NO more perfect place could have been imagined for an exchange of
confidences and sympathy between two girls situated as Alma and Isma
were than the oval, daintily-cushioned interior of the _Cygna_, as Isma
had called her swan-prowed craft.
Skirting the mountains, at a distance of about five hundred yards from
them, and at a height of about as many feet from the summits of the
undulating foothills below, the _Cygna_ sped quietly along at a speed
of some twenty-five miles an hour. The temperature of the tropic night
was so soft and warm, and the air was so dry that it was not even
necessary for them to make use of the light wraps that lay in the stern
of the boat.
Isma reclined in the after part of the broad, low seat which ran round
the inside, with one hand resting lightly upon a little silver lever
which could be used for working the rudder-fan, in addition to the
tiller-ropes, which she held in her hands while standing up. Alma sat
almost upright amidships, with one hand clasped on the rail of polished
satin-wood which ran round the well of the boat, her head turned away
from Isma and her eyes fixed upon two dim points of light far away to
the southward, which marked the position of the two moonlit, snowy
peaks which guarded the southern confines of the valley.
For several minutes they proceeded thus in silence, which neither
seemed inclined to break. At length Isma looked up at a planet that
was shining redly over the northern mountains, and, possessed by a
sudden inspiration, said--
“Look, Alma, there is Mars returning to our skies!”
“Yes,” said Alma, turning round and gazing from beneath her
slightly-frowning brows at the ruddy planet; “it is a fitting time
for him to come back now that, after all these years of peace and
happiness, human wickedness and ambition have brought the curse of war
back again on earth.”
“Yes,” said Isma. “If there were anything in what the old astrologers
used to say we could look upon his rising as an omen. And yet we have
very little reason surely for taking as an emblem of war a world in
which wars have been unheard of for thousands of years.”
“I wonder when that time will come on earth?” said Alma bitterly. “If
ever it does! We terrestrials seem to be too hopelessly wicked and
foolish for such wisdom as that.
“Mankind will never have a fairer opportunity of working out its
redemption than it had after the Terror, and yet here, after four
generations of peaceful happiness and prosperity, the wickedness of one
woman is able to set the world ablaze again. Our forefathers were wise,
but they would have been wiser still if they had stamped that vile
brood out utterly. Their evil blood has been the one drop of venom that
has poisoned the whole world’s cup of happiness!”
As Alma spoke these last words her grey eyes grew dark with sudden
passion under her straight-drawn brows. Her breast heaved with a sudden
wave of emotion, and the sentences came quickly and fiercely from the
lips which Isma had never heard speak in anger before.
“Yes,” she replied, rather sadly than angrily, “perhaps it would have
been better for the world if they had done so, or, at anyrate, if they
had shut them up for life, as they did the criminals and the insane in
the middle of the last century. But we must remember, even in our own
sorrow and anger, that this Olga Romanoff is in her way not altogether
unlike our own Angel was in hers.”
“Surely you’re speaking sacrilege now!” interrupted Alma. “How can the
evil be like the good under any circumstances?”
“No, I am not,” said Isma, with a smile. “Remember how Natasha was
trained up by the Master in undying hate of Russian tyranny, and how
she inherited the legacy of revenge from her mother and him. No doubt
this Olga has done the same, and she has been taught to look upon us as
the Terrorists looked upon the Tsar and his family.
“We are the descendants of those who flung her ancestor from his
throne, extinguished his dynasty, and sent him to die in Siberia. I
would kill her with my own hand if I could, and believe that I was
ridding the world of a curse, but surely we two daughters of Aeria are
wise enough to be just even to such an enemy as she is.”
“But she has done worse than kill us,” Alma almost hissed between her
clenched teeth. “If she had a thousand lives and we took them one by
one they would not expiate her crime against us, or equal the hopeless
misery that she has brought upon us.
“What is mere death, the swift transition from one stage of existence
to another, compared with the hopeless death-in-life to which her
wanton wickedness has condemned you and me, or to the calamities which
she has brought upon the world?”
“It is nothing, I grant you,” said Isma. “But still I do not agree with
you about that hopeless death-in-life, as you call it. Our present
sorrow is great and heavy enough, God knows, but for me at least it is
not hopeless, nor will it be for you when the first stress of the storm
is over.”
“What do you mean?” cried Alma, almost as fiercely as before, and
leaning forward and looking through the dusk into her face as though
she hardly credited her ears. “Do you mean to say that either you or I
could ever”--
“Yes,” said Isma, interrupting her, and speaking now with eager
animation. “Yes, I mean just what you were going to say. And some day,
I believe, you will think as I do.”
Alma shook her head in mournful incredulity, and Isma noticing the
gesture went on--
“Yes, you will! The reason that you do not agree with me now is that
yours is a deeper and stronger nature than mine. You are like the sea,
and I am like the lake. Your grief and anger struck you dumb at first.
“You were in a stupor when I found you on the terrace, and now the
depths of your nature are broken up and the storm is raging, and until
it is over you will see nothing but your own sorrow and anger.
“But with me the storm broke out at once, and I ran to my room and
threw myself upon my bed and sobbed and wailed until my mother thought
I was going mad. You have not wept yet, and it will be well for you
when you do. Your nature is prouder than mine, and it will take longer
to melt, but it must melt some time, for we are both women, after all,
and then you will see hope through your tears, as I did.”
Alma shook her head again, and said in a low, sad, steady voice--
“I can never see hope until I can see Alan as he was when he left me,
and you know that is impossible.”
“You will never see him again as he was,” replied Isma gently. “But
that is no reason why you should not see him better than he was.”
“Better?” exclaimed Alma, with an involuntary note of scorn in her
voice, which brought a quick flush to Isma’s cheek, and a flash into
her eyes for her brother’s sake. “Better! How can that be?”
“Just as the man who has fallen and risen again of his own native
strength, is better and stronger than the man who has never been
tempted,” replied Isma almost hotly.
“Remember the lessons we have learnt from the people of Mars since we
learnt to communicate with them. You know how they have gone through
civilisation after civilisation until they have refined everything out
of human nature that makes it human except their animal existence and
their intellectual faculties.
“They have no passions and they make no mistakes. What we call love
they call sexual suitability, the mechanical arrangement into which
they have refined our ruling passion. Do you remember how almost
impossible Vassilis, after he had perfected the code of signals, found
it to make even their brightest and most advanced intellects understand
the meaning of jealousy?”
The skilfully-aimed shot struck home instantly. A bright wave of colour
swept from Alma’s throat up to her brow. Her eyes shone like two pale
fires in the dusk, and her hand grasped the rail on which it was
resting till the bones and sinews stood out distinct in it. She seemed
to gasp for breath a moment before she found her voice, but when she
spoke her tone seemed to ring and vibrate like a bell in the sudden
strength of her unloosed passion.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you innocent-looking little Isma! You are wiser
than I am after all. I did not know the meaning of that word till
Olga’s letter fell from the sky, but I know it now. My God, how I hate
that woman!”
“She is not a woman,” replied Isma, speaking in the unconscious pride
of her pure descent. “She is a baseborn animal, for she has used her
beauty for the vilest ends, yet I am glad to hear you say that you hate
her for Alan’s sake, as I do, and--and for Alexis’s. While you can hate
you can love, and some day you will love Alan--the real Alan, not your
ideal lover--all the better because you have hated Olga for his sake.”
“What?” almost wailed Alma, in the intensity of her anger and misery.
“After he has held her in his arms--after his lips have kissed
hers--after”--
“Yes, even after that. When your first bitterness has passed, as mine
has, you will be more just, and remember the influence under which he
did so--if he did. Do you hold yourself responsible for what you think
or do in your dreams, or do you not believe what Alan said in his
letter about the drug? You know too much about chemistry not to know
that such horrible poisons have existed for centuries.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, and I know that he has no share in the moral
guilt; but how can I ever forget he has been what those cruel words
of Olga’s told us she had made of him?” replied Alma, her face growing
cold and hard again as she spoke.
“Alma,” said Isma, with gentle dignity, yet with a note of keen
reproach in her voice, “surely you are forgetting that you are speaking
of my brother as well as of your lover. No, I am not angry, for I
am too sad myself not to understand your sorrow. But I want you to
remember that I who have lost both a lover and a brother am asking you
to be patient and to hope with me.
“We have never seen Alan and Alexis as they are. We only remember them
as two handsome boys who had never seen or known evil. When we meet
them again, as I firmly believe we shall, they will be men who have
passed through the fire; for if they do not pass through it and come
out stronger and better than they were, rest assured we shall never
meet on earth again.
“Alan would no more come to you now than you would go to him. When he
believes himself worthy of you he will come for you as Alexis will come
for me, and then”--
She stopped short in her eloquent pleading, for Alma, at last melted
and overcome by her sweet unselfishness and loving logic, had felt the
springs of her own woman’s nature unloosed, and with a low, wailing cry
had sunk down upon the cushions towards her, and was sobbing out her
sorrow on her lap. Isma said nothing more, for her end was achieved.
She laid her left hand caressingly on Alma’s hair, and with her right
she pulled the steering-lever back and swung the _Cygna_ round until
her prow pointed towards home again.
When they reached the villa they found the President’s private yacht
resting on the terrace, for Alan’s father and mother had come over
after the Council meeting to discuss with Alma’s parents the more
intimate family aspect of the strange events which had cleared up in
such terrible fashion the mystery which had so long shrouded the fate
of the sons of the two chief families in Aeria.
So revolting was the idea of their mental servitude to such an enemy
of the human race as they could not but believe Olga Romanoff to be,
and so frightful were the consequences that must infallibly befall
humanity in consequence of it, that their parents would rather have
known them dead than living under such degrading circumstances. To the
Aerians, far advanced as they were beyond the standards of the present
day, both in religion and philosophy, the conception of death was one
which included no terrors and no more regret than was natural and
common to all humanity at parting with a kinsman or a friend.
As they were destined to prove, when face to face with a crisis
unparalleled in the history of humanity, they regarded death merely
as a natural and necessary transition from one state of existence to
another, which would be higher or lower according to the preponderance
of good or evil done in this life.
If, therefore, the parents and kinsmen of those who were now exiles
and wanderers upon the ocean wastes could have chosen, they would
infinitely rather have known that Alan and Alexis had shared the fate
of their companions in the Norwegian snowdrift than they would have
learnt that for six years they had been the slaves and playthings of a
woman who, as they guessed from Alan’s letter, combined the ambition
of a Semiramis with the vices of a Messalina, and who had used the
skill and knowledge which they had acquired and inherited as Princes of
the Air with the avowed purpose of subverting the dominion of Aeria,
undoing all that their ancestors had done, and bringing back the evil
era of strife, bloodshed, and political slavery.
So, too, with Alma. As she had told Isma, she would a thousand times
rather have seen her lover dead than degraded to such base uses.
Although she, like everyone else in Aeria, admitted that the strange
circumstances absolved both Alan and Alexis from all moral blame and
responsibility, she, in common with her own father and mother, and
perhaps, also, with others not less intimately concerned, found it
impossible to forget or ignore the taint of such an association, and to
look upon it as a stain that might never be washed away.
Indeed, the only member of the family council who openly proclaimed
her belief that the two exiles would, if ever they returned, come back
to Aeria better and stronger men than those who had known no evil was
Isma, who repeated, with all the winning eloquence at her command, all
the arguments that she had used to Alma during their cruise together.
Whether Alma and the others would ever come round to her view could of
course only be proved by time, but it is nevertheless certain that when
the family council at last separated the hearts of its members were
less sore than they would have been had Alan and Alexis not possessed
such an advocate as the girl who had so good a double reason for
pleading their causes.