CHAPTER VI.
Miss Dodan came more and more frequently to see me. The thought of myphysical depression, the revulsion of hopelessness over my changinglineaments made the love I bore her more painful and enervating. I triedhard to conceal my fears over my condition. But Miss Dodan had beenobservant. Her developing affections became daily more tender anddelicate, and her solicitude evinced itself in many charming, thoughtfulways that added only a more poignant sadness to my sufferings.
I was, indeed, tortured by the conflicting aims life seemed to furnishme. On the one hand was the necessity of continuing, if I could, mycommunications with my father; on the other, the duty I owed myself toabandon all for the woman I truly loved, and to renovate and establishmy health so that I might woo and win, and marry her.
It was, in a sense, an ethical question, but it was quite as hard todetermine by ordinary arguments whether I could have any permission toviolate my promise to my father, as it was to estimate the exact measureof my obligations to myself and Miss Dodan. An incident occurred thatdissipated this dilemma, sent Miss Dodan to England, and left me atChrist Church to receive the last message from my father before thesickness had fully developed that now has laid its searching andremorseless veto upon any further life or happiness for me in thisworld.
Miss Dodan and myself were seated together upon a bench drawn up in thesunshine at the foot of the Observatory, watching with delight thedistinct changing sea, the plumes of smoke from diminished steamers, andthe white glory of full-rigged ships. It was the autumn of the southerncountry, and the dreamy spell of the declining days fell softly upon thematerial tissues of nature, as well as on the acquiescent spirit of man.
"Father," said Miss Dodan, uncertainly, while she formed her hand intoan improvised tube, and looked through it on the peaceful scene at ourfeet, "has been telling me of my birthplace in Devonshire. It must bevery beautiful, more beautiful than it is here. But there is no sea, andit seems to me now that I should die without it; it is the very soul andvoice, too, of all this picture!" She spread out her arms, and halfwillfully threw back the one nearest me, until it swept over my head,and I caught and kissed the opened palm.
"Yes," I replied, "the sea relieves everything about or near it, fromthe humiliation of commonness. The stamp of distinction rests on itsprintless waves. It was the first surface of the earth, and its primalregency has never been lost or forfeited;" a suspicion crossed my mind:"How was it your father spoke of Devonshire. I never knew before thatyou came from that pearl of the countries of England. Would you like tosee it?"
My voice half sank, and the hitherto unsuspected fact that Mr. Dodan hadobserved my physical danger, and now was planning to interrupt hisdaughter's intimacy and hallucination for a poor, failing man,struggling with an impossible problem, and a mortal malady, seemedsuddenly understood by me. I turned to her a face of questioningconcern. Her eyes were still fixed upon the distant, pulsating sea."No," she answered, half nonchalantly. "I suppose not, and yet--why not!I have only known this country; to cross the great ocean, to see thecapital of the world, to learn the great wonders of its palaces andtemples, to see its multitudes, to see the Queen. Ah! to see the Queen!"
Her hands folded tightly together across her brow, she looked the veryembodiment of reverent expectation, and the blushing roses on hercheeks, the lovelight in her eyes seemed to deepen for an instant, andthen pale slightly, as she turned to me only to see me bury my head inmy hands, holding back the cry of stifled hope that often before hadleaped to my lips, but never had before so nearly passed them.
"Oh, Bradford," she cried, "would you mind so much! I would soon be backagain. And then, you know, this awful telegraphic work would be over,and we could be happy together without a thought of that cold, far-awayMars!"
We talked on together till the dusky night had begun to gather itsshadows about us, and Mars, that marvellous spot of light from whoseuntouched continents the waves of magnetic oscillation might even thenbe starting on their pathless transit across the abyss of space,destined for my ear, began to shine above us.
It was clear to me now that Mr. Dodan had been carefully nursing in hisdaughter a desire to see England and the Queen, and her own littlebirthplace, and that he had formed a resolution to separate us, for hisdaughter's best interests, as he thought.
I suffered from a very proud, sensitive nature, perhaps unwholesomelyintensified by the lonely life I had led, and a peculiar sense of mydifference from other people.
This revelation, so unwelcome, so fraught with painful anticipations,roused my pride to a sharp climax of revolt, disdain and defiance. MissDodan should go,--I should urge it. I would applaud and hasten it, therewould be no weakness, no supplication, no obstacles on my part. Letdeath write his inerrant claim to me, let it be recognized; Mr. Dodanneed not be disturbed as to my absolute self-control.
The very acerbity of my coming misery, through Miss Dodan's absence,fully realized by me, seemed now only to add a desperation of assumedindifference and gayety to all my actions. I argued against delay, anddwelt with excellent effect upon the charms of the visit. I assumed thatMiss Dodan needed the change, that the educational value of such anexperience would be incalculable.
Mr. Dodan was frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support andenthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefullyaccepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me apower of self-renunciation which won his ardent approval and admiration.
The day was at last fixed. Miss Dodan, young, appreciative, andcurious, was elated at the prospect of the voyage, and, momentarily, atleast, forgot her first reluctance to desert me. The preparations wereall completed. I need not dwell upon all the detail of that last week.It was a cruel ordeal for me, but no one would have suspected my realanguish. I seemed the most thoughtful of all, the most naturally buoyantand hopeful for the success of the trip. I forgot nothing. The telegraphstation was not, however, neglected. I watched at night, and during thehours of my absence my assistant was persistently present in the tower.
At last the steamer sailed away from the wharf at Port Littelton. Thelast moments I passed alone with Miss Dodan were sacred, sweet memories;all that I have now.
Mr. and Mrs. Dodan and Miss Dodan were waving their handkerchiefs fromthe deck as I turned sorrowfully back to Christ Church. I realized thatI had seen Miss Dodan for the last time, and that when she returned toNew Zealand, she would only find me gone. There was but one duty now. Toresume, if possible, the communications with my father, and prepare thestory of my experience and discoveries, and leave it to the world.
I went back to the Observatory. I was again alone. A reaction ofdespondency overwhelmed me, and it was coincident with a hemorrhage,which left me weak and nervous. I resumed my watching at the station. Iseemed to anticipate a new message. I endured peculiar and excruciatingexcitement, a tense suspense of desire and prevision that deprived me ofappetite and sleep, and accelerated the ravages of the disease, thatnow, victorious over my weakened, nervous force, began the last stagesof its devastating advance.
It was a clear, cold night of exquisite severity and beauty--May 20,1894, that the third message came from my father. It was announced, ashad been all the others, by the sudden response of the Morse receiver. Afew nights before, grasping at a vague hope that I might again reach himwith the magnetic waves at my command, I had launched into space thesingle sentence: "Await me! Death is very near." The message that nowstartled my ears began with an exact answer to that trans-abysmaldespatch:
"My son, the thought of your death fills me with happiness. Surely youwill come to this wonderful and unspeakable world, you will see meagain, and I you, but under such new circumstances! My heart yearns foryou immeasurably. Come! Come quickly! To press you to my heart, to speakwith you, to teach you the new things, and Oh! more than all, to bringyou to your mother. For, Tony, she is found; my search is ended. I havediscovered her whom the cruel mystery of Death on earth so sharplyremoved from us, in youth and rad
iance. I have not yet revealed myself.The joy of anticipation surpasses thought or words. I have hastened backfrom seeing her, whom to leave in this paradise imparts the one pang Ihave known in this new life, hastened again to the Hill of Observationthat now looks on the cruel ruin, the emptiness of desolation, whereonce was the City of Scandor. Let me tell you all:
"When I sent you my last message I was at the Tower of Observation. Asthe last wave was emitted from the transmitter, the hand ofSuperintendent Alca, whom I met at the mines, was laid upon my shoulder.I looked up in surprise. He answered my questioning glance: 'I did notreturn with Chapman. There was no need of it. A barge going to the Cityof Light took the body. I explained everything in a letter to theCouncil. I was distressed over the news I had received of the approachof the cometary mass, which I have detected myself, and I hurried afteryou in my own kil-chow (the name of the little porcelain steamers),anxious to see this terrible thing. Let us go out and watch the wonder.Whatever happens we shall remain together. I am from Scandor myself,and though I might have been safer at the mines, I could not stay therein the crisis.'
"We descended to the ground and walked out over the hillside. Theencircling range of high country about Scandor is, perhaps, one thousandfeet high. Its crest is a low swell, that beyond the city falls away inbroken, irregular slopes to the country of the Ribi on one side, and tofar outstretched plains on almost every other side. This dome wascovered with the people of Scandor, fleeing from the doomed city. Thelong lines of moving figures were issuing from the city through itsnumerous boulevards, and crowding the spaces on the hilltops. Theastronomers knew exactly now the nature of the approaching mass, itsorbit, spacial extent and weight. Their proclamation had been preparedand pasted all over the city, announcing its certain destruction, butthat the area of devastation would only embrace the city, that thecometary visitor was a narrow train or procession of meteors of stoneand iron, that the force of impact would be considerable, enough tocrush to the ground the glassy splendor of the beautiful city, and thatbeyond its limits there would be almost no falls.
"Beautiful, indeed, was Scandor in the morning light. It lay before usshining with a hundred hues. How can I tell you of its exquisiteperfection! Its arrangement expressed a color scheme simple andeffective. The amphitheatre rose in the center, an opalescent yellow;the boulevards spaced with trees, stretched out in radiating lines fromit, defined by the blue lines of ornamental metal pillars which held thelamps; from point to point, piercing the air from the shady peaks orsquares shot up also the needles of metal holding the curious electricglobes, while at regular intervals blue domes like gigantic azurebubbles interrupted the streets of square and colonnaded houses, thatbegan around the amphitheatre, with pale saffron tones, and grew inintensity until the edges of the huge populous ellipse were laid like adeep orange rim upon the green country side. The light falling upon thisreflected, refracted and dispersed, seemed to convert it into a liquidand faintly throbbing lake of color, cut up into segments by the darklanes or streets of trees.
"And this was to be crushed and crumbled to the ground. The houses andall the constructions are built of glass bricks laid in courses, as withyou on the earth, a soluble glass forming the cement that holds them incontact and together. The huge glass factories making this formed ablack circle in one part of the City.
"It was now day, and the meteoric nebula was invisible. All day thepeople came crowding to the hills. At last, as we gazed in bewilderedadmiration at the strange multitudes about us, the sound of distantmusic, the organ-like swell of a titanic chorus approaching was heard.Far away down the boulevard, on whose apex we stood, we saw a marchingretinue of men and women surrounding a platform borne on the shouldersof men. The platform held the upright figures of the Council amongstwhom, distinguished by a blue chalcal tunic bound about him by yellowcords, was the noble being I had seen in the Council chamber on thenight of my arrival in Scandor.
"How marvellous it all seemed. The sense of unreality, of dreamlandagain overpowered me, a wild horror like some mad possession seized me.I shook convulsively, and covered my face in my hands, stricken throughand through with a nameless repining misery of doubt, of apprehension,of dismay. It was the last struggle of readjustment between my memoriesof earth, my identity as a man on the earth, and this new life I hadentered. Alca caught me affectionately and placed the acrid bean I hadtasted in the City of Light in my mouth. The black suffocation passed,and as I slowly returned to realization and serenity I opened my eyesupon the city, now dead and silent, but blazing with all its lights,awaiting desolation, dressed in its sumptuous glory like some princelycaptive on whom the doom of immolation, before an unappeasable deity,had suddenly fallen. It was night fall.
"Suddenly a flash, a short piercing note, a loud report, and the skyabove us seemed crowded with glowing missiles. The impact from the firstarrivals of the cometary body upon the outer envelopes of the Martianatmosphere had begun. A loud shout of attention, surprise and halfextemporized terror rose from the multitudes about us. It was abreathless moment. The oncoming shoals shot forward in rapid jets offire now clouded together in igneous masses, now separated in disjointedstreaks and radiant clusters of snapping, shining bolts.
"As yet the material rushing in upon us failed, in most instances, toreach the ground in solid forms. It was burned up in the air. Thespectacle was surpassingly strange. The air before us was weaved withcrossing shafts, threads, and traces of phosphorescent light. Behindthis veil still shone with responsive beauty the great city, whilerising occasionally in bursts of color, we could see the alarm rocketsfrom the opposite hills penetrate the entering flood of light withfrivolous and extinguished protests.
"About half an hour after the glory reached us, and as on all sides thecountry shone in spectral illumination, a great mass, decrepitating withminute explosions along its oncoming side, plunged down upon the nobleamphitheatre of glass. A dreadful sound of crashing stone followed, andthen, rapidly fired from the aerial batteries, came still more of thedark, half ignited bodies, bathed in hurrying streams of evanescentblades, and splinters of light.
"And now the destructive bombardment had really begun. The celestialdownpour increased, the valley below us sent upward the detonations ofexploding meteorites and the harsh reverberating crash and overthrow ofglass fabrics. The lights of the city were brokenly extinguished and thepitiless hail of ruin continued with increasing fierceness.
"It was an awful, glorious scene. The vault of the sky emptying itselfin an avalanche of flame, while from within the wide stream ofprojectiles, collisions caused by some accident of deflection originatedinterior spots of sudden blazing light. The irregular and separatedshocks of sound from the falling city now ran together in a continuousroar of dislocated and broken walls, towers, parapets and citadels.Coruscations sprang out from the yet heated masses, accumulating on theground, as they became incessantly struck by new accessions. The groundtrembled with ceaseless fulminations and impingement, the atmosphereseemed saturated with sulphurous odors, and the panoramic flow offluctuating splendor shed a day-like brightness upon the upturned facesof the startled and stupefied multitude.
"All night long the invasion continued. The area of destruction, exactlyas the astronomers had defined it, was confined to the long ellipticalbasin in which Scandor lay. Beyond it hardly a branch upon the trees wasbroken, though occasional erratic bombs shot over us and fell miles awayalong the borders of the canals.
"As the morning dawned, the shower discontinued, a few laggards fell inscattering confusion over the prostrate city, and the sun climbing theeastern sky sent its peaceful reassuring light upon a cairn-like heap ofdesolation. The chilled surface of the fallen meteorites were broken upby areas of glowing cinder-like surfaces. The glittering and opalinecity of glass, the City of Scandor, capital of the Martian world, wasburied beneath the scorching and stony fragments of a minor comet, orsome diminished and wandering meteor train which suddenly issuing fromthe unknown depths of space had descended with mathematica
l precisionupon the treasure city of the planet.
"The Martian legions remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. Theawful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed theirspirit, and they looked into each other's faces with bewilderment.
"I had stayed with Alca throughout the night, and I now turning to himsaid:
"'Let us go! What can we do here? Let us walk away for awhile. I amdizzy with terror.'
"'Yes,' he answered, and tears seemed filling his eyes, 'we will go. Wewill walk out into the hill and river country beyond the canal. Many arewandering over the country now. The farmers will harbor us and thebeauty of the lanes will bring us cheerfulness.'
"And so we went away, hastening with the Martian velocity of motionuntil as the sun hung in the zenith, we had reached a hillside slopingupon a meadow space through which passed the clear but sluggish watersof a wide stream. A tulip-like grass was distributed in the heavyluxuriant growth of the meadow, which bore upon pendant threads a bluebell-like flower. A gentle wind, rising and falling, swept over them,lifting and blowing out the cups as it passed off to the surface of thewater and printed it with plashes of ripples. A piece of wood pushed outfrom the hillside, the trees that formed it struggling out into themeadow in a broken succession of individuals like a line of men. Here,leaning against the last tree trunk that stood quite alone in advance ofits companions, was a young woman, her arms folded above the cap--likethe Grecian cassos--that imperfectly held her hair, and dressed in ayellow tunic and the half seen leggings of meshed chalcal thread--alovely picture of meditation.
"I caught Alca's arm in a sudden wave of desire and excitement. It wasthe impulse of love, the first burning of its sacred fire I had known inMars, and it was the intense certainty of recognition that made it soimpetuous. My Son, your Mother was before me!
"The same glorious beauty I had known on earth covered her, and like amystic light shone from her face and person. I was myself again, young,and she was the same. The impelling sense of a superhuman Destinybringing us together again in this new world, forced from me anejaculation of thankfulness. The cry was not loud, but audible to herears, and she turned toward us. Yes! it was Martha, as I knew her inthose raptured days of love on the banks of the Hudson before diseaseand weakness and age had stolen the bloom from her cheeks, the lightfrom her eyes, and the fair presentiment of charm and perfection fromher body. She did not see me perhaps clearly. Certainly she did notrecognize me. An instant's scrutiny and her face turned again to theopen exposure of hill and field, stream and cloud-flecked sky.
"Alca had observed my gestures of delight, and, perhaps reading mythoughts by that intuition of mind so wonderful in the Martians, pushedme toward her gently and moved away from us toward the brink of theriver.
"I stood for a moment hesitating, overwhelmed with the marvel of thisnew thing. I stole on, and finally pushing aside the high grown grass,was at her side--at the side of the very form and feature of the womanwho had taught me on earth the worth of living and the meaning and theglory of rectitude.
"She was breathing fast, her bosom rising and falling with quickrespirations, and her cheeks flushed with color, made a delicious foilto the pearly tone of her face, concealed on her neck and forehead bythe escaping tresses of her dark hair.
"I drew back, trembling with anticipation, my heart beating, and myclasped hands folded on my breast in an agony of restraint. She wastalking, talking to herself in the low musical voice of the Martians.The wind had ceased, a dark shadow from a crossing cloud moved toward usfrom the river over the blue sprinkled field, a haze stole upward fromthe farther view, and, bending at the margin of the water the figure ofAlca bathed in light, seemed to watch us like some calm incarnateresponse to my own hopes and prayers.
"'How beautiful, how wonderful it is!' her arms dropped from her head,the body bent forward to the earth, she knelt; 'but must it always be asit is! Shall not the companion of my days come to this dear place? Thelight of sun and moon and stars seems as it always seemed on Earth, butthere does not come to me the divine touch of affection, that intimatefeeling of oneness and self-surrender that was mine with Randolph on theEarth. A strength unknown to me before, a power of enjoyment, a motionthat is ecstacy, thought, feeling, language, all strong, radiant,supreme, but yet loneliness! Memory of the things of Earth hardlyremains, except where love prints its firm expression. Randolph, myhusband, and Bradford, my boy, to me are deathless. Why can it not bethat they should be here also? Can the purposes of divine love befulfilled by this separation? Shall all the powers of this new life,this beautiful and sinless Nature be wasted for the want of love whichholds both Nature and the soul in place, in harmony, in adoration of theOne enduring Thought?
"'How the long years have rolled by since I have left the Earth, andhow, amid all the pleasurable things of this serene and hopeful life,the hidden loneliness has denied it the last completing touch of joy!Only as I still dare to believe, that the flight of years must end hisaging days on Earth, and that the eternal destiny of married souls is aneternal union, and that his reincarnation here shall bring us into a newand better, richer, deeper harmony of mind and tastes and thoughts; onlyas the belief grows stronger with passing time, can I, so surroundedwith peace and happiness, in this countryside of quiet work and gentlecares, bear longer this awful isolation, the nights of prayerful hope,the days of still enduring hope.
"'How beautiful it is to live, to watch the changing seasons in thisstrange new world untouched by sickness or death or sin. And yet,' sheconvulsively clasped her face, 'what beauty, what peace, whatsinlessness can replace the only life--the Life of Love?
"'And then my boy! Can it be possible that I may see him! Why, now hewill seem only a brother in this new youth in which I have been born,and yet--and yet--the mother feeling is unchanged; the old yearning,just as when I left him a boy upon the Earth seems as great as ever.
"'Oh! when shall this waiting all end in our reunion--father, mother,son--and all strong and glad in youth and hope?'
"She rose and stretched out her arms toward some phantasy of thought orfancy in the air above her, and then a song of recall from a distancefloated along the meadow and the river's banks, a sweet, joyous,beckoning melody, that compelled the ear to listen, and the feet tofollow.
"Martha half turned--I was dazed with wonder--I did not wish to speak. Icould not then have revealed myself. It was all too marvellous, too hardto comprehend. The old doubts of my reality, of the realness ofeverything I had seen, surged up again, and swept over me in a tide ofdisillusion.
"Was I dreaming; in the death from Earth had I passed into a wildphantasmagoria of mental pictures, some endless dream where the lulledsoul encountered again, as visions, all it may have hoped for, all itsunconscious cerebration had limned on the interior canvases of the mind,to be reviewed, as in a sleep, where every detail met the test ofcuriosity--except that last test--waking? Should I awake?
"I sprang forward and beat myself, in a sort of fury of doubt againstthe trees about me. The resistance was secure and certain. Pain--itseemed a kind of bliss, as the guarantee of my flesh and bloodexistence--came to me and in my paroxysms the torn skin of my body bled.I looked at the red stains with exultation. I felt the aches of physicalconcussion, with a real rapture.
"This life was real, was dual--body and mind--as on Earth, and the womanhastening before me along the marge of the rippling stream--I listenedin a kind of feverish anticipation of its silence, for the low cadenceof water passing over pebbles--was Martha! It must be true! What agencyof superhuman cruelty could thus deceive me? No! my eyes were faithful,and the air, thrilling with the distant song, brought nearer to my earsthe answering call of my wife!
"She was far distant. I ran from tree to tree in the wooded back groundand traced her to a little hamlet where a group of Martians awaited her.They turned up a narrow lane singing, and I lost them.
"I returned to Alca, pensively standing on the hill we had firstdescended, and said nothing of the strange revelat
ion. I contrived tolearn from him the name of the little village, and the nature of itsinhabitants. He called it Nitansi, and said it had been one of the oldspots where migrating souls from other worlds once entered Mars.
"'A few,' he added, 'come there now, though rarely, and the peoplecultivate flowers in great farms, and formerly sent them to Scandor. Ithink I saw them moving now along the fields at the riverside. We mustgo back. I shall go down the canal to Sinsi. I know the Council ofScandor will resolve to rebuild the city.'"
The message closed. I rose and staggered backward into the arms ofJobson. A severe hemorrhage ensued, and slowly thereafter the darkeningdoors of life began to close upon me. Disease had won its way againstall the force of life.
It has been my task during these last weeks of life to write thisaccount of these wonderful experiences, and to leave them to the worldas an assurance--to how many will it give a new delight in living, tohow many will it remove the bitterness of living, to how many may itbring resignation and hope--that the blight of Death is only an incidentin a continuous renewal of Life.
(End of Mr. Dodd's MS.)