FullReads

I thought of the gangs of magnificently built men that I had seen at work in the fields. I looked at the strong and beautiful girl beside me. The drastic methods of the lords of Thule had at least brought about one thing–the highest possible physical condition of the race.

“Tell me,” I said, “do your gods interfere also in the matter of marriage?”

She gazed at me with her sincere and wondering eyes. “What is marriage?” she said, in much the same tone as she had inquired what a boat was.

I told her something of the marriage ceremonies existing in my own country, and she was very much amused.

“But why?” she asked; “that is a very great to-do about very little. If a man loves a woman and the woman also loves the man, what more is there to say? Why write down things in books and call many people to a feast?”

“Dream,” I said, “you are an immoral heathen.”

“Those also are words that I do not know. You will tell me about them.”

I did not tell her about them. I had already been rather struck by the curious simplicity of her own speech. Her phrases were at times biblical, though she knew nothing of any religion, and could not have read a bible if she had possessed one.

“And when, as you say, a man and woman love one another, is it customary with you for them to live together for the rest of their lives?”

Dream yawned. I was wearying her.

“It is so strange,” she said, “to have to tell you the things that everybody knows. Also what you ask is so funny. Of course people who love live together. Is not that right?”

I hardly knew what to tell her. She had the innocence of the first garden. After all it may be that the notions of right and wrong which are very properly accepted in my own country are not to be imposed upon every people in every form of civilisation. I did not wish to judge her. I therefore changed the subject.

“This evening, Dream, I want you to take me to that town where you all live. I am going to save you and take you away from this island. To do that I must make a boat or a great raft. I must have men to help me.”

“I will take you there if you wish, but if I do I shall die immediately. Every day and every night the overseeing gods go up and down there. It is well known that I left my work at the loom, and that I am to die. The gods have said I am to die, and what they say always happens. Any one of them who saw me in the town would point at me with his death-rod and I should fall. Still, no one has ever escaped, and as I must die anyhow, I will take you to the town if this gives you pleasure.”

I could not of course hear of this. My first step to secure her safety could not reasonably be a step which would ensure her death. I asked her, however, how these overseeing gods–the police of the town, as I figured it–would recognise her.

“By the pictures,” she said. “They have pictures of every one of us. My picture is put up throughout the town on the walls of houses.”

“I see,” I said. “If I go to the town at all I will go alone. Shall I be in any danger from your people?”

“None. You wear the grey garments. True, you do not walk like a god, and you suffer from short arms, as I do. But would you be safe from the gods themselves?”

“Yes,” I said. “I have something that was given to me to show them. It is a sign that they are not to injure me.”

“Injure?” she echoed. “The gods injure nobody. They kill when it is necessary, but they do not injure. If one has a crooked spine, or if one falls sick, or if one has lived too long, or if one refuses obedience, as I have done, then of course they must die. It is the law. The gods themselves have told us that in the old days our forefathers were beaten or shut up in prisons or their goods were taken away from them. This was called punishment. We are free from all that. We have food and shelter, we have light and warmth, we have times of work and times of play. No one punishes us. That is why it is our duty to love the gods.”