Across the Zodiac (41 page)

"Madonna, if I
am
to rule such a household, I will rule as
absolutely as your autocratic Prince. I will tolerate no criticism and
no questions."

"You surely forget," she urged, "that they know my offence, and do not
know—must not know—what in your judgment excuses it. Let them once
learn that it is possible so to force the springs
(bolts)
without a
sting, it will take a salt-fountain
(of tears)
to blot the lesson from
their memory."

"What would you have, Eveena? Am I to deal unjustly that I may seem
just? That course steers straight to disaster. And, had you been in
fault, could, I humble you in other eyes?"

"If I feel hurt by any mark of your displeasure, or humbled that it
should be known to my equals in your own household," she replied, "it
is time I were deprived of the privileges that have rendered me so
overweening."

My answer was intercepted by the sound of an electric bell or
miniature gong, and a slip of tafroo fell upon the desk. The first
words were in that vocal character which I had mastered, and came from
Esmo.

"Hysterical folly," he had said. "Mountain air might be fatal; and
clear nights are dangerously cold for more than yourselves."

"What does he mean?" I asked, as I read out a formula more studiously
occult than those of the Pharmacopoeia.

"That I am unpardonably silly, and that you must not dream of going
back to your vessel. The last words, I suppose, warn you how carefully
in such a household you need to guard the secrets of the Starlight."

"Well, and what is this in the stylic writing?"

Eveena glanced over it and coloured painfully, the tears gathering in
her eyes.

"That," she said, pointing to the first cipher, "is my mother's
signature."

"Then," I said, "it is meant for you, not for me."

"Nay," she answered. "Do you think I could take advantage of your not
knowing the character?"—and she read words quite as incomprehensible
to me as the writing itself.

"Can a star mislead the blind? I should veil myself in crimson if I
have trained a bird to snatch sugar from full hands. Must even your
womanhood reverse the clasps of your childhood?"

"It chimes midnight twice," I said—a Martial phrase meaning, 'I am as
much in the dark as ever.' "Do not translate it, carissima. I can read
in your face that it is unjust—reproachful where you deserve no
reproach."

"Nay, when you so wrong my mother I must tell you exactly what she
means:—'Can a child of the Star take advantage of one who relies on
her to explain the customs of a world unknown to him? I blush to think
that my child can abuse the tenderness of one who is too eager to
indulge her fancies.'

"You see she is quite right. You do trust me so absolutely, you are so
strangely over-kind to me, it is shameful I should vex you by fretting
because you are forced to do what you might well have done at your own
pleasure."

"My own, I was more than vexed; chiefly perhaps for your sake, but not
by you. Where any other woman would have stung the sore by sending
fresh sparks along the wire, you thought only to spare me the pain of
seeing you pained. But what do the last words mean? No"—for I saw the
colour deepen on her half-averted face—"better leave unread what we
know to be written in error."

But the less agreeable a supposed duty, the more resolute was Eveena
to fulfil it.

"They were meant to recall a saying familiar in every school and
household," she said:—

"'Sandal loosed and well-clasped zone—
Childhood spares the woman grown.
Change the clasps, and woman yet
Pays with interest childhood's debt.'"

"This"—tightening and relaxing the clasp of her zone—"is the symbol
of stricter or more indulgent household rule." Then bending so as to
avert her face, she unclasped her embroidered sandal and gave it into
my hand;—"and this is what, I suppose, you would call its sanction."

"There is more to be said for the sandal than I supposed, bambina, if
it have helped to make you what you are. But you may tell Zulve that
its work and hers are done."

Kneeling before her, I kissed, with more studied reverence than the
sacred stone of the Caaba, the tiny foot on which I replaced its
covering.

"Baby as she thinks and I call you, Eveena, you are fast unteaching me
the lesson which, before you were born and ever since, the women of
the Earth have done their utmost to impress indelibly upon my
mind—the lesson that woman is but a less lovable, more petulant, more
deeply and incurably spoilt child. Your mother's reproach is an exact
inversion of the truth. No one could have acted with more utter
unselfishness, more devoted kindness, more exquisite delicacy than you
have shown in this miserable matter. I could not have believed that
even you could have put aside your own feelings so completely, could
have recognised so promptly that I was not in fault, have thought so
exclusively of what was best and safe for me in the first place, and
next of what was kind and just and generous to your rivals. I never
thought such reasonableness and justice possible to feminine nature;
and if I cannot love you more dearly, you have taught me how deeply to
admire and honour you. I accept the situation, since you will have it
so; be as just and considerate henceforward as you have been to-night,
and trust me that it shall bring no shadow between us—shall never
make you less to me than you are now."

"But it must," she insisted. "I cannot now be other than one wife
among many; and what place I hold among them is, remember, for you and
you alone to fix. No rule, no custom, obliges you to give any
preference in form or fact to one, merely because you chanced to marry
her first."

"Such, nevertheless, did not seem to be the practice in your father's
house. Your mother was as distinctly wife and mistress as if his sole
companion."

"My father," she replied, "did not marry a second time till within my
own memory; and it was natural and usual to give the first place to
one so much older and more experienced. I have no such claim, and when
you see my companions you may find good reason to think that I am the
least fit of all to take the first place. Nor," she added, drawing me
from the room, "do I wish it. If only you will keep in your mind one
little place for the memory of our visit to your vessel and your
promise respecting it, I shall be more than content."

Eveena's humble, unconscious self-abnegation was rendering the
conversation intolerably painful, and even the embarrassing situation
now at hand was a welcome interruption. Eveena paused before a door
opening from the gallery into one of the rooms looking on the
peristyle.

"You will find them there," she said, drawing back.

"Come with me, then," I answered; and as she shrank away, I tightened
my clasp of her waist and drew her forward. The door opened, and we
found ourselves in presence of six veiled ladies in pink and silver,
all of them, with one exception, a little taller and less slight than
my bride. Eveena, with the kindness which never failed under the most
painful trial or the most powerful impulses of natural feeling,
extricated herself gently from my hold, took the hand of the first,
and brought her up to me. The girl was evidently startled at the first
sight of her new possessor, and alarmed by a figure so much larger and
more powerful than any she had ever seen, exceeding probably the
picture drawn by her imagination.

"This," said Eveena gently and gravely, "is Eunané, the prettiest and
most accomplished scholar in her Nursery."

As I was about to acknowledge the introduction with the same cold
politeness with which I should have bowed to a strange guest on Earth,
Eveena took my left hand in her own and laid it on the maiden's veil,
recalling to me at once the proprieties of the occasion and the
justice she had claimed for her unoffending and unintentional rivals;
but at the same time bringing back in full force a remembrance she
could not have forgotten, but whose effect upon myself the ideas to
which she was habituated rendered her unable to anticipate. To accept
in her presence a second bride, by the same ceremonial act which had
so lately asserted my claim to herself, was intensely repugnant to my
feelings, and only her own self-sacrificing influence could have
overcome my reluctance. My hesitation was, I fear, perceptible to
Eunané; for, as I removed her veil and head-dress, her expression and
a colour somewhat brighter than that of mere maiden shyness indicated
disappointment or mortified pride. She was certainly very beautiful,
and perhaps, had I now seen them both for the first time, I might have
acquiesced in the truth of Eveena's self-depreciation. As it was,
nothing could associate with the bright intelligent face, the clear
grey eyes and light brown hair, the lithe active form instinct with
nervous energy, that charm which from our first acquaintance their
expression of gentle kindness, and, later, the devoted affection
visible in every look, had given to Eveena's features.

It is, I suppose, hardly natural to man to feel actual unkindness
towards a young and beautiful girl who has given no personal offence.
Having once admitted, the justice of Eveena's plea, and feeling that
she would be more pained by the omission than by the fulfilment of the
forms which courtesy and common kindness imperatively demanded, I
kissed Eunané's brow and spoke a few words to her, with as much of
tenderness as I could feel or affect for Eveena's rival, after what
had passed to endear Eveena more than ever. The latter waited a
little, to allow me spontaneously to perform the same ceremony with
the other girls; but seeing my hesitation, she came forward again and
presented severally four others—Enva ("Snow" = Blanche), Leenoo
("Rose"), Eiralé, Elfé, all more or less of the usual type of female
beauty in Mars, with long full tresses varying in tinge from flax to
deep gold or the lightest brown; each with features almost faultless,
and with all the attraction (to me unfailing) possessed for men who
have passed their youth by
la beauté du Diable
—the bloom of pure
graceful girlhood. Eivé, the sixth of the party, standing on the right
of the others, and therefore last in place according to Martial usage,
was smaller and slighter than Eveena herself, and made an individual
impression on my attention by a manifest timidity and agitation
greater than any of the rest had evinced. As I removed her veil I was
struck by the total unlikeness which her face and form presented to
those I had just saluted. Her hair was so dark as by contrast to seem
black; her complexion less fair than those of her companions, though
as fair as that of an average Greek beauty; her eyes of deepest brown;
her limbs, and especially the hands and feet, marvellously perfect in
shape and colour, but in the delicacy and minuteness of their form
suggesting, as did all the proportions of her tiny figure, the
peculiar grace of childhood; an image in miniature of faultless
physical beauty. In Eivé alone of the bevy I felt a real interest; but
the interest called forth by a singularly pretty child, in whose
expression the first glance discerns a character it will take long to
read, rather than that commanded by the charms of earliest womanhood.

When I had completed the ceremonial round, there was a somewhat
awkward silence, which Eveena at last broke by suggesting that Eunané
should show us through the house, with which she had made the earliest
acquaintance. This young girl readily took the lead thus assigned to
her, and by some delicate manoeuvre, whose authorship I could not
doubt, I found her hand in mine as we made our tour. The number of
chambers was much greater than in Esmo's dwelling, the garden of the
peristyle larger and more elaborately arranged, if not more beautiful.
The ambau were more numerous than even the domestic service of so
large a mansion appeared to require. The birds, whose duties lay
outside, were by this time asleep on their perches, and we forbore to
disturb them. The central chamber of the seraglio, if I may so call
it, the largest and midmost of those in the rear of the garden,
devoted as of course to the ladies of the household, was especially
magnificent.

When we stood in its midst, shy looks askance from all the six
betrayed their secret ambition; though Eivé's was but momentary, and
so slight that I felt I might have unfairly suspected her of
presumption. I left this room, however, in silence, and assigned to
each, of my maiden brides, in order as they had been presented to me,
the rooms on the left; and then, as we stood once more in the
peristyle, having postponed all further arrangements, all distribution
of household duties, to the morrow (assigning, however, to Eunané,
whose native energy and forwardness had made early acquaintance with
the dwelling and its dumb inhabitants, the charge of providing and
preparing with their assistance our morning meal), I said, "I have let
the business of the evening zyda actually encroach on midnight, and
must detain you from your rest no longer. Eveena, you know, I still
have need of you."

She was standing at a little distance, next to Eunané; and the latter,
with a smile half malicious, half triumphant, whispered something in
her ear. There was a suppressed annoyance in Eveena's look which
provoked me to interpose. On Earth I should never have been fool
enough to meddle in a woman's quarrel. The weakest can take her own
part in the warfare of taunt and innuendo, better and more venomously
than could dervish, priest, or politician. But Eveena could no more
lower herself to the ordinary level of feminine malice than I could
have borne to hear her do so; and it was intolerable that one whose
sweet humility commanded respect from myself should submit to slight
or sneer from the lips and eyes of petulant girls. Eunané started as I
spoke, using that accent which gives its most peremptory force to the
Martial imperative. "Repeat aloud what you have chosen to say to
Eveena in my presence."