A Trip to Venus: A Novel

by John Munro

  CHAPTER VI.

  IN SPACE.

  We had entered the clouds.

  For half-an-hour we were muffled in a cold, damp mist, and totaldarkness, and had begun to think of going indoors when, all at once, thecar burst into the pure and starlit region of the upper air.

  A cry of joyous admiration escaped from us all.

  The spectacle before us was indeed sublime.

  The sky of a deep dark blue was hung with innumerable stars, whichseemed to float in the limpid ether, and the rolling vapours throughwhich we had passed were drawn like a sable curtain between us and thelower world. The stillness was so profound that we could hear thebeating of our own hearts.

  "How beautiful!" exclaimed Miss Carmichael, in a solemn whisper, as ifshe were afraid that angels might hear.

  "There is Venus right ahead," cried the astronomer, but in a softertone than usual, perhaps out of respect for the sovereign laws of theuniverse. "The course is clear now--we are fairly on the open sea--Imean the open ether. I must get out my telescope."

  "The sky does not look sad here, as it always does on the earth--to meat least," whispered Miss Carmichael, after Gazen had left us alone. "Isuppose that is because there is so much sadness around us and within usthere."

  "The atmosphere, too, is often very impure," I replied, also in awhisper.

  "Up here I enjoy a sense of absolute peace and well-being, if nothappiness," she murmured. "I feel raised above all the miseries oflife--they appear to me so paltry and so vain."

  "As when we reach a higher moral elevation," said I, drifting into aconfidential mood, like passengers on the deck of a ship, under themysterious glamour of the night-sky. "Such moments are too rare in life.Do you remember the lines of Shakespeare:--

  "'Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims: Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in--we cannot hear it.'"

  "True," responded Miss Carmichael, "and now I begin to feel like adisembodied spirit--a 'young-eyed cherubim.' I seem to belong already toa better planet. Should you not like to dwell here for ever, far awayfrom the carking cares and troubles of the world?"

  The unwonted sadness of her tone reminded me of her devoted life, and Iturned towards her with new interest and sympathy. She was looking atthe Evening Star, whose bright beam softened the irregularities of herprofile, and made her almost beautiful.

  "Yes," I answered, and the words "with you" formed themselves in myheart. I know not what folly I might have spoken had not theconversation been interrupted by Gazen, who called out in his unromanticstyle,

  "I say, Miss Carmichael! Won't you come and take a look at Venus?"

  She rose at once, and I followed her to the observatory.

  The telescope was very powerful for its size, and showed the dusky nightside of the planet against the brilliant crescent of the day like the"new moon in the arms of the old," or, as Miss Carmichael said, "like anamethyst in a silver clasp."

  "Really, it is not unlike that," said Gazen, pleased with her feminineconceit. "If the instrument were stronger you would probably see theclasp go all round the dusky violet body like a bright ring, andprobably, too, an ashen light within it, such as we see on the dark sideof the moon. By-and-by, as we get nearer, we shall study the markings ofthe terminator, and a shallow notch that is just visible on the inneredge of the southern horn. Can you see it?"

  "Yes, I think I can. What is it?" replied Miss Carmichael.

  "Probably a vast crater, or else a range of high mountains interceptingthe sunlight, and making a scallop in the border of the terminator.However, that is a secret for us to find out. We know very little of theplanet Venus--not even the length of her day. Some think it is eightmonths long, others twenty-four hours. We shall see. I have begun tokeep a record of our discoveries, and some day--when I return to town--Ihope to read a paper on the subject before the most potent, grave, andlearned Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society--I rather think Ishall surprise them--I do not say startle--it is impossible to startlethe Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society--or even to astonishthem--you might as well hope to tickle the Sphinx--but I fancy it willstir them up a little, especially my friend Professor Sylvanus PettiferPossil. However, I must take care not to give them the slightest hint ofwhat they are to expect beforehand, otherwise they will declare theyknew all about it already."

  "Has it struck you that up here the stars appear of different colours atvarious distances," said Miss Carmichael.

  "Oh, yes," answered Gazen, "and in the pure atmosphere of the desert, oron the summit of high mountains, we notice a similar effect. The starshave been compared to the trees of a forest, in different stages ofgrowth and decay. Some of them are growing in splendour, and othersagain are dying out. Arcturus, a red star, for example, is fast coolingto a cinder. Capella, over there, is a yellow star, like our own sun,and past his prime. Sirius, that brilliant white or bluish star, whichflashes like a diamond in the south, is one of the fiercest. He is adouble star, his companion being seven and himself thirteen timesmassier than the sun; but they are fifty times brighter, and a milliontimes further off, that is to say, one hundred billion miles away.These double or twin stars are often very beautiful. The twins are ofall colours, and generally match well with each other--for instance,purple and orange--green and orange--red and green--blue and palegreen--white and ruby. One of the prettiest lies in the constellationCygnus. I will show it to you."

  "Oh, how lovely!" exclaimed Miss Carmichael, looking through the glass."The bigger star is a golden or topaz yellow, and the smaller a lightsapphire blue."

  "Some of the star groups and nebulae are just as pretty," observed Gazen,turning his telescope to another part of the heavens; "most of the starsare white, but there is a sprinkling of yellow, blue, and red amongstthem--I mean, of course, to our view, for the absorption of ouratmosphere alters the tint."

  "Does that mean that there is more youth than age, more life than death,in the universe?" enquired Miss Carmichael.

  "Not exactly," replied the astronomer. "There is apparently no lack ofvigour in the Cosmos--no great sign of decrepitude; but we must rememberthat we see the younger and brighter stars better than the others, andfor aught we know there are many dark suns or extinct stars, as well asplanets and their satellites. I should not like to say that thepopulation of space is going down; but on the whole it may bestationary. I wish I could show you the cluster in Toucan, a rosy starin a ring of white ones."

  "Like a brooch of pearls," said Miss Carmichael.

  "Yes--not unlike that," responded Gazen, evidently amused at hercomparison. "But that constellation is in the Southern Hemisphere.However, here is the 'ring' or 'planetary' nebula in the Lyre."

  "What a wonderful thing!" exclaimed Miss Carmichael, with her eye at theinstrument. "It looks to me like a golden hoop, with diamond dustinside."

  I do not know where Miss Carmichael got her knowledge of jewellery, forto all appearance she wore none.

  "Or the cup of a flower," she added, raising her head.

  "Poets have called the stars 'fleurs de ciel,'" said Gazen, shifting thetelescope, "and if so, the nebula are the orchids; for they imitatecrabs, birds, dumb-bells, spirals, and so forth. Take a look at thisone, and tell us what you think of it."

  "I see a cloud of silver light in the dark sky," said Miss Carmichael,after observing it.

  "What does it resemble?"

  "It's rather like a pansy--or--"

  "Anything else?"

  "A human face!"

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

  "And what is it?" enquired Miss Carmichael.

  "It is a cluster of stars--a spawn of worlds, if I may use theexpression," answered Gazen.

  "And what are they made of? I know very lit
tle 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 theworld are composed of the same letters, so all the celestial bodies arebuilt of the same elements. Everything is everywhere--"

  Gazen was evidently in his own element, and began a long lecture on theconstitution of the universe, which appeared to interest Miss Carmichaelvery much. Somehow it jarred upon me, and I retired to the littlesmoking-room, where I lit a cigar, and sat down beside the open scuttlesto enjoy a quiet smoke.

  "Why am I displeased with the lucubrations of the professor?" I said tomyself. "Am I jealous of him because he has monopolised the attention ofMiss Carmichael? No, I think not. I confess to a certain interest inMiss Carmichael. I believe she is a noble girl, intelligent andaffectionate, simple and true; with a touch of poetry in her naturewhich I had never suspected. She will make an excellent companion to thefortunate man who wins her. When I remember the hard life she has led sofar, I confess I cannot help sympathising with her; but surely I am notin love?"

  I regret to say that my friend the astronomer, with all his goodqualities, was not quite free from the arrogance which leads some men ofscience to assume a proprietary right in the objects of their discovery.To hear him speak you would think he had created the stars, instead ofexplaining a secret of their constitution. However, I was used to thatlittle failing in his manner. It was not that. No, it was chiefly thematter of his discourse which had been distasteful to me. The sight ofthat glorious firmament had filled me with a sentiment of awe andreverence to which his dry and brutal facts were a kind of desecration.Why should our sentiment so often shrink from knowledge? Are we afraidits purity may be contaminated and defiled? Why should science be soinimical to poetry? Is it because the reality is never equal to ourdreams? There is more in this antipathy than the fear of disillusionand alloyment. Some of it arises from a difference in the attitude ofthe mind.

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

  To the man of science, on the other hand, nature is a molecularmechanism. He wishes to understand its construction, and mode of action.He enquires into its particular parts with his intellect, and tries topenetrate the illusion in order to lay bare its cause. Heedless of itspower and beauty, he remains uninfluenced by sentiment, and mistrustingthe part played by his own mind, he tends to destroy the habit ofpersonification.

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

  How can I enjoy the perfume of a rose if I am thinking of its cellulartissue? I grow blind to the beauty of the Venus de Medicis when Imeasure its dimensions, or analyse its marble. What do I care for thedrama if I am bent on going behind the scenes and examining the stagemachinery? The telescope has banished Phoebus and Diana from ourliterature, and the spectroscope has vulgarised the stars.

  Will science make an end of poetry as Renan and many others havethought? Surely not? Poetry is quite as natural and as needful tomankind as science. All men are poetical, as they are scientific, moreor less.

  It might even be argued that poetry is for the general, for the man as aman; 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 alivethe celestial as well as the terrestrial portion of our nature.

  Shall we prefer the cause to the effect, and the means to the end, orexalt the matter above the form, and the letter above the spirit? Doesnot the tissue exist for the sweetness of the rose, the marble for thebeauty of the stature, and the mechanism for the illusion of the play?The "opposition" between science and poetry lies not in the object, butin our mode of regarding it. The scientific and the poetical spirit arecomplementary, as the inside to the outside of a garment, and if theyseem to drive each other away it is because the mind cannot easilyentertain and employ both together; but one is passive when the other isactive.

  Keats drank "confusion to Newton" for destroying the poetry of therainbow by showing how the colours were elicited; but after all wasNewton guilty? Why should a true knowledge of the cause destroy thepoetry of an effect? Every effect must be produced somehow. The rainbowis not less beautiful in itself because I know that it is due to therefraction of light. The diamond loses none of its lustre althoughchemistry has proved it to be carbon; the heavens are still gloriouseven if the stars are red-hot balls.

  But stones, carbon, and light are familiar commonplace things, andfraught with prosaic associations.

  True, and yet natural things are noble in themselves, and only vulgar inour usage. It is for us to purify and raise our thoughts. Instead oflosing 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 avariety out of a common element.

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

  In exchange for the mystery we have truth, which excites other emotionsand ideas. Moreover, the mystery is only pushed further back. We cannottell what the elements really are; they will never be more than symbolsto us, and all nature at bottom will ever remain a mystery to us: anorganised illusion. Think, too, of the innumerable worlds amongst thestars, and the eternity of the past and future. Whether we look into thedepths of space beyond the reach of telescope and microscope, orbackward and forward along the vistas of time, we shall find ourselvessurrounded with an impenetrable mystery in which the imagination is freeto rove.

  Science, far from destroying, will foster and develop poetry. It is thepart of the scientific to serve the poetical spirit by providing it withfresh matter. The poet will take the truth discovered by the man ofscience, and purify it from vulgar associations, or stamp it with abeautiful and ideal form.

  Consider the vast horizons opened to the vision of the poet by theinvestigations of science and the doctrine of evolution. At present thespirit of science is perhaps more active than the spirit of poetry, butwe are passing through an unsettled to a settled period. Tennyson wasthe voice of the transition; but the singer of evolution is to come, andafter him the poet of truth.

  If we allowed the scientific to drive away the poetical spirit, weshould have to go in quest of it again, as the forlorn Psyche went insearch of Eros. It is necessary to the proper balance and harmony of ourminds, to the purification of our feelings, and the right enjoyment oflife. Poetry expresses the inmost soul of man, and science can nevertake its place. Religion apart, what does the present age of scienceneed more than poetry? What would benefit a hard-headed, matter-of-factman of science like Professor Gazen if not the arts of the sublime andbeautiful--if not a poetical companion--such as Miss Carmichael?

  * * * * *

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

  "Yes," thought I, rather uneasily, I must confess, for I could notdisguise from myself the fact that I was taken with her, "Gazen and sheare not an ill-matched pair by any means. They are alike in manyrespects, and a contrast in others. They have common ground in theirlove and aptitude for science; yet each has something which the otherlacks. She has poetry and sentiment for instance, but he--well, I'mafraid that if he ever had any it has all evaporated by this time. Onthe other hand, she"--but it puzzled me to think of any good qualitythat Miss Carmichael did not possess, and I began to consider that shewould be throwing herself away upon him. "They seem to get on welltogether, however--monstrously wel
l. I wonder what star he is picking topieces now?"

  I listened for the sound of their voices, but not a murmur passedthrough the curtain which I had drawn across the entrance to the smokingcabin. Only a peculiar tremor from the mysterious engines broke theutter stillness. Was I growing deaf? I snapped my fingers to reassuremyself, and the sound startled me like the crack of a pistol. Evidentlymy sense of hearing had become abnormally acute. My mind, too, waspreternaturally clear, and the solitude became so irksome that I rosefrom my seat, and looked out of the scuttles to relieve the tension ofmy nerves.

  Apparently we had reached a great height in the atmosphere, for the skywas a dead black, and the stars had ceased to twinkle. By the sameillusion which lifts the horizon of the sea to the level of thespectator on a hillside, the sable cloud beneath was dished out, and thecar seemed to float in the middle of an immense dark sphere, whose upperhalf was strewn with silver. Looking down into the dark gulf below, Icould see a ruddy light streaming through a rift in the clouds. It wasprobably a last glimpse of London, or some neighbouring town; but soonthe rolling vapours closed, and shut it out.

  I now realised to the full that I was _nowhere_, or to speak morecorrectly, a wanderer in empty space--that I had left one world behindme and was travelling to another, like a disembodied spirit crossing thegloomy Styx. A strange serenity took possession of my soul, and all thathad polluted or degraded it in the lower life seemed to fall away fromit like the shadow of an evil dream.

  In the depths of my heart I no longer felt sorry to quit the earth. Itseemed to me now, a place where the loveliest things never come tobirth, or die the soonest--where life itself hangs on a blind mischance,where true friendship is afraid to show its face, where pure love isunrequited or betrayed, and the noblest benefactors of their fellowmenhave been reviled or done to death--a place which we regard as a heavenwhen we enter it, and a hell before we leave it. . . . No, I was notsorry to quit the earth.

  And the beautiful planet, shining there so peacefully in the west, wasit any better? At a like distance the earth would seem still fairer, andperhaps even now some wretch in Venus is asking himself a similarquestion. Is it not probable that just as all the worlds are made of thesame 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 hisriddles. The better land! Where is it? if not among the stars. I am nowin the old heaven above the clouds. Does it lie _within_ the visibleuniverse, as it lies within the heart when peace and happiness arethere?

  In that pure ether the glory of the firmament was revealed to me as ithad never been on the earth, where it is often veiled with clouds andmist, or marred by houses and surrounding objects--where the quietude ofthe mind is also apt to be disturbed by sordid and perplexing cares. Itsawful sublimity overwhelmed my faculties, and its majesty inspired mewith a kind of dread. In presence of these countless orbs my ownnothingness 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 marvellouswhiteness dawning in the east. By slow degrees it spread over thestarlit sky, lightening its blackness to a deep Prussian blue, andlining the sable clouds on the horizon with silver. At length the rounddisc of the sun, whiter than the full moon, and intolerably bright, roseinto view.

  With the intention of rejoining Professor Gazen in the observatory, andseeing it through his telescope, I flung away my cigar, and steppedtowards the door of the cabin; but ere I had gone two paces, I suddenlyreeled and fell. At first I imagined that an accident had happened tothe 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 raisedmyself with great difficulty into a seat, and tried to collect mythoughts. For the last quarter of an hour I had been aware of a growinguneasiness, but the spectacle of sunrise had entranced me, and I forgotit. Suspecting an attack of "mountain sickness" owing to the rarity ofthe atmosphere, I attempted to rise and close the scuttles, but foundthat I had lost all power in my lower limbs. The pain in my headincreased, the palpitation of my heart grew more violent, my ears ranglike a bell, and I literally gasped for breath. Moreover, I felt apeculiar dryness in my throat, and a disagreeable taste of blood in mymouth. What was to be done? I tried again to reach the door, but only tofind that I could not even move my arms, let alone my feet.Nevertheless, I was singularly free from agitation or alarm, and my mindwas just as clear as it is now. I reflected that as the car was everrising into a rarer atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in callingfor help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not amoment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sortof hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the carnow struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael notcommitted the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps evenCarmichael himself had been equally careless, and the flying machine,now masterless, was carrying us Heaven knows whither. Strange to say Ientertained these sinister apprehensions without the least emotion. Ihad lost all feeling of pain or anxiety, and was perfectly tranquil andindifferent to anything that might happen. It is possible that with theparalysis of my powers to help myself, I was also relieved by naturefrom the fears of death. I began to think of the sensation which ourmysterious disappearance would make in the newspapers, and of diversother matters, such as my own boyhood and my friends, when all at oncemy eyes grew dim--and I remembered nothing more.