth was dry, the droplets rolled off as if
from oiled silk, and they moved briskly on.
The incredible forest had ended with
the river; they walked over a meadow studded with
little, many-hued, star-shaped flowers, whose fronds
underfoot were soft as a lawn. Yet still the sweet
pipings followed them, now loud, now whisper-soft,
in a tenuous web of melody.
“Galatea!” said Dan suddenly.
“Where is the music coming from?”
She looked back amazed. “You
silly one!” she laughed. “From the
flowers, of course. See!” she plucked a
purple star and held it to his ear; true enough, a
faint and plaintive melody hummed out of the blossom.
She tossed it in his startled face and skipped on.
A little copse appeared ahead, not
of the gigantic forest trees, but of lesser growths,
bearing flowers and fruits of iridescent colors, and
a tiny brook bubbled through. And there stood
the objective of their journey a building
of white, marble-like stone, single-storied and vine
covered, with broad glassless windows. They trod
upon a path of bright pebbles to the arched entrance,
and here, on an intricate stone bench, sat a grey-bearded
patriarchal individual. Galatea addressed him
in a liquid language that reminded Dan of the flower-pipings;
then she turned. “This is Leucon,”
she said, as the ancient rose from his seat and spoke
in English.
“We are happy, Galatea and I,
to welcome you, since visitors are a rare pleasure
here, and those from your shadowy country most rare.”
Dan uttered puzzled words of thanks,
and the old man nodded, reseating himself on the carven
bench; Galatea skipped through the arched entrance,
and Dan, after an irresolute moment, dropped to the
remaining bench. Once more his thoughts were
whirling in perplexed turbulence. Was all this
indeed but illusion? Was he sitting, in actuality,
in a prosaic hotel room, peering through magic spectacles
that pictured this world about him, or was he, transported
by some miracle, really sitting here in this land
of loveliness? He touched the bench; stone, hard
and unyielding, met his fingers.
“Leucon,” said his voice,
“how did you know I was coming?”
“I was told,” said the other.
“By whom?”
“By no one.”
“Why someone must have told
you!”
The Grey Weaver shook his solemn head. “I
was just told.”
Dan ceased his questioning, content
for the moment to drink in the beauty about him and
then Galatea returned bearing a crystal bowl of the
strange fruits. They were piled in colorful disorder,
red, purple, orange and yellow, pear-shaped, egg-shaped,
and clustered spheroids fantastic, unearthly.
He selected a pale, transparent ovoid, bit into it,
and was deluged by a flood of sweet liquid, to the
amusement of the girl. She laughed and chose a
similar morsel; biting a tiny puncture in the end,
she squeezed the contents into her mouth. Dan
took a different sort, purple and tart as Rhenish wine,
and then another, filled with edible, almond-like
seeds. Galatea laughed delightedly at his surprises,
and even Leucon smiled a grey smile. Finally
Dan tossed the last husk into the brook beside them,
where it danced briskly toward the river.
“Galatea,” he said, “do
you ever go to a city? What cities are in Paracosma?”
“Cities? What are cities?”
“Places where many people live close together.”
“Oh,” said the girl frowning. “No.
There are no cities here.”
“Then where are the people of Paracosma?
You must have neighbors.”
The girl looked puzzled. “A
man and a woman live off there,” she said, gesturing
toward a distant blue range of hills dim on the horizon.
“Far away over there. I went there once,
but Leucon and I prefer the valley.”
“But Galatea!” protested
Dan. “Are you and Leucon alone in this valley?
Where what happened to your parents your
father and mother?”
“They went away. That way toward
the sunrise. They’ll return some day.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Why, foolish one! What could hinder them?”
“Wild beasts,” said Dan.
“Poisonous insects, disease, flood, storm, lawless
people, death!”
“I never heard those words,”
said Galatea. “There are no such things
here.” She sniffed contemptuously.
“Lawless people!”
“Not death?”
“What is death?”
“It’s ”
Dan paused helplessly. “It’s like
falling asleep and never waking. It’s what
happens to everyone at the end of life.”
“I never heard of such a thing
as the end of life!” said the girl decidedly.
“There isn’t such a thing.”
“What happens, then,”
queried Dan desperately, “when one grows old?”
“Nothing, silly! No one
grows old unless he wants to, like Leucon. A
person grows to the age he likes best and then stops.
It’s a law!”
Dan gathered his chaotic thoughts.
He stared into Galatea’s dark, lovely eyes.
“Have you stopped yet?”
The dark eyes dropped; he was amazed
to see a deep, embarrassed flush spread over her cheeks.
She looked at Leucon nodding reflectively on his bench,
then back to Dan, meeting his gaze.
“Not yet,” he said.
“And when will you, Galatea?”
“When I have had the one child
permitted me. You see” she stared
down at her dainty toes “one cannot bear
children afterwards.”
“Permitted? Permitted by whom?”
“By a law.”
“Laws! Is everything here
governed by laws? What of chance and accidents?”
“What are those chance and accidents?”
“Things unexpected things unforeseen.”
“Nothing is unforeseen,”
said Galatea, still soberly. She repeated slowly,
“Nothing is unforeseen.” He fancied
her voice was wistful.
Leucon looked up. “Enough
of this,” he said abruptly. He turned to
Dan, “I know these words of yours chance,
disease, death. They are not for Paracosma.
Keep them in your unreal country.”
“Where did you hear them, then?”
“From Galatea’s mother,”
said the Grey Weaver, “who had them from your
predecessor a phantom who visited here before
Galatea was born.”
Dan had a vision of Ludwig’s face. “What
was he like?”
“Much like you.”
“But his name?”
The old man’s mouth was suddenly
grim. “We do not speak of him,” he
said and rose, entering the dwelling in cold silence.
“He goes to weave,” said
Galatea after a moment. Her lovely, piquant face
was still troubled.
“What does he weave?”
“This,” She fingered the
silver cloth of her gown. “He weaves it
out of metal bars on a very clever machine. I
do not know the method.”
“Who made the machine?”
“It was here.”
“But Galatea! Who built the
house? Who planted these fruit trees?”
“They were here. The house
and trees were always here.” She lifted
her eyes. “I told you everything had been
foreseen, from the beginning until eternity everything.
The house and trees and machine were ready for Leucon
and my parents and me. There is a place for my
child, who will be a girl, and a place for her child and
so on forever.”
Dan thought a moment. “Were you born here?”
“I don’t know.”
He noted in sudden concern that her eyes were glistening
with tears.
“Galatea, dear! Why are you unhappy?
What’s wrong?”
“Why, nothing!” She shook
her black curls, smiled suddenly at him. “What
could be wrong? How can one be unhappy in Paracosma?”
She sprang erect and seized his hand. “Come!
Let’s gather fruit for tomorrow.”
She darted off in a whirl of flashing
silver, and Dan followed her around the wing of the
edifice. Graceful as a dancer she leaped for a
branch above her head, caught it laughingly, and tossed
a great golden globe to him. She loaded his arms
with the bright prizes and sent him back to the bench,
and when he returned, she piled it so full of fruit
that a deluge of colorful spheres dropped around him.
She laughed again, and sent them spinning into the
brook with thrusts of her rosy toes, while Dan watched
her with an aching wistfulness. Then suddenly
she was facing him; for a long, tense instant they
stood motionless, eyes upon eyes, and then she turned
away and walked slowly around to the arched portal.
He followed her with his burden of fruit; his mind
was once more in a turmoil of doubt and perplexity.
The little sun was losing itself behind
the trees of that colossal forest to the west, and
a coolness stirred among long shadows. The brook
was purple-hued in the dusk, but its cheery notes mingled
still with the flower music. Then the sun was
hidden; the shadow fingers darkened the meadow; of
a sudden the flowers were still, and the brook gurgled
alone in a world of silence. In silence too,
Dan entered the doorway.
The chamber within was a spacious
one, floored with large black and white squares; exquisite
benches of carved marble were here and there.
Old Leucon, in a far corner, bent over an intricate,
glistening mechanism, and as Dan entered he drew a
shining length of silver cloth from it, folded it,
and placed it carefully aside. There was a curious,
unearthly fact that Dan noted; despite windows open
to the evening, no night insects circled the globes
that glowed at intervals from niches in the walls.
Galatea stood in a doorway to his
left, leaning half-wearily against the frame; he placed
the bowl of fruit on a bench at the entrance and moved
to her side.
“This is yours,” she said,
indicating the room beyond. He looked in upon
a pleasant, smaller chamber; a window framed a starry
square, and a thin, swift, nearly silent stream of
water gushed from the mouth of a carved human head
on the left wall, curving into a six-foot basin sunk
in the floor. Another of the graceful benches
covered with the silver cloth completed the furnishings;
a single glowing sphere, pendant by a chain from the
ceiling, illuminated the room. Dan turned to the
girl, whose eyes were still unwontedly serious.
“This is ideal,” he said,
“but, Galatea, how am I to turn out the light?”
“Turn it out?” she said.
“You must cap it so!” A faint
smile showed again on her lips as she dropped a metal
covering over the shining sphere. They stood
tense in the darkness; Dan sensed her nearness achingly,
and then the light was on once more. She moved
toward the door, and there paused, taking his hand.
“Dear shadow,” she said
softly, “I hope your dreams are music.”
She was gone.
Dan stood irresolute in his chamber;
he glanced into the large room where Leucon still
bent over his work, and the Grey Weaver raised a hand
in a solemn salutation, but said nothing. He felt
no urge for the old man’s silent company and
turned back into his room to prepare for slumber.
Almost instantly, it seemed, the dawn
was upon him and bright elfin pipings were all about
him, while the odd ruddy sun sent a broad slanting
plane of light across the room. He rose as fully
aware of his surroundings as if he had not slept at
all; the pool tempted him and he bathed in stinging
water. Thereafter he emerged into the central
chamber, noting curiously that the globes still glowed
in dim rivalry to the daylight. He touched one
casually; it was cool as metal to his fingers, and
lifted freely from its standard. For a moment
he held the cold flaming thing in his hands, then
replaced it and wandered into the dawn.
Galatea was dancing up the path, eating
a strange fruit as rosy as her lips. She was
merry again, once more the happy nymph who had greeted
him, and she gave him a bright smile as he chose a
sweet green ovoid for his breakfast.
“Come on!” she called. “To
the river!”
She skipped away toward the unbelievable
forest; Dan followed, marveling that her lithe speed
was so easy a match for his stronger muscles.
Then they were laughing in the pool, splashing about
until Galatea drew herself to the bank, glowing and
panting. He followed her as she lay relaxed;
strangely, he was neither tired nor breathless, with
no sense of exertion. A question recurred to
him, as yet unasked.
“Galatea,” said his voice, “Whom
will you take as mate?”
Her eyes went serious. “I
don’t know,” she said. “At the
proper time he will come. That is a law.”
“And will you be happy?”
“Of course.” She seemed troubled.
“Isn’t everyone happy?”
“Not where I live, Galatea.”
“Then that must be a strange
place that ghostly world of yours.
A rather terrible place.”
“It is, often enough,”
Dan agreed. “I wish ” He
paused. What did he wish? Was he not talking
to an illusion, a dream, an apparition? He looked
at the girl, at her glistening black hair, her eyes,
her soft white skin, and then, for a tragic moment,
he tried to feel the arms of that drab hotel chair
beneath his hands and failed. He smiled;
he reached out his fingers to touch her bare arm,
and for an instant she looked back at him with startled,
sober eyes, and sprang to her feet.
“Come on! I want to show
you my country.” She set off down the stream,
and Dan rose reluctantly to follow.
What a day that was! They traced
the little river from still pool to singing rapids,
and ever about them were the strange twitterings and
pipings that were the voices of the flowers. Every
turn brought a new vista of beauty; every moment brought
a new sense of delight. They talked or were silent;
when they were thirsty, the cool river was at hand;
when they were hungry, fruit offered itself. When
they were tired, there was always a deep pool and
a mossy bank; and when they were rested, a new beauty
beckoned. The incredible trees towered in numberless
forms of fantasy, but on their own side of the river
was still the flower-starred meadow. Galatea
twisted him a bright-blossomed garland for his head,
and thereafter he moved always with a sweet singing
about him. But little by little the red sun slanted
toward the forest, and the hours dripped away.
It was Dan who pointed it out, and reluctantly they
turned homeward.
As they returned, Galatea sang a strange
song, plaintive and sweet as the medley of river and
flower music. And again her eyes were sad.
“What song is that?” he asked.
“It is a song sung by another
Galatea,” she answered, “who is my mother.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “I will make
it into English for you.” She sang:
“The River lies in flower
and fern,
In
flower and fern it breathes a song.
It breathes a song of your
return,
Of
your return in years too long.
In years too long its murmurs
bring
Its
murmurs bring their vain replies,
Their vain replies the flowers
sing,
The
flowers sing, ‘The River lies!’”
Her voice quavered on the final notes;
there was silence save for the tinkle of water and
the flower bugles. Dan said, “Galatea ”
and paused. The girl was again somber-eyed, tearful.
He said huskily, “That’s a sad song, Galatea.
Why was your mother sad? You said everyone was
happy in Paracosma.”
“She broke a law,” replied
the girl tonelessly. “It is the inevitable
way to sorrow.” She faced him. “She
fell in love with a phantom!” Galatea said.
“One of your shadowy race, who came and stayed
and then had to go back. So when her appointed
lover came, it was too late; do you understand?
But she yielded finally to the law, and is forever
unhappy, and goes wandering from place to place about
the world.” She paused. “I shall
never break a law,” she said defiantly.
Dan took her hand. “I would
not have you unhappy, Galatea. I want you always
happy.”
She shook her head. “I
am happy,” she said, and smiled a tender,
wistful smile.
They were silent a long time as they
trudged the way homeward. The shadows of the
forest giants reached out across the river as the sun
slipped behind them. For a distance they walked
hand in hand, but as they reached the path of pebbly
brightness near the house, Galatea drew away and sped
swiftly before him. Dan followed as quickly as
he might; when he arrived, Leucon sat on his bench
by the portal, and Galatea had paused on the threshold.
She watched his approach with eyes in which he again
fancied the glint of tears.
“I am very tired,” she said, and slipped
within.
Dan moved to follow, but the old man raised a staying
hand.
“Friend from the shadows,” he said, “will
you hear me a moment?”
Dan paused, acquiesced, and dropped
to the opposite bench. He felt a sense of foreboding;
nothing pleasant awaited him.
“There is something to be said,”
Leucon continued, “and I say it without desire
to pain you, if phantoms feel pain. It is this:
Galatea loves you, though I think she has not yet
realized it.”
“I love her too,” said Dan.
The Grey Weaver stared at him.
“I do not understand. Substance, indeed,
may love shadow, but how can shadow love substance?”
“I love her,” insisted Dan.
“Then woe to both of you!
For this is impossible in Paracosma; it is a confliction
with the laws. Galatea’s mate is appointed,
perhaps even now approaching.”
“Laws! Laws!” muttered
Dan. “Whose laws are they? Not Galatea’s
nor mine!”
“But they are,” said the
Grey Weaver. “It is not for you nor for
me to criticize them though I yet wonder
what power could annul them to permit your presence
here!”
“I had no voice in your laws.”
The old man peered at him in the dusk.
“Has anyone, anywhere, a voice in the laws?”
he queried.
“In my country we have,” retorted Dan.
“Madness!” growled Leucon.
“Man-made laws! Of what use are man-made
laws with only man-made penalties, or none at all?
If you shadows make a law that the wind shall blow
only from the east, does the west wind obey it?”
“We do pass such laws,”
acknowledged Dan bitterly. “They may be
stupid, but they’re no more unjust than yours.”
“Ours,” said the Grey
Weaver, “are the unalterable laws of the world,
the laws of Nature. Violation is always unhappiness.
I have seen it; I have known it in another, in Galatea’s
mother, though Galatea is stronger than she.”
He paused. “Now,” he continued, “I
ask only for mercy; your stay is short, and I ask
that you do no more harm than is already done.
Be merciful; give her no more to regret.”
He rose and moved through the archway;
when Dan followed a moment later, he was already removing
a square of silver from his device in the corner.
Dan turned silent and unhappy to his own chamber, where
the jet of water tinkled faintly as a distant bell.
Again he rose at the glow of dawn,
and again Galatea was before him, meeting him at the
door with her bowl of fruit. She deposited her
burden, giving him a wan little smile of greeting,
and stood facing him as if waiting.
“Come with me, Galatea,” he said.
“Where?”
“To the river bank. To talk.”
They trudged in silence to the brink
of Galatea’s pool. Dan noted a subtle difference
in the world about him; outlines were vague, the thin
flower pipings less audible, and the very landscape
was queerly unstable, shifting like smoke when he
wasn’t looking at it directly. And strangely,
though he had brought the girl here to talk to her,
he had now nothing to say, but sat in aching silence
with his eyes on the loveliness of her face.
Galatea pointed at the red ascending
sun. “So short a time,” she said,
“before you go back to your phantom world.
I shall be sorry, very sorry.” She touched
his cheek with her fingers. “Dear shadow!”
“Suppose,” said Dan huskily,
“that I won’t go. What if I won’t
leave here?” His voice grew fiercer. “I’ll
not go! I’m going to stay!”
The calm mournfulness of the girl’s
face checked him; he felt the irony of struggling
against the inevitable progress of a dream. She
spoke. “Had I the making of the laws, you
should stay. But you can’t, dear one.
You can’t!”
Forgotten now were the words of the
Grey Weaver. “I love you, Galatea,”
he said.
“And I you,” she whispered.
“See, dearest shadow, how I break the same law
my mother broke, and am glad to face the sorrow it
will bring.” She placed her hand tenderly
over his. “Leucon is very wise and I am
bound to obey him, but this is beyond his wisdom because
he let himself grow old.” She paused.
“He let himself grow old,” she repeated
slowly. A strange light gleamed in her dark eyes
as she turned suddenly to Dan.
“Dear one!” she said tensely.
“That thing that happens to the old that
death of yours! What follows it?”
“What follows death?” he echoed.
“Who knows?”
“But ” Her
voice was quivering. “But one can’t
simply vanish! There must be an awakening.”
“Who knows?” said Dan
again. “There are those who believe we wake
to a happier world, but ” He shook
his head hopelessly.
“It must be true! Oh, it
must be!” Galatea cried. “There must
be more for you than the mad world you speak of!”
She leaned very close. “Suppose, dear,”
she said, “that when my appointed lover arrives,
I send him away. Suppose I bear no child, but
let myself grow old, older than Leucon, old until
death. Would I join you in your happier world?”
“Galatea!” he cried distractedly.
“Oh, my dearest what a terrible thought!”
“More terrible than you know,”
she whispered, still very close to him. “It
is more than violation of a law; it is rebellion!
Everything is planned, everything was foreseen, except
this; and if I bear no child, her place will be left
unfilled, and the places of her children, and of their
children, and so on until some day the whole great
plan of Paracosma fails of whatever its destiny was
to be.” Her whisper grew very faint and
fearful. “It is destruction, but I love
you more than I fear death!”
Dan’s arms were about her. “No, Galatea!
No! Promise me!”
She murmured, “I can promise
and then break my promise.” She drew his
head down; their lips touched, and he felt a fragrance
and a taste like honey in her kiss. “At
least,” she breathed. “I can give
you a name by which to love you. Philometros!
Measure of my love!”
“A name?” muttered Dan.
A fantastic idea shot through his mind a
way of proving to himself that all this was reality,
and not just a page that any one could read who wore
old Ludwig’s magic spectacles. If Galatea
would speak his name! Perhaps, he thought daringly,
perhaps then he could stay! He thrust her away.
“Galatea!” he cried. “Do you
remember my name?”
She nodded silently, her unhappy eyes on his.
“Then say it! Say it, dear!”
She stared at him dumbly, miserably, but made no sound.
“Say it, Galatea!” he
pleaded desperately. “My name, dear just
my name!” Her mouth moved; she grew pale with
effort and Dan could have sworn that his name trembled
on her quivering lips, though no sound came.
At last she spoke. “I can’t,
dearest one! Oh, I can’t! A law forbids
it!” She stood suddenly erect, pallid as an ivory
carving. “Leucon calls!” she said,
and darted away. Dan followed along the pebbled
path, but her speed was beyond his powers; at the
portal he found only the Grey Weaver standing cold
and stern. He raised his hand as Dan appeared.
“Your time is short,”
he said. “Go, thinking of the havoc you
have done.”
“Where’s Galatea?” gasped Dan.
“I have sent her away.”
The old man blocked the entrance; for a moment Dan
would have struck him aside, but something withheld
him. He stared wildly about the meadow there!
A flash of silver beyond the river, at the edge of
the forest. He turned and raced toward it, while
motionless and cold the Grey Weaver watched him go.
“Galatea!” he called. “Galatea!”
He was over the river now, on the
forest bank, running through columned vistas that
whirled about him like mist. The world had gone
cloudy; fine flakes danced like snow before his eyes;
Paracosma was dissolving around him. Through
the chaos he fancied a glimpse of the girl, but closer
approach left him still voicing his hopeless cry of
“Galatea!”
After an endless time, he paused;
something familiar about the spot struck him, and
just as the red sun edged above him, he recognized
the place the very point at which he had
entered Paracosma! A sense of futility overwhelmed
him as for a moment he gazed at an unbelievable apparition a
dark window hung in midair before him through which
glowed rows of electric lights. Ludwig’s
window!
It vanished. But the trees writhed
and the sky darkened, and he swayed dizzily in turmoil.
He realized suddenly that he was no longer standing,
but sitting in the midst of the crazy glade, and his
hands clutched something smooth and hard the
arms of that miserable hotel chair. Then at last
he saw her, close before him Galatea, with
sorrow-stricken features, her tear-filled eyes on
his. He made a terrific effort to rise, stood
erect, and fell sprawling in a blaze of coruscating
lights.
He struggled to his knees; walls Ludwig’s
room encompassed him; he must have slipped
from the chair. The magic spectacles lay before
him, one lens splintered and spilling a fluid no longer
water-clear, but white as milk.
“God!” he muttered.
He felt shaken, sick, exhausted, with a bitter sense
of bereavement, and his head ached fiercely. The
room was drab, disgusting; he wanted to get out of
it. He glanced automatically at his watch:
four o’clock he must have sat here
nearly five hours. For the first time he noticed
Ludwig’s absence; he was glad of it and walked
dully out of the door to an automatic elevator.
There was no response to his ring; someone was using
the thing. He walked three flights to the street
and back to his own room.
In love with a vision! Worse in
love with a girl who had never lived, in a fantastic
Utopia that was literally nowhere! He threw himself
on his bed with a groan that was half a sob.
He saw finally the implication of
the name Galatea. Galatea Pygmalion’s
statue, given life by Venus in the ancient Grecian
myth. But his Galatea, warm and lovely
and vital, must remain forever without the gift of
life, since he was neither Pygmalion nor God.
He woke late in the morning, staring
uncomprehendingly about for the fountain and pool
of Paracosma. Slow comprehension dawned; how
much how much of last
night’s experience had been real? How much
was the product of alcohol? Or had old Ludwig
been right, and was there no difference between reality
and dream?
He changed his rumpled attire and
wandered despondently to the street. He found
Ludwig’s hotel at last; inquiry revealed that
the diminutive professor had checked out, leaving
no forwarding address.
What of it? Even Ludwig couldn’t
give what he sought, a living Galatea. Dan was
glad that he had disappeared; he hated the little professor.
Professor? Hypnotists called themselves “professors.”
He dragged through a weary day and then a sleepless
night back to Chicago.
It was mid-winter when he saw a suggestively
tiny figure ahead of him in the Loop. Ludwig!
Yet what use to hail him? His cry was automatic.
“Professor Ludwig!”
The elfin figure turned, recognized
him, smiled. They stepped into the shelter of
a building.
“I’m sorry about your
machine, Professor. I’d be glad to pay for
the damage.”
“Ach, that was nothing a
cracked glass. But you have you been
ill? You look much the worse.”
“It’s nothing,”
said Dan. “Your show was marvelous, Professor marvelous!
I’d have told you so, but you were gone when
it ended.”
Ludwig shrugged. “I went
to the lobby for a cigar. Five hours with a wax
dummy, you know!”
“It was marvelous!” repeated Dan.
“So real?” smiled the
other. “Only because you co-operated, then.
It takes self-hypnosis.”
“It was real, all right,”
agreed Dan glumly. “I don’t understand
it that strange beautiful country.”
“The trees were club-mosses
enlarged by a lens,” said Ludwig. “All
was trick photography, but stereoscopic, as I told
you three dimensional. The fruits
were rubber; the house is a summer building on our
campus Northern University. And the
voice was mine; you didn’t speak at all, except
your name at the first, and I left a blank for that.
I played your part, you see; I went around with the
photographic apparatus strapped on my head, to keep
the viewpoint always that of the observer. See?”
He grinned wryly. “Luckily I’m rather
short, or you’d have seemed a giant.”
“Wait a minute!” said
Dan, his mind whirling. “You say you played
my part. Then Galatea is she
real too?”
“Tea’s real enough,”
said the Professor. “My niece, a senior
at Northern, and likes dramatics. She helped
me out with the thing. Why? Want to meet
her?”
Dan answered vaguely, happily.
An ache had vanished; a pain was eased. Paracosma
was attainable at last!