I was glad when spring came, when the trees began to bud, the grass to grow, the flowers to bloom; for, of all the seasons, I like it best,—this wonderful resurrection of life and sweetness!
Thursia is a fine city,—not only in its costly and architecturally and æsthetically perfect buildings, public and private, but in its shaded avenues, its parks, lawns, gardens, fountains, its idyllic statues, and its monuments to greatness.
Severnius took pains to exhibit all its attractions to me, driving with me slowly through the beautiful streets, and pointing out one conspicuous feature and another. Of course there were some streets which were not beautiful, but he avoided those as much as possible,—as I have done myself when I have had friends visiting me in New York. It is a compliment to your guest to show him the best there is and to spare him the worst.
But often, too, we took long walks through fields and woods. When Elodia accompanied us, which she did a few times, the whole face of nature smiled, and I thought Paleveria the most incomparably charming country I had ever seen. Her presence gave importance to everything,—the song of a bird, the opening of a humble little flower, the babbling of water. But other things absorbed most of her time,—we only got the scraps, the remnants. When she was with us she relaxed, as though we were in some sort a recreation. She amused herself with us just as I have seen a busy father amuse himself with his family for an hour or so of an evening. And I think we really planned our little theatricals of evening conversation for her,—at least I did. I saved up whatever came to me of thought or incident to give to her at the dinner table. And she appreciated it; her mind bristled with keen points, upon which any ideas let loose were caught in a flash. The sudden illumination of her countenance when a new thing, or even an old thing in a new dress, was presented to her, was of such value to me that I found myself laying traps for it, inventing stories and incidents to touch her fancy.
Besides her banking interests, over which she kept a close surveillance, she had a great many other matters that required to be looked after. As soon as the weather was fine enough, and business activities in the city began to be redoubled, especially in the matter of real estate, she made a point of driving about by herself to inspect one piece of property and another, and to make plans and see that they were carried out according to her ideas. And she was just as conscientious in the discharge of her official duties. She was constantly devising means for the betterment of the schools, both as to buildings and methods of instruction. I believe she knew every teacher personally,—and there must have been several thousand,—and her relations with all of them were cordial and friendly. Her approbation was a thing they strove for and valued,—not because of her official position and the authority she held in her hands, but because of a power which was innate in herself and that made her a leader and a protector.
But I was too selfish to yield my small right to her society,—the right only of a guest in her house,—to these greater claims with absolute sweetness and patience.
“Why does she take all these things upon herself?” I asked of Severnius.
“Because she has a taste for them,” he replied. “Or, as she would say, a need of them. It is an internal hunger. It is her nature to exert herself in these ways.”
“I cannot believe it is her nature; it is no woman’s nature,” I retorted. “It is a habit which she has cultivated until it has got the mastery of her.”
“Perhaps,” returned Severnius, who was never much disposed to argue about his sister’s vagaries—as they seemed to me.
“All this is mannish,” I went on. “There are other things for women to do. Why does she not give her time and attention to the softer graces, to feminine occupations?”
“I see,” he laughed; “you want her to drop these weighty matters and devote herself to amusing us! and you call that ‘feminine.’”
I joined in his laugh ruefully.
“Perhaps I am narrow, and selfish, too,” I admitted; “but she is so charming, she brings so much into our conversations whenever we can entice her to spend a moment with us.”
“Yes, that is true,” he answered. “She gleans her ideas from a large and varied field.”
“I do not mean her ideas, so much as—well, as the delicious flavor of her presence and personality.”
“Her presence and her personality would not have much flavor, my friend, if she had no ideas, I am thinking.”
“O, yes, they would,” I insisted. “They are the ether in which our own thoughts expand and take shape and color. They are the essence of her supreme beauty.”
He shook his head. “Beauty is nothing without intelligence. What is the camellia beside the rose? Elodia is the rose. She has several pleasing qualities that appeal to you at one and the same time.”
This was rather pretty, but a man’s praises of his sister always sound tame to me. “She is adorable!” I cried with fervor. We were walking toward a depot connected with a great railway. For the first time I was to try the speed of a Marsian train. Severnius wanted me to visit the city of Frambesco, some two hundred miles from Thursia, in another state.
After a short, ruminating silence I broke out again:
“We don’t even have her company evenings, to any extent. What does she do with her evenings?”
“Who? O, Elodia! Why, she goes to her club. For recreation, you know.”
“That is complimentary to you and me,” I said coolly.
He brought his spectacles to bear upon me somewhat sharply.
“Don’t you think you are a little unreasonable?” he demanded. “You have curious ideas about individual liberty! Now, we hold that every soul shall be absolutely free,—that is, in its relations to other souls; it shall not be coerced by any other. It is as though souls were stars suspended in space, each moving in its appointed orbit. No one has the right to disturb the poise and equilibrium of another, not even the one nearest it. That is a Caskian idea, by the way; about the only one Elodia is enamored of. These souls, or spheres, are extremely sensitive; and they may, and do, exert a tremendous influence, one upon another,—but without violence.”
“Your meaning is clear,” I said coldly. “My powers of attraction in this case are feeble. Is the club you speak of composed entirely of women?”
“Certainly.”
“Do not the men here have clubs?”
“O, yes; I belong to one, though I do not often attend. I will take you to visit it,—I wonder I had not thought of it before! But those things are disturbing; we scientists like to keep our minds clear, like the lenses of our telescopes.”
“Is Elodia’s club a literary one?” I asked, though I was almost sure it was not.
“O, no; it is for recreation purely, as I said. The same kind of a club, I suppose, that you men have. Of course, they have the current literature, which they skim over and discuss, so as to keep themselves informed about what is going on in the world. It is the only way you can keep up with the times, I think, for no one can read everything. They have games and various diversions. Elodia’s clubhouse is furnished with elegant baths, for women have an extraordinary fondness for bathing. And they have a gymnasium,—you notice what splendid figures most of our women have!—and of course a wine cellar.”
“Severnius!” I cried. “You don’t mean to tell me that these women have wines in their clubhouse?”
“Why, yes,” said he.
“And it is tolerated, allowed, nobody objects?”
“O, yes, there are plenty of objectors,” he replied. “There is a very strong anti-intoxicant element here, but it has no actual force and exerts but little influence in—in our circles.”
Severnius was too modest a man to boast of belonging to the upper class of society, but that was what “our circles” meant.
“But do not the male relatives of these women object,—their husbands, fathers, brothers?”
“No, indeed, why should they? We do the same things they do, without demur from them.”
“But they should be looking after their domestic affairs, their children, their homes.”
“My dear sir! they have servants to attend to those matters.”
It seemed useless to discuss these things with Severnius, his point of view concerning the woman question was so different from mine. Nevertheless, I persisted.
“Tell me, Severnius, do women on this planet do everything that men do?”
“They have that liberty,” he replied, “but there is sometimes a difference of tastes.”
“I am glad to hear it!”
“For instance, they do not smoke. By the way, have a cigar?” He passed me his case and we both fired up. There is a peculiarly delightful flavor in Marsian tobacco.
“They have a substitute though,” he added, removing the fragrant weed from his lips to explain. “They vaporize.”
“They what?”
“They have a small cup, a little larger than a common tobacco pipe, which they fill with alcohol and pulverized valerian root. This mixture when lighted diffuses a kind of vapor, a portion of which they inhale through the cup-stem, a slender, tortuous tube attached to the cup. The most of it, however, goes into the general air.”
“Good heavens!” I cried, “valerian! the most infernal, diabolical smell that was ever emitted from any known or unknown substance.”
“It is said to be soothing to the nerves,” he replied.
“But do you not find it horribly disagreeable, unbearable?” I suddenly recollected that, in passing through the upper hall of the house, I had once or twice detected this nauseating odor, in the neighborhood of Elodia’s suite of rooms.
“Yes, I do,” he answered, “when I happen to come in contact with it, which is seldom. They are careful not to offend others to whom the vapor is unpleasant. Elodia is very delicate in these matters; she is fond of the vapor habit, but she allows no suggestion of it to cling to her garments or vitiate her breath.”
“It must be a great care to deodorize herself,” I returned, with ill-concealed contempt.
“That is her maid’s business,” said he.
“Is it not injurious to health?” I asked.
“Quite so; it often induces frightful diseases, and is sometimes fatal to life even.”
“And yet they persist in it! I should think you would interfere in your sister’s case.”
“Well,” said he, “the evils which attend it are really no greater than those that wait upon the tobacco habit; and, as I smoke, I can’t advise with a very good grace. I have a sort of blind faith that these good cigars of mine are not going to do me any harm,—though I know they have harmed others; and I suppose Elodia reasons in the same friendly way with her vapor cup.”
The train stood on the track ready to start. I was about to spring up the steps of the last car when Severnius stopped me.
“Not that one,” he said; “that is the woman’s special.”
I stepped back, and read the word Vaporizer,—printed in large gilt letters,—bent like a bow on the side of the car.
“Do you mean to tell me, Severnius,” I exclaimed, “that the railroad company devotes one of these magnificent coaches exclusively to the use of persons addicted to the obnoxious habit we have been speaking of?”
“That is about the size of it,” he returned,—he borrowed the phrase from me. “Come, make haste, or we shall be left; the next car is the smoker; we’ll step into that and finish these cigars, after which I’ll show you what sumptuous parlor coaches we have.”
As we mounted to the platform I could not resist glancing into the Vaporizer. There were only two or three ladies there, and one of them held in her ungloved hand the little cup with the tortuous stem which my friend had described to me. From it there issued a pale blue smoke or vapor, and oh! the smell of it! I held my breath and hurried after Severnius.
“That is the most outrageous, abominable thing I ever heard of!” I declared, as we entered the smoker and took our seats.
“O, it is nothing,” he returned, smiling; “you are a very fastidious fellow. I saw you look into that car; did you observe the lady in blue?”
“I should think I did! she was in the act,” I replied. “And I recognized her, too; she is that Madam Claris you introduced me to in the Auroras’ Temple, is she not?”
“Yes; but did you notice her cup?”
“Not particularly.”
“It is carved out of the rarest wood we have,—wood that hardens like stone with age,—and has an indestructible lining and is studded with costly gems; the thing is celebrated, an heirloom in Claris’ family. They like to sport those things, the owners of them do. They are a mark of distinction,—or, as they might say in some of your countries, a patent of nobility.”
“I suppose, then, that only the rich and the aristocratic ‘vaporize’?”
“By no means; whatever the aristocracy do, humble folk essay to imitate. These vapor cups are made in great quantities, of the commonest clay, and sold for a penny apiece.”
“Then it must be a natural taste, among your women?” said I.
“No, no more than smoking is among men. They say it is nauseating in the extreme, at first, and requires great courage and persistence to continue in it up to the point of liking. There is no doubt that it becomes very agreeable to them in the end, and that it is almost impossible to break the habit when once it is fixed.”
“And what do they do with their cups,—I mean, how do they carry them about when they are not using them?” I asked.
“Put them in a morocco case, the same as you would a meerschaum, and drop them into a fanciful little bag which they wear on the arm, suspended by a chain or ribbon.”
Frambesco could not compare with Thursia either in size or beauty; and it had a totally different air, a kind of swagger, you might say. I felt the mercury in my moral barometer drop down several degrees as we walked about the streets amid much filth, and foul odors, and unsightly spectacles.
I made the natural comments to my friend, and he replied that neither Frambesco nor any other city on the continent could hold a candle to Thursia, where the best of every thing was centered.
We observed a great many enormous placards posted about conspicuously, announcing a game of fisticuffs to take place that afternoon in an amphitheatre devoted to such purposes; and we decided to look in upon it. I think it was I who suggested it, for I had no little curiosity about the “tactics” of the manly art in that country, having seen Sullivan and several other famous hitters in our own.
Severnius had considerable difficulty in procuring tickets, and finally paid a fabulous price to a speculator for convenient seats. The great cost of admission of course kept out the rabble, and, in a way, it was an eminently respectable throng that was assembled,—I mean in so far as money and rich clothes make for respectability. But there was an unmistakable coarseness in most of the faces, or if not that, a curiosity which bordered on coarseness. I was amazed to see women in the audience; but this was nothing to the horror that quivered through me like a deadly wound, when the combatants sprang into the arena and squared off for action. For they, too, were women,—women with tender, rosy flesh; with splendid dark eyes gleaming with high excitement. Their long, fair hair was braided and twisted into a hard knot on top of the head. They wore no gloves. Ah, a woman’s hands are soft enough without padding!—I thought.
They went at it in scientific fashion and were careful to observe the etiquette of the game; it was held “foul” to attack the face. In fact it was more of a wrestling than a sparring match,—a test of strength, prowess, agility. But I recoiled from it with loathing, and feeling myself grow sick and faint, I muttered something to Severnius and rushed out of the place. He followed me, of course; the performance was quite as distasteful to him as to me, the only difference being that he was familiar with the idea and I was not.
As I passed out, I observed that many of the women were vaporizing and many of the men smoking. I suppose it was, in part, the intolerable abomination of these commingled smells that affected me, for I experienced a physical as well as moral nausea. I did not get over it for hours, and I was as glad as a child when it came time to take the train back to Thursia.
My disgust was so great that I could not discuss the matter with Severnius, as I was wont to discuss other matters with him. There was one thing for which I was supremely thankful,—that Elodia was not there.
A few days later, the subject accidentally came up, and I had the satisfaction of hearing her denounce the barbarity as emphatically as I could denounce it,—and more sweepingly, for she included male fighters in her condemnation, and I was unable to make her see that that was quite another matter.
Chapter 6.
CUPID’S GARDENS.
During the time that intervened before the arrival of the Caskians, to make their proposed visit, I gleaned many more interesting hints from Severnius relative to their life and conduct, which greatly whetted my curiosity to meet them. For instance, we were one day engaged in a conversation, he, Elodia, and myself, upon the subject of the province of poetry in history,—but that does not matter,—when dinner was announced in the usual way; that is, the way which assumes without doubt that nothing else in the world is so important as dinner. It may be a bell, or a gong, or a verbal call, but it is as imperative as the command of an autocrat. It brings to the ground, with the suddenness of a mental shock, the finest flights of the imagination. It wakes the soul from transcendent dreams, cools the fervor of burning eloquence, breaks the spell of music. More than this: it destroys the delicate combination of mental states and forces sometimes induced when several highly trained minds have fallen into an attitude of acute sympathy toward one another,—a rare and ineffable thing!—and are borne aloft through mutual helpfulness to regions of thought and emotion infinitely exalted, which can never be reproduced.
I have often had this experience myself, and have wished that the cook was a creature of supernatural intuitions, so that he could divine the right moment in which to proclaim that the soup was served! There is a right moment, a happy moment, when the flock of intellectual birds, let loose to whirl and circle and soar in the upper air, descend gracefully and of their own accord to the agreeable level of soup.
On the occasion to which I have referred, I tried to ignore, and to make my companions ignore, the discordant summons—by a kind of dominant action of my mind upon theirs—in order that we might continue the talk a little longer. We three had never before shown ourselves off to each other to such striking advantage; we traveled miles in moments, we expanded, we unrolled reams of intelligence which were apprehended in a flash, as a whole landscape is apprehended in a glare of lightning. It was as if our words were tipped with flame and carried their illumination along with them. I knew that there never would, never could, come another such time, but Elodia thwarted my effort to hold it a moment longer.
“Come!” she cried gayly, rising to her feet and breaking off in the middle of a beautiful sentence, the conclusion of which I was waiting for with tremors of delight,—for her views, as it happened, accorded with mine,—“the ideal may rule in art, but not in life; it is very unideal to eat, but the stomach is the dial of the world.”
“We make it so,” said Severnius.
“Of course, we make all our sovereigns,” she returned. “We set the dial to point at certain hours, and it simply holds us to our agreement,—it and the chef.”
“That reminds me of our Caskian friends,” said Severnius. “They have exceedingly well-ordered homes, but occasionally one of the three Natures waits upon another; the Mind may yield to some contingency connected with the Body, or the Body waive its right in favor of the Spirit.”
“I had supposed they were more machine-like,” commented Elodia, with her usual air of not being able to take a great interest in the Caskians.
“They are the farthest from that of any people I know,” he answered. “They have great moments, now and then, when a few people are gathered together, and their thought becomes electrical and their minds mingle as you have seen the glances of eyes mingle in a language more eloquent than speech,—and, to tell the truth, we ourselves have such moments, I’ll not deny that; but the difference is, that they appreciate the value of them and hold them fast, while we open our hands and let them fly away like uncoveted birds, or worthless butterflies. I have actually known a meal to be dropped out entirely in Calypso’s house, forgotten in the felicity of an intellectual or spiritual delectation!”
“Thank heaven, that we live in Thursia!” cried Elodia, “where such lapses are impossible.”
“They are next to impossible there,” said Severnius; “but they do happen, which proves a great deal. They are in the nature of miracles, they are so wonderful,—and yet not so wonderful. We forget sometimes that we have a soul, and they forget that they have a body; there’s no great difference.”
“There is a mighty difference,” answered Elodia. “We are put into a material world, to enjoy material benefits. I should think those people would miss a great deal of the actual good of life in the pursuit of the unactual,—always taking their flights from lofty pinnacles, and skipping the treasures that lie in the valleys.”
“On the contrary,” he returned, “the humblest little flower that grows, the tiniest pebble they pick up on the beach, the smallest voice in nature, all have place in their economy. They miss nothing; they gather up into their lives all the treasures that nature scatters about. If a bird sings, they listen and say, ‘That song is for me;’ or, if a blossom opens, ‘I will take its beauty into my heart.’ These things, which are free to all, they accept freely. Their physical senses are supplemented,—duplicated as it were, in finer quality,—by exquisite inner perceptions.”
The morning after this conversation, Severnius and I took a long drive in a new direction. We went up the river a mile or so, the road winding through an avenue of century-old elms, whose great, graceful branches interlocked overhead and made a shade so dense that the very atmosphere seemed green. We were so earnestly engaged in conversation that I did not observe when we left the avenue and entered a wood. We drove some distance through this, and then the road branched off and skirted round a magnificent park,—the finest I had seen,—bordered by a thick hedge, all abloom with white, fragrant flowers, and fenced with a fretwork of iron, finished with an inverted fringe of bristling points. Within, were evidences of costly and elaborate care; the trees were of noble growth and the greensward like stretches of velvet over which leaf-shadows flickered and played. The disposition of shrubbery and flowers, the chaste and beautiful statuary, the fountains, brooklets, arbors, and retreats; the rustic effects in bridges, caves, grottoes, and several graceful arches, hidden in wreathed emerald, from which snow-white cherubs with wings on their shoulders peeped roguishly, all betokened ingenious design, and skilful and artistic execution.
Beyond, seen vaguely through the waving foliage, were handsome buildings, of the elegant cream-colored stone so much in vogue in Thursia. Here and there, I espied a fawn; one pretty creature, with a ribbon round its neck, was drinking at a fountain, and at the same time some beautiful birds came and perched upon the marble rim and dipped into the sparkling water.
“How lovely! how idyllic!” I cried. “What place is it, Severnius, and why have I never seen it before?”
His answer came a little reluctantly, I thought. “It is called Cupid’s Gardens.”
“And what does it mean?” I asked.
“Does not its name and those naked imps sufficiently explain it?” he replied. As I looked at him, a blush actually mantled his cheek. “It is a rendezvous,” he explained, “where women meet their lovers.”
“How curious! I never heard of such a thing,” said I. “Do you mean that the place was planned for that purpose, or did the name get fastened upon it through accident? Surely you are joking, Severnius; women can receive their lovers in their homes here, the same as with us!”
“Their suitors, not their lovers,” he replied.
“You make a curious distinction!” said I.
“Women sometimes marry their suitors, never their lovers,—any more than men marry their mistresses.”
“Great heavens, Severnius!” I felt the blood rush to my face and then recede, and a cold perspiration broke out all over me. There was a question in my mind which I did not dare to ask, but Severnius divined it.
“Is it a new idea to you?” said he. “Have you no houses of prostitution in your country, licensed by law, as this is?”
“For men, not for women,” said I.
“Ah! another of your peculiar discriminations!” he returned.
“Well, surely you will agree with me that in this matter, at least, there should be discrimination?” I urged.
He shook his head with that exasperating stubbornness one occasionally finds in sweet-tempered people.
“No, I cannot agree with you, even in this,” he replied. “What possible reason is there why men, more than women, should be privileged to indulge in vice?”
“Why, in the very nature of things!” I cried. “There is a hygienic principle involved; you know,—it is a statistical fact,—that single men are neither so vigorous nor so long-lived as married men, and a good many men do not marry.”
“Well, a good many more women do not marry; what of those?”
“Severnius! I cannot believe you are in earnest. Women!—that is quite another matter. Women are differently constituted from men; their nature—”
“O, come!” he interrupted; “I thought we had settled that question—that their nature is of a piece with our own. It happens in your world, my friend, that your women were kept to a strict line of conduct, according to your account, by a severe discipline,—including even the death penalty,—until their virtue, from being long and persistently enforced, grew into a habit and finally became a question of honor.”
“Yes, stronger than death, thank God!” I affirmed.
“Well, then, it seems to me that the only excuse men have to offer for their lack of chastity—I refer to the men on your planet—is that they have not been hedged about by the wholesome restraints that have developed self-government in women. I cannot admit your ‘hygienic’ argument in this matter; life is a principle that needs encouragement, and a man of family has more incentives to live, and usually his health is better cared for, than a single man, that is all.”
We rode in silence for some time. I finally asked, nodding toward the beautiful enclosure still in view:
“How do they manage about this business; do they practice any secrecy?”
“Of course!” he replied. “I hope you do not think we live in open and shameless lawlessness? Usually it is only the very wealthy who indulge in such ‘luxuries,’ and they try to seal the lips of servants and go-betweens with gold. But it does not always work; it is in the nature of those things to leak out.”
“And if one of these creatures is found out, what then?” I asked.
He answered with some severity: “‘Creatures’ is a harsh name to apply to women, some of whom move in our highest circles!”
“I beg your pardon! call them what you like, but tell me, what happens when there is an exposé? Are they denounced, ostracized, sat upon?” I inquired.
“No, not so bad as that,” said he. “Of course there is a scandal, but it makes a deal of difference whether the scandal is a famous or an infamous one. If the woman’s standing is high in other respects,—if she has money, political influence, talent, attractiveness,—there is very little made of it; or if society feels itself particularly insulted, she may conciliate it by marrying an honest man whose respectability and position protect her.”
“What! does an honest man—a gentleman—ever marry such a woman as that?” I cried.
“Frequently; and sometimes they make very good wives. But it is risky. I have a friend, a capital fellow, who was so unfortunate as to attract such a woman, and who finally yielded to her persuasions and married her.”
“Heavens! do the women propose?”
“Certainly, when they choose to do so; what is there objectionable in that?”
I made no reply, and he continued, “My friend, as I said, succumbed to her pleadings partly—as I believe—because she threw herself upon his mercy, though she is a beautiful woman, and he might have been fascinated to some extent. She told him that his love and protection would be her salvation, and that his denial of her would result in her total ruin; and that for his sake she would reform her life. He is both chivalrous and tender, and, withal, a little romantic, and he consented. My opinion is that, if she could have had him without marriage, she would have preferred it; but he is a true man, a man of honor. Women of her sort like virtuous men, and seldom marry any other. Her love proved to be an ephemeral passion—such as she had had before—and the result has been what you might expect, though Claris is not, by any means, the worst woman in the world.”
“Claris?” I exclaimed.
“Ah! I did not mean to speak her name,” he returned in some confusion; “and I had forgotten that you knew her. Well, yes, since I have gone so far, it is my friend Massilia’s wife that I have been speaking of. In some respects she is an admirable woman, but she has broken her husband’s heart and ruined his life.”
“Admirable!” I repeated with scorn; “why, in my country, such conduct would damn a woman eternally, no matter what angelic qualities she might possess. She would be shown no quarter in any society—save the very lowest.”
“And how about her counterpart of the other sex?” asked Severnius, slyly.
I disregarded this, and returned:
“Did he not get a divorce?”
“No; the law does not grant a divorce in such a case. There was where Claris was shrewder than her husband; she made herself safe by confessing her misdeeds to him, and cajoling him into marrying her in spite of them.”
“I beg your pardon, but what a fool he was!”
Severnius acquiesced in this. “I tried to dissuade him,” he said, “before the miserable business was consummated,—he made me his confidant,—but it was too late, she had him under her influence.”
Another silence fell upon us, which I broke by asking, “Who were those pretty youngsters we saw lounging about on the lawn back there?” I referred to several handsome young men whom I had observed strolling through the beautiful grounds.
He looked at me in evident surprise at the question, and replied:
“Why, those are some of the professional ‘lovers’.”
“Great Cæsar’s ghost!”
“Yes,” he went on; “some of our most promising youths are decoyed into those places. It is a distressing business,—a hideous business! And, on the other hand, there are similar institutions where lovely young girls are the victims. I do not know which is the more deplorable,—sometimes I think the latter is. A tender mother would wish that her daughter had never been born, if she should take up with such a life; and an honorable father would rather see his son gibbeted than to find him inside that railing.”
“I should think so!” I responded, and inquired, “What kind of standing have these men in the outside world?”
“About the same that a leper would have. They are ignored and despised by the very women who court their caresses here. In fact, they are on a level with the common, paid courtesan,—the lowest rank there is. I have often thought it a curious thing that either men or women should so utterly despise these poor instruments of their sensual delights!”
My friend saw that I was too much shocked to moralize on the subject, and he presently began to explain, and to modify the facts a little.
“You see, these fellows, when they begin this sort of thing, are mostly mere boys, with the down scarcely started on their chins; in the susceptible, impressionable stage, when a woman’s honeyed words—ay, her touch, even—may turn the world upside down to them. The life, of course, has its attractions,—money and luxury; to say nothing of the flattery, which is sweeter. Still, few, if any, adopt it deliberately. Often they are wilily drawn into ‘entanglements’ outside; for the misery of it is, that good society, as I have said before, throws its cloak around these specious beguilers, and the unfortunate dupe does not dream whither he is being led,—youth has such a sincere faith in beauty, and grace, and feminine charm! Sometimes reverses and disaster, of one kind or another, or a cheerless home environment, drive a young man into seeking refuge and lethean pleasures here. It is a form of dissipation similar to the drink habit, only a thousand times worse.”
“Worse?” I cried. “It is infernal, diabolical, damnable! And it is woman who accomplishes this horrible ruin!—and is ‘received’ in society, which, if too flagrantly outraged, will not forgive her unless she marries some good man!”
“O, not always that,” protested Severnius; “the unlucky sinner sometimes recovers caste by a course of penitence, by multiplying her subscriptions to charities, and by costly peace-offerings to the aforesaid outraged society.”
“What sort of peace-offerings?” I asked.
“Well, an entertainment, perhaps, something superb, something out of the common; or may be a voyage in her private yacht. Bait of that sort is too tempting for any but the high and mighty, the real aristocrats, to withstand. The simply respectable, but weak-hearted,—who are a little below her level in point of wealth, position, or ancestry,—fall into her net. I have observed that a woman who has forfeited her place in the highest rank of society usually begins her reascent by clutching hold of the skirts of honest folk who are flattered by her condescension, and whose sturdy arms assist her to rise again.”
“I have observed the same thing myself,” I rejoined, but he had not finished; there was a twinkle in his eye as he went on:
“If you were to reveal the secret of your air-ship to a woman of this kind she would probably seize upon it as a means of salvation; she would have one constructed, on a large and handsome scale, and invite a party to accompany her on an excursion to the Earth. And though she were the worst of her class, every mother’s son—and daughter—of us would accept! for none of us hold our self-respect at a higher figure than that, I imagine.”
“Yes, Severnius, you do,” I replied emphatically.
“I beg your pardon! I would knock off a good deal for a visit to your planet,” he said, laughing.
By this time we had left Cupid’s Gardens far behind. The road bent in again toward the river, which we presently crossed. If it had not been for the dreadful things I had just listened to, I think I should have been in transports over the serene loveliness of the prospect around us. The view was especially fine from the summit of the bridge; it is a “high” bridge, for the Gyro is navigated by great steam-ships and high-masted schooners.
Severnius bade the driver stop a moment that we might contemplate the scene, but I had little heart for its beauties. And yet I can recall the picture now with extraordinary clearness. The river has many windings, and the woods often hide it from view; but it reappears, again and again, afar off, in green meadows and yellowing fields,—opalescent jewels in gold or emerald setting. Here and there, in the distance, white sails were moving as if on land. Far beyond were vague mountain outlines, and over all, the tender rose-blush of the sky. The sweetness of it, contrasted with the picture newly wrought in my mind, saddened me.
Some distance up the river, on the other side, we passed an old, dilapidated villa, or group of buildings jumbled together without regard to effect evidently, but yet picturesque. They were half hidden in mammoth forest trees that had never been trimmed or trained, but spread their enormous limbs wheresoever they would. Unpruned shrubbery and trailing vines rioted over the uneven lawn, and the rank, windblown grass, too long to stand erect, lay in waves like a woman’s hair.
In a general way, the lawn sloped downward toward the road, so that we could see nearly the whole of it over the high, and ugly, board fence which inclosed it. Under the trees, a little way back, I observed a group of young girls lolling in hammocks and idling in rustic chairs. They caught sight of us and sprang up, laughing boistterously. I thought they were going to run away in pretended and playful flight; but instead, they came toward us, and blew kisses at us off their fingers.
I looked at Severnius. “What does this mean?” I asked.
“Why,” he said, and the blush mantled his handsome face again, “this place is the counterpart of Cupid’s Gardens,—a resort for men.”
“I thought so,” I replied.
By-and-by he remarked, “I hope you will not form too bad an opinion of us, my friend! You have learned to-day what horrible evils exist among us, but I assure you that the sum total of the people who practice them constitutes but a small proportion of our population. And the good people here, the great majority, look upon these things with the same aversion and disgust that you do, and are doing their best—or they think they are—to abolish them.”
“How?—by legislation?” I asked.
“Partly; but more through education. Our preachers and teachers have taken the matter up, but they are handicapped by the delicacy of the question and the privacy involved in it, which seems to hinder discussion even, and to forestall advice. Though this is the only way to accomplish anything, I think. I have very little faith in legislative measures against secret vices; it is like trying to dam a stream which cannot be dammed but must break out somewhere. I am convinced that my friends, the Caskians, have solved the question in the only possible way,—by elevating and purifying the marriage relation. I hope some good may be accomplished by the visit of the few who are coming here!”
“Will they preach or lecture?” I asked, with what seemed to me a moment later to be stupid simplicity.
“O, no!” replied Severnius, with the same air of modest but emphatic protest which they themselves would have doubtless assumed had the question been put to them. “It was simply their personal influence I had reference to. I do not know that I can make you understand, but their presence always seemed to me like a disinfectant of evil. With myself, when I was among them, all the good that was in me responded to their nobility; the evil in me slept, I suppose.”
I made a skeptical rejoinder to the implication in his last sentence, for to me he seemed entirely devoid of evil; and we finished the drive in silence.
Chapter 7.
NEW FRIENDS.
“Having established his equality with class after class, of those with whom he would live well, he still finds certain others, before whom he cannot possess himself, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer, which extorts homage of him.”—Emerson.
It is scarcely egotistical for me to say that I was much sought after, not only by the citizens of Thursia, but by many distinguished people from other cities and countries. Among them were many men and women of great scientific learning, who made me feel that I ought to have provided myself with a better equipment of knowledge relative to my own world, before taking my ambitious journey to Mars! They were exceedingly polite, but I fear they were much disappointed in many of my hazy responses to their eager questionings. I learned by this experience the great value of exact information. In a country like ours, where so much, and so many sorts, of knowledge are in the air, a person is apt, unless he is a student of some particular thing, to get little more than impressions.
There was I,—an average (let me hope!) American citizen,—at the mercy of inquisitive experts in a hundred different arts and trades, concerning which, in the main, my ideas might be conservatively described as “general.” You may imagine how unsatisfactory this was to people anxious to know about our progress in physics and chemistry, botany, and the great family of “ologies,”—or rather about our processes in developing the principles of these great sciences.
With the astronomers and the electricians I got along all right; and I was also able to make myself interesting,—or so I fancied—in describing our social life, our educational and political institutions, and our various forms of religion. Our modes of dress were a matter of great curiosity to most of these people, and I was often asked to exhibit my terrestrial garments.
It was when the crowd of outside visitors was at its thickest that the Caskians arrived, and as their stay was brief, covering only two days, you may suppose that we did not advance far on the road to mutual acquaintance. But to tell the truth, there was not a moment’s strangeness between us after we had once clasped hands and looked into each other’s eyes. It might have been partly due to my own preparedness to meet them with confidence and trust; but more, I think, to their singular freedom from the conventional barriers with which we hedge round our selfness. Their souls spoke to mine, and mine answered back, and the compact of friendship was sealed in a glance.
I cannot hope to give you a very clear idea of their perfect naturalness, their perfect dignity, their kindliness, or their delightful gayety,—before which stiffness, formality, ceremony, were borne down, dissolved as sunshine dissolves frost. No menstruum is so wonderful as the quality of merriment, take it on any plane of life; when it reaches the highest, and is subtilized by cultured and refined intellects, it creates an atmosphere in which the most frigid autocrat of society, and of learning, too, must thaw. The haughtiest dame cannot keep her countenance in the face of this playful spirit toying with her frills. The veriest old dry-as-dust, hibernating in mouldy archæological chambers, cannot resist the blithesome thought which dares to illumine his antique treasures with a touch of mirth.
I was struck by Clytia’s beauty, which in some ways seemed finer than Elodia’s. The two women were about the same height and figure. But Clytia’s coloring was pure white and black, except for the healthy carmine of her lips, and occasional fluctuations of the rose tint in her cheeks.
I was present when they first met, in the drawing-room. Elodia rose to her full stature, armed cap-a-pie with her stateliest manner, but with a gracious sense of hospitality upon her. I marked with pleasure that Clytia did not rush upon her with any exuberance of gladness,—as some women would have done in a first meeting with their friend’s sister,—for that would have disgusted Elodia and driven her to still higher ground. How curious are our mental attitudes toward our associates, and how quickly adjusted! Here had I been in Elodia’s house, enjoying her companionship—if not her friendship—for months; and yet, you see, I secretly did not wish any advantage to be on her side. It could not have been disloyalty, for the impulse was swift and involuntary. I would like to suppose that it sprang from my instantaneous recognition of the higher nature; but it did not. It was due, no doubt, to a fear for the more timid one—as I fancied it to be. I had a momentary sensation as of wanting to “back” Clytia,—knowing how formidable my proud hostess could be, and, I feared, would be,—but the beautiful Caskian did not need my support. She was not timid. I never saw anything finer than her manner; the most consummate woman of the world could not have met the situation with more dignity and grace, and with not half so much simplicity. Her limpid dark eyes met Elodia’s blue-rayed ones, and the result was mutual respect, with a slight giving on Elodia’s part.
I felt that I had, for the first time in my life, seen a perfect woman; a woman of such fine proportions, of such nice balance, that her noble virtues and high intelligence did not make her forget even the smallest amenities. She kept in hand every faculty of her triple being, so that she was able to use each in its turn and to give to everything about her its due appreciation. She had, as Balzac says, the gift of admiration and of comprehension. That which her glance rested upon, that which her ear listened to, responded with all that was in them. I thought it a wonderful power that could so bring out the innate beauties and values of even inanimate things. Elodia’s eyes rested upon her, from time to time, with a keen and questioning interest. I think that, among other things, she was surprised—as I was—at the elegance, the “style” even, of Clytia’s dress.
Although there is very little fashion on that planet, as we know the word, there is a great deal of style. I had speedily mastered all its subtle gradations, and could “place” a woman with considerable certainty, by, let me say, her manner of wearing her clothes, if not the clothes themselves. I have never studied woman’s apparel in detail, it always seems as mysterious to me as woman herself does; but I have a good eye for effects in that line, as most men have, and I knew that Clytia’s costume was above criticism. She wore, just where they seemed to be needed,—as the keystone is needed in an arch,—a few fine gems. I could not conceive of her putting them on to arouse the envy of any other woman, or to enhance her personal charms in the eyes of a man. She dressed well, as another would sing well. Sight is the sense we value most, but how often is it offended! You can estimate the quality of a woman by the shade of green she chooses for her gown. And there is poetry in the fit of a gown, as there is in the color of it. Clytia knew these things, these higher principles of dress, as the nightingale knows its song,—through the effortless working of perfected faculties. But not she alone. My description of her will answer for the others; the Caskians are a people, you see, who neglect nothing. We upon the Earth are in the habit of saying, with regretful cadence, Life is short. It is because our life is all out of proportion. We are trying to cheat time; we stuff too much plunder into our bags, and discriminate against the best.
Clytia and Calypso and their friend Ariadne, a young girl, stayed with us throughout their visit; the others of their party were entertained elsewhere. On each of the two evenings they were with us, Elodia invited a considerable company of people,—not so many as to crowd the rooms, nor so few as to make them seem empty. Those gatherings were remarkable events, I imagine, in a good many lives.
They were in mine. At the close of each evening I retired to my room in a state of high mental intoxication; my unaccustomed brain had taken too large a draught of intellectual champagne. And when I awoke in the morning, it was with a sense of fatigue of mind, the same as one feels fatigue of body the day after extraordinary feats of physical exertion.
But not so the guests! who came down into the breakfast room as radiant as ever and in full possession of themselves. With them fatigue seemed impossible. We do not know—because we are so poorly trained—the wonderful elasticity of a human being, in all his parts. We often see it exemplified in single faculties,—the voice of a singer, the legs of a runner, the brain of a lawyer, the spirit of a religionist. But, as I have said before, we are all out of proportion, and any slight strain upon an unused faculty gives us the cramp. The fact is, the most of us are cripples in some sense. We lack a moral leg, a spiritual arm; there are parts of us that are neglected, withered, paralyzed.
One thing in the Caskians which especially pleased me, and which I am sure made a strong—and favorable—impression upon Elodia, too, was that their conduct and conversation never lacked the vital human interest without which all philosophy is cold, and all religion is asceticism.
It appeared that these people had taken the long journey not only to meet me, but that they might extend to me in person a cordial invitation to visit their country. Severnius warmly urged me to accept, assuring me, with unmistakable sincerity, that it would give him pleasure to put his purse at my disposal for the expenses of the journey,—I having brought up this point as a rather serious obstacle. As it would only add one more item to the great sum of my indebtedness to my friend, I took him at his word, and gave my promise to the Caskians to make the journey to Lunismar sometime in the near future. And with that they left us, and left behind them matter for conversation for many a day.
Chapter 8.
A TALK WITH ELODIA.
“It behoveth us also to consider the nature of him that offendeth.”—Seneca.
The longer I delayed my visit to Caskia, the more difficult it became for me to tear myself away from Thursia. You may guess the lodestar that held me back. It was as if I were attached to Elodia by an invisible chain which, alas! in no way hindered her free movements, because she was unconscious of its existence. Sometimes she treated me with a charmingly frank camaraderie, and at other times her manner was simply, almost coldly, courteous,—which I very well knew to be due to the fact that she was more than usually absorbed in her business or official affairs; she was never cold for a purpose, any more than she was fascinating for a purpose. She was singularly sincere, affecting neither smiles nor frowns, neither affability nor severity, from remote or calculating motives. In brief, she did not employ her feminine graces, her sexpower, as speculating capital in social commerce. The social conditions in Thursia do not demand that women shall pose in a conciliatory attitude toward men—upon whose favor their dearest privileges hang. Marriage not being an economic necessity with them, they are released from certain sordid motives which often actuate women in our world in their frantic efforts to avert the appalling catastrophe of missing a husband; and they are at liberty to operate their matrimonial campaigns upon other grounds. I do not say higher grounds, because that I do not know. I only know that one base factor in the marriage problem,—the ignoble scheming to secure the means of living, as represented in a husband,—is eliminated, and the spirit of woman is that much more free.
We men have a feeling that we are liable at any time to be entrapped into matrimony by a mask of cunning and deceit, which heredity and long practice enable women to use with such amazing skill that few can escape it. We expect to be caught with chaff, like fractious colts coquetting with the halter and secretly not unwilling to be caught.
Another thing: woman’s freedom to propose—which struck me as monstrous—takes away the reproach of her remaining single; the supposition being, as in the case of a bachelor, that it is a matter of choice with her. It saves her the dread of having it said that she has never had an opportunity to marry.
Courtship in Thursia may lack some of the tantalizing uncertainties which give it zest with us, but marriage also is robbed of many doubts and misgivings. Still I could not accustom myself with any feeling of comfort to the situation there,—the idea of masculine pre-eminence and womanly dependence being too thoroughly ingrained in my nature.
Elodia, of course, did many things and held many opinions of which I did not approve. But I believed in her innate nobility, and attributed her defects to a pernicious civilization and a government which did not exercise its paternal right to cherish, and restrain, and protect, the weaker sex, as they should be cherished, and restrained, and protected. And how charming and how reliable she was, in spite of her defects! She had an atomic weight upon which you could depend as upon any other known quantity. Her presence was a stimulus that quickened the faculties and intensified the emotions. At least I may speak for myself; she awoke new feelings and aroused new powers within me.
Her life had made her practical but not prosaic. She had imagination and poetic feeling; there were times when her beautiful countenance was touched with the grandeur of lofty thought, and again with the shifting lights of a playful humor, or the flashings of a keen but kindly wit. She had a laugh that mellowed the heart, as if she took you into her confidence. It is a mark of extreme favor when your superior, or a beautiful woman, admits you to the intimacy of a cordial laugh! Even her smiles, which I used to lie in wait for and often tried to provoke, were not the mere froth of a light and careless temperament; they had a significance like speech. Though she was so busy, and though she knew so well how to make the moments count, she could be idle when she chose, deliciously, luxuriously idle,—like one who will not fritter away his pence, but upon occasion spends his guineas handsomely. At the dinner hour she always gave us of her best. Her varied life supplied her with much material for conversation,—nothing worth noticing ever escaped her, in the life and conduct of people about her. She was fond of anecdote, and could garnish the simplest story with an exquisite grace.
Upon one of her idle days,—a day when Severnius happened not to be at home,—she took up her parasol in the hall after we had had luncheon, and gave me a glance which said, “Come with me if you like,” and we went out and strolled through the grounds together. Her manner had not a touch of coquetry; I might have been simply another woman, she might have been simply another man. But I was so stupid as to essay little gallantries, such as had been, in fact, a part of my youthful education; she either did not observe them or ignored them, I could not tell which. Once I put out my hand to assist her over a ridiculously narrow streamlet, and she paid no heed to the gesture, but reefed her skirts, or draperies, with her own unoccupied hand and stepped lightly across. Again, when we were about to ascend an abrupt hill, I courteously offered her my arm.
“O, no, I thank you!” she said; “I have two, which balance me very well when I climb.”
“You are a strange woman,” I exclaimed with a blush.
“Am I?” she said, lifting her brows. “Well, I suppose—or rather you suppose—that I am the product of my ancestry and my training.”
“You are, in some respects,” I assented; and then I added, “I have often tried to fancy what effect our civilization would have had upon you.”
“What effect do you think it would have had?” she asked, with quite an unusual—I might say earthly—curiosity.
“I dare not tell you,” I replied, thrilling with the felicity of a talk so personal,—the first I had ever had with her.
“Why not?” she demanded, with a side glance at me from under her gold-fringed shade.
“It would be taking too great a liberty.”
“But if I pardon that?” There was an archness in her smile which was altogether womanly. What a grand opportunity, I thought, for saying some of the things I had so often wanted to say to her! but I hesitated, turning hot and then cold.
“Really,” I said, “I cannot. I should flatter you, and you would not like that.”
For the first time, I saw her face crimson to the temples.
“That would be very bad taste,” she replied; “flattery being the last resort—when it is found that there is nothing in one to compliment. Silence is better; you have commendable tact.”
“Pardon my stupid blunder!” I cried; “you cannot think I meant that! Flattery is exaggerated, absurd, unmeaning praise, and no praise, the highest, the best, could do you justice, could—”
She broke in with a disdainful laugh:
“A woman can always compel a pretty speech from a man, you see,—even in Mars!”
“You did not compel it,” I rejoined earnestly, “if I but dared,—if you would allow me to tell you what I think of you, how highly I regard—”
She made a gesture which cut short my eloquence, and we walked on in silence.
Whenever there has been a disturbance in the moral atmosphere, there is nothing like silence to restore the equilibrium. I, watching furtively, saw the slight cloud pass from her face, leaving the intelligent serenity it usually wore. But still she did not speak. However, there was nothing ominous in that, she was never troubled with an uneasy desire to keep conversation going.
On top of the hill there were benches, and we sat down. It was one of those still afternoons in summer when nature seems to be taking a siesta. Overhead it was like the heart of a rose. The soft, white, cottony clouds we often see suspended in our azure ether, floated—as soft, as white, as fleecy—in the pink skies of Mars.
Elodia closed her parasol and laid it across her lap and leaned her head back against the tree in whose shade we were. It was an acute pleasure, a rapture indeed, to sit so near to her and alone with her, out of hearing of all the world. But she was calmly unconscious, her gaze wandering dreamily through half-shut lids over the wide landscape, which included forests and fields and meadows, and many windings of the river, for we had a high point of observation.
I presently broke the silence with a bold, perhaps an inexcusable question,
“Elodia, do you intend ever to marry?”
It was a kind of challenge, and I held myself rigid, waiting for her answer, which did not come immediately. She turned her eyes toward me slowly without moving her head, and our glances met and gradually retreated, as two opposing forces might meet and retreat, neither conquering, neither vanquished. Hers went back into space, and she replied at last as if to space,—as if the question had come, not from me alone, but from all the voices that urge to matrimony.
“Why should I marry?”
“Because you are a woman,” I answered promptly.
“Ah!” her lip curled with a faint smile, “your reason is very general, but why limit it at all, why not say because I am one of a pair which should be joined together?”
The question was not cynical, but serious; I scrutinized her face closely to make sure of that before answering.
“I know,” I replied, “that here in Mars there is held to be no difference in the nature and requirements of the sexes, but it is a false hypothesis, there is a difference,—a vast difference! all my knowledge of humanity, my experience and observation, prove it.”
“Prove it to you, no doubt,” she returned, “but not to me, because my experience and observation have been the reverse of yours. Will you kindly tell me,” she added, “why you think I should wish to marry any more than a man,—or what reasons can be urged upon a woman more than upon a man?”
An overpowering sense of helplessness fell upon me,—as when one has reached the limits of another’s understanding and is unable to clear the ground for further argument.
“O, Elodia! I cannot talk to you,” I replied. “It is true, as you say, that our conclusions are based upon diverse premises; we are so wide apart in our views on this subject that what I would say must seem to you the merest cant and sentiment.”
“I think not; you are an honest man,” she rejoined with an encouraging smile, “and I am greatly interested in your philosophy of marriage.”
I acknowledged her compliment.
“Well,” I began desperately, letting the words tumble out as they would, “it is woman’s nature, as I understand it, to care a great deal about being loved,—loved wholly and entirely by one man who is worthy of her love, and to be united to him in the sacred bonds of marriage. To have a husband, children; to assume the sweet obligations of family ties, and to gather to herself the tenderest and purest affections humanity can know, is surely, indisputably, the best, the highest, noblest, province of woman.”
“And not of man?”
“These things mean the same to men, of course,” I replied, “though in lesser degree. It is man’s office—with us—to buffet with the world, to wrest the means of livelihood, of comfort, luxury, from the grudging hand of fortune. It is the highest grace of woman that she accepts these things at his hands, she honors him in accepting, as he honors her in bestowing.”
I was aware that I was indulging in platitudes, but the platitudes of Earth are novelties in Mars.
Her eyes took a long leap from mine to the vague horizon line. “It is very strange,” she said, “this distinction you make, I cannot understand it at all. It seems to me that this love we are talking about is simply one of the strong instincts implanted in our common nature. It is an essential of our being. Marriage is not, it is a social institution; and just why it is incumbent upon one sex more than upon the other, or why it is more desirable for one sex than the other, is inconceivable to me. If either a man, or a woman, desires the ties you speak of, or if one has the vanity to wish to found a respectable family, then, of course, marriage is a necessity,—made so by our social and political laws. It is a luxury we may have if we pay the price.”
I was shocked at this cold-blooded reasoning, and cried, “O, how can a woman say that! have you no tenderness, Elodia? no heart-need of these ties and affections,—which I have always been taught are so precious to woman?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and, leaning forward a little, clasped her hands about her knees.