CHAPTER II.
As I now know there is a Martian language, if this communication came from that planet, which was my own and my father's deepest conviction, it would be impossible to interpret the foregoing record with any certainty, or indeed, in any way. Absolute ignorance of that language, except the brief mention in my father's communications, received by myself from that body—whose publication before I die is the sole purpose of this manuscript—make it quite certain that it is in the main a vowel language, consisting of short vocalic syllables. In such a case it is probable that some abbreviation has been used, and the problem of its resolution simply is placed out of the question. I may here partially forestall the facts communicated to me by my father from Mars. In those unparalleled messages he has told me of the desire of the Martians to communicate with the earth, and as the Martians themselves are largely made up of transplanted human spirits, the possibility of doing so would have been completely expected. But the singular evanescence of memory amongst these humans which absolutely displaces details of strictly mnemonic acquirements, except in certain directions of art and invention, has apparently precluded this.
We remained at the register almost the entire night taking turns in our tireless vigil. But no more disturbances occurred. My father was deeply moved and I scarcely less so. Accustomed as we had become to the thought that wireless telegraphy would place us more readily in touch with the sidereal universe than with distant points upon our earth, presuming indeed, that, except for the intervening envelopes of atmosphere attached to our or any neighboring planet, the path of transmission of messages through space would be inconceivably swift, we saw nothing really impossible in the impression that we had that night received communications from extra-terrestrial sources.
The thought was none the less stupendous, and it seemed almost impossible for us to allude to the subject without a peculiar sense of reverential self-suppression, at least for a week or so. Examination and inquiry showed us no contiguous source of the message and it seemed most improbable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, as we had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility of bridging our very great distances with the resources then at human command, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity.
* * * * *
It was a few months after this that my father, returning from a climb in the neighboring hills, complained of great weariness and a sort of mild vertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a most unusual companion, and unnaturally separated as I had been from more ordinary associations, our lives had assumed an almost fraternal tenderness.
I was greatly troubled to see my father's illness, and begged him to take rest; indeed, to leave the observatory for a while; to visit Christ Church. We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church. A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name of Dodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subject of perennial curiosity, and were more or less visited by curiosity hunters and others, actuated by more intelligent motives, the Tontines and the Dodans remained our only very intimate friends.
Indeed, Miss Dodan had come to me, buried in scientific speculations and denied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light through a sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almost irksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedly enthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories was boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope adjusting everything with—oh! such exquisite precision—and then sometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touching those silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow and reddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so unexpected, so strange, that I felt a new desire rise in my heart, and the newness of life lifted me for a moment out of myself, and started those fires of ambition and hope that only a lovely woman can awaken in the heart of a man. I mention this circumstance that led to the fatal train of occurrences 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 her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and 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 hillside that slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost from view in a turn of the road, which also robbed me of the sight of a waving, small white handkerchief, floating in front of a half-loosened pile of chestnut hair.