PAGE 22
The New Gulliver
by
“Who taught you to say that?”
“They taught it me themselves. It is one of the first things that a child learns. But I grow weary of sitting here and telling you the things that everybody knows. Will you come with me through the forest and down to the shore where the caves are where I sleep?”
I assented. She rose up and draped her garment anew about her. As we walked side by side I asked her if she was not afraid of sleeping in the caves. Surely there first of all the gods would go to look for her.
“No,” she said. “Never. No god has ever been inside those caves since the creature came out of the sea and lived there.”
“What creature?”
“How should I know? It was more than fifty years ago, and none of us live for fifty years. But I have heard the story as it is told by my people. The creature that came out of the sea was something like a serpent, but larger than all serpents. Those who looked into its eyes died of horror. Two of the gods died. It went away into the caves, and no one has ever seen it again. I suppose it still lives there waiting for something. But it is far away in the very heart of the caves where I never go. If I heard it moving I should awake at once, for I sleep but lightly, and so I should save myself. If I could remain always in the caves I need have no fear of the gods, but one must have the sun, and water to swim in, and food to eat. Is that not so?”
I agreed with her. “But,” I said, “in the forest you are in constant danger.”
“Only on calm days. When the wind blows the gods will not go into the forest. That is well known, but I do not know what the reason is.”
I knew perfectly well. I had already learned their fear of something falling on them. Over-civilisation had broken up their nerves and rendered them flaccid and spiritless. They had no reason to fear the wild cattle with the death-rod in their hands. They had no reason to fear the docile race that they had tamed in ignorance to serve them. But the limb of a tree might fall, or a cave might be haunted. I grew to hate these first-class beings, as they called themselves.
She began now to ask me questions about the land from which I had come, and all that I told her was subjected to her barbarian criticism. She was perfectly shocked at hearing of hospitals, and regarded the whole of the medical fraternity as impious. “If those who are weak and sickly are patched up and made to live a little longer, is there not a danger that they will have children who will also be weak and sickly, and so much more trouble be made? We see that this is so with the beasts that we rear, and the plants that we cultivate. Is it not so with men also?”
I had to admit that it was. But I pointed out to her that in my country we regarded many other things besides physical perfection.
“So I have already observed,” she said, with almost embarrassing frankness. “Are the women of your country beautiful?”
“Some of them are very beautiful. Some, I fear, are not beautiful at all.”
“Then why do they live? It must be very unpleasant. Are any of them more beautiful than I am?”
“I have never seen anyone, Dream, as beautiful as you are.”
“Say that again,” she said, “it makes a pleasing sound.”
I did not say it again. I felt my responsibilities towards this beautiful but wholly barbarous creature. It seemed to me my duty at the very first to purge her mind of her superstitions about that deformed, intelligent, and learned section of humanity in whose divine character she had been taught to believe.