CHAPTER II.
As I now know there is a Martian language, if this communication camefrom that planet, which was my own and my father's deepest conviction,it would be impossible to interpret the foregoing record with anycertainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language,except the brief mention in my father's communications, received bymyself from that body--whose publication before I die is the solepurpose of this manuscript--make it quite certain that it is in the maina vowel language, consisting of short vocalic syllables. In such a caseit is probable that some abbreviation has been used, and the problem ofits resolution simply is placed out of the question. I may herepartially forestall the facts communicated to me by my father from Mars.In those unparalleled messages he has told me of the desire of theMartians to communicate with the earth, and as the Martians themselvesare largely made up of transplanted human spirits, the possibility ofdoing so would have been completely expected. But the singularevanescence of memory amongst these humans which absolutely displacesdetails of strictly mnemonic acquirements, except in certain directionsof art and invention, has apparently precluded this.
We remained at the register almost the entire night taking turns in ourtireless vigil. But no more disturbances occurred. My father was deeplymoved and I scarcely less so. Accustomed as we had become to the thoughtthat wireless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with thesidereal universe than with distant points upon our earth, presumingindeed, that, except for the intervening envelopes of atmosphereattached to our or any neighboring planet, the path of transmission ofmessages through space would be inconceivably swift, we saw nothingreally impossible in the impression that we had that night receivedcommunications from extra-terrestrial sources.
The thought was none the less stupendous, and it seemed almostimpossible for us to allude to the subject without a peculiar sense ofreverential self-suppression, at least for a week or so. Examination andinquiry showed us no contiguous source of the message and it seemed mostimprobable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, aswe had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility ofbridging our very great distances with the resources then at humancommand, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity.
* * * * *
It was a few months after this that my father, returning from a climb inthe neighboring hills, complained of great weariness and a sort of mildvertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a mostunusual companion, and unnaturally separated as I had been from moreordinary associations, our lives had assumed an almost fraternaltenderness.
I was greatly troubled to see my father's illness, and begged him totake rest; indeed, to leave the observatory for a while; to visit ChristChurch. We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church.A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name ofDodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subjectof perennial curiosity, and were more or less visited by curiosityhunters and others, actuated by more intelligent motives, the Tontinesand the Dodans remained our only very intimate friends.
Indeed, Miss Dodan had come to me, buried in scientific speculations anddenied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light througha sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almostirksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedlyenthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories wasboundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescopeadjusting everything with--oh! such exquisite precision--and thensometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touchingthose silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow andreddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so unexpected, sostrange, that I felt a new desire rise in my heart, and the newness oflife lifted me for a moment out of myself, and started those fires ofambition and hope that only a lovely woman can awaken in the heart of aman. I mention this circumstance that led to the fatal train ofoccurrences that led to my father's death.
I urged my father to go to Christ Church and stay with the Dodans. Mr.Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and hercheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long tohis lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness,which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the homeand scenes of his former happiness.
He at last consented, and in October, 1891, accompanied by the Dodans,whom he had summoned from Christ Church, he went down the steep hillsidethat slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost fromview in a turn of the road, which also robbed me of the sight of awaving, small white handkerchief, floating in front of a half-loosenedpile of chestnut hair.
A few days later I received a visit from Miss Dodan. I was then workingat some photographs in the dark room. My assistant told me of herarrival. I hurried to our little reception room and library, where a fewof my father's "Worthies of Science" decorated the walls, which for themost part were covered with irregular book cases, while a long squarecovered table occupied the center of the room, littered with charts,maps, journals and daily papers.
Miss Dodan sat near the wide window looking toward Christ Church and thequickly descending road over which only a few days ago my father hadjourneyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbedglance, and I felt almost instantly an intimation of disaster. Sheturned to me as I came into the room and with a quick movement advanced.
"Mr. Dodd, your father is ill. I hardly know what is the matter withhim. He is quite strange; does not know us when we talk to him, andwanders in a talk about 'magnetic waves' and 'his wife' and 'differentcode.' Won't you come to see him? You may help him greatly."
The kind, clear eyes looked up into mine and the impulse of realsympathy as she pressed my hand seemed unmistakable. I asked a fewquestions and was convinced that my father was the victim of some sortof shock, perhaps precipitated by the continuous excitement caused byour unaccountable experience in the observatory.
I was but a few moments getting ready for the drive to Christ Church. Iremember the cold, crisp air, the rapid motion, and can I ever forgetit--the nearness and touch of Miss Dodan's person, perhaps only ahurried brushing past me of her arm, the stray touch of her floatinghair, or the accidental stubbing of her foot against my own. It seemed ashort, delicious drive. I fear my heart was almost equally dividedbetween apprehension for my father's health and the joy of simplenearness to the woman I loved. At last we reached Christ Church. TheDodans lived in the suburbs in a pretty villa on a high hill, from whosetop the city lay spread before them in its modest extent with itsneighboring places and Port Lyttelon eight miles away.
I found my father better, but it required my own zeal and affection tothoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristicinterest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful acompanion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan andmyself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to eachother, my father renewed his wonted studies, and strongly desired toreturn to the "plateau."
I almost regretted, harsh as the thought may seem, our return. Suchincidents are now a kind of sweet sadness to recall, for as I writethese words, I hear nearer and nearer the summons that must put me alsoin the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived,has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with herfather's people in a charming, rustic village of Devonshire. But oh! sofar away! and this picture which daily I draw from beneath the pillow ofmy sick couch must alone serve to replace the companionship of her faceand voice.
I can permit myself in this last record of an unrecoverable past todescribe a treasured incident just before I left the Dodan home with myfather. I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan alsoemerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. Wemet and I said: "Miss Dodan, it is a treacherous confession, but I wishyou were going back with us, or that my father would stay a little
longer here. I shall miss you."
"Yes," she answered. "Aren't you a good nurse?"
"Oh, I think you need not misunderstand me," I insisted.
"Misunderstanding is rather an English trait, you Americans say," sheretorted.
"But in this case," I continued, "I hoped any disadvantages of that sortwould be overcome by your own feelings."
She blushed and looked quite dauntlessly into my eyes: "You mean," sheinquired, "that you are sorry to leave me?"
My face was very red, I knew, and I felt a puzzling sensation in mythroat, but I did not hesitate: "Of course, I am sorry to leave you,more sorry than I can say, but I fear more, that leaving you may meanlosing you."
This time confusion seemed struggling with a pleased mirth in her face,and with a laugh and a quick movement toward the stairway she exclaimed:"Well, Americans, they say, never lose what they really care to win."
I darted forward, but she was too quick for me and the chase ended inthe lower hall in a group of people--her parents, my father, visitorsand servants--and I saw her disappear with a backward glance, in which,I could swear, I saw two pouting lips.
My father was overjoyed to return to our really very comfortablequarters on "Martian Hill," as Mr. Dodan, in reference to my father'sinfatuation over his imaginary (?) population of Mars, was accustomed tocall our professional home.
It was, I think, only a few weeks after this that my father called me tohis room. He was standing in his morning apparel, a strange garb whichhe sometimes affected, made up of a black velvet gown brought togetherat the waist by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort ofsandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered withloose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to theclose fitting sleeves of the velvet gown which only descended to hiselbow. Beneath the gown, when he was thus theatrically attired, he worea shirt of pale blue silk with a flat collar, over which came a blackvest meeting his black trunks and blue hose.
My father was a really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruoushabiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet clustered thecurly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest,sad eyes, seemed--how distinctly I recall it--almost ideally lovely thatmorning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola,only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I camein, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces of tearsupon his cheeks. My heart was full of love for my father, or childlikeadoration it might have been called. I hurried to him and embraced him.The tenderness overcame his habitual self-restraint and he seemed tofall sobbing in my arms.
"My son," he finally whispered, "my days are drawing very fast to aclose. The shock I experienced at Christ Church prepared me to believe Iwould die in some attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred thismorning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot beneglected. I and you must at once make preparations for that futurecolloquy which we must endeavor to establish between ourselves, when Ihave left this earth and you yet remain upon it.
"I have been thinking a good deal on this subject and my reflectionshave resulted in this conclusion."
His voice had now resumed its usual melody and power, and we sat downwhile he turned the pages of Prof. Bain's little work entitled "Mind andBody." He read (I marked at the time the passage): "The memory risesand falls with the bodily condition; being vigorous in our fresh momentsand feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is related by Sir HenryHolland that on one occasion he descended, on the same day, two mines inthe Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mine hewas so exhausted with inanition and fatigue, that his memory utterlyfailed him; he could not recollect a single word of German. The powercame back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs thememory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred."
My father then continued: "It seems to me quite clear that our memory,at any rate, however little of our other mental attributes is engaged inmatter, is quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements ofour nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluidthat survives death, but, inasmuch as memory is so closely expressed inphysical or material units or elements, does it not seem plain that asspirits we shall probably lose memory?
"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memoryitself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhapsnot wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely betreasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which areso subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ animpression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs:'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuingin the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the originalagent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, Ishall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. Itmust be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feelingoccupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the originalfeeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can beassigned.'
"It seems to me, my son, in view of all this, that, as the fondest hopeof my life is to send back to you from wherever I may be, a message, andas we both believe the means must be something like this wirelesstelegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed,and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morsealphabet. Beating, beating, beating upon my brain substance thisceaselessly reiterated mechanical language, it will become soincorporated, that even in the surviving mind I shall find its tracesand be able to use it.
"So I have concluded to put aside almost everything else and think andlive in the thought only of this coming experience. You understand me?You sympathize in this? Yes, yes, I shall get ready for this supremeexperiment which may at last, to a long waiting world, bring somereasonable assurance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as Ilook forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death growswonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, youwho have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for myconvenience and pleasure, I dread to leave you. But I will speak to you!Watch! wait! and at that instrument upstairs, which I know responded tosome waves of magnetism crossing the oceans of space, I shall be heardby you in English words, opening up the mysteries of other worlds!"
He stopped in sheer exhaustion with his whole face charged with almostfrantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the sameimpossible dreams, that I saw nothing ludicrous in his hopes.
From that day on we gave ourselves up to telegraphing from our twostations, while my father again and again consulted models of ourtransmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and itdid seem psychologically certain that in any disembodied condition myfather would be likely to recall some important parts or all of thiswell learned lesson.
For years my father, as I mentioned before, in his astronomical studies,had limited himself to the study, photography and drawing of thesurfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him,for he had, by some illusion or accident of thought fixed his belieffirmly that Mars represented his future post mortem home.
The progress of study of the physical features of Mars had beenconsiderable. With these results my father and I were very familiar, hadbeen in correspondence with certain astronomical centers with regard tothem, and had even contributed something toward the elucidation of theproblems thus presented.
In 1884, before the Royal Society, some notes on the aspect of Mars, byOtto Baeddicker, were read by the Earl of Rosse. They were accompaniedby thirteen drawings of the planet and showed many features representedon the Schiaparelli charts. W.F. Denning in 1885, remarked upon "theseeming permanency of the chief lineaments on Mars, and theirdistinctiveness of outline." Schiaparelli confirmed his previousobservations upon the duplications of the canals and Mr. Knobelpublished some sketches.
In 1886, M. Terby presented to th
e Royal Academy of Belgium notes ondrawings made by Herschell and Schroeter, indicating the so-calledKaiser Sea. M. Perrotin at the Nice Observatory was able to redetectSchiaparelli's canals, which elicited the remark that "the reality ofthe existence of the delicate markings discovered by the keen-sightedastronomer of Brera seems thus fully demonstrated, and it appears highlyprobable that they vary in shape and distinctness with the changes ofthe Martial seasons."
These observations of M. Perrotin were detailed at length in the_Bulletin Astronomique_, and the distinguished observer called attentionto the fact that these markings varied but slightly from Schiaparelli'schart, and indicated a state of things of considerable stability in theequatorial region of Mars. M. Perrotin recorded changes in the KaiserSea (Schiaparelli's _Syrtis Major_). This spot, usually dark, was seenon May 21, 1886, "to be covered with a luminous cloud forming regularand parallel bands, stretching from northwest to southeast on thesurface, in color somewhat similar to that of the continents but notquite so bright." These cloud-like coverings were later more distributedand on the three following days diminished greatly in intensity. Theywere referred by Perrotin to clouds.
In March and April of the year 1886 a study was made of the surface ofMars by W.F. Denning in England. Mr. Denning's drawings corroborated thecharts of Green, Schiaparelli, Knobel, Terby and Baeddicker. He foundthe surface of Mars one of extreme complexity, a multitude of brightspots in places, but with a general fixity of character which led him tobelieve that the appearances were not atmospheric. He indeed attributedto Mars an attenuated atmosphere and thought that some of the vagariesin its surface characters were due to variations in our own atmosphereHe did not find the Schiaparelli canals as distinct in outline as givenby that ingenious observer. He noted many brilliant spots on Mars andindicated the disturbing influences of vibrations produced by winds onthe surface of our earth in connection with changes in the earth'satmospheric envelope.
In 1888 M. Perrotin continued his observations on the channels of Marsand noted changes. The triangular continent (Lydia of Schiaparelli) haddisappeared, its reddish white tint indicating, or supposed to indicate,land, was then replaced by the black or blue color of the seas of Mars.New channels were observed, some of them in "direct continuation" withchannels previously observed, amongst these an apparent channel throughthe polar ice cap. Some of these seemed double, running from near theequator to the neighborhood of the North Pole. The place called Lydiadisappeared and reappeared. A strange puzzling statement was made thatthe canals could be traced straight across seas and continents in theline of the meridian. M. Terby confirmed many of these observations.Later the so-called "inundation of Lydia," observed by M. Perrotin, wasdoubted. Schiaparelli himself, Terby, Niesten at Brussels, and Holden atthe Lick Observatory, failed to remark this change. These observers didnot double the canals satisfactorily, but all agreed upon the strikingwhiteness and brightness of the planet.
M. Fizeau (1888) argued that the Schiaparelli canals were really glacialphenomena, being ridges, crevasses, rectilinear fissures, etc., ofcontinental masses of ice. Again (Bulletin de l'Academie Royale deBelgique, June) M. Nesten averred that the changes on the surface ofMars were periodic.
In 1889, Prof. Schiaparelli reviewed what had been observed upon thesurface of the planet in a continued article in _Himmel und Erde_, apopular astronomical journal published by the Gesellschaft Urania andedited by Dr. Meyer.
Some remarkable photographs taken by Mr. Wilson in 1890 were commentedon by Prof. W.H. Pickering in the "Sidereal Messenger." They showed theseasonal variations in the polar white blotches.
In 1889 there reached us from Chatto and Windus of London a mostentertaining book by Hugh MacColl, entitled "Mr. Stranger's SealedPacket." It was a work of fancy, ingeniously constructed upon scientificprinciples. It described a hypothetical machine, a flying machine, whichwas made up of a substance more than half of whose mass had beenconverted into repelling particles. Such a fabric would leave the earth,pass the limits of its attraction with an accelerating velocity and movethrough space. In such a way Mr. Stranger reached Mars. He found itinhabited by a people--the Marticoli--happy in a state of socialism, andwith abundance of food manufactured from the elements, oxygen, hydrogen,carbon and nitrogen, with electric lights, phonetic speech, but withoutgunpowder or telescopes.
Its inhabitants had been derived from the earth by a most delightfulscientific fabrication. A sun and its satellites in its course aroundsome other center draws the earth and Mars so together that on someparts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome thatof the earth and gently suck up to itself inhabitants from the earth,who would not suffer death from loss of air, as the atmosphere of bothbodies would be mingled.
These observations and this last scientific myth have some interest inview of the actual knowledge now vouchsafed to the world through myfather's messages. I have very briefly reviewed them.
My father's premonitions were fully realized. He grew sensibly weaker asthe months of 1891 passed. His mind became eager with the cherishedexpectation which grew day by day into a sort of a mild possession. Itseemed to me that there was a moderate aberration involved in his deeplyseated convictions, and when sometimes I saw him walking past thewindows on the plateau with his head thrown back, his arms outstretchedas if he were inviting the stars to take him and his murmuring voice,repeating some snatches of song, I felt awed and frightened.
My father was stricken with paralysis on September 21, 1892, becamespeechless the following day, but for a day thereafter wrote on a padhis last directions. Some of these were quite personal, and need not bedetailed here. It was indeed pathetic to see his strenuous and repeatedefforts to assure me that he remembered all the parts of the telegraphicapparatus, and his smile of saddened self-depreciation when hehesitated over some detail. At last he sank into a torpor with the usualstertorous breathing, flushed face and gradually chilled extremities.His last words were scrawled almost illegibly by his failinghand--"Remember, watch, wait, I will send the messages."
Miss Dodan came to the plateau and was helpful; to me especially. Shekept up my breaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her bravegrace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to gothrough the trial of death and separation.
All was finished. My father was buried in Christ Church cemetery by hisown request, although thus separated by a hemisphere from his wife.
* * * * *
A year had passed. I had received nothing. Mr. and Miss Dodan came tothe observatory. They both were acquainted with the singularprepossessions which controlled both myself and my father, and I thinkMr. Dodan was himself, though he admitted nothing, most curious andinterested in the whole matter. Miss Dodan frankly said she was. But Iknow, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was somethingweirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. Shethought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me inher thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed alittle the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender.
I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of theuselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expectingto hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any wordtransmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, mademe feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged everyportion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the mostdelicate adjustment.
Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an assistant to the post,or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to theMorse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention.At length as time wore on I arranged a bell signal that might summon usto the register.
On the occasion of this visit by the Dodans I was in the loft at thereceiver which was in a room to one side of that we called "theequatorial," where the telescope was suspended. I was as usual waitingfor a message that never came, and my failin
g hopes, made more and moretransitory by the brightness of the southern spring and all the instantpresent industry of the fields below me on the low-lands, seemed todissolve into a mocking phantom of derisive dreams.
I stood up hackneyed and forlorn. Had I not done everything I could? HadI not kept my promise? I heard the voices below me; one, that musicaltone, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turnedhastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to sendupward its powerful sensitizing odors that turn energy into languorousdesire, and touch the senses with indolence; at that moment the Morseregister spoke!
Could my ears have deceived me? No! It was running, running, running,intelligible, strong, definite; it seemed to me of almost piercingloudness, although just audible. I bent over, seized my pad and wrote.The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorablesilence which lies beyond the grave came a voice--and what a voice! Theclicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knewand used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down themessage. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption.
I was told the Dodans came up and saw me, heard the telltale clicks ofthe register, and unnoticed left me. Still I wrote on, unheeding thetime. My assistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measuredtappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at10 a.m., Sept. 25, 1893. It ended at 10 p.m. on the same day. It camequite evenly, though slowly, and was unmistakably intended to beinerrantly recorded, as indeed it was.
Certainty of a Future Life in Mars Page 2