Across the Zodiac (47 page)

My audience had detained me longer than I had expected, and the
evening mist had fairly closed in before I returned. Entering, not as
usual through the grounds and the peristyle, but by the vestibule and
my own chamber, and hidden by my half-open window, I overheard an
exceedingly characteristic discussion on the incident of the morning.

"Serve her right!" Leenoo was saying. "That she should for once get
the worst of it, and be disbelieved to sharpen the sting!"

"How do you know?" asked Enva. "I don't feel so sure we have heard the
last of it."

"Eveena did not seem to have liked her half-hour," answered Leenoo
spitefully. "Besides, if he did not disbelieve her story, he would
have let her prove it."

"Is that your reliance?" broke in Eunané. "Then you are swinging on a
rotten branch. I would not believe my ears if, for all that all of us
could invent against her, I heard him so much as ask Eveena, 'Are you
speaking the truth?'"

"It is very uneven measure," muttered Enva.

"Uneven!" cried Eunané. "Now, I think
I
have the best right to be
jealous of her place; and it does sting me that, when he takes me for
his companion out of doors, or makes most of me at home, it is so
plain that he is taking trouble, as if he grudged a soft word or a
kiss to another as something stolen from her. But he deals evenly,
after all. If he were less tender of her we should have to draw our
zones tighter. But he won't give us the chance to say, 'Teach the
ambâ
with stick and the
esve
with sugar.'"

"I do say it. She is never snubbed or silenced; and if she has had
worse than what he calls 'advice' to-day, I believe it is the first
time. She has never 'had cause to wear the veil before the household'
(to hide blushes or tears)
, or found that his 'lips can give sharper
sting than their kiss can heal,' like the rest of us."

"What for? If he wished to find her in fault he would have to watch
her dreams. Do you expect him to be harder to her than to us? He don't
'look for stains with a microscope.' None of us can say that he
'drinks tears for taste.' None of us ever 'smarted because the sun
scorched
him
.' Would you have him 'tie her hands for being white'?"
(punish her for perfection)
.

"She is never at fault because he never believes us against her,"
returned Leenoo.

"How often would he have been right? I saw nothing of to-day's
quarrel, but I know beforehand where the truth lay. I tell you this:
he hates the sandal more than the sin, but, strange as it seems, he
hates a falsehood worse still; and a falsehood against Eveena—If you
want to feel 'how the spear-grass cuts when the sheath bursts,' let
him find you out in an experiment like this! You congratulate
yourself, Leenoo, that you have got her into trouble.
Elnerve
that
you are!—if you have, you had better have poisoned his cup before his
eyes. For every tear he sees her shed he will reckon with us at twelve
years' usury."

"
You
have made her shed some," retorted Enva.

"Yes," said Eunané, "and if he knew it, I should like half a year's
penance in the black sash"
(as the black sheep or scapegoat of her
Nursery)
"better than my next half-hour alone with him. When I was
silly enough to tie the veil over her mouth"
(take the lead in sending
her to Coventry)
"the day after we came here, I expected to pay for
it, and thought the fruit worth the scratches. But when he came in
that evening, nodded and spoke kindly to us, but with his eyes seeking
for her; when he saw her at last sitting yonder with her head down, I
saw how his face darkened at the very idea that she was vexed, and I
thought the flash was in the cloud. When she sprang up as he called
her, and forced a smile before he looked into her face, I wished I had
been as ugly as Minn oo, that I might have belonged to the miseries,
worst-tempered man living, rather than have so provoked the giant."

"But what did he do?"

"Well that he don't hear you!" returned Eunané. "But I can
answer;—nothing. I shivered like a
leveloo
in the wind when he came
into my room, but I heard nothing about Eveena. I told Eivé so next
day—you remember Eivé would have no part with us? 'And you were
called the cleverest girl in your Nursery!' she said; 'you have just
tied your own hands and given your sandal into Eveena's. Whenever she
tells him, you will drink the cup she chooses to mix for you, and very
salt you will find it.'"

"Crach!" (tush or stuff), said Eiralé contemptuously. "We have 'filled
her robe with pins' for half a year since then, and she has never been
able to make him count them."

"Able!" returned Eunané sharply, "do you know no better? Well, I chose
to fancy she was holding this over me to keep me in her power. One day
she spoke—choosing her words so carefully—to warn me how I was sure
to anger Clasfempta" (the master of the household) "by pushing my
pranks so often to the verge of safety and no farther. I answered her
with a taunt, and, of course, that evening I was more perverse than
ever, till even he could stand it no longer. When he quoted—

"'More lightly treat whom haste or heat to headlong trespass urge;
The heaviest sandals fit the feet that ever tread the verge'—

"I was well frightened. I saw that the bough had broken short of the
end, and that for once Clasfempta could mean to hurt. But Eveena kept
him awhile, and when he came to me, she had persuaded him that I was
only mischievous, not malicious, teasing rather than trespassing. But
his last words showed that he was not so sure of that. 'I have treated
you this time as a child whose petulance is half play; but if you
would not have your teasing returned with interest, keep it clipped;
and—keep it for
me
.' I have often tormented her since then, but I
could not for shame help you to spite her."

"Crach!" said Enva. "Eveena might think it wise to make friends with
you; but would she bear to be slighted and persecuted a whole summer
if she could help herself? You know that—

"Man's control in woman's hand
Sorest tries the household band.
Closer favourite's kisses cling,
Favourite's fingers sharper sting.'"

"Very likely," replied Eunané. "I cannot understand any more than you
can why Eveena screens instead of punishing us; why she endures what a
word to him would put down under her sandal; but she does. Does she
cast no shadow because it never darkens his presence to us? And after
all, her mind is not a deeper darkness to me than his. He enjoys life
as no man here does; but what he enjoys most is a good chance of
losing it; while those who find it so tedious guard it like
watch-dragons. When the number of accidents made it difficult to fill
up the Southern hunt at any price, the Camptâ's refusal to let him go
so vexed him that Eveena was half afraid to show her sense of relief.
You would think he liked pain—the scars of the
kargynda
are not his
only or his deepest ones—if he did not catch at every excuse to spare
it. And, again, why does he speak to Eveena as to the Camptâ, and to
us as to children—'child' is his softest word for us? Then, he is
patient where you expect no mercy, and severe where others would
laugh. When Enva let the electric stove overheat the water, so that he
was scalded horribly in his bath, we all counted that he would at
least have paid her back the pain twice over. But as soon as Eveena
and Eivé had arranged the bandages, he sent for her. We could scarcely
bring you to him, Enva; but he put out the only hand he could move to
stroke your hair as he does Eivé's, and spoke for once with real
tenderness, as if you were the person to be pitied! Any one else would
have laughed heartily at the figure her
esve
made with half her tail
pulled out. But not all Eveena's pleading could obtain pardon for me."

"That was caprice, not even dealing," said Leenoo. "You were not half
so bad as Enva."

"He made me own that I was," replied Eunané. "It never occurred to him
to suppose or say that she did it on purpose. But I was cruel on
purpose to the bird, if I were not spiteful to its mistress. 'Don't
you feel,' he said, 'that intentional cruelty is what no ruler,
whether of a household or of a kingdom, has a right to pass over? If
not, you can hardly be fit for a charge that gives animals into your
power.' I never liked him half so well; and I am sure I deserved a
severer lesson. Since then, I cannot help liking them both; though it
is
mortifying to feel that one is nothing before her."

"It is intolerable," said Enva bitterly; "I detest her."

"Is it her fault?" asked Eunané with some warmth. "They are so like
each other and so unlike us, that I could fancy she came from his own
world. I went to her next day in her own room."

"Ay," interjected Leenoo with childish spite, "'kiss the foot and
'scape the sandal.'"

"Think so," returned Eunané quietly, "if you like. I thought I owed
her some amends. Well, she had her bird in her lap, and I think she
was crying over it. But as soon as she saw me she put it out of sight.
I began to tell her how sorry I was about it, but she would not let me
go on. She kissed me as no one ever kissed me since my school friend
Ernie died three years ago; and she cried more over the trouble I had
brought on myself than over her pet. And since then," Eunané went on
with a softened voice, "she has showed me how pretty its ways are, how
clever it is, how fond of her, and she tries to make it friends with
me.... Sometimes I don't wonder she is so much to him and he to her.
She was brought up in the home where she was born. Her father is one
of those strange people; and I fancy there is something between her
and Clasfempta more than...."

I could not let this go on; and stepping back from the window as if I
had but just returned, I called Eunané by name. She came at once, a
little surprised at the summons, but suspecting nothing. But the first
sight of my face startled her; and when, on the impulse of the moment,
I took her hands and looked straight into her eyes, her quick
intelligence perceived at once that I had heard at least part of the
conversation.

"Ah," she said, flushing and hanging her head, "I am caught now,
but"—in a tone half of relief—"I deserve it, and I won't pretend to
think that you are angry only because Eveena is your favourite. You
would not allow any of us to be spited if you could help it, and it is
much worse to have spited her."

I led her by the hand across the peristyle into her own chamber, and
when the window closed behind us, drew her to my side.

"So you would rather belong to the worst master of your own race than
to me?"

"Not now," she answered. "That was my first thought when I saw how you
felt for Eveena, and knew how angry you would be when you found how
we—I mean how I—had used her, and I remembered how terribly strong
you were. I know you better now. It is for women to strike with five
fingers" (in unmeasured passion); "only, don't tell Eveena. Besides,"
she murmured, colouring, with drooping eyelids, "I had rather be
beaten by you than caressed by another."

"Eunané, child, you might well say you don't understand me. I could
not have listened to your talk if I had meant to use it against you;
and with
you
I have no cause to be displeased. Nay" (as she looked
up in surprise), "I know you have not used Eveena kindly, but I heard
from yourself that you had repented. That she, who could never be
coaxed or compelled to say what made her unhappy, or even to own that
I had guessed it truly, has fully forgiven you, you don't need to be
told."

"Indeed, I don't understand," the girl sobbed. "Eveena is always so
strangely soft and gentle—she would rather suffer without reason than
let us suffer who deserve it. But just because she is so kind, you
must feel the more bitterly for her. Besides," she went on, "I was so
jealous—as if you could compare me with her—even after I had felt
her kindness. No! you cannot forgive
for her
, and you ought not."

"Child," I answered, sadly enough, for my conscience was as ill at
ease as hers, with deeper cause, "I don't tell you that your jealousy
was not foolish and your petulance culpable; but I do say that neither
Eveena nor I have the heart—perhaps I have not even the right—to
blame you. It is true that I love Eveena as I can love no other in
this world or my own. How well she deserves that love none but I can
know. So loving her, I would not willingly have brought any other
woman into a relation which could make her dependent upon or desirous
of such love as I cannot give. You know how this relation to you and
the others was forced upon me. When I accepted it, I thought I could
give you as much affection as you would find elsewhere. How far and
why I wronged Eveena is between her and myself. I did not think that I
could be wronging you."

Very little of this was intelligible to Eunané. She felt a tenderness
she had never before received; but she could not understand my doubt,
and she replied only to my last words.

"Wrong us! How could you? Did we ask whether you had another wife, or
who would be your favourite? Did you promise to like us, or even to be
kind to us? You might have neglected us altogether, made one girl your
sole companion, kept all indulgences, all favours, for her; and how
would you have wronged us? If you had turned on us when she vexed you,
humbled us to gratify her caprice, ill-used us to vent your temper,
other men would have done the same. Who else would have treated us as
you have done? Who would have been careful to give each of us her
share in every pleasure, her turn in every holiday, her employment at
home, her place in your company abroad? Who would have inquired into
the truth of our complaints and the merits of our quarrels; would have
made so many excuses for our faults, given us so many patient
warnings?... Wronged us! There may be some of us who don't like you;
there is not one who could bear to be sent away, not one who would
exchange this house for the palace of the camptâ though you pronounce
him kingly in nature as in power."