下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
"I fear," continued Thorwald, "that I am wearying you with this long talk."
We assured him we were enjoying it too much to think of being tired, and hoped he would not stop. But he said he had some duties to attend to, and would take us to his room and leave us by ourselves for a while.
As soon as we were alone the doctor looked at me with a smile and said:
"Why did you act so queerly when I spoke of Mona?"
"Why did you speak so?" I asked in reply. "And how could you tell Thorwald we found one inhabitant on the moon?"
"Did you want to have me tell him a falsehood?"
"Of course not. I tried to catch your eye and keep you from saying any thing on the subject till we could consult in regard to it. If we are going to color our narrative in order to make it more marvelous we must at least make our stories agree."
"My friend," said the doctor, "I am now confirmed in my suspicion that your brain was affected by your fall from the moon."
I saw by this time that I need not hesitate further to tell the doctor the truth. I disliked the task, but I saw it would not be safe to leave him any longer in ignorance of his condition. There as no telling what other preposterous tales he might invent. So I said to him gently:
"Doctor, your last remark makes it easier for me to tell you that the first words you said to me on this vessel showed me that you were not right. I kept it from our new friends here, and I thought I had better tell you how you are, so you can be a little cautious. You talk all right on most subjects, but you will do well to avoid the moon as a topic of conversation. If the others ask any more questions about the moon, you can just let me answer them."
I said all this seriously enough, but the doctor laughed boisterously as he answered:
"Well, if this isn't a joke. You think I am crazy, and I know you are crazy, and I can prove it. I will just ask you one question, which please answer truthfully. Don't you remember Mona?"
"Oh, there is Mona again! Don't you see that only proves your own madness?
No, I don't remember Mona, and you don't either."
"I must say," returned the doctor, "I never expected to see you get over your infatuation so quickly."
"What direction did my infatuation, as you call it, take?"
"Marriage, I should say."
"Now you interest me," I returned, "and you must tell me more. Is this
Mona of yours the sole resident of the moon, of whom you spoke to
Thorwald?"
"Certainly she is, but you surely must be out of your head to call her my
Mona—I want no stronger proof."
"How so?" I asked.
"Why, because but yesterday you scarce wanted to have me speak to her. You tried to keep your jealousy from me, but there was not room enough in all the moon to hide it."
"This is very laughable," I exclaimed.
"You did not think so then. But let me try to bring it all back to you by another question. Don't you remember her voice?"
"Most truly I do not. Why, what was the matter with her voice? Was it loud and harsh, or was it squeaky? I cannot imagine anything very pleasant in the way of a voice in such a wild and withered home as the moon would make."
"True," answered the doctor, "as to the outside, but you forget our visit to the interior."
"There it is again," said I. "Now, Doctor, the sooner you get rid of these strange notions the better So tell me your recollections of our stay in the moon, and I will let you know where you are wrong."
"Very well. You remember, of course, when we found ourselves rushing away from the earth so swiftly."
"Yes, and then we remained shut up in the car day after day, more dead than alive I think, until, fortunately, we were spilled out upon this more favored globe."
"You seem to be sincere," said the doctor, "but if you are, then you forget the most interesting part of our experience. Just as we were about to be overwhelmed with our troubles we heard exquisite music, which we soon found proceeded from a lovely maiden. You fell desperately in love with her at first sight and never recovered till you were plunged in the ocean of Mars. You insisted on following her nod, and she led us at once through a narrow path down into the center of the moon. Here, in her quiet home, we taught her to sing in our language—her only speech was song—and the first words she used were to say she loved me. She did not understand what the words meant, of course, but you looked as if you wished I had been blown away before Mona had discovered us. After that I helped you in your wooing all I could, but although your passion increased every day your suit did not seem to prosper. One day I expressed the wish that I had some of the things we had left in the car, whereupon she led us out to the surface again, where we arrived just in time to be thrown upon this planet. Here we are, you and I, all safe, but where is poor Mona?"
"I am sure it would take a wise man to answer that question," I replied. "And now let me show you, Doctor, how wrong you are. If you will only try to exercise a little of that good judgment for which you are noted, you will be convinced that this is only a pretty little fairy tale which has somehow taken possession of a corner of your brain. Now that the fairy is gone you must try to forget the rest. Just think how unlikely the whole story is. Think of a delicate girl living in such surroundings as we found there; and then, how could we exist down in the center of the moon?"
"Why, don't you remember Mona told us the water and atmosphere had all run down there, making it the only habitable part of the decaying globe?"
"Oh, that's only one of your scientific notions, probably as true as the others that we have disproved. Too much science has turned your head, and I will prove it to you again by showing you how impossible is the part which I play in your romance. I will tell you now, what you doubtless do not know, that I am engaged to be married to the best woman in all the earth, excepting your own good wife, of course."
"Is that a fact?" asked the doctor. "And do you love her?"
"To be sure I do. I love her very dearly, and if I ever see her again I shall tell her so in a manner to make her understand it."
"Why, doesn't she understand it now?"
"Yes, I think so, but she thought I didn't show heart enough in my wooing."
"Well, if she could see you with Mona she would learn that you have plenty of heart when the right one appears to make it spring into life."
"You speak as if you thought I did not love Margaret. You do not know her. Why, I wouldn't once look at another woman anywhere, not even in Mars, and most certainly not in that puckered-up old world that we have just left, happily for us."
"Do you know what I think about you?" asked the doctor.
"No."
"I think you have an exceedingly poor memory. First, you forgot Margaret as soon as the voice of that fair singer fell on your ear, and now you have forgotten the singer again the moment we have lost her. I await with much interest your first introduction to a daughter of Mars."
"You will be disappointed," said I, "if you think I shall be more than civil to her."
"If she be handsome and can turn a tune moderately well, I shall be willing to wager a fair young planet against the moon that you will propose to her in a week."
"I have done nothing to give you so poor an opinion of me. It is only your own diseased imagination, and I do not seem to be curing it very fast. I suppose, because your mind is naturally so strong, it is the more difficult to destroy such an hallucination as has taken possession of you."
"I would give it up," said the doctor. "The story is all true, and not a work of my imagination. Isn't it more reasonable to believe that you could forget the circumstances I have related than that I could invent such a tale?"
"Oh, I never could forget it if I had been false to Margaret. You do not know me. If your vagaries had taken any other direction I might possibly be brought to think you were right."
By this time we both began to realize that the conversation was not proving a great success in the way we had hoped, and so, after some pleasant words and a hearty laugh over the situation, we found our way to the deck again. Here there were various things to attract our attention, different members of the crew being eager to show us about. The doctor asked some question in regard to the system of steering the vessel, and when one of the men had taken him back toward the stern to explain the point, I found Thorwald and quietly explained to him the mental condition of my companion.
"The doctor is all right," I said, "on every subject but one. His head must have been injured a little in his fall, and he imagines and asserts with positiveness that we found a young woman in the moon, the last of her race—a ridiculous idea, is it not?"
"And did you find any inhabitants at all?" asked Thorwald.
"Certainly not. No one could live in such a place. It is indeed marvelous how we existed long enough to get here. The doctor calls this creature of his brain Mona, says she was a great beauty, and plainly intimates that I was rather too attentive to her. You will see what a convincing proof this is of his unsound condition when I tell you I am engaged to the best woman on the earth, and so of course could not show any marked preference for another. I have told you about the doctor so that you may pass over unnoticed any allusion he makes to these subjects."
Thorwald thanked me and said he would be careful not to embarrass us in the matter. And so I flattered myself that in the future Thorwald and I would sympathize with each other in commiserating the doctor. But I afterward learned that the doctor, about this time, had also sought an interview with Thorwald and had confided the following secret to him:
"My friend," said he, "is a fine young fellow, but his head must have been injured in his fall. He has entirely forgotten the best of our experience in the moon. Queer, too, for he fell in love with the only and last inhabitant of that globe, a beautiful, sweet-voiced maiden named Mona, who never talked but she sang."
Thorwald then made the doctor tell him the whole story, and at the close he promised he would not pay much attention to anything I might say on the subject in future conversation.
So it was quite a puzzle to Thorwald to tell which of his visitors from the earth was of unsettled mind and which in his normal condition. He decided to hold the question open and wait for further evidence.