Across the Zodiac (48 page)

She spoke as she believed, if she spoke in error. "If so, my child,
why have you all been so bitter against Eveena? Why have you yourself
been jealous of one who, as you admit, has been a favourite only in a
love you did not expect?"

"But we saw it, and we envied her so much love, so much respect," she
replied frankly. "And for myself,"—she coloured, faltered, and was
silent. "For yourself, my child?"

"I was a vain fool," she broke out impetuously. "They told me that I
was beautiful, and clever, and companionable. I fancied I should be
your favourite, and hold the first place; and when I saw her, I would
not see her grace and gentleness, or observe her soft sweet voice, and
the charms that put my figure and complexion to shame, and the quiet
sense and truth that were worth twelvefold my quickness, my memory,
and my handiness. I was disappointed and mortified that she should be
preferred. Oh, how you must hate me, Clasfempta; for I hate myself
while I tell you what I have been!"

According to European doctrine, my fealty to Eveena must then have
been in peril. And yet, warmly as I felt for Eunané, the element in
her passionate confession that touched me most was her recognition of
Eveena's superiority; and as I soothed and comforted the half-childish
penitent, I thought how much it would please Eveena that I had at last
come to an understanding with the companion she avowedly liked the
best.

"But, Eunané," I said at last, "do you remember what you were saying
when I called you—called you on purpose to stop you? You said that
there was something between Eveena and myself more than—more than
what? What did you mean? Speak frankly, child; I know that this time
you were not going to scald me on purpose."

"I don't know quite what I meant," she replied simply. "But the first
time you took me out, I heard the superintendent say some strange
things; and then he checked himself when he found your companion was
not Eveena. Then Eivé—I mean—you use expressions sometimes in
talking to Eveena that we never heard before. I think there is some
secret between you."

"And if there be, Eunané, were
you
going to betray it—to set Enva
and Leenoo on to find it out?"

"I did not think," she said. "I never do think before I get into
trouble. I don't say, forgive me this time; but I
will
hold my
tongue for the future."

By this time our evening meal was ready. As I led Eunané to her place,
Eveena looked up with some little surprise. It was rarely that,
especially on returning from absence, I had sought any other company
than hers. But there was no tinge of jealousy or doubt in her look. On
the contrary, as, with her entire comprehension of every expression of
my face, and her quickness to read the looks of others, she saw in
both countenances that we were on better terms than ever before, her
own brightened at the thought. As I placed myself beside her, she
stole her hand unobserved into mine, and pressed it as she whispered—

"You have found her out at last. She is half a child as yet; but she
has a heart—and perhaps the only one among them."

"The four," as I called them, looked up as we approached with eager
malice:—bitterly disappointed, when they saw that Eunané had won
something more than pardon. Whatever penance they had dreaded, their
own escape ill compensated the loss of their expected pleasure in the
pain and humiliation of a finer nature. Eunané's look, timidly
appealing to her to ratify our full reconciliation, answered by
Eveena's smile of tender, sisterly sympathy, enhanced and completed
their discomfiture.

A chief luxury and expense in which, when aware what my income was, I
indulged myself freely was the purchase of Martial literature. Only
ephemeral works are as a rule printed in the phonographic character,
which alone I could read with ease. The Martialists have no
newspapers. It does not seem to them worth while to record daily the
accidents, the business incidents, the prices, the amusements, and the
follies of the day; and politics they have none. In no case would a
people so coldly wise, so thoroughly impressed by experience with a
sense of the extreme folly of political agitation, legislative change,
and democratic violence, have cursed themselves with anything like the
press of Europe or America. But as it is, all they have to record is
gathered each twelfth day at the telegraph offices, and from these
communicated on a single sheet about four inches square to all who
care to receive it. But each profession or occupation that boasts, as
do most, an organisation and a centre of discussion and council,
issues at intervals books containing collected facts, essays, reports
of experiments, and lectures. Every man who cares to communicate his
passing ideas to the public does so by means of the phonograph. When
he has a graver work, which is, in his view at least, of permanent
importance to publish, it is written in the stylographic character,
and sold at the telegraphic centres. The extreme complication and
compression employed in this character had, as I have already said,
rendered it very difficult to me; and though I had learnt to decipher
it as a child spells out the words which a few years later it will
read unconsciously by the eye, the only manner in which I could
quickly gather the sense of such books was by desiring one or other of
the ladies to read them aloud. Strangely enough, next to Eveena, Eivé
was by far the best reader. Eunané understood infinitely better what
she was perusing; but the art of reading aloud is useless, and
therefore never taught, in schools whose every pupil learns to read
with the usual facility a character which the practised eye can
interpret incomparably faster than the voice could possibly utter it.
This reading might have afforded many opportunities of private
converse with Eveena, but that Eivé, whose knowledge was by no means
proportionate to her intelligence, entreated permission to listen to
the books I selected; and Eveena, though not partial to her childish
companion and admirer, persuaded me not to refuse.

The story of my voyage and reports of my first audience at Court were,
of course, widely circulated and extensively canvassed. Though
regarded with no favour, especially by the professed philosophers and
scientists, my adventures and myself were naturally an object of great
curiosity; and I was not surprised when a civil if cold request was
preferred, on behalf of what I may call the Martial Academy, that I
would deliver in their hall a series of lectures, or rather a
connected oral account of the world from which I professed to have
come, and of the manner in which my voyage had been accomplished.
After consulting Eveena and Davilo, I accepted the invitation, and
intended to take the former with me. She objected, however, that while
she had heard much in her father's house and during our travels of
what I had to tell, her companions, scarcely less interested, were
comparatively ignorant. Indiscreetly, because somewhat provoked by
these repeated sacrifices, as much of my inclination as her own, I
mentioned my purpose at our evening meal, and bade her name those who
should accompany me. I was a little surprised when, carefully evading
the dictation to which she was invited, she suggested that Eunané and
Eivé would probably most enjoy the opportunity. That she should be
willing to get rid of the most wilful and petulant of the party seemed
natural. The other selection confirmed the impression I had formed,
but dared not express to one whom I had never blamed without finding
myself in the wrong, that Eveena regarded Eivé with a feeling more
nearly approaching to jealousy than her nature seemed capable of
entertaining. I obeyed, however, without comment; and both the
companions selected for me were delighted at the prospect.

The Academy is situated about half-way between Amacasfe and the
Residence; the facilities of Martial travelling, and above all of
telegraphic and telephonic communication, dispensing with all reason
for placing great institutions in or near important cities. We
traveller by balloon, as I was anxious to improve myself in the
management of these machines. After frightening my companions so far
as to provoke some, outcry from Eivé, and from Eunané some saucy
remarks on my clumsiness, on which no one else would have ventured, I
descended safely, if not very creditably, in front of the building
which serves as a local centre of Martial philosophy. The residences
of some sixty of the most eminent professors of various
sciences—elected by their colleagues as seats fall vacant, with the
approval of the highest Court of Judicature and of the camptâ—cluster
around a huge building in the form of a hexagon made up of a multitude
of smaller hexagons, in the centre whereof is the great hall of the
same shape. In the smaller chambers which surround it are telephones
through which addresses delivered in a hundred different quarters are
mechanically repeated; so that the residents or temporary visitors can
here gather at once all the knowledge that is communicated by any man
of note to any audience throughout the planet. On this account numbers
of young men just emancipated from the colleges come here to complete
their education; and above each of the auditory chambers is another
divided into six small rooms, wherein these visitors are accommodated.
A small house belonging to one of the members who happened to be
absent was appropriated to me during my stay, and in its hall the
philosophers gathered in the morning to converse with or to question
me in detail respecting the world whose existence they would not
formally admit, but whose life, physical, social, and political, and
whose scientific and human history, they regarded with as much
curiosity as if its reality were ascertained. Courtesy forbids evening
visits unless on distinct and pressing invitation, it being supposed
that the head of a household may care to spend that part of his time,
and that alone, with his own family.

The Academists are provided by the State with incomes, of an amount
very much larger than the modest allowances which the richest nations
of the Earth almost grudge to the men whose names in future history
will probably be remembered longer than those of eminent statesmen and
warriors. Some of them have made considerable fortunes by turning to
account in practical invention this or that scientific discovery. But
as a rule, in Mars as on Earth, the gifts and the career of the
discoverer, and the inventor are distinct. It is, however, from the
purely theoretical labours of the men of science that the inventions
useful in manufactures, in communication, in every department of life
and business, are generally derived; and the prejudice or judgment of
this strange people has laid it down that those who devote their lives
to work in itself unremunerative, but indirectly most valuable to the
public, should be at least as well off as the subordinate servants of
the State. In society they are perhaps more honoured than any but the
highest public authorities; and my audience was the most
distinguished, according to the ideas of that world, that it could
furnish.

At noon each day I entered the hall, which was crowded with benches
rising on five sides from the centre to the walls, the sixth being
occupied by a platform where the lecturer and the members of the
Academy sat. After each lecture, which occupied some two hours,
questions more or less perplexing were put by the latter. Only,
however, on the first occasion, when I reserved, as before the Zinta
and the Court, all information that could enable my hearers to divine
the nature of the apergic force, was incredulity so plainly insinuated
as to amount to absolute insult.

"If," I said, "you choose to disbelieve what I tell you, you are
welcome to do so. But you are not at liberty to express your disbelief
to me. To do so is to charge me with lying; and to that charge,
whatever may be the customs of this world, there is in mine but one
answer," and I laid my hand on the hilt of the sword I wore in
deference to Davilo's warnings, but which he and others considered a
Terrestrial ornament rather than a weapon.

The President of the Academy quietly replied—"Of all the strange
things we have heard, this seems the strangest. I waive the
probability of your statements, or the reasonableness of the doubts
suggested. But I fail to understand how, here or in any other world,
if the imputation of falsehood be considered so gross an offence—and
here it is too common to be so regarded—it can be repelled by proving
yourself more skilled in the use of weapons, or stronger or more
daring than the person who has challenged your assertion."

The moral courage and self-possession of the President were as marked
as his logic was irrefragable; but my outbreak, however illogical,
served its purpose. No one was disposed to give mortal offence to one
who showed himself so ready to resent it, though probably the
apprehension related less to my swordsmanship than the favour I was
supposed to enjoy with the Suzerain.

Seriously impressed by the growing earnestness of Davilo's warnings,
and feeling that I could no longer conceal the pressure of some
anxiety on my mind, gradually, cautiously, and tenderly I broke to
Eveena what I had learned, with but two reserves. I would not render
her life miserable by the suggestion of possible treason in our own
household. That she might not infer this for herself, I led her to
believe that the existence and discovery of the conspiracy was of a
date long subsequent to my acceptance of the Sovereign's unwelcome
gift. She was deeply affected, and, as I had feared, exceedingly
disturbed. But, very characteristically, the keenest impression made
upon her mind concerned less the urgency of the peril than its origin,
the fact that it was incurred through and for her. On this she
insisted much more than seemed just or reasonable. It was for her
sake, no doubt, that I had made the Regent of Elcavoo my bitter,
irreconcilable foe. It was my marriage with her, the daughter of the
most eminent among the chiefs of the Zinta, that had marked me out as
one of the first and principal victims, and set on my head a value as
high as on that of any of the Order save the Arch-Enlightener himself,
whose personal character and social distinction would have indicated
him as especially dangerous, even had his secret rank been altogether
unsuspected. It was impossible to soothe Eveena's first outbreak of
feeling, or reason with her illogical self-reproach. Compelled at last
to admit that the peril had been unconsciously incurred when she
neither knew nor could have known it, she pleaded eagerly and
earnestly for permission to repair by the sacrifice of herself the
injury she had brought upon me. It was useless to tell her that the
acceptance of such a sacrifice would be a thousand-fold worse than
death. Even the depth and devotion of her own love could not persuade
her to realise the passionate earnestness of mine. It was still more
in vain to remind her that such a concession must entail the dishonour
that man fears above all perils; would brand me with that indelible
stain of abject personal cowardice which for ever degrades and ruins
not only the fame but the nature of manhood, as the stain of wilful
unchastity debases and ruins woman.