Across the Zodiac (62 page)

Eveena heard my story with more annoyance than interest, mortified not
a little by the reproof I had drawn upon myself and my followers; and,
despite her reluctance to seem to acknowledge a fault in me,
apparently afraid that a similar ebullition of feeling might on some
future occasion lead to serious disaster.

To detain as a captive and a culprit, thus converting my own house
into a prison, my would-be murderess and former plaything, was
intolerably painful. To leave her at large was to incur danger such as
I had no right to bring on others. To dismiss her was less perilous
than the one course, less painful than the other, but combined peril
and pain in a degree which rendered both Eveena and myself most
reluctant to adopt it. From words of Esmo's, and from other sources, I
gathered that the usual course under such circumstances would have
been to keep the culprit under no other restraint than that
confinement to the house which is too common to be remarkable,
trusting to the terror which punishment inflicted and menaced by
domestic authority would inspire. But Eivé now understood the limits
which conscience or feeling imposed on the use of an otherwise
unlimited power. She knew very nearly how much she could have to fear;
and, timid as she was, would not be cowed or controlled by
apprehensions so defined and bounded. Eveena herself naturally
resented the peril, and was revolted by the treason even more
intensely than myself; and was for once hardly content that so heinous
a crime should be so lightly visited. In interposing "between the
culprit and the horrors of the law, she had taken for granted the
strenuous exertion of a domestic jurisdiction almost as absolute under
the circumstances as that of ancient Rome.

"What suggested to you," I asked one day of Eveena, "the suspicion
that so narrowly saved my life?"

"The carefully steadied hand—you have teased her so often for
spilling everything it carried—and the unsteady eyes. But," she added
reluctantly, "I never liked to watch her—no, not lest you should
notice it—but because she did not seem true in her ways with you; and
I should have missed those signs but for a strange warning." ... She
paused.

"
I
would not be warned," I answered with a bitter sigh. "Tell me,
Madonna."

"It was when you left me in this room alone," she said, her exquisite
delicacy rendering her averse to recal, not the coercion she had
suffered, but the pain she knew I felt in so coercing her. "Dearest,"
she added with a sudden effort, "let me speak frankly, and dispel the
pain you feel while you think over it in silence."

I kissed the hand that clasped my own, and she went on, speaking with
intentional levity.

"Had a Chief forgotten?" tracing the outline of a star upon her bosom.
"Or did you think Clavelta's daughter had no share in the hereditary
gifts of her family?"

"But how did you unlock the springs?"

"Ah! those might have baffled me if you had trusted to them. You made
a double mistake when you left Enva on guard.... You don't think I
tempted her to disobey? Eager as I was for release, I could not have
been so doubly false. She did it unconsciously. It is time to put her
out of pain."

"Does she know me so little as to think I could mean to torture her by
suspense? Besides, even she must have seen that you had secured her
pardon."

"Or my own punishment," Eveena answered.

"Spare me such words, Eveena, unless you mean to make me yet more
ashamed of the compulsion I did employ. I never spoke, I never
thought"—

"Forgive me, dearest. Will it vex you to find how clearly your
flower-bird has learned to read your will through your eyes? When I
refused to obey, and you felt yourself obliged to compel, your first
momentary thought was to threaten, your next that I should not believe
you. When you laid your hand upon my shoulder, thus, it was no gesture
of anger or menace. You thought of the only promise I must believe,
and you dropped the thought as quickly as your hand. You would not
speak the word you might have to keep. Nay, dearest, what pains you
so? You gave me no pain, even when you called another to enforce your
command. Yet surely you know that
that
must have tried my spirit far
more than anything else you could do. You did well. Do you think that
I did not appreciate your imperious anxiety for me; that I did not
respect your resolution to do what you thought right, or feel how much
it cost you? If anything in the ways of love like yours could pain me,
it would be the sort of reserved tenderness that never treats me as
frankly and simply as" ... "There was no need to name either of those
so dearly loved, so lately—and, alas! so differently—lost. Trusting
the loyalty of my love so absolutely in all else, can you not trust it
to accept willingly the enforcement of your will ... as you have
enforced it on all others you have ruled, from the soldiers of your
own world to the rest of your household? Ah! the light breaks through
the mist. Before you gave Enva her charge you said to me in her
presence, 'Forgive me what you force upon me;' as if I, above all,
were not your own to deal with as you will. Dearest, do you so wrong
her who loves you, and is honoured by your love, as to fancy that any
exertion of your authority could make her feel humbled in your eyes or
her own?"

It was impossible to answer. Nothing would have more deeply wounded
her simple humility, so free from self-consciousness, as the plain
truth; that as her character unfolded, the infinite superiority of her
nature almost awed me as something—save for the intense and
occasionally passionate tenderness of her love—less like a woman than
an angel.

"I was absorbed," she continued, "in the effort that had thrown Enva
into the slumber of obedience. I did not know or feel where I was or
what I had next to do. My thought, still concentrated, had forgotten
its accomplished purpose, and was bent on your danger. Somehow on the
cushioned pile I seemed to see a figure, strange to me, but which I
shall never forget. It was a young girl, very slight, pale, sickly,
with dark circles round the closed eyes, slumbering like Enva, but in
everything else Enva's very opposite. I suppose I was myself entranced
or dreaming, conscious only of my anxiety for you, so that it seemed
natural that everything should concern you. I remember nothing of my
dream but the words which, when I came to myself in the peristyle,
alone, were as clear in my memory as they are now:—

"'Watch the hand and read the eyes;
On his breast the danger lies—
Strength is weak and childhood wise.

"'Fail the bowl, and—'ware the knife!
Rests on him the Sovereign's life,
Rests the husband's on the wife.

"'They that would his power command
Know who holds his heart in hand:
Silken tress is surest band.

"'Well they judge Kargynda's mood,
Steel to peril, pain, and blood,
Surely through his mate subdued.

"'Love can make the strong a slave,
Fool the wise and quell the brave ...
Love by sacrifice can save.'"

"She again!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"You hear," murmured Eveena. "In kindness to me heed my warning, if
you have neglected all others. Do not break my heart in your mercy to
another. Eivé"—

"
Eivé
!—The prophetess knows me better than you do! The warning
means that they now desire my secret before my life, and scheme to
make your safety the price of my dishonour. It is the Devil's
thought—or the Regent's!"

As I could not decide to send Eivé forth without home, protection, or
control, and Eveena could suggest no other course, the days wore on
under a domestic thunder-cloud which rendered the least sensitive
among us uncomfortable and unhappy, and deprived three at least of the
party of appetite, of ease, and almost of sleep, till two alarming
incidents broke the painful stagnation.

I had just left Eivé's prison one morning when Eveena, who was
habitually entrusted with the charge of these communications, put into
my hands two slips of tafroo. The one had been given her by an ambâ,
and came from Davilo's substitute on the estate. It said simply: "You
and you alone were recognised among the rescuers of your friend.
Before two days have passed an attempt will be made to arrest you."
The other came from Esmo, and Eveena had brought it to me unread, as
was indeed her practice. I could not bear to look at her, though I
held her closely, as I read aloud the brief message which announced
the death, by the sting of two dragons (evidently launched by some
assassin's hand, but under circumstances that rendered detection by
ordinary means hopeless for the moment), of her brother and Esmo's
son, Kevimâ; and invited us to a funeral ceremony peculiar to the
Zinta. I need not speak of the painful minutes that followed, during
which Eveena strove to suppress for my sake at once her tears for her
loss and her renewed and intensified terror on my own account. It was
suddenly announced by the usual signs of the mute messenger that a
visitor awaited me in the hall. Ergimo brought a message from the
Camptâ, which ran as follows:—

"Aware that their treachery is suspected, the enemy now seek your
secret first, and then your life. Guard both for a very short time.
Your fate, your friends', and my own are staked on the issue. The same
Council that sends the traitors to the rack will see the law
repealed."

I questioned Ergimo as to his knowledge of the situation.

"The enemy," he said, "must have changed their plan. One among them,
at least, is probably aware that his treason is suspected both by his
Sovereign and by the Order. This will drive him desperate; and if he
can capture you and extort your secret, he will think he can use it to
effect his purpose, or at least to ensure his escape. He may think
open rebellion, desperate as it is, safer than waiting for the first
blow to come from the Zinta or from the Palace."

My resolve was speedily taken. At the same moment came the necessity
for escape, and the opportunity and excuse. I sought out the writer of
the first message, who entirely concurred with me in the propriety of
the step I was about to take; only recommending me to apply personally
for a passport from the Camptâ, such as would override any attempt to
detain me even by legal warrant. He undertook to care for those I left
behind; to release and provide for Eivé, and to see, in case I should
not return, that full justice was done to the interests of the others,
as well as to their claim to release from contracts which my departure
from their world ought, like death itself, to cancel. The royal
passport came ere I was ready to depart, expressed in the fullest,
clearest language, and such as none, but an officer prepared instantly
to rebel against the authority which gave it, dared defy. During the
last preparations, Velna and Eveena were closeted together in the
chamber of the former; nor did I care to interrupt a parting the most
painful, save one, of those that had this day to be undergone. I went
myself to Eivé.

"I leave you," I said, "a prisoner, not, I hope, for long. If I return
in safety, I will then consider in what manner the termination of your
confinement can be reconciled with what is due to myself and others.
If not, you will be yet more certainly and more speedily released. And
now, child whom I once loved, to whom I thought I had been especially
gentle and indulgent, was the miserable reward offered you the sole
motive that raised your hand against my life? Poison, I have always
said, is the protection of the household slave against the domestic
tyrant. If I had ever been harsh or unjust to you, if I had made your
life unhappy by caprice or by severity, I could understand. But you of
all have had least reason to complain. Not Enva's jealous temper, not
Leenoo's spite, ever suggested to them the idea which came so easily
and was so long and deliberately cherished in your breast."

She rose and faced me, and there was something of contempt in the eyes
that answered mine for this once with the old fearless frankness.

"I had no reason to hate you? Not certainly for the kind of injury
which commonly provokes women to risk the lives their masters have
made intolerable. That your discipline was the lightest ever known in
a household, I need not tell you. That it fell more lightly, if
somewhat oftener, on me than on others, you know as well as I. Put all
the correction or reproof I ever received from you into one, and
repeat it daily, and never should I have complained, much less dreamed
of revenge. You think Enva or Leenoo might less unnaturally, less
unreasonably, have turned upon you, because your measure to their
faults was somewhat harder and your heart colder to them! You did not
scruple to make a favourite of me after a fashion, as you would never
have done even of Eunané. You could pet and play with me, check and
punish me, as a child who would not 'sicken at the sweets, or be
humbled by the sandal.' You forbore longer, you dealt more sternly
with them, because, forsooth, they were women and I a baby. I, who was
not less clever than Eunané, not less capable of love, perhaps of
devotion to you, than Eveena,
I
might rest my head on your knee when
she was by, I might listen to your talk when others were sent away; I
was too much the child, too little the woman, to excite your distrust
or her jealousy. Do you suppose I think better of you, or feel the
more kindly towards you, that you have not taken vengeance? No! still
you have dealt with me as a child; so untaught yet by that last
lesson, that even a woman's revenge cannot make you treat me as a
woman! Clasfempta! you bear, I believe, outside, the fame of a wise
and a firm man; but in these little hands you have been as weak a fool
as the veriest dotard might have been;—and may be yet."

"As you will," I answered, stung into an anger which at any rate
quelled the worst pain I had felt when I entered the room. "Fool or
sage, Eivé, I was your fellow-creature, your protector, and your
friend. When bitter trouble befals you in life, or when, alone, you
find yourself face to face with death, you may think of what has
passed to-day. Then remember, for your comfort, my last words—I
forgive you, and I wish you happy."