I had for some time observed in my host’s highly informed and powerfully
proportioned daughter that kindly and protective sentiment which,
whether above the earth or below it, an all-wise Providence has bestowed
upon the feminine division of the human race. But until very lately I
had ascribed it to that affection for ‘pets’ which a human female at
every age shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware that
the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different from that
which I had inspired in Taee. But this conviction gave me none of that
complacent gratification which the vanity of man ordinarily conceives
from a flattering appreciation of his personal merits on the part of
the fair sex; on the contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of all
the Gy-ei in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the
strongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she was
certainly the most popularly beloved. The desire to aid, to succour, to
protect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade her whole being. Though
the complicated miseries that originate in penury and guilt are unknown
to the social system of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discovered
in vril an agency which could banish sorrow from life; and wherever
amongst her people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed in the
mission of comforter. Did some sister Gy fail to secure the love she
sighed for? Zee sought her out, and brought all the resources of her
lore, and all the consolations of her sympathy, to bear upon a grief
that so needs the solace of a confidant. In the rare cases, when grave
illness seized upon childhood or youth, and the cases, less rare,
when, in the hardy and adventurous probation of infants, some accident,
attended with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook her studies and
her sports, and became the healer and nurse. Her favourite flights
were towards the extreme boundaries of the domain where children were
stationed on guard against outbreaks of warring forces in nature, or the
invasions of devouring animals, so that she might warn them of any peril
which her knowledge detected or foresaw, or be at hand if any harm had
befallen. Nay, even in the exercise of her scientific acquirements there
was a concurrent benevolence of purpose and will. Did she learn any
novelty in invention that would be useful to the practitioner of some
special art or craft? she hastened to communicate and explain it. Was
some veteran sage of the College perplexed and wearied with the toil of
an abstruse study? she would patiently devote herself to his aid, work
out details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful smile, quicken
his wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him, as it were, his own
good genius made visible as the strengthener and inspirer. The same
tenderness she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have often known
her bring home some sick and wounded animal, and tend and cherish it as
a mother would tend and cherish her stricken child. Many a time when I
sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have
watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments
groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with
joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that
she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with
her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would
scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress
of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical
whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion
among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet,
with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars.
These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand
they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This
serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their
wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the
dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of face
lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to
be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision
of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel
for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love.
Is it that, among the race I belong to, man’s pride so far influences
his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he
feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what
strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the
supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all
other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me
with her preference? In personal qualifications, though I passed for
good-looking amongst the people I came from, the handsomest of my
countrymen might have seemed insignificant and homely beside the grand
and serene type of beauty which characterised the aspect of the Vril-ya.
That novelty, the very difference between myself and those to whom Zee
was accustomed, might serve to bias her fancy was probable enough, and
as the reader will see later, such a cause might suffice to account for
the predilection with which I was distinguished by a young Gy scarcely
out of her childhood, and very inferior in all respects to Zee. But
whoever will consider those tender characteristics which I have just
ascribed to the daughter of Aph-Lin, may readily conceive that the main
cause of my attraction to her was in her instinctive desire to cherish,
to comfort, to protect, and, in protecting, to sustain and to exalt.
Thus, when I look back, I account for the only weakness unworthy of
her lofty nature, which bowed the daughter of the Vril-ya to a woman’s
affection for one so inferior to herself as was her father’s guest. But
be the cause what it may, the consciousness that I had inspired such
affection thrilled me with awe--a moral awe of her very imperfections,
of her mysterious powers, of the inseparable distinctions between her
race and my own; and with that awe, I must confess to my shame, there
combined the more material and ignoble dread of the perils to which her
preference would expose me.
Under these anxious circumstances, fortunately, my conscience and sense
of honour were free from reproach. It became clearly my duty, if Zee’s
preference continued manifest, to intimate it to my host, with, of
course, all the delicacy which is ever to be preserved by a well-bred
man in confiding to another any degree of favour by which one of the
fair sex may condescend to distinguish him. Thus, at all events,
I should be freed from responsibility or suspicion of voluntary
participation in the sentiments of Zee; and the superior wisdom of
my host might probably suggest some sage extrication from my perilous
dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the ordinary instinct of civilised and
moral man, who, erring though he be, still generally prefers the right
course in those cases where it is obviously against his inclinations,
his interests, and his safety to elect the wrong one.