Read Ebook: Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance by Jones Alice Ilgenfritz Merchant Ella

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Ebook has 954 lines and 50016 words, and 20 pages

He led the way down-stairs, and luckily into the breakfast room.

We were served by men dressed similarly to ourselves, though their clothing was without trimming and was of coarser material than ours. They moved about the room swiftly and noiselessly. Motion upon that planet seems so natural and so easy. There is very little inertia to overcome.

Our meal was rather odd; it consisted of fruits, some curiously prepared cereals, and a hot palatable drink. No meat.

I at first made out that it was a place devoted to the fine arts. I had noticed a somewhat conspicuous absence, in the rooms below, of the sort of things with which rich people in our country crowd their houses. I understood now, they were all marshaled up here.

There were exquisitely carved vessels of all descriptions, bronzes, marbles, royal paintings, precious minerals.

Here also were the riches of color.

The brilliant morning light came through the most beautiful windows I have ever seen, even in our finest cathedrals. The large central stained glasses were studded round with prisms that played extraordinary pranks with the sunbeams, which, as they glanced from them, were splintered into a thousand scintillating bits, as splendid as jewels.

We sat down, I filled--I do not know why--with a curious sense of expectancy that was half awe.

Across one end of the great room was stretched a superb curtain of tapestry,--a mosaic in silk and wool.

Severnius did not make any other sign or gesture to me except the one that bade me be seated.

I watched him wonderingly but furtively. He seemed to be composing himself, as I have seen saintly people compose themselves in church. Not that he was saintly; he did not strike me as being that kind of a man, though there was that about him which proclaimed him to be a good man, whose friendship would be a valuable acquisition.

He folded his hands loosely in his lap and sat motionless, his glance resting serenely on one of the great windows for a time and then passing on to other objects equally beautiful.

We were still enwrapped in this august silence when I became conscious that somewhere, afar off, beyond the tapestry curtain, there were stealing toward us strains of unusual, ineffable music, tantalizingly sweet and vague.

Gradually the almost indistinguishable sounds detached themselves from, and rose above, the pulsing silence,--or that unappreciable harmony we call silence,--and swelled up among the arches that ribbed the lofty ceiling, and rolled and reverberated through the great dome above, and came reflected down to us in refined and sublimated undulations.

Our souls--my soul,--in this new wonder and ecstasy I forgot Severnius,--awoke in responsive raptures, inconceivably thrilling and exalted.

I did not need to be told that it was sacred music, it invoked the Divine Presence unmistakably. No influence that had ever before been trained upon my spiritual senses had so compelled to adoration of the Supreme One who holds and rules all worlds.

This I murmured, and texts of our scriptures, and fragments of anthems. It was as if I brought my earthly tribute to lay on this Marsian shrine.

The gates did roll back, the heavens were broken up, new spiritual heights were shown to me, up which my spirit mounted.

I looked at Severnius. His eyes were closed. His face, lighted as by an inner illumination, and his whole attitude, suggested a "waiting upon God," that

"Intercourse divine, Which God permits, ordains, across the line."

There stole insensibly upon the sound-burdened air, the hallowed perfume of burning incense.

I conjectured, and truly as I afterward learned, that I was in my friend's private sanctuary. It was his spiritual lavatory, in which he made daily ablutions. A service in which the soul lays aside the forms necessary in public worship and stands unveiled before its God.

It was a rare honor he paid me, in permitting me to accompany him. And he repeated it every morning during my stay in his house, except on one or two occasions. It speedily became almost a necessity to me. You know how it is when you have formed a habit of exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. If you leave it off, you are uncomfortable, you have a feeling that you have cheated your body out of its right. It was so with me, when for any reason I was obliged to forego this higher exercise. I was heavy in spirit, my conscience accused me of a wrong to one of the "selfs" in me,--for we have several selfs, I think.

There was not always music. Sometimes a wonderful voice chanted psalms and praises, and recited poems that troubled the soul's deepest waters. At first I did not understand the words, of course, but the intonations spoke to me the same as music does. And I felt that I knew what the words expressed.

Often there was nothing there but The Presence, which hushed our voices and set our souls in tune with heavenly things. No matter, I was fed and satisfied.

At the end of a sweet half-hour, the music died away, and we rose and passed out of the sacred place. I longed to question Severnius, but was powerless.

He led the way down into the library, which was just off the wide entrance hall. Books were ranged round the walls on shelves, the same as we dispose ours. But they were all bound in white cloth or white leather.

The lettering on the backs was gold.

I took one in my hand and flipped its leaves to show Severnius that I knew what a book was. He was delighted. He asked me, in a language which he and I had speedily established between ourselves, if I would not like to learn the Marsian tongue. I replied that it was what I wished above all things to do. We set to work at once. His teaching was very simple and natural, and I quickly mastered several important principles.

After a little a servant announced some visitors, and Severnius went out into the hall to receive them. He left the door open, and I saw that the visitors were the astronomers I had met the night before. They asked to see me, and Severnius ushered them into the library. I stood up and shook hands with each one, as he advanced, and repeated their own formula for "How do you do!" which quite amused them. I suppose the words sounded very parrot-like,--I did not know where to put the accent. They congratulated me with many smiles and gesticulations on my determination to learn the language,--Severnius having explained this fact to them. He also told them that I had perhaps better be left to myself and him until I had mastered it, when of course I should be much more interesting to them and they to me. They acquiesced, and with many bows and waves of the hand, withdrew.

The language, I found, was not at all difficult,--not so arbitrary as many of our modern languages. It was similar in form and construction to the ancient languages of southern Europe. The proper names had an almost familiar sound. That of the country I was in was Paleveria. The city was called Thursia, and there was a river flowing through it,--one portion of Severnius' grounds, at the back of the house, sloped to it,--named the Gyro.

A WOMAN.

I felt myself growing red under her lively gaze, and attributed it to my clothes. I was not accustomed to them yet, and I felt as you would to appear before a beautiful woman in your night shirt. Especially if you fancied you saw something in her eyes which made you suspect that she thought you cut a ludicrous figure. Of course that was my imagination, my apparel, in her eyes, must have been correct, since it was selected from among his best by my new friend, who was unmistakably a man of taste.

Her face, which was indescribably lovely, was also keenly intelligent,--that sort of intelligence which lets nothing escape, which is as quick to grasp a humorous situation as a sublime truth. It was a face of power and of passion,--of, I might say, manly self-restraint,--but yet so soft!

I now observed for the first time the effect of the pinkish atmosphere on the complexion. You have seen ladies in a room where the light came through crimson hangings or glass stained red. So it was here.

Severnius smiled, spoke, and gave her his hand. The glance they bestowed upon each other established their relationship in my mind instantly. I had seen that glance a thousand times, without suspecting it had ever made so strong an impression upon me that in a case like this I should accept its evidence without other testimony. They were brother and sister. I was glad of that, for the reason, I suppose, that every unmarried man is glad to find a beautiful woman unmarried,--there are seductive possibilities in the situation.

Severnius did his best to introduce us. He called her Elodia. I learned afterwards that ladies and gentlemen in that country have no perfunctory titles, like Mrs., or Mr., they support their dignity without that. It would have seemed belittling to say "Miss" Elodia.

I had a feeling that she did not attach much importance to me, that she was half amused at the idea of me; a peculiar tilting-up of her eyebrows told me so, and I was piqued. It seemed unfair that, simply because she could not account for me, she should set me down as inferior, or impossible, or ridiculous, whichever was in her mind. She regarded me as I have sometimes regarded un-English foreigners in the streets of New York.

She indulged her curiosity about me only for a moment, asking a few questions I inferred, and then passed me over as though she had more weighty matters in hand. I knew, later on, that she waived me as a topic of conversation when her brother insisted upon talking about me, saying half impatiently, "Wait till he can talk and explain himself, Severnius,--since you say he is going to learn our speech."

I studied her with deep interest as we walked along, and no movement or accent of hers was lost upon me. Once she raised her hand--her wide sleeve slipped back and bared a lovely arm--to break off a long scimeter-shaped leaf from a bough overhead. Quicker than thought I sprang at the bough and snapped off the leaf in advance of her, and presented it with a low obeisance. She drew herself up with a look of indignant surprise, but instantly relented as though to a person whose eccentricities, for some reason or other, might better be excused. She did not, however, take the leaf,--it fluttered to the ground.

She was not like any other woman,--any woman I had ever seen before. You could not accuse her of hauteur, yet she bore herself like a royal personage, though with no suggestion of affecting that sort of an air. You had to take her as seriously as you would the Czar. I saw this in her brother's attitude toward her. There was none of that condescension in his manner that there often is in our manner toward the women of our households. I began to wonder whether she might not be the queen of the realm! But she was not. She was simply a private citizen.

She sat at the dinner table with us, and divided the honors equally with Severnius.

I wish I could give you an idea of that dinner,--the dining-room, the service, the whole thing! It surpassed my finest conceptions of taste and elegance.

We sat down not merely to eat,--though I was hungry enough!--but to enjoy ourselves in other ways.

There was everything for the eye to delight in. The room was rich in artistic decorations upon which the rarest talent must have been employed. The table arrangements were superb; gold and silver, crystal, fine china, embroidered linen, flowers. And the food, served in many courses, was a happy combination of the substantial and the delicate. There was music--not too near--of a bright and lively character. Music enters largely into the life of these people. It seemed to me that something beat time to almost everything we did.

The conversation carried on between the brother and sister--in which I could take no more part than a deaf-mute--was, I felt sure, extremely entertaining if not important. My eyes served me well,--for one sense is quick to assume the burdens of another,--and I knew that the talk was not mere banter, nor was it simply the necessary exchange of words and opinions about everyday matters which must take place in families periodically, concerning fuel, and provisions, and servants, and water-tax, and the like. It took a much higher range. The faces of both were animated, their eyes beamed brightly upon each other. It was clear that the brother did not talk down to her understanding, rather he talked up to it,--or no, they were on a level with each other, the highest level of both, for they held each other up to their best. However, Elodia had been away for a couple of days, I learned, and absence gives a bloom of newness which it is delightful to brush off.

I did not detect any of the quality we call chivalry in Severnius' pose, nor of its complement in hers. Though one would hardly expect that between brothers and sisters anywhere. Still, we have a way with our near women relations which never ignores the distinction between the sexes; we humor them, patronize them, tyrannize over them. And they defer to, and exalt us, and usually acknowledge our superiority.

They held widely different opinions upon many subjects, but they never crowded them upon each other. Their tastes were dissimilar. For one thing, Elodia had not her brother's fine religious sense. She seldom entered the sanctuary, though once or twice I saw her there, seated far apart from Severnius and myself.

Stimulated by the hope of some day being able to talk with her, and of convincing her that I was a person not altogether beneath her intelligence, I devoted myself, mind and soul, to the Paleverian language. In six weeks I could read and write it fairly well.

Severnius was untiring in his teaching; and every day strengthened my regard for him as a man. He was an accomplished scholar, and he was as clean-souled as a child,--but not weakly or ignorantly so. He knew evil as well as good; but he renounced the one and accepted the other. He was a man "appointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact." And I never knew him to weaken his position by defending it. Often we spent hours in the observatory together. It was a glorious thing to me to watch the splendid fleet of asteroids sailing between Jupiter and Mars, and to single out the variously colored moons of Jupiter, and to distinguish with extraordinary clearness a thousand other wonders but dimly seen from the Earth.

Even to study the moons of Mars, the lesser one whirling round the planet with such astonishing velocity, was a world of entertainment to me.

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