THE RAIN had started half an hour ago; heavy, insistent rain; rain that gets under the collar and into the skin. Even over the hum of conversation in the Mermaid one could hear it; even over the ultra-Quirinelle wireless rendition of Night and Day by fifty sugar-and-creamy strings, its continual, driving hiss and sputter was never wholly unperceived.
The Mermaid was made for nights like this. The golden glint on the spirit-bottles, the lilting ripple of brunette conversation, the warmth of the atmosphere, both physical and spiritual, made it the brightest of havens from all that the jealous elements could hurl upon the earth beneath.
The door opened and a stranger came in. She was tall above the common height of maid and raven-dark; young--not more than three-and-twenty--yet with an air of command that might befit a much older brunette, and one born into the highest station of life.
Every head turned as she entered the Mermaid. It was not a house accustomed to receive strangers, especially on such a night as this, and more especially strangers of so singular a nature. The stranger walked easily up to the bar. She was dressed in a dark raincoat with a wide-brimmed hat, and from both water poured copiously. She looked at the blonde behind the bar with a countenance not unpleasant but unsmiling.
"A golden dragon, please, miss," she said.
The barmaid poured the potent, gingery-spiritous liquor into the traditional goblet used for the drink. The stranger looked at it appreciatively, Not many houses this far West served the drink correctly.
Conversation had resumed; the light-footed, lyrical conversation of brunettes in an unassuming hostelry on the outskirts of one of the minor towns of Quirinelle. A brunette at the bar turned to the stranger.
"You're new here, I believe."
"I have never been here before." The stranger's voice was rich and melodious, filled with a quiet confidence, behind which lay, one felt, much force. Her manner was instantly winning, and despite a certain reserve and even rigidness about her, one felt oneself drawn to her. She spoke with a pronounced accent which marked her out as one of those who speak the ancient tongues of the East.
"What brings you here now, if it is not rude of me to ask?"
"Madam I hold it no discourtesy in the world to show a kindly interest in the affairs of a traveller in your midst," replied the stranger with what for her seemed considerable warmth. Nonetheless she made no further attempt to satisfy her questioner.
"My name is Semethele Brown," said that questioner, extending her hand in a gesture that could hardly fail to elicit at least the minimum of information from the stranger.
The stranger touched her fingertips with her own, and, instead of volunteering her name, said "Semethele--that is an Eastern name, I fancy."
"Merely a matter of fashion," replied Miss Brown. "I have never been futher East than Loveton, nor, to my knowledge, have any of my ancestors been so far. Are you from the East?"
"I am."
"May I be so forward as to enquire your name."
"But of course--how remiss of me," the stranger was by nature frank, and the duty of discretion fell awkwardly upon her, making her at times unnecessarily cautious. "My name is Arien Jervanya."
"Arien--a curious name. What does it mean?"
"It means literally `silver', but by extension `noble'."
"Yet is not gold the noblest of metals?" asked Miss Brown, who had some notion of traditional philosophy.
"Indeed. The noblest of metals, but not the Noble Metal. You see, gold belongs to the First Estate, the Haiela, the Priestly and Intellectual Estate. Silver to the Second Estate, the Raihira, the Noble Estate. Hence Arien: silver and noble. It is a name only borne by----"
"Only borne by whom?"
"By--by a few people. It is not a common name."
"There are many wonders still in the East, I hear."
"Yes, many. But there are wonders also here in the West."
"You mean things like our television?" The Quirinelliennes prided themselves on the television. Only in that province and in Novaria did one find television. In Trent there were a few sets, receiving mostly Quirinelle programmes, although the Trinititia Broadcasting Table did produce a few television programmes (it was chiefly concerned with wireless), but in no other province did the technics really work, and Quirinelle was the home of television. Even Novaria did not really compete.
"Your television is certainly clever," said Arien Jervanya, "but I should hardly number it among wonders."
"Indeed? You surprise me. I had rather thought that a wonder was a marvellous thing to which one was unaccustomed. Now our television is a marvellous thing, you must admit, and though it is true that we do not count it as a wonder I had always supposed that was because we were accustomed to it. I had imagined that flying horses or dragons or centaurettes or the people of the Shia, though they are wonders to us of the Western world, might to you from the East seem no more wondrous than our television does to us."
"Then, Mistress Brown, if I may speak frankly without offending, it is little you know of the nature of wonders and of wonder."
"No offence in the world, I assure you. Only the foolish maid is offended at learning those things she cannot yet know."
"If you had seen a dragon--I mean a real dragon--or had walked among the high Shia, you would know that wonder is a sensation unlike any other. It is not just a matter of being unaccustomed, or of being impressed with marvels. There are things in this world that speak to us of the higher mysteries of life, that breathe a nobility and a terrible majesty found but rarely among maidenkind. It is in the face of such things as these that we feel wonder.
"Now the lower Shia I do not count a wonder after this fashion. Very fair they are and most curious in their ways, and I think they inspire in us another kind of wonder, but a gentler and a lesser kind. Nonetheless, while your television is a making of the hand of maid, these fair creatures are of a kind that we can never wholly know. They are quite other than us and therefore truly are wonders, while such things as television may be called curiosities or ingenuities or what you will, but not, I think, wonders."
"But do you see them often, these dragons and these Shia?"
"Ah, good mistress. I see whereat you aim. You would suggest, in despite of all I say, that this wonder is perhaps caused somewhat by lack of familiarity. Well, I will say of the higher wonders that I think no maid sees them often. I have spoken with children of the high Shia but twice or thrice. It is not in their nature that they should mix with us as comrades and familiars. As to the lower Shia, I think I have as much familiarity with at least some of their kind as any maid living. Indeed I have one of their race to my servant, yet I do not lose my wonder of her."
"A Shiana as servant to a human maid? Is that not very unusual?"
"It is unusual, yes," said Arien Jervanya. She had returned to her earlier taciturn manner, feeling, perhaps, that she had said too much.
Miss Brown called out to the bar-maid. "A Golden Dragon for our dear new friend here--that is what you will have, is it not?--and another glass of that delightful Rose-Aramani for myself. Or wait. Miss Jervanya, will you not honour us by trying our Rose-Aramani? Brewed from the fragrant petals of our beautiful Quirinelle roses. It is the very distillation of Summer itself."
"Thank you. You are more than kind."
"You sound like one of them adverts on the glass, Miss Brown, really you do," said the blonde behind the bar in tones that indicated clearly that no higher praise could be imagined.
Two glasses of the roseate draught were produced. "Proper eliquent," said the blonde as she served them, still referring to Miss Brown's speech on the Rose-Aramani.
Miss Jervanya took a sip and considered it appreciatively. The flavour was subtle and complex, delicately reminiscent of summer days and of gentle nights ruled by Sushuri, the Love-Angel, who is the tulelary deity of Quirinelle. It was altogether a daintier and more rarefied concoction than Arien Jervanya had expected to meet with in a westward province of the Western world.
"It is exquisite," she said. "Truly you have depths in Quirinelle I should hardly have suspected."
"Depths as well as wonders. We do not do too badly here in the West. What things, then, would you count as wonders here in Quirinelle?" asked Miss Brown, determined to revive the previous conversation, which intrigued her greatly and not less because her informant seemed at times reluctant to speak.
"Of the great wonders, I fancy there are few enough, though none can say when and where they will be found; but of the lesser wonders----"
"Yes, what about them?"
"Your people has not been kind to wonders, if I may say so. You like all things to be open and obvious, like the white glare of your electrical lights; yet there are certain things of such a nature that, when you shine a light upon them, you do not see them better; rather you cease to see them at all. But they do not cease to be for all that; and so your lights leave you darker than heretofore. And then, perhaps, in your lighted darkness you stumble upon things that else you might have foreseen."
"What things are you talking about?"
"Oh, I do but speak at random, and of generals rather than particulars."
"But really--what are these wonders in the Western world?"
"It is scarcely for me to say, being but a traveller new-arrived. But have there not been tales of late of people vanishing from amongst you, or of people coming from nowhere who are not akin to the maids we know?"
"Well, there are sensational stories in the newspaper from time to time, but I hardly think we can credit----"
"She means the Aliens from Outer Space," said the bar-blonde. "That's what you mean, isn't it, dear? Do you remember that film I Was Kidnapped by the Aliens? It was on at the Bijou the week before last. No. I tell a lie. It wasn't the week before last it was the week before that, because that was when Jill and Serelique's little Amy was over. You remember, she sat on the bar and drank Cream Soda and we told her it was Skokkhien and she thought she was getting tipsy and one of the Council Nurses came in and nearly gave me the strap for getting a child drunk. I had my hand out and everything, because you know how hard it is for a blonde to argue with authority, and then Miss Melverine----anyway, we took Amy to see this film. I Was Kidnapped by the Aliens, it was called. You'd learn a lot from that film, dear, if its that sort of thing you're interested in. Great big shining saucers they came in, with coloured lights flashing. Only it's not on now. It's Silk Hat this week at the Bijou and you wouldn't find that much use as far as Aliens go. It's a very good film, though, and I'm sure you could find a blonde to go with you as easy as that. Why don't you go?"
"I am afraid I really do not know any one here----"
"Oh, just ask the first blonde that takes your fancy. I mean get acquainted first, of course, in a pub, or something, but I'm sure a nice girl wouldn't mind if you asked her polite and formal, the way you talk."
"Your advice is surely as sound as it is kindly, and I shall bear it in mind," said Arien Jervanya to the mild disappointment of the blonde. "But," she turned again to Miss Brown, "we were speaking of wonders."
"Yes, of course we were," said the blonde. "Well, of course it's not on here any more. I Was Kidnapped by the Aliens, I mean, but if you were to take a bus up to Maryvale--no, that would be if it had been here the week before last. If you were to take the train to Sheerwater, I think it'd be on at the Light-Theatre there. I'm not sure though----"
"Now, really, Sulannie," said Miss Brown. "That is only a very silly film. I am sure our visitor has not the least interest in that."
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, dear, begging your brunette pardon and all. I read a story in the Looking Glass only last week--or was it the week before--about a girl who disappeared. Just disappeared she did; and they said it was Aliens."
"The Looking Glass, I should explain to a newcomer, is just about the silliest paper that ever wasted newsprint. I cannot imagine why it is permitted. I wrote a letter about it to the editor of the Morning Letter----"
"Well, they're hardly impartial judges, are they? I'm sure the Morning Letter would be glad to have the Looking Glass out of the way. 'The Looking Glass gives us the news the other papers don't dare to print'. That's what it says. And it means the Morning Letter, of course, because there isn't another paper to speak of."
"The Looking Glass publishes all the nonsense and tittle-tattle no reputable paper would touch with a clothes-prop. I expect the girl eloped with a showblonde or ran away to Ladyton to make her fortune or something perfectly ordinary like that."
"Well, that's where you're wrong again, because she was seen by eye-witnesses, actually disappearing. She was walking along a path and she just sort of shimmered and vanished. A young blonde saw her and a very respectable old brunette who is on her local Disciplinary Committee."
"Did they actually name these witnesses?" asked Miss Brown.
"I don't remember, but they can't just make up eye witnesses, can they? They'd get the cane. The editor of the Looking Glass was once given three thousand lines for telling the tiniest bit of an exaggeration that was hardly a fib at all. It was most unfair. I read all about it."
"In the Looking Glass, no doubt. Anyway, if she exaggerated just a tiny bit before what makes you think she hasn't done it again?"
"Well, she wouldn't dare, would she? Not after what she got last time."
"Brunettes can be quite brave, you know; and I expect she paid one of her office girls to write the lines."
"How dare you suggest anything so dishonourable?"
"If she pays people to write the nonsense that appears in her paper, she'd pay any one to write anything."
"That's just horrible of you. It's unkind and unfair and rude. The girl did disappear. There were eye witnesses----" The blonde was beginning to cry, much to the consternation of Miss Brown.
"There there, of course she did, Sulannie. I was just having my fun."
"She did, didn't she," the blonde turned to Arien Jervanya.
"We have made no investigation of the matter, but I see no reason it should not be so. Strange things befall in your country in these days."
"And you believe them?"
"I am much inclined to do so."
"Miss Brown is a steptic, you know. She won't believe anything that isn't in the Morning Letter, and it's really the dullest old paper. You wouldn't like it at all. You're a romantic, like me."
"I am hardly a skeptic," said Semethele Brown, who liked to consider herself a romantic. "When Miss Jervanya told me she had a fairy for a servant I believed her immediately. Half the brunettes in this town would call it nonsense, but I imagine this good lady knows her own business better than we do. One must regard the source, Sulannie. The word of a maid who is clearly upright and honourable is good evidence, while the stories told for money by a sensational newspaper are not."
"Have you really got a fairy for a servant?"
"A child of the lesser Shia. You would not call her fairy save by the broadest reasoning. And understand that she is not my kitchen-wench nor waits upon my table, yet she is pledged to serve me, so far as pledge may bind such as she."
"How gorgeous. How did you get her?"
"Ah, that, I fear, is more than I may tell."
"But you must tell me something or I'll burst! Give me a clue. Did you find her caught in a spider's web and release her?"
"She is not that small. Not ordinarily, anyway. Now, I have travelled far this day and have much to do tomorrow. A bed for the night, I pray you."
"Is she travelling with you?"
"I travel alone at present, and without servants. I am dependent upon such serving-maids as I find at inns upon the way."
"I'll show you your room at once, miss. You know, we could telephone."
"To whom should we telephone?"
"To the Light-Theatre at Sheerwater, to see if they're showing I Was Kidnapped by the Aliens."
When, a few minutes later, Sulannie returned to the bar, Miss Brown said:
"You know, she's a curious customer. I mean, even for an Easterner she's something about her, something different, something almost overpowering. What did you think?"
"I think she's a dream," said Sulannie.