Part 14 (1/2)
But in such measure as Eveena's distress became intelligible, the fault of which she accused herself became incredible. I could not believe that she could be wilfully disloyal to me--still less that she could have suddenly broken through the fixed ideas of her whole life, the principles engraved on her mind by education more stringently than the maxims of the Koran or the Levitical Law on the children of Ishmael or of Israel; and this while the impressive rites of Initiation, the imprecation at which I myself had shuddered, were fresh in her memory--their impression infinitely deepened, moreover, by the awful mystery of that Vision of which even yet we were half afraid to speak to one another. While I hesitated to reply, gathering up as well as I could the thread of these thoughts as they pa.s.sed in a few seconds through my mind, my left hand touched an object hidden in my bride's zone. I drew out a tiny crystal phial three parts full, taken, as I saw, from the medicine-chest Esmo had carefully stocked and as carefully fastened. As, holding this, I turned again to her, Eveena repeated: ”Punish, but don't question me!”
”My own,” I said, ”you are far more punished already than you deserve or I can bear to see. How did you get this?”
Releasing her hands, she drew from the folds of her robe the electric keys, which, by a separate combination, would unlock each of my cases;--without which it was impossible to open or force them.
”Yes, I remember; and you were surprised that I trusted them to you.
And now you expect me to believe that you have abused that trust, deceived me, broken a rule which in your father's house and by all our Order is held sacred as the rings of the Signet, for a drug which twelve days ago you disliked as much as I?”
”It is true.”
The words were spoken with downcast eyes, in the low faltering tone natural to a confession of disgrace.
”It is not true, Eveena; or if true in form, false in matter. If it were possible that you could wish to deceive me, you knew it could not be for long.”
”I meant to be found out,” she interrupted, ”only not yet.”
She had betrayed herself, stung by words that seemed to express the one doubt she could not nerve herself to endure--doubt of her loyalty to me. Before I could speak, she looked up hastily, and began to retract. I stopped her.
”I see--when you had done with it. But, Eveena, why conceal it? Do you think I would not have given this or all the contents of the chest into your hands, and asked no question?”
”Do you mean it? Could you have so trusted me?”
”My child! is it difficult to trust where I know there is no temptation to wrong? Do you think that to-day I have doubted or suspected you, even while you have accused yourself? I cannot guess at your motive, but I am as sure as ever of your loyalty. Take these things,”--forcing back upon her the phial and the magnets,--”yes, and the test-stone.” ... She burst into pa.s.sionate tears.
”I cannot endure this. If I had dreamed your patience would have borne with me half so far, I would never have tried it so, even for your own sake. I meant to be found out and accept the consequences in silence.
But you trust me so, that I must tell you what I wanted to conceal.
When you kept on the surface it made me so ill”---
”But, Eveena, if the remedy be not worse than the sickness, why not ask for it openly?”
”It was not that. Don't you understand? Of course, I would bear any suffering rather than have done this; but then you would have found me out at once. I wanted to conceal my suffering, not to escape it.”
”My child! my child! how could you put us both to all this pain?”
”You know you would not have given me the draught; you would have left the surface at once; and I cannot bear to be always in the way, always hindering your pleasures, and even your discoveries. You came across a distance that makes a bigger world than this look less than that light, through solitude and dangers and horrors I cannot bear to think of, to see and examine this world of ours. And then you leave things unseen or half-seen, you spoil your work, because a girl is seasick!
You ran great risk of death and got badly hurt to see what our hunting was like, and you will not let my head ache that you may find out what our sea-storms and currents are! How can I bear to be such a burden upon you? You trust me, and, I believe,” (she added, colouring), ”you love me, twelvefold more than I deserve; yet you think me unwilling or unworthy to take ever so small an interest in your work, to bear a few hours' discomfort for it and for you. And yet,” she went on pa.s.sionately, ”I may sit trembling and heart-sick for a whole day alone that you may carry out your purpose. I may receive the only real sting your lips have given, because I could not bear that pain without crying. And so with everything. It is not that I must not suffer pain, but that the pain must not come from without. Your lips would punish a fault with words that shame and sting for a day, a summer, a year; your hand must never inflict a sting that may smart for ten minutes.
And it is not only that you do this, but you pride yourself on it.
Why? It is not that you think the pain of the body so much worse than that of the spirit:--you that smiled at me when you were too badly bruised and torn to stand, yet could scarcely keep back your tears just now, when you thought that I had suffered half an hour of sorrow I did not quite deserve. Why then? Do you think that women feel so differently? Have the women of your Earth hearts so much harder and skins so much softer than ours?”
She spoke with most unusual impetuosity, and with that absolute simplicity and sincerity which marked her every look and word, which gave them, for me at least, an unspeakable charm, and for all who heard her a characteristic individuality unlike the speech or manner of any other woman. As soon suspect an infant of elaborate sarcasm as Eveena of affectation, irony, or conscious paradox. Nay, while her voice was in my ears, I never could feel that her views _were_ paradoxical. The direct straightforwardness and simple structure of the Martial language enhanced this peculiar effect of her speech; and much that seems infantine in translation was all but eloquent as she spoke it. Often, as on this occasion, I felt guilty of insincerity, of a verbal fencing unworthy of her unalloyed good faith and earnestness, as I endeavoured to parry thrusts that went to the very heart of all those instinctive doctrines which I could the less defend on the moment, because I had never before dreamed that they could be doubted.
”At any rate,” I said at last, ”your s.e.x gain by my heresy, since they are as richly gifted in stinging words as we in physical force.”
”So much the worse for them, surely,” she answered simply, ”if it be right that men should rule and women obey?”
”That is the received doctrine on Earth,” I answered. ”In practice, men command and women disobey them; men bully and women lie. But in truth, Eveena, having a wife only too loyal and too loving, I don't care to canva.s.s the deserts of ordinary women or the discipline of other households. I own that it was wrong to scold you. Do not insist on making me say that it would have been a little less wrong to beat you!”
She laughed--her low, sweet, silvery laugh, the like of which I have hardly heard among Earthly women, even of the simpler, more child-like races of the East and South; a laugh still stranger in a world where childhood is seldom bright and womanhood mostly sad and fretful. Of the very few satisfactory memories I bore away from that world, the sweetest is the recollection of that laugh, which I heard for the first time on the morrow of our bridals, and for the last time on the day before we parted. I cherish it as evidence that, despite many and bitter troubles, my bride's short married life was not wholly unhappy.