"What can that matter?" she answered. "I suppose in almost any case we
should escape or die together? To leave me here is to inflict
certainly, and at once, the worst that can possibly befall me; to take
me gives me the hope of living or dying with you; and even if I were
killed, I should be with you, and feel that you were kind to me, to
the last."
"I little thought," said I, hesitating long for some expression of
tenderness, which the language of Mars refuses to furnish,—"I little
thought to find in a world of which selfishness seems to be the
paramount principle, and the absence of real love even between man and
woman the most prevalent characteristic, a wife so true to the best
and deepest meaning of wedlock. Still less could I have hoped to find
such a wife in one who had scarcely spoken to me twenty-four hours
before our marriage. If my unexampled adventure had had no other
reward—if I had cared nothing for the triumph of discovering a new
world with all its wonders—Eveena, this discovery alone is reward in
full for all my studies, toils, and perils. For all I have done and
risked already, for all the risks of the future, I am tenfold repaid
in winning you."
She looked up at these words with an expression in which there was
more of bewilderment and incredulity than of satisfaction, evidently
touched by the earnestness of my tone, but scarcely understanding my
words better than if I had spoken in my own tongue. It would not be
worth while to record the next hour's conversation; I would only note
the strong and painful impression it left upon my mind. There was in
Eveena's language and demeanour a timidity—a sort of tentative
fearful venturing as on dangerous ground, feeling her way, as it were,
in almost every sentence—which could not be wholly attributed to the
shyness of a very young and very suddenly wedded bride. There was
enough and to spare of this shyness; but more of the sheer physical or
nervous fear of a child suddenly left in hands whose reputed severity
has thoroughly frightened her; not daring to give offence by silence,
but afraid at each word to give yet more fatal offence in speaking.
Longer experience of a world in which even the first passion of love
is devoid of tenderness—in which asserted equality has long since
deprived women of that claim to indulgence which can only rest on
acknowledged weakness—taught me but too well the meaning of this
fearful, trembling anxiety to please, or rather not to offend. I
suppose that even a brutal master hardly likes to see a child cower in
his presence as if constantly expecting a blow; and this cowering was
so evident in my bride's demeanour, that, after trying for a couple of
hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I
began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone
involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade of
annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask
what error she had committed and how it might be repaired, a
scratching on the door startled her. She did not, however, venture to
disengage herself from the hand which now held her own, but only moved
half-imperceptibly aside with a slight questioning look and gesture,
as if tacitly asking to be released. As I still held her fast, she was
silent, till the unnoticed scratching had been two or three times
repeated, and then half-whispered, "Shall I tell them to come in?"
When I released her, there appeared to my surprise at her call, no
human intruder, but one of the ambau, bearing on a tray a goblet,
which, as he placed it on a table beside us, I perceived to contain a
liquid rather different from any yet offered me. The presence of these
mute servants is generally no more heeded than that of our cats and
dogs; but I now learnt that Martial ideas of delicacy forbid them,
even as human servants would be forbidden, to intrude unannounced on
conjugal privacy. When the little creature had departed, I tasted the
liquid, but its flavour was so unpleasant that I set down the vessel
immediately. Eveena, however, took it up, and drinking a part of it,
with an effort to control the grimace of dislike it provoked, held it
up to me again, so evidently expecting and inviting me to share it
that courtesy permitted no further demur. A second sign or look, when
I set it down unemptied, induced me to finish the draught. Regarding
the matter as some trivial but indispensable ceremonial, I took no
further notice of it; but, thankful for the diversion it had given to
my thoughts, continued my endeavours to soothe and encourage my fair
companion. After a few minutes it seemed as if she were somewhat
suddenly gaining courage and confidence. At the same time I myself
became aware of a mental effect which I promptly ascribed to the
draught. Nor was I wrong. It contained one of those drugs which I have
mentioned; so rarely used in this house that I had never before seen
or tasted any of them, but given, as matter of course, on any occasion
that is supposed to involve unusual agitation or make an exceptional
call on nerves or spirits. But for the influence of this cup I should
still have withheld the remark which, nevertheless, I had resolved to
make as soon as I could hope to do so without annoying or alarming
Eveena.
"Are you afraid of me?" I asked somewhat abruptly. The question may
have startled her, but I was more startled by the answer.
"Of course," she said in a tone which would have been absolutely
matter of fact, except that the doubt evidently surprised her. "Ought
I not to be so? But what made you ask? And what had I done to
displease you, just before they sent us the 'courage cup'?"
"I did not mean to show anything like displeasure," I replied. "But I
was thinking then, and I may tell you now, that you remind me not of
the women of my own Earth, but of petted children suddenly transferred
to a harsh school. You speak and look like such a child, as if you
expected each moment at least to be severely scolded, if not beaten,
without knowing your fault."
"Not yet," she murmured, with a smile which seemed to me more painful
than tears would have been. "But please don't speak as if I should
fear anything so much as being scolded by you. We have a saying that
'the hand may bruise the skin, the tongue can break the heart.'"
"True enough," I said; "only on Earth it is mostly woman's tongue that
breaks the heart, and men must not in return bruise the skin."
"Why not?" she asked. "You said to my mother the other day that Argâ
(the fretful child of Esmo's adoption) deserved to be beaten."
"Women are supposed," I answered, "to be amenable to milder
influences; and a man must be drunk or utterly brutal before he could
deal harshly with a creature so gentle and so fragile as yourself."
"Don't spoil me," she said, with a pretty half-mournful, half-playful
glance. "'A petted bride makes an unhappy wife.' Surely it is no true
kindness to tempt us to count on an indulgence that cannot last."
"There is among us," I rejoined, "a saying about 'breaking a butterfly
on the wheel'—as if one spoke of driving away the tiny birds that
nestle and feed in your flowers with a hammer. To apply your proverbs
to yourself would be to realise this proverb of ours. Can you not let
me pet and spoil my little flower-bird at least till I have tamed her,
and trust me to chastise her as soon as she shall give reason—if I
can find a tendril or flower-stem light enough for the purpose?"
"Will you promise to use a hammer when you wish to be rid of her?"
said she, glancing up for one moment through her drooping lashes with
a look exactly attuned to the mingled archness and pathos of her tone.
Like all Martialists, I had been accustomed since my landing to wake
with the first light of dawn; but the draught, though its earlier
effects were anything but narcotic or stupifying, deepened and
prolonged my sleep. It was not till the rays of sunlight came clear
and full through the crystal roof of the peristyle, and the window of
our bridal chamber, that my eyes unclosed. The first object on which
they opened startled me into full waking recollection. Exactly where
the sunbeams fell, just within reach of my hand, Eveena stood; the
loveliest creature I ever beheld, a miniature type of faultless
feminine grace and beauty. By the standard of Terrestrial humanity she
was tiny rather than small: so light, so perfect in proportion, form,
and features, so absolutely beautiful, so exquisitely delicate, as to
suggest the ideal Fairy Queen realised in flesh and blood, rather than
any properly human loveliness. In the transparent delicacy of a
complexion resembling that of an infant child of the fairest and most
tenderly nurtured among the finest races of Europe, in the ideally
perfect outline of face and features—the noble but even forehead—the
smooth, straight, clearly pencilled eyebrows—the large almond-shaped
eyes and drooping lids, with their long, dark, soft fringe—the little
mouth and small, white, even regular teeth—the rosy lips, slightly
compressed, save when parted in speech, smile, or eager attention—she
exhibited in their most perfect but by no means fullest development
the characteristics of Martial physiognomy; or rather the
characteristic beauty of a family in which the finest traits of that
physiognomy are unmixed with any of its meaner or harsher
peculiarities. The hands, long, slight, and soft, the unsandalled
feet, not less perfectly shaped, could only have belonged to the child
of ancestors who for more than a hundred generations have never known
hard manual toil, rough exposure, or deforming, cramping costume; even
as every detail of her beauty bore witness to an immemorial
inheritance of health unbroken by physical infirmity, undisturbed by
violent passions, and developed by an admirable system of physical and
mental discipline and culture. The absence of veil and sleeves left
visible the soft rounded arms and shoulders, in whose complexion a
tinge of pale rose seemed to shine through a skin itself of
translucent white; the small head, and the perfection of the slender
neck, with the smooth unbroken curve from the ear to the arm. Her long
hair, fastened only by a silver band woven in and out behind the small
rounded ears, fell almost to her knee; and, as it caught the bright
rays of the morning sun, I discerned for the first time the full
beauty of that tinge of gold which varied the colour of the rich,
soft, brown tresses. As her sex are seldom exposed to the cold of the
night or the mists, their underclothing is slight and close fitting.
Eveena's thin robe, of the simplest possible form—two wide straight
pieces of a material lustrous as satin but rivalling the finest
cambric in texture (lined with the same fabric reversed), sewn
together from the hem of the skirt to the arm, and fastened again by
the shoulder clasps—fell perfectly loose save where compressed by the
zone or by the movements of the wearer; and where so compressed,
defined the outlines of the form as distinctly as the lightest wet
drapery of the studio. Her dress, in short, achieved in its pure
simplicity all at which the artistic skill of matrons, milliners, and
maidens aims in a Parisian ball costume, without a shadow of that
suggestive immodesty from which ball costumes are seldom wholly free.
Exactly reversing Terrestrial practice, a Martial wife reserves for
strictest domestic privacy that undressed full-dress, that frank
revelation of her beauty, which the matrons of London, Paris, or New
York think exclusively appropriate to the most public occasions. Till
now, while still enjoying the liberty allowed to maidens in this
respect, Eveena, by the arrangement of her veil, had always given to
her costume a reserve wholly unexceptionable, even according to the
rules enforced by the customs of Western Europe on young girls not yet
presented in the marriage market of society. A new expression, or one,
at least, which I had never before seen there, gave to her face a
strange and novel beauty; the beauty, I wish to think, of shy, but
true happiness; felt, it may be, for the first time, and softened, I
fear, by a doubt of its possible endurance which rendered it as
touching as attractive. Never was the sleep even of the poet of the
Midsummer Night's Dream
visited by a lovelier vision—especially
lovely as the soft rose blush suffused her cheeks under my gaze of
admiration and delight. Springing up, I caught her with both hands and
drew her on my knee. Some minutes passed before either of us cared to
speak. Probably as she rested her head on my arm and looked into my
eyes, each read the other's character more truly and clearly than
words the most frank and open could ever enable us to do. I had taught
her last night a few substitutes in the softest tongue I knew for
those words of natural tenderness in which her language is signally
deficient: taught her to understand them, certainly not to use them,
for it was long before I could even induce her to address me by name.
"My father bade me yesterday," she said at last, "ask you in future to
wear the dress of our people. Not that you will be the less an object
of attention and wonder, but that in retaining a distinction which
depends entirely on your own choice, you will seem intentionally to
prefer your own habits to ours."
"I comply of course," I observed. "Naturally the dress of every
country is best suited to its own conditions. Yet I should have
thought that a preference for my own world, even were it wholly
irrational, might seem at least natural and pardonable."
"People don't," she answered simply, "like any sign of individual
fancy or opinion. They don't like any one to show that he thinks them
wrong even on a matter of taste."
"I fear, then,
carissima
, that I must be content with unpopularity.
I may wear the costume of your people; but their thought, their
conduct, their inner and outer life, as your father reports them, and
as thus far I have seen them, are to me so unnatural, that the more I
resemble them externally the more my unlikeness in all else is likely
to attract notice. I am sorry for this, because women are by nature
prone to judge even their nearest and dearest by the standard of
fashion, and to exact from men almost as close a conformity to that
standard as they themselves display. I fear you will have to forgive
many heresies in my conduct as well as in my thoughts."