A Trip to Venus Part 9

"Not far out," rejoined Gazen. "It is called the Devil Nebula!"

"And what is it?" enquired Miss Carmichael.

"It is a cl.u.s.ter of stars--a sp.a.w.n of worlds, if I may use the expression," answered Gazen.

"And what are they made of? I know very little of astronomy."

"The same stuff as the earth--the same stuff as ourselves--hydrogen, iron, carbon, and other chemical elements. Just as all the books in the world are composed of the same letters, so all the celestial bodies are built of the same elements. Everything is everywhere--"

Gazen was evidently in his own element, and began a long lecture on the const.i.tution of the universe, which appeared to interest Miss Carmichael very much. Somehow it jarred upon me, and I retired to the little smoking-room, where I lit a cigar, and sat down beside the open scuttles to enjoy a quiet smoke.

"Why am I displeased with the lucubrations of the professor?" I said to myself. "Am I jealous of him because he has monopolised the attention of Miss Carmichael? No, I think not. I confess to a certain interest in Miss Carmichael. I believe she is a n.o.ble girl, intelligent and affectionate, simple and true; with a touch of poetry in her nature which I had never suspected. She will make an excellent companion to the fortunate man who wins her. When I remember the hard life she has led so far, I confess I cannot help sympathising with her; but surely I am not in love?"

I regret to say that my friend the astronomer, with all his good qualities, was not quite free from the arrogance which leads some men of science to a.s.sume a proprietary right in the objects of their discovery.

To hear him speak you would think he had created the stars, instead of explaining a secret of their const.i.tution. However, I was used to that little failing in his manner. It was not that. No, it was chiefly the matter of his discourse which had been distasteful to me. The sight of that glorious firmament had filled me with a sentiment of awe and reverence to which his dry and brutal facts were a kind of desecration.

Why should our sentiment so often shrink from knowledge? Are we afraid its purity may be contaminated and defiled? Why should science be so inimical to poetry? Is it because the reality is never equal to our dreams? There is more in this antipathy than the fear of disillusion and alloyment. Some of it arises from a difference in the att.i.tude of the mind.

To the poet, nature is a living mystery. He does not seek to know what it is, or how it works. He allows it as a whole to impress itself on his entire soul, like the reflection in a mirror, and is content with the illusion, the effect. By its power and beauty it awakens ideas and sentiments within him. He does not even consider the part which his own mind plays, and as his fancy is quite free, he tends to personify inanimate things, as the ancients did the sun and moon.

To the man of science, on the other hand, nature is a molecular mechanism. He wishes to understand its construction, and mode of action.

He enquires into its particular parts with his intellect, and tries to penetrate the illusion in order to lay bare its cause. Heedless of its power and beauty, he remains uninfluenced by sentiment, and mistrusting the part played by his own mind, he tends to destroy the habit of personification.

Hence that opposition between science and poetry which Coleridge pointed out. The spirit of poetry is driven away by the spirit of science, just as Eros fled before the curiosity of Psyche.

How can I enjoy the perfume of a rose if I am thinking of its cellular tissue? I grow blind to the beauty of the Venus de Medicis when I measure its dimensions, or a.n.a.lyse its marble. What do I care for the drama if I am bent on going behind the scenes and examining the stage machinery? The telescope has banished Phoebus and Diana from our literature, and the spectroscope has vulgarised the stars.

Will science make an end of poetry as Renan and many others have thought? Surely not? Poetry is quite as natural and as needful to mankind as science. All men are poetical, as they are scientific, more or less.

It might even be argued that poetry is for the general, for the man as a man; while science is for the particular, for the man as a specialist; and that poetry is a higher and more essential boon than science, because it speaks to the heart, not merely to the head, and keeps alive the celestial as well as the terrestrial portion of our nature.

Shall we prefer the cause to the effect, and the means to the end, or exalt the matter above the form, and the letter above the spirit? Does not the tissue exist for the sweetness of the rose, the marble for the beauty of the stature, and the mechanism for the illusion of the play?

The "opposition" between science and poetry lies not in the object, but in our mode of regarding it. The scientific and the poetical spirit are complementary, as the inside to the outside of a garment, and if they seem to drive each other away it is because the mind cannot easily entertain and employ both together; but one is pa.s.sive when the other is active.

Keats drank "confusion to Newton" for destroying the poetry of the rainbow by showing how the colours were elicited; but after all was Newton guilty? Why should a true knowledge of the cause destroy the poetry of an effect? Every effect must be produced somehow. The rainbow is not less beautiful in itself because I know that it is due to the refraction of light. The diamond loses none of its l.u.s.tre although chemistry has proved it to be carbon; the heavens are still glorious even if the stars are red-hot b.a.l.l.s.

But stones, carbon, and light are familiar commonplace things, and fraught with prosaic a.s.sociations.

True, and yet natural things are n.o.ble in themselves, and only vulgar in our usage. It is for us to purify and raise our thoughts. Instead of losing our interest in the universe because it is all of the same stuff, we should rather wonder at the miracle which has formed so rich a variety out of a common element.

But the mystery is gone, and the feelings and fancies which arose from it.

In exchange for the mystery we have truth, which excites other emotions and ideas. Moreover, the mystery is only pushed further back. We cannot tell what the elements really are; they will never be more than symbols to us, and all nature at bottom will ever remain a mystery to us: an organised illusion. Think, too, of the innumerable worlds amongst the stars, and the eternity of the past and future. Whether we look into the depths of s.p.a.ce beyond the reach of telescope and microscope, or backward and forward along the vistas of time, we shall find ourselves surrounded with an impenetrable mystery in which the imagination is free to rove.

Science, far from destroying, will foster and develop poetry. It is the part of the scientific to serve the poetical spirit by providing it with fresh matter. The poet will take the truth discovered by the man of science, and purify it from vulgar a.s.sociations, or stamp it with a beautiful and ideal form.

Consider the vast horizons opened to the vision of the poet by the investigations of science and the doctrine of evolution. At present the spirit of science is perhaps more active than the spirit of poetry, but we are pa.s.sing through an unsettled to a settled period. Tennyson was the voice of the transition; but the singer of evolution is to come, and after him the poet of truth.

If we allowed the scientific to drive away the poetical spirit, we should have to go in quest of it again, as the forlorn Psyche went in search of Eros. It is necessary to the proper balance and harmony of our minds, to the purification of our feelings, and the right enjoyment of life. Poetry expresses the inmost soul of man, and science can never take its place. Religion apart, what does the present age of science need more than poetry? What would benefit a hard-headed, matter-of-fact man of science like Professor Gazen if not the arts of the sublime and beautiful--if not a poetical companion--such as Miss Carmichael?

Thus, after a long rambling meditation, I had come back to my bachelor friend and the fair American.

"Yes," thought I, rather uneasily, I must confess, for I could not disguise from myself the fact that I was taken with her, "Gazen and she are not an ill-matched pair by any means. They are alike in many respects, and a contrast in others. They have common ground in their love and apt.i.tude for science; yet each has something which the other lacks. She has poetry and sentiment for instance, but he--well, I'm afraid that if he ever had any it has all evaporated by this time. On the other hand, she"--but it puzzled me to think of any good quality that Miss Carmichael did not possess, and I began to consider that she would be throwing herself away upon him. "They seem to get on well together, however--monstrously well. I wonder what star he is picking to pieces now?"

I listened for the sound of their voices, but not a murmur pa.s.sed through the curtain which I had drawn across the entrance to the smoking cabin. Only a peculiar tremor from the mysterious engines broke the utter stillness. Was I growing deaf? I snapped my fingers to rea.s.sure myself, and the sound startled me like the crack of a pistol. Evidently my sense of hearing had become abnormally acute. My mind, too, was preternaturally clear, and the solitude became so irksome that I rose from my seat, and looked out of the scuttles to relieve the tension of my nerves.

Apparently we had reached a great height in the atmosphere, for the sky was a dead black, and the stars had ceased to twinkle. By the same illusion which lifts the horizon of the sea to the level of the spectator on a hillside, the sable cloud beneath was dished out, and the car seemed to float in the middle of an immense dark sphere, whose upper half was strewn with silver. Looking down into the dark gulf below, I could see a ruddy light streaming through a rift in the clouds. It was probably a last glimpse of London, or some neighbouring town; but soon the rolling vapours closed, and shut it out.

I now realised to the full that I was _nowhere_, or to speak more correctly, a wanderer in empty s.p.a.ce--that I had left one world behind me and was travelling to another, like a disembodied spirit crossing the gloomy Styx. A strange serenity took possession of my soul, and all that had polluted or degraded it in the lower life seemed to fall away from it like the shadow of an evil dream.

In the depths of my heart I no longer felt sorry to quit the earth. It seemed to me now, a place where the loveliest things never come to birth, or die the soonest--where life itself hangs on a blind mischance, where true friendship is afraid to show its face, where pure love is unrequited or betrayed, and the n.o.blest benefactors of their fellowmen have been reviled or done to death--a place which we regard as a heaven when we enter it, and a h.e.l.l before we leave it. . . . No, I was not sorry to quit the earth.

And the beautiful planet, shining there so peacefully in the west, was it any better? At a like distance the earth would seem still fairer, and perhaps even now some wretch in Venus is asking himself a similar question. Is it not probable that just as all the worlds are made of the same materials, so the mixture of good and evil is much the same in all?

I turned to the stars, where in all ages man has sought an answer to his riddles. The better land! Where is it? if not among the stars. I am now in the old heaven above the clouds. Does it lie _within_ the visible universe, as it lies within the heart when peace and happiness are there?

In that pure ether the glory of the firmament was revealed to me as it had never been on the earth, where it is often veiled with clouds and mist, or marred by houses and surrounding objects--where the quietude of the mind is also apt to be disturbed by sordid and perplexing cares. Its awful sublimity overwhelmed my faculties, and its majesty inspired me with a kind of dread. In presence of these countless...o...b.. my own nothingness came home to me, and a voice seemed to whisper in my ear,

"Hush! What art thou? Be humble and revere."

After a while, I perceived a pure celestial radiance of a marvellous whiteness dawning in the east. By slow degrees it spread over the starlit sky, lightening its blackness to a deep Prussian blue, and lining the sable clouds on the horizon with silver. At length the round disc of the sun, whiter than the full moon, and intolerably bright, rose into view.

With the intention of rejoining Professor Gazen in the observatory, and seeing it through his telescope, I flung away my cigar, and stepped towards the door of the cabin; but ere I had gone two paces, I suddenly reeled and fell. At first I imagined that an accident had happened to the car, but soon realised that I myself was at fault. Dizzy and faint, with a bounding pulse, an aching head, and a panting chest, I raised myself with great difficulty into a seat, and tried to collect my thoughts. For the last quarter of an hour I had been aware of a growing uneasiness, but the spectacle of sunrise had entranced me, and I forgot it. Suspecting an attack of "mountain sickness" owing to the rarity of the atmosphere, I attempted to rise and close the scuttles, but found that I had lost all power in my lower limbs. The pain in my head increased, the palpitation of my heart grew more violent, my ears rang like a bell, and I literally gasped for breath. Moreover, I felt a peculiar dryness in my throat, and a disagreeable taste of blood in my mouth. What was to be done? I tried again to reach the door, but only to find that I could not even move my arms, let alone my feet.

Nevertheless, I was singularly free from agitation or alarm, and my mind was just as clear as it is now. I reflected that as the car was ever rising into a rarer atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in calling for help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not a moment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sort of hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the car now struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael not committed the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps even Carmichael himself had been equally careless, and the flying machine, now masterless, was carrying us Heaven knows whither. Strange to say I entertained these sinister apprehensions without the least emotion. I had lost all feeling of pain or anxiety, and was perfectly tranquil and indifferent to anything that might happen. It is possible that with the paralysis of my powers to help myself, I was also relieved by nature from the fears of death. I began to think of the sensation which our mysterious disappearance would make in the newspapers, and of divers other matters, such as my own boyhood and my friends, when all at once my eyes grew dim--and I remembered nothing more.

CHAPTER VII.

ARRIVING IN VENUS.

"Try to speak--there's a good fellow--open your eyes."

I heard the words as in a dream. I recognised the voice of Gazen, but it seemed to come from the far distance. Opening my eyes I found myself prostrate on the floor of the smoking room, with the professor and Miss Carmichael kneeling beside me. There was a look of great anxiety on their faces.

"I'm all right," said I feebly. "I'm so glad you are safe."

It appears that a short time before, Gazen had closed the scuttles of the observatory and returned with Miss Carmichael to the saloon, then, after calling to me without receiving any answer, had opened the door of the smoking-room and seen me lying in a dead faint. Luckily Miss Carmichael had acquired some knowledge of medicine, partly from her father, and without loss of time they applied themselves to bring me round by the method of artificial respiration employed in cases of drowning or lightning stroke.

It would be tedious to narrate all the particulars of our journey through the dark abyss, particularly as nothing very important befell us, and one day pa.s.sed like another. Now and then a small meteoric stone struck the car and glanced off its rounded sides.

"Old Charon," as Gazen and I had nicknamed Carmichael, after the grim ferryman of the Styx, seldom forsook his engines, and Miss Carmichael spent a good deal of her time along with him. Occasionally she chatted with Gazen and myself in the saloon, or helped us to make scientific observations; but although neither of us openly confessed it, I think we both felt that she did not give us quite enough of her company. Her manner seemed to betray no preference for one or the other.

Did she, by her feminine instinct, perceive that we were both solicitous of her company, and was she afraid of exciting jealousy between us? In any case we were all the more glad to see her when she did join us. No doubt men in general, and professors in particular, are fond of communicating knowledge, but a great deal depends on the pupil; and certainly I was surprised to see how the hard and dry astronomer beamed with delight as he initiated this young lady into the mysteries of the apparatus, and what a deal of trouble he took to cram her lovely head with mathematics.

We noted the temperature of s.p.a.ce as we darted onwards, and discovered that it contains a trace of gases lost from the atmospheres of the heavenly bodies. We also found there a sprinkling of minute organisms, which had probably strayed from some living world. Gazen suggested that these might sow the seeds of organic life in brand-new planets, ready for them, but perhaps that was only his scientific joke. The jokes of science are frequently so well disguised, that many people take them for earnest.