Across the Zodiac (40 page)

"You have not lifted it yourself yet," she answered. "You will
understand me, when you have looked at the slips you were about to
make them read aloud, had I not interrupted you."

"Bead them yourself," I said, handing to her the papers I still held,
and which, after her interposition, I had not attempted to decipher.
She took them, but with a visible shudder of reluctance—not stronger
than came over me before she had read three lines aloud. Had I known
their purport, I doubt whether even Eveena's persuasion and the
Autocrat's power together could have induced me to sign them. They
were in very truth contracts of marriage—if marriage it can be
called. The Sovereign had done me the unusual, but not wholly
unprecedented, favour of selecting half a dozen of the fairest maidens
of those waiting their fate in the Nurseries of his empire; had
proffered on my behoof terms which satisfied their ambition, gratified
their vanity, and would have induced them to accept any suitor so
recommended, without the insignificant formality of a personal
courtship. It had seemed to him only a gracious attention to complete
my household; and he had furnished me with a bevy of wives, as I
presently found he had selected a complete set of the most intelligent
amlau, carvee,
and
tyree
which he could procure. Without either
the one or the other, the dwelling he had given me would have seemed
equally empty or incomplete.

This mark of royal favour astounded and dismayed me more than Eveena
herself. If she had entertained the wish, she would hardly have
acknowledged to herself the hope, that she might remain permanently
the sole partner of my home. But so sudden, speedy, and wholesale an
intrusion thereon she certainly had not expected. Even in Mars, a
first bride generally enjoys for some time a monopoly of her husband's
society, if she cannot be said to enchain his affection. It was hard,
indeed, before the thirtieth day after her marriage, to find herself
but one in a numerous family—the harder that our union had from the
first been close, intimate, unrestrainedly confidential, as it can
hardly be where neither expects that the tie can remain exclusive; and
because she had learned to realise and rest upon such love as belongs
to a life in which woman, never affecting the independence of coequal
partnership, has never yet sunk by reaction into a mere slave and toy.
It was hard, cruelly hard, on one who had given in the first hour of
marriage, and never failed to give, a love whose devotion had no
limit, no reserve or qualification; a submission that was less
self-sacrifice or self-suppression than the absolute surrender of
self—of will, feeling, and self-interest—to the judgment and
pleasure of him she loved: hard on her who had neither thought nor
care for herself as apart from me.

When I understood to what I had actually committed myself, I snatched
the papers from her, and might have torn them to pieces but for the
gentle restraining hand she laid upon mine.

"You cannot help it," she said, the tears falling from her eyes, but
with a self-command of which I could not have supposed her capable.
"It seems hard on me; but it is better so. It is not that you are not
content with me, not that you love me less. I can bear it better when
it comes from a stranger, and is forced upon you without, and even, I
think, against your will."

The pressure of the arm that clasped her waist, and the hand that held
her own, was a sufficient answer to any doubt that might be implied in
her last words; and, lifting her eyes to mine, she said—

"I shall always remember this. I shall always think that you were
sorry not to have at least a little while longer alone with me. It is
selfish to feel glad that you are pained; but your sympathy, your
sharing my own feeling, comforts me as I never could have been
comforted when, as must have happened sooner or later, you had found
for yourself another companion."

"Child, do you mean to say there is 'no portal to this passage;' and
that, however much against my will, I am bound to women I have never
seen, and never wish to see?"

"You have signed," replied Eveena gently. "The contracts are stamped,
and are in the official's hands; and you could not attempt to break
them without giving mortal offence to the Prince, who has intended you
a signal favour. Besides, these girls themselves have done no wrong,
and deserve no affront or unkindness from you."

I was silent for some minutes; at first simply astounded at the calm
magnanimity which was mingled with her perfect simplicity, then,
pondering the possibilities of the situation—

"Can we not escape?" I said at last, rather to myself than to her.

"Escape!" she repeated with surprise. "And from what? The favour shown
you by our Sovereign, the wealth he has bestowed, the personal
interest he has taken in perfecting every detail of one of the most
splendid homes ever given save to a prince—every incident of your
position—make you the most envied man in this world; and you would
escape from them?"

Gazing for a few moments in my face, she added—

"These maidens were chosen as the loveliest in all the Nurseries of
two continents; every one of them far more beautiful than I can be,
even in your eyes. Pray do not, for my sake, be unkind to them or try
to dislike them. What is it you would escape?"

"Being false to you," I answered, "if nothing else."

"False!" she echoed, in unaffected wonder. "What did you promise me?"

Again I was silenced by the loyal simplicity with which she followed
out ideas so strange to me that their consequences, however logical, I
could never anticipate; and could hardly admit to be sound, even when
so directly and distinctly deduced as now from the intolerable
consistency of the premises.

"But," I answered at last, "how much did
you
promise, Eveena? and
how much more have you given?"

"Nothing," she replied, "that I did not owe. You won your right to all
the love I could give before you asked for it, and since."

"We 'drive along opposite lines,' Madonna; but we would both give and
risk much to avoid what is before us. Let me ask your father whether
it be not yet possible to return to my vessel, and leave a world so
uncongenial to both of us."

"You cannot!" she answered. "Try to escape—you insult the Prince; you
put yourself and me, for whom you fear more, in the power of a
malignant enemy. You cannot guide a balloon or a vessel, if you could
get possession of one; and within a few hours after your departure was
known, every road and every port would be closed to you."

"Can I not send to your father?" I said.

"Probably," she replied. "I think we shall find a telegraph in your
office, if you will allow me to enter there, now there is no one to
see; and it must be morning in Ecasfe."

Familiar with the construction and arrangement of a Martial house,
Eveena immediately crossed the gallery to what she called the
office—the front room on the right, where the head of the house
carries on his work or study. Here, above a desk attached to the wall,
was one of those instruments whose manipulation was simple enough for
a novice like myself.

"But," I said, "I cannot write your stylic characters; and if I used
the phonic letters, a message from me would be very likely to excite
the curiosity of officials who would care about no other."

"May I," she suggested, "write your message for you, and put your
purport in words that will be understood by my father alone?"

"Do," I rejoined, "but do it in my name, and I will sign it."

Under her direction, I took the stylus or pencil and the slip of
tafroo
she offered me, and wrote my name at the head. After
eliciting the exact purport of the message I desired to send, and
meditating for some moments, she wrote and read out to me words
literally translated as follows:—

"The rich aviary my flower-bird thought over full. I would breathe
home [air]. Health-speak." The sense of which, as I could already
understand, was—

"A splendid mansion has been given us, but my flower-bird has found it
too full. I wish for my native air. Prescribe."

The brevity of the message was very characteristic of the language.
Equally characteristic of the stylography was the fact that the words
occupied about an inch beyond the address. Following her pencil as she
pointed to the ciphers, I said—

"Is not
asny caré
a false concord? And why have you used the past
tense?"

This ill-timed pedantry, applying to Martial grammar the rules of that
with which my boyhood had been painfully familiarised, provoked, amid
all our trouble, Eveena's low silver-toned laugh.

"I meant it," she answered. "My father will look at his pupil's
writing with both eyes."

"Well, you are out of reach even of the leveloo."

She laughed again.

"Asnyca-re," she said; the changed accentuation turning the former
words into the well-remembered name of my landing-place, with the
interrogative syllable annexed.

This message despatched, we could only await the reply. Nestling among
the cushions at my knee, her head resting on my breast, Eveena said—

"And now, forgive my presumption in counselling you, and my reminding
you of what is painful to both. But what to us is as the course of the
clock, is strange as the stars to you. You must see—
them
, and must
order all household arrangements; and" (glancing at a dial fixed in
the wall) "the black is driving down the green."

"So much the better," I said. "I shall have less time to speak to
them, and less chance of speaking or looking my mind. And as to
arrangements, those, of course, you must make."

"I! forgive me," she answered, "that is impossible. It is for you to
assign to each of us her part in the household, her chamber, her rank
and duties. You forget that I hold exactly the same position with the
youngest among them, and cannot presume even to suggest, much less to
direct."

I was silent, and after a pause she went on—

"It is not for me to advise you; but"—

"Speak your thought, now and always, Eveena. Even if I did not stand
in so much need of your guidance in a new world, I never yet refused
to hear counsel; and it is a wife's right to offer it."

"Is it? We are not so taught," she answered. "I am afraid you have
rougher ground to steer over than you are aware. Alone with you, I
hope I should have done nay best, remembering the lesson of the
leveloo, never to give you the pain of teaching a different one. But
we shall no longer be alone; and you cannot hope to manage seven as
you might manage one. Moreover, these girls have neither had that
first experience of your nature which made that lesson so impressive
to me, nor the kindly and gentle training, under a mother's care and a
father's mild authority, that I had enjoyed. They would not understand
the control that is not enforced. They will obey when they must; and
will feel that they must obey when they cannot deceive, and dare not
rebel. Do not think hardly of them for this. They have known no life
but that of the strict clockwork routine of a great Nursery, where no
personal affection and no rule but that of force is possible."

"I understand, Madonna. Your Prince's gift puts a man in charge of
young ladies, hitherto brought up among women only, and, of course,
petty, petulant, frivolous, as women left to themselves ever are! I
wish you could see the ridiculous side of the matter which occurs to
me, as I see the painful aspect which alone is plain to you. I can
scarcely help laughing at the chance which has assigned to me the
daily personal management of half-a-dozen school-girls; and
school-girls who must also be wives! I don't think you need fear that
I shall deal with them as with you: as a man of sense and feeling must
deal with a woman whose own instincts, affection, and judgment are
sufficient for her guidance. I never saw much of girls or children. I
remember no home but the Western school and the Oriental camp. I
never, as soldier or envoy, was acquainted with other men's homes.
While still beardless, I have ruled bearded soldiers by a discipline
whose sanctions were the death-shot and the bastinado; and when I left
the camp and court, it was for colleges where a beardless face is
never seen. I must look to you to teach me how discipline may be
softened to suit feminine softness, and what milder sanction may
replace the noose and the stick of the
ferash
" (Persian
executioner).

"I cannot believe," Eveena answered, taking me, as usual, to the
letter, "that you will ever draw the zone too tight. We say that
'anarchy is the worst tyranny.' Laxity which leaves us to quarrel and
torment each other, tenderness which encourages disorder and
disobedience till they must be put down perforce, is ultimate
unkindness. I will not tell you that such indulgence will give you
endless trouble, win you neither love nor respect, and probably teach
its objects to laugh at you under the veil. You will care more for
this—that you would find yourself forced at last to change 'velvet
hand for leathern band.' Believe me, my—our comfort and happiness
must depend on your grasping the helm at once and firmly; ruling us,
and ruling with a strong hand. Otherwise your home will resemble the
most miserable of all scenes of discomfort—an ungoverned school; and
the most severe and arbitrary household rule is better by far than
that. And—forgive me once more—but do not speak as if you would deal
one measure with the left hand and another with the right. Surely you
do not so misunderstand me as to think I counselled you to treat
myself differently from others? 'Just rule only can be gentle.' If you
show favouritism at first, you will find yourself driven step by step
to do what you will feel to be cruel; what will pain yourself perhaps
more than any one else. You may make envy and dislike bite (hold)
their tongues, but you cannot prevent their stinging under the veil.
Therefore, once more, you cannot let my interference pass as if none
but you knew of it."