Across the Zodiac (59 page)

From that time I scarcely left her chamber save for a few minutes, and
Velna remained constantly at her friend's side, save when, to give her
at least a chance of escape, I sent her to her room to bathe, change
her dress, and seek the fresh air for the half hour during which alone
I could persuade her to leave the sufferer. The
daftare
(man-woman)
physician came, but on learning the nature of the disease, expressed
intense indignation that she had been summoned to a position of so
much danger to herself.

I answered by a contemptuous inquiry regarding the price for which she
would run so much risk as to remain in the peristyle so long as I
might have need of her presence; and, for a fee which would ensure her
a life-income as large as that secured to Eveena herself, she
consented to remain within speaking distance for the few hours in
which the question must be decided. Eunané was seldom insensible or
even delirious, and her quick intelligence caught very speedily the
meaning of my close attendance, and of the distress which neither
Velna nor I could wholly conceal. She asked and extracted from me what
I knew of the origin of her illness, and answered, with a far stronger
feeling than I should have expected even from her—

"If I am to die, I am glad it should be through trying to serve and
please Eveena.... It may seem strange, Clasfempta," she went on
presently, "scarcely possible perhaps; but my love for her is not only
greater than the love I bear you, but is so bound up with it that I
always think of you together, and love you the better that I love her,
and that you love her so much better than me.... But," she resumed
later, "it is hard to die, and die so young. I had never known what
happiness meant till I came here.... I have been so happy here, and I
was happier each day in feeling that I no longer made Eveena or you
less happy. Ah! let me thank you and Eveena while I can for
everything, and above all for Velna.... But," after another long
pause, "it is terrible and horrible—never to wake, to move, to hear
your voices, to see you, to look upon the sunlight, to think, or even
to dream again! Once, to remove a tooth and straighten the rest, they
made me senseless; and that sinking into senselessness, though I knew
I should waken in a minute, was horrible; and—to sink into
senselessness from which I shall never waken!"

She was sinking fast indeed, and this terror of death, so seldom seen
in the dying, grew apparently deeper and more intense as death drew
near. I could not bear it, and at last took my resolve and dismissed
Velna, forbidding her to return till summoned.

"Ah!" said Eunané, "you send her away that she may not see the last.
Is it so near?"

"No, darling!" I replied (she, like Eveena, had learnt the meaning of
one or two expressions of human affection in my own tongue), "but I
have that to say which I would not willingly say in her presence. You
dread death not as a short terrible pain, and for you it will not be
so, not as a short sleep, but as eternal senselessness and
nothingness. Has it never seemed to you strange that, loving Eveena as
I do,
I
do not fear to die? Though you did not know it, I have lived
almost since first you knew me under the threat of death; and death
sudden, secret, without warning, menacing me every day and every hour.
And yet, though death meant leaving her and leaving her to a fate I
could not foresee, I have been able to look on it steadily. Kneeling
here, I know that I am very probably giving my life to the same end as
yours. I do not fear. That may not seem strange to you; but Eveena
knows all I know, and I could scarcely keep Eveena away. So loving
each other,
we
do not fear to die, because we believe, we know, that
that in us which thinks, and feels, and loves will live; that in death
we lay aside the body as we lay aside our worn-out clothing. If I
thought otherwise, Eunané, I could not bear
this
parting."

She clasped my hands, almost as much surprised and touched, I thought,
for the moment by the expression of an affection of which till that
hour neither of us were fully aware, as by the marvellous and
incredible assurance she had heard.

"Ah!" she said, "I have heard her people are strange, and they dream
such things. No, Clasfempta, it is a fancy, or you say it to comfort
me, not because it is true."

The expression of terror that again came over her face was too painful
for endurance. To calm that terror I would have broken every oath,
have risked every penalty. But in truth I could never have paused to
ask what in such a case oath or law permitted, "Listen, Eunané," I
said, "and be calm. Not only Eveena, not only I, but hundreds,
thousands, of the best and kindliest men and women of your world hold
this faith as fast as we do. You feel what Eveena is. What she is and
what others are not, she owes to this trust:—to the assurance of a
Power unseen, that rules our lives and fortunes and watches our
conduct, that will exact an account thereof, that holds us as His
children, and will never part with us. Do you think it is a lie that
has made Eveena what she is?"

"But you
think
, you do not know."

"Yes, I know; I have seen." Here a touch, breaking suddenly upon that
intense concentration of mind and soul on a single thought, violently
startled me, gentle as it was; and to my horror I saw that Eveena was
kneeling with me by the couch.

"Remember," she said, in the lowest, saddest whisper, "'the Veil that
guards the Shrine.'"

"No matter, Eveena," I answered in the same tone, the pain at my heart
suppressing even the impulse of indignation, not with her, but with
the law that could put such a thought into her heart. "Neither penalty
nor oath should silence me now. Whether I break our law I know not;
but I would forfeit life here—I would forfeit life hereafter, rather
than fail a soul that rests on mine at such a moment."

The clasp of her hand showed how thoroughly, despite the momentary
doubt, she felt with me; and I could not now recur to that secondary
selfishness which had so imperiously repelled her from the
sick-chamber.

"I have seen," I repeated, as Eunané still looked earnestly into my
face, "and Eveena has seen at the same moment, one long ages since
departed this world—the Teacher of this belief, the Founder of that
Society which holds it, the ancestor of her own house—in bodily form
before us."

"It is true," said Eveena, in answer to Eunané's appealing look.

"And I," I added, "have seen more than once in my own world the forms
of those I have known in life recalled, according to promise, to human
eyes."

The testimony, or the contagion of the strong undoubting confidence we
felt therein, if they did not convince the intellect, changed the tone
of thought and feeling of the dying girl. Too weak now to reason, or
to resist the impression enforced upon her mind by minds always far
more powerful than her own in its brightest hours, she turned
instinctively from the thought of blackness, senselessness eternal, to
that of a Father whose hand could uphold, of the wings that can leap
the grave. Her left hand clasped in mine, her right in Eveena's,—
looking most in my face, because weakness leant on strength even more
than love appealed to love—Eunané spent the remaining hours of that
night in calm contentment and peace. Perhaps they were among the most
perfectly peaceful and happy she had known. To strong, warm,
sheltering affection she had never been used save in her new home; and
in the love she received and returned there was much too strange and
self-contradicting to be satisfactory. But no shadow of jealousy,
doubt, or contradictory emotion troubled her now: assured of Eveena's
sisterly love as of my own hardly and lately won trust and tenderness.

The light had been long subdued, and the chamber was dim as dimmest
twilight, when suddenly, with a smile, Eunané cried—

"It is morning already! and there,—why, there is Erme."

She stretched out her arms as if to greet the one creature she had
loved—perhaps more dearly than she loved those now beside her. The
hands dropped; and Eveena's closed for ever on the sights of this
world the eyes whose last vision had been of another.

Leading Eveena from the room, I hastily dictated every precaution that
could diminish the danger to her and others. Velna had run risks that
could not well be increased, and on her and on myself must devolve
what remained to be done. I sent an ambâ to summon Davilo, gathered
the garments that Eveena had thrown off, and removed them to the
death-chamber. When the first arrangements were made, and I had paid
the fee of Astona, the woman-physician, I passed out into the garden,
and Davilo met me at the door of the peristyle. A few words explained
all that was necessary. It was still almost dark; and as we stood
close by the door, speaking in the low tone partly of sadness, partly
of precaution, two figures were dimly discernible just inside, and we
caught a few broken words.

"You have heard," said a harsh voice, which seemed to be Astona's,
"there is no doubt now. You have your part to play, and can do it
quickly and safely."

I paid little attention to words whose dangerous significance would at
another moment have been plain to me. But Davilo, greatly alarmed,
laid his hand upon my arm. As he did so, another voice thrilled me
with intensest pain and amazement.

"Be quick to bear your message," Eivé said, in rapid guarded tones.
"They have means of vengeance certain and prompt, and they never
spare."

Astona departed without seeing us. Eivé closed the door, and Davilo
and I, hastily and unperceived, followed the spy to the gate of the
enclosure. Some one waited for her there. What passed we could not
hear; but, as we saw Astona and another depart, Davilo spoke
imprudently aloud—

"She has the secret, and she must die. 'Nay' (as I would have
expostulated), she is spy, traitress, and assassin, and merits her
doom most richly."

"Hist!" said I, "your words may have fallen into other ears;" for I
thought that beyond the wall I discerned a crouching figure. If that
of a man, however, it was too far off, and dressed in colours too
dark, to be clearly seen; and in another instant it had certainly
vanished.

"Remember," he urged, "you have heard that one quite as dangerous is
under your own roof; and, once more, it is not only your life that is
at stake. What you call courage, what seems to us sheer folly, may
cost you and others what you value far more than your life. An error
of softness now may make your future existence one long and useless
remorse."

Half-an-hour later, having warned the women to their rooms—ordering a
variety of disinfecting measures in which Martial science excelled
while they were needed there—I opened the door of the death chamber
to those who carried in a coffer hollowed out of a dark, exceedingly
dense natural stone, and half-filled with a liquid of enormous
destructive power. Then I lifted tenderly the lifeless form, laid it
on cushions arranged therein, kissed the lips, and closed the coffer.
Two of Davilo's attendants had meantime adjusted the electric
machinery. We carried the coffer into the apartment where this worked
to heat the stove, to keep the lights burning, to raise, warm, and
diffuse the water through the house, and perform many other important
household services. Two strong bars of conducting metal were attached
to the apparatus, and fitted into two hollows of the coffer. A flash,
a certain hissing sound, followed. After a few moments the coffer was
opened, and Davilo, carefully gathering a few handfuls of solid white
material, something resembling pumice stone in appearance, placed them
in a golden chest about twelve inches cube, which was then soldered
down by the heat derived from the electric power. Then all infected
clothes and the contents of the death chamber were carried out for
destruction; while, with a tool adjusted to the machinery, one of the
attendants engraved a few characters upon the chest. Whatever the
risk, I could not part with every relic of her we had lost; and, after
passing them through such chemical purification as Martial science
suggested, I took the three long chestnut locks I had preserved.
Velna's quick fingers wove them into plaits, one of which I left with
her, one bound around my own neck, and one reserved for Eveena. As
soon as the sun had risen, I had despatched a message to the Prince,
explaining the danger of infection to which I had been subjected, and
asking permission notwithstanding to wait upon him. The emergency was
so pressing that neither sorrow nor peril would allow me to neglect an
embassy on which the lives of hundreds, and perhaps the safety of his
kingdom, might depend. Passing Eivé as I turned towards Eveena's room,
and fevered with intense thirst, I bade her bring me thither a cup of
the carcarâ. I need not dwell on the terribly painful moments in which
I bound round Eveena's arm a bracelet prized above all the choicest
ornaments she possessed. To calm her agitation and my own by means of
the charny, I sought the keys. They were not at my belt, and I asked,
"Have I returned them to you?"

"Certainly not," said Eveena, startled. "Can you not find them?"

At this moment Eivé entered the room and presented me with the cup for
which I had asked. It struck me with surprise, even at that moment,
that Eveena took it from my hand and carried it first to her own lips.
Eivé had turned to leave the room; but before she had reached the
threshold Eveena had sprung up, placed her foot upon the spring that
closed the door, and snatching the test-stone from my watch chain
dipped it into the cup. Her face turned white as death, while she held
up to my eyes the discoloured disc which proved the presence of the
deadliest Martial poison.