The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

Then he thought of Julia's lovely face and magnificent body—and all his manhood thrilled as he recalled the look in her eyes when they met his the day before.

This was the strongest kind of temptation by which his nature could ever be assailed—he knew himself to be weak as water when that came his way, the ten‑thousandth face (and the figure to match)! He had often prayed to Martia to deliver him from such a lure. But here was Martia on the side of the too sweet enemy!

The train stopped for a few minutes at Neanderthal, and he thought he could think better if he got out and walked in that beautiful valley an hour or two—there was no hurry; he would take another train later, in time to meet Julia at Beresford Duff's, where she was sure to be. So he walked among the rocks, the lonely rocks, and sat and pondered in the famous cave where the skull was found—that simple prehistoric cranium which could never have been so pathetically nonplussed by such a dilemma as this when it was a human head!

And the more he pondered the less he came to a conclusion. It seemed as though there were the "tug of war" between Martia and all that he felt to be best in himself—his own conscience, his independence as a man, his sense of honor. He took her letter out of his pocket to re‑read, and with it came another letter; it was from my sister, Ida Maurice. It told him when they would arrive in Düsseldorf.

He jumped up in alarm—it was that very day. He had quite forgotten!

He ran off to the station, and missed a train, and had to wait an hour for another; but he got himself to the Rhine station in Düsseldorf a few minutes before the train from Belgium arrived.

Everything was ready for the Gibson party—lodgings and tea and supper to follow—he had seen to all that before; so there he walked up and down, waiting, and still revolving over and over again in his mind the troublous question that so bewildered and oppressed him. Who was Martia? what was she—that he should take her for a guide in the most momentous business of his life; and what were her credentials?

And what was love? Was it love he felt for this young goddess with yellow hair and light‑blue eyes so like his own, who towered in her full‑blown frolicsome splendor among the sons and daughters of men, with her moist, ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and laughter—that royal milk‑white fawn that had only lain in the roses and fed on the lilies of life?

"Oh, Mr. Nobody of Nowhere! be at least a man; let no one ever call you the basest thing an able‑bodied man can become, a fortune‑hunting adventurer!"

Then a bell rang, and the smoke of the coming train was visible—ten minutes late. The tickets were taken, and it slowed into the station and stopped. Ida's head and face were seen peering through one of the second‑class windows, on the lookout, and Barty opened the door and there was a warm and affectionate greeting between them; the meeting was joy to both.