As we approached the house I caught sight of Eveena's figure among the
party gathered on the roof. She had witnessed the interview, but her
habitual and conscientious deference forbade her to ask a confidence
not volunteered; and she seemed fully satisfied when, on the first
occasion on which we were alone, I told her simply that the stranger
belonged to the Zinta and had been recommended by her father himself
to the charge of my estate. Though reluctant to disturb her mind with
fears she could not shake off as I could, and which would make my
every absence at least a season of terror, the sense of insecurity
doubtless rendered me more anxious to enjoy whenever possible the only
society in which it was permissible to be frank and off my guard. No
man in his senses would voluntarily have accepted the position which
had been forced upon me. The Zveltau never introduce aliens into their
households. Their leading ideas and fundamental principles so deeply
affect the conduct of existence, the motives of action, the bases of
all moral reasoning—so completely do the inferences drawn from them
and the habits of thought to which they lead pervade and tinge the
mind, conscience, and even language—that though it may be easy to
"live in the light at home and walk with the blind abroad," yet in the
familiar intercourse of household life even a cautious and reserved
man (and I was neither) must betray to the keen instinctive
perceptions of women whether he thought and felt like those around
him, or was translating different thoughts into an alien language.
This difficulty is little felt between unbelievers and Christians. The
simple creed of the Zinta, however, like that of the Prophet, affects
the thought and life as the complicated and subtle mysteries of more
elaborate theologies, more refined philosophic systems rarely do.
One of Eveena's favourite quotations bore the unmistakable stamp of
Zveltic mysticism:—
"Symbols that invert the sense
Form the Seal of Providence;
Contradiction gives the key,
Time unlocks the mystery."
The danger in which my relation to the Zinta and its chief involved
me, and the presence of half a dozen rivals to Eveena—rivals also to
that regard for the Star which at first I felt chiefly for her
sake—likely as they seemed to impair the strength and sweetness of
the tie between us, actually worked to consolidate and endear it. To
enjoy, except on set occasions, without constant liability to
interruption, Eveena's sole society was no easy matter. To conceal our
real secret, and the fact that there was a secret, was imperative.
Avowedly exclusive confidence, conferences from which the rest of the
household were directly shut out, would have suggested to their
envious tempers that Eveena played the spy on them, or influenced and
advised the exercise of my authority. To be alone with her, therefore,
as naturally and necessarily I must often wish to be, required
manoeuvres and arrangements as delicate and difficult, though as
innocent, as those employed by engaged couples under the strict
conventions of European household usage; and the comparative rarity of
such interviews, and the manner in which they had often to be
contrived beforehand, kept alive in its earliest freshness the love
which, if not really diminished, generally loses somewhat of its first
bloom and delicacy in the unrestrained intercourse of marriage.
Absolutely and solely trusted, assured that her company was eagerly
sought, and at least as deeply valued as ever—compelled by the ideas
of her race to accept the situation as natural and right, and wholly
incapable of the pettier and meaner forms of jealousy—Eveena was
fully content and happy in her relations with me. That, on the whole,
she was not comfortable, or at least much less so than during our
suddenly abbreviated honeymoon, was apparent; but her loss of
brightness and cheerfulness was visible chiefly in her weary and
downcast looks on any occasion when, after being absent for some hours
from the house, I came upon her unawares. In my presence she was
always calm and peaceful, kind, and seemingly at ease; and if she saw
or heard me on my return, though she carefully avoided any appearance
of eagerness to greet me sooner than others, or to claim especial
attention, she ever met me with a smile of welcome as frank and bright
as a young bride on Earth could give to a husband returning to her
sole society from a long day of labour for her sake.
In so far as compliance was possible I was compelled to admit the
wisdom of Eveena's plea that no open distinction should be made in her
favour. Except in the simple fact of our affection, there was no
assignable reason for making her my companion more frequently than
Eunané or Eivé. Except that I could trust her completely, there was no
distinction of age, social rank, or domestic relation to afford a
pretext for exempting her from restraints which, if at first I thought
them senseless and severe, were soon justified by experience of the
kind of domestic control which just emancipated school-girls expected
and required. Nor would she accept the immunity tacitly allowed her.
It was not that any established custom or right bounded the arbitrary
power of domestic autocracy. The right of all but unbounded wrong, the
liberty of limitless caprice, is unquestionably vested in the head of
the household. But the very completeness of the despotism rendered its
exercise impossible. Force cannot act where there is no resistance.
The sword of the Plantagenet could cleave the helmet but not the quilt
of down. I could do as I pleased without infringing any understanding
or giving any right to complain.
"But," said Eveena, "you have a sense of justice which has nothing to
do with law or usage. Even your language is not ours. You think of
right and wrong, where we should speak only of what is or is not
punishable. You can make a favourite if you will pay the price. Could
you endure to be hated in your own home, or I to know that you
deserved it? Or, if you could, could you bear to see me hated and my
life made miserable?"
"They dare not!" I returned angrily fearing that they had dared, and
that she had already felt the spite she was so careful not to provoke.
"Do you think that feminine malice cannot contrive to envenom a dozen
stings that I could not explain if I would, and you could not deal
with if I did?"
"But," I replied, "it seems admitted that there is no such thing as
right or custom. As Enva said, I have bought and paid for them, and
may do what I please within the contract; and you agree that is just
what any other man in this world would do."
"Yes," returned Eveena, "and I watched your face while Enva spoke. How
did you like her doctrine? Of course you may do as you please—if you
can please. You may silence discontent, you may suppress spiteful
innuendos and even sulky looks, you may put down mutiny, by sheer
terror. Can you? You may command me to go with you whenever you go
out; you may take the same means to make me complain of unkindness as
to make them conceal it; you may act like one of our own people, if
you can stoop to the level of their minds. But we both know that you
can do nothing of the kind. How could you bear to be driven into
unsparing and undeserved severity, who can hardly bring yourself to
enforce the discipline necessary to peace and comfort on those who
will only be ruled by fear and would like you better if they feared
you more? Did you hear the proverb Leenoo muttered, very unjustly,
when she left your room yesterday, 'A favourite wears out many
sandals'? No! You see the very phrase wounds and disgusts you. But you
would find it a true one. Can you take vengeance for a fault you have
yourself provoked? Can you decide without inquiry, condemn without
evidence, punish without hearing? Men do these things, of course, and
women expect them. But you—I do not say you would be ashamed so to
act—you cannot do it, any more than you can breathe the air of our
snow-mountains."
"At all events, Eveena, I no more dare do it in your presence than I
dare forswear the Faith we hold in common."
But whatever Eveena might exact or I concede, the distinction between
the wife who commanded as much respect as affection, and the girls who
could at best be pets or playthings, was apparent against our will in
every detail of daily life and domestic intercourse. It was alike
impossible to treat Eveena as a child and to rule Enva or Eiralé as
other than children. It was as unnatural to use the tone of command or
rebuke to one for whom my unexpressed wishes were absolute law, as to
observe the form of request or advice in directing or reproving those
whose obedience depended on the consequences of rebellion. It only
made matters worse that the distinction corresponded but too
accurately to their several deserts. No faults could have been so
irritating to Eveena's companions as her undeniable faultlessness.
The ludicrous aspect of my relation to the rest of the household was
even more striking than I had expected. That I should find myself in
the absurd position of a man entrusted with the direct personal
government of half-a-dozen young ladies was even "more truly spoke
than meant." One at least among them might singly have made in time a
not unlovable wife, and all, perhaps, might severally and separately
have been reduced to conjugal complaisance. Collectively, they were,
as Eveena had said, a set of school-girls, and school-girls used to
stricter restraint and much sharper discipline than those of a French
or Italian convent. They would have made life a burden to a vigorous
English schoolmistress, and imperilled the soul of any Lady-Abbess
whose list of permissible penances excluded the dark cell and the
scourge. Fortunately for both parties, I had the advantage of
governess and Superior in the natural awe which girls feel for the
authority of manhood—till they have found out of what soft fibre men
are made—and in the artificial fear inspired by domestic usage and
tradition. For I was soon aware that even on its ridiculous side the
relation was not to be trifled with. The simple indifference a man
feels towards the escapades of girlhood was not applicable to women
and wives, who yet lacked womanly sense and the feeling of conjugal
duty. This serious aspect of their position soon contracted the
indulgence naturally conceded to youth's heedlessness and animal
spirits. These, displayed at first only in the energy and eagerness of
their every movement within the narrow limits of conventional usage,
broke all bounds when, after one or two half-timid, half-venturous
experiments on my patience, they felt that they had, at least for the
moment, exchanged the monotony, the mechanical routine, the stern
repression of their life in the great Nurseries, not for the harsh
household discipline to which they naturally looked forward, but for
the "loosened zone" which to them seemed to promise absolute liberty.
When not immediately in my presence or Eveena's, their keen enjoyment
of a life so new, the sudden development of the brighter side of their
nature under circumstances that gave play to the vigorous vitality of
youth, gave as much pleasure to me as to themselves. But in contact
with myself or Eveena they were women, and showed only the wrong side
of the varied texture of womanhood. To the master they were slaves,
each anxious to attract his notice, win his preference; before the
favourite, spiteful, envious of her and of each other, bitter,
malicious, and false. For Eveena's sake, it was impossible to look on
with indolent indifference on freaks of temper which, childish in the
form they assumed, were envenomed by the deliberate dislike and
unscrupulous cunning of jealous women.
But even on the childish side of their character and conduct, they
soon displayed a determination to test by actual experiment the utmost
extent of the liberty allowed, and the nature and sufficiency of its
limits. Eunané was always the most audacious trespasser and
representative rebel. Fortunately for her, the daring which had
bewildered and exasperated feminine guardians rather amused and
interested me, giving some variety and relief to the monotonous
absurdity of the situation. Nothing in her conduct was more remarkable
or more characteristic than the simplicity and good temper with which
she generally accepted as of course the less agreeable consequences of
her outbreaks; unless it were the sort of natural dignity with which,
when she so pleased, the game played out and its forfeit paid, the
naughty child subsided into the lively but rational companion, and the
woman simply ignored the scrapes of the school-girl.
As her character seemed to unfold, Eivé's individuality became as
distinctly parted from the rest as Eunané's, though in an opposite
direction. Comparatively timid and indolent, without their fulness of
life, she seemed to me little more than a child; and she fell with
apparent willingness into that position, accepting naturally its
privileges and exemptions. She alone was never in the way, never
vexatious or exacting. Content with the notice that naturally fell to
her share, she obtained the more. Never intruding between Eveena and
myself, she alone was not wholly unwelcome to share our accidental
privacy when, in the peristyle or the grounds, the others left us
temporarily alone. On such occasions she would often draw near and
crouch at my feet or by Eveena's side, curling herself like a kitten
upon the turf or among the cushions, often resting her little head
upon Eveena's knee or mine; generally silent, but never so silent as
to seem to be a spy upon our conversation, rather as a favourite child
privileged, in consideration of her quietude and her supposed
harmlessness and inattention, to remain when others are excluded, and
to hear much to which she is supposed not to listen. Having no special
duties of her own in the household, she would wait upon and assist
Eveena whenever the latter would accept her attendance. When the whole
party were assembled, it was her wont to choose her place not in the
circle, still less at my side—Eveena's title to the post of honour on
the left being uncontested, and Eunané generally occupying the
cushions on my right. But Eivé, lying at our feet, would support
herself on her arm between my knee and Eunané's, content to attract my
hand to play with her curls or stroke her head. Under such
encouragement she would creep on to my lap and rest there, but seldom
took any part in conversation, satisfied with the attention one pays
half-consciously to a child. A word that dropped from Enva, however,
on one occasion, obliged me to observe that it was in Eveena's absence
that Eivé always seemed most fully aware of her privileges and most
lavish of her childlike caresses. The kind of notice and affection she
obtained did not provoke the envy even of Leenoo or Eiralé. She no
more affected to imitate Eveena's absolute devotion than she ventured
on Eunané's reckless petulance. She kept my interest alive by the
faults of a spoiled child. Her freaks were always such as to demand
immediate repression without provoking serious displeasure, so that
the temporary disgrace cost her little, and the subsequent
reconciliation strengthened her hold on my heart. But with Eveena, or
in her presence, Eivé's waywardness was so suppressed or controlled
that Eveena's perceptible coolness towards her—it was never coldness
or unkindness—somewhat surprised me.
Few Martialists, when wealthy enough to hand over the management of
their property to others, care to interfere, or even to watch its
cultivation. This, however, to me was a subject of as much interest as
any other of the many peculiarities of Martial society, commerce, and
industry, which it concerned me to investigate and understand; and
when not otherwise employed, I spent great part of my day in watching,
and now and then directing, the work that went on during the whole of
the sunlight, and not unfrequently during the night, upon my farm.
Davilo, the superintendent, had engaged no fewer than eight
subordinates, who, with the assistance of the ambau, the carvee, and
the electric machines, kept every portion of the ground in the most
perfect state of culture. The most valuable part of the produce
consisted of those farinaceous fruits, growing on trees from twenty to
eighty feet in height, which form the principal element of Martial
food. Between the tropics these trees yield ripe fruit twice a year,
during a total period of about three of our months—perhaps for a
hundred days. Various gourds, growing chiefly on canes, hanging from
long flexile stalks that spring from the top of the stem at a height
of from three to eight feet, yield juice which is employed partly in
flavouring the various loaves and cakes into which the flour is made,
partly in the numerous beverages (never allowed to ferment, and
consequently requiring to be made fresh every day), of which the
smallest Martial household has a greater variety than the most
luxurious palace of the East. The best are made from hard-skinned
fruits, whose whole pulp is liquified by piercing the rind before the
fruit is fully ripe, and closing the orifice with a wax-like
substance, almost exactly according to a practice common in different
parts of Asia. The drinks are made, of course, at home. The
farinaceous fruits are sold to the confectioners, who take also a
portion of the milk and all the meat supplied by the pastures. Many
choice fruits grow on shrubs, ranging from the size of a large black
currant tree to that of the smallest gooseberry bush. Vines growing
along the ground bear clustering nuts, whose kernels are sometimes as
hard as that of a cocoa-nut, sometimes almost as soft as butter. The
latter with the juicy fruits, are preserved if necessary for a whole
year in storehouses dug in the ground and lined with concrete, in
which, by chemical means, a temperature a little above the
freezing-point is steadily maintained at very trivial cost. The number
of dishes producible by the mixture of these various materials, with
the occasional addition of meat, fish, and eggs, is enormous; and it
is only when some particular compound is in special favour with the
master of the house that it makes its appearance more than perhaps
once in ten days upon the same table. The invention of the
confectioners is exquisite and inexhaustible; and every table is
supplied with a variety of dainties sufficient for a feast in the most
hospitable and wealthy household of Europe. Many of the smaller
fruit-trees and shrubs yield two crops in the year. The vegetables,
crisper, and of much more varied taste than the best Terrestrial
salads, sometimes possessing a flavour as _piquant_ as that of
cinnamon or nutmeg, are gathered continuously from one end of the year
to the other.
The vines, tough and fibrous, supply the best and strongest cordage
used in Mars. For this purpose they are dried, stripped, combed, and
put through an elaborate process of manufacture, which, without
weakening the fibres, renders them smooth, and removes the knots in
which they naturally abound. The twisted cord of the nut-vine is
almost as strong as a metallic wire rope of half its measurement.
There is another purpose for which these fibres in their natural state
are employed. Simply dried and twisted, they form a scourge as
terrible as the Russian knout or African cowhide, though of a
different character—a scourge which, even in its lightest form,
reduces the wildest herd to instant order; and which, as employed on
criminals, is hardly less dreaded than that electric rack whereby
Martial science inflicts on every nerve a graduated torture such as
even ecclesiastical malignity has not invented on Earth—such as I
certainly will not place in the hands of Terrestrial rulers.
All these crops are raised with marvellously little human labour, the
whole work of ploughing and sowing being done by machinery, that of
weeding and harvesting chiefly by the carvee. The ambau climb the
trees and pick the fruit from the ends of the branches, which they are
also taught to pinch in, so that none grow so long as to break with
the weight of these creatures, as clever and agile as the smaller
monkeys, but almost as large as an ordinary baboon. It must always be
remembered that, size for size, and _cæteris paribus,_ all bodies,
animate and inanimate, on Mars weigh less than half as much as they
would on Earth. Eunané's blunder about the _carcarâ_ was not explained
by any subsequent errors of the ambau or carvee, which always selected
the ripe fruit with faultless skill, leaving the immature untouched,
and throwing aside in small heaps to manure the ground the few that
had been allowed to grow too ripe for use. The sums paid from time to
time into my hands, received from the sales of produce, were far
greater than I could possibly spend in gratifying any taste of my own;
and, as I presently found, the idea that the surplus might indulge
those of the ladies never entered their minds.
Before we had been settled in our home for three days Eveena had made
two requests which I was well pleased to grant. First, she entreated
that I would teach her one at least of the languages with which I was
familiar—a task of whose extreme difficulty she had little idea.
Compared with her native tongue, the complication and irregularities
of the simplest language spoken on Earth are far more arbitrary and
provoking than seems the most difficult of ancient or Oriental tongues
to a Frenchman or Italian. In order to fulfil my promise that she
should assist me in recording my observations and writing out my
notes, I chose Latin. Unhappily for her, I found myself as impatient
and unsuccessful as I was inexperienced in teaching; and nothing but
her exquisite gentleness and forbearance could have made the lessons
otherwise than painful to us both. Well for me that the "right to
govern wrong" was to her a simple truth—an inalienable marital
privilege, to be met with that unqualified submission which must have
shamed the worst temper into self-control. Eivé on one occasion made a
similar request; but besides that I realised the convenience of a
medium of communication understood by ourselves alone, I had no
inclination to expose either my own temper or Eivé's to the trial.
Eveena's second request came naturally from one whose favourite
amusement had been the raising and modification of flowers. She asked
to be entrusted with the charge of the seeds I had brought from Earth,
and to be permitted to form a bed in the peristyle for the purpose of
the experiment. Though this disfigured the perfect arrangement of the
garden, I was delighted to have so important and interesting a problem
worked out by hands so skilful and so careful. I should probably have
failed to rear a single plant, even had I been familiar with those
applications of electricity to the purpose which are so extensively
employed in Mars. Eveena managed to produce specimens strangely
altered, sometimes stunted, sometimes greatly improved, from about
one-fourth of the seeds entrusted to her; and among those with which
she was most brilliantly successful were some specimens of Turkish
roses, the roses of the attar, which I had obtained at Stamboul. My
admiration of her patience and pleasure in her success deeply
gratified her; and it was a full reward for all her trouble when I
suggested that she should send to her sister Zevle a small packet of
each of the seeds with which she had succeeded. It happened, however,
that the few rose seeds had all been planted; and the flowers, though
apparently perfect, produced no seed of their own, probably because
they were not suited to the taste of the flower-birds, and Eveena
somehow forgot or failed to employ the process of artificial
fertilisation.
If anything could have fully reconciled my conscience to the household
relations in which I was rather by weakness than by will inextricably
entangled, it would have been the certainty that by the sacrifice
Eveena had herself enforced on me, and which she persistently refused
to recognise as such, she alone had suffered. True that I could not
give, and could hardly affect for the wives bestowed on me by
another's choice, even such love as the head of a Moslem household may
distribute among as many inmates. But to what I could call love they
had never looked forward. But for the example daily presented before
their own eyes they would no more have missed than they comprehended
it. That they were happier than they had expected, far happier than
they would have been in an ordinary home, happier certainly than in
the schools they had quitted, I could not doubt, and they did not
affect to deny. If my patience were not proof against vexations the
more exasperating from their pettiness, and the sense of ridicule
which constantly attached to them, I could read in the manner of most
and understand from the words of Eunané, who seldom hesitated to speak
her mind, whether its utterances, were flattering or wounding, that
she and her companions found me not only far more indulgent, but
incomparably more just than they had been taught to hope a man could
be. Of justice, indeed, as consisting in restraint on one's own temper
and consideration for the temper of others, Martial manhood is
incapable, or, at any rate, Martial womanhood never suspects its
masters.
Moreover, though no longer blest with the spirits of youth, and
finding little pleasure in what youth calls pleasure, I had escaped
the kind of satiety that seems to attend lives more softly spent than
mine had been; and found a very real and unfading enjoyment in
witnessing the keen enjoyment of these youthful natures in such
liberty as could be accorded and such amusements as the life of this
dull and practical world affords.
Among these, two at least are closely similar to the two favourite
pleasures of European society. Music appears to have been carried,
like most arts and sciences, to a point of mechanical perfection
which, I should suppose, like much of the artificial accuracy and ease
which civilisation has introduced, mars rather than enhances the
natural gratification enjoyed by simpler ages and races. Almost deaf
to music as distinguished from noise, I did not attempt to comprehend
the construction of Martial instruments or the nature of the concords
they emitted. One only struck me with especial surprise by a
peculiarity which, if I could not understand, I could not mistake. A
number of variously coloured flames are made to synchronise with or
actually emit a number of corresponding notes, dancing to, or, more
properly, weaving a series of strangely combined movements in accord
with the music, whose vibrations were directly and inseparably
connected with their motion. But all music is the work of professional
musicians, never the occupation of woman's leisure, never made more
charming to the ear by its association with the movement of beloved
hands or the tones of a cherished voice. Electric wires, connected
with the vast buildings wherein instruments produce what sounds like
fine choral singing as well as musical notes, enable the householder
to turn on at pleasure music equal, I suppose, to the finest operatic
performances or the grandest oratorio, and listen to it at leisure
from the cushions of his own peristyle. This was a great though not
wholly new delight to Eunané and most of her companions. For their
sake only would Eveena ever have resorted to it, for though herself
appreciating music not less highly, and educated to understand it much
more thoroughly, than they, she could derive little gratification from
that which was clearly incomprehensible if not disagreeable to
me—could hardly enjoy a pleasure I could not share.
The theatre was a more prized and less common indulgence. It is little
frequented by the elder Martialists; and not enjoying it themselves,
they seldom sacrifice their hours to the enjoyment of their women. But
it forms so important an aid to education, and tends so much to keep
alive in the public memory impressions which policy will not permit to
fade, that both from the State and from the younger portion of the
community it receives an encouragement quite sufficient to reward the
few who bestow their time and talent upon it. Great buildings, square
or oblong in form, the stage placed at one end, the arched boxes or
galleries from which the spectators look down thereon rising tier
above and behind tier to the further extremity, are constantly filled.
There are no actors, and Martial feeling would hardly allow the
appearance of women as actresses. But an art, somewhat analogous to,
but infinitely surpassing, that displayed in the manipulation of the
most skilfully constructed and most complicated magic lanterns,
enables the conductors of the theatre to present upon the stage a
truly living and moving picture of any scene they desire to exhibit.
The figures appear perfectly real, move with perfect freedom, and
seem to speak the sounds which, in fact, are given out by a gigantic
hidden phonograph, into which the several parts have long ago been
carefully spoken by male and female voices, the best suited to each
character; and which, by the reversal of its motion, can repeat the
original words almost for ever, with the original tone, accent, and
expression. The illusion is far more perfect than that obtained by all
the resources of stage management and all the skill of the actor's art
in the best theatres of France. After the first novelty, the first
surprise and wonder were exhausted, I must confess that these
representations simply bored me, the more from their length and
character. But even Eveena enjoyed them thoroughly, and my other
companions prized an evening or afternoon thus spent above all other
indulgences. A passage running along at the back of each tier admits
the spectator to boxes so completely private as to satisfy the
strictest requirements of Martial seclusion.
The favourite scenes represent the most striking incidents of Martial
history, or realise the life, usages, and manners of ages long gone
by, before science and invention had created the perfect but
monotonous civilisation that now prevails. One of the most interesting
performances I witnessed commenced with the exhibition of a striking
scene, in which the union of all the various States that had up to
that time divided the planet's surface, and occasionally waged war on
one another, in the first Congress of the World, was realised in the
exact reproduction of every detail which historic records have
preserved. Afterwards was depicted the confusion, declining into
barbarism and rapid degradation, of the Communistic revolution, the
secession of the Zveltau and their merely political adherents, the
construction of their cities, fleets, and artillery, the terrible
battles, in which the numbers of the Communists were hurled back or
annihilated by the asphyxiator and the lightning gun; and finally, the
most remarkable scene in all Martial history, when the last
representatives of the great Anarchy, squalid, miserable, degraded,
and debased in form and features, as well as indicating by their dress
and appearance the utter ruin of art and industry under their rule,
came into the presence of the chief ruler of the rising
State—surrounded by all the splendour which the "magic of property,"
stimulating invention and fostering science, had created—to entreat
admission into the realm of restored civilisation, and a share in the
blessings they had so deliberately forfeited and so long striven to
deny to others.