Chapter 6: In Space

We had entered the clouds.

For half-an-hour we were muffled in a cold, damp mist, and total darkness, and had begun to think of going indoors when, all at once, the car 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, which seemed to float in the limpid ether, and the rolling vapours through which we had passed were drawn like a sable curtain between us and the lower world. The stillness was so profound that we could hear the beating of our own hearts.

“How beautiful!” exclaimed Miss Carmichael, in a solemn whisper, as if she were afraid that angels might hear.

“There is Venus right ahead,” cried the astronomer, but in a softer tone than usual, perhaps out of respect for the sovereign laws of the universe. “The course is clear now--we are fairly on the open sea--I mean the open ether. I must get out my telescope.”

“The sky does not look sad here, as it always does on the earth--to me at least,” whispered Miss Carmichael, after Gazen had left us alone. “I suppose that is because there is so much sadness around us and within us there.”

“The atmosphere, too, is often very impure,” I replied, also in a whisper.

“Up here I enjoy a sense of absolute peace and well-being, if not happiness,” she murmured. “I feel raised above all the miseries of life--they appear to me so paltry and so vain.”

“As when we reach a higher moral elevation,” said I, drifting into a confidential mood, like passengers on the deck of a ship, under the mysterious 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 a disembodied spirit--a ‘young-eyed cherubim.’ I seem to belong already to a better planet. Should you not like to dwell here for ever, far away from the carking cares and troubles of the world?”

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

“Yes,” I answered, and the words “with you” formed themselves in my heart. I know not what folly I might have spoken had not the conversation been interrupted by Gazen, who called out in his unromantic style,

“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 night side 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 an amethyst in a silver clasp.”

“Really, it is not unlike that,” said Gazen, pleased with her feminine conceit. “If the instrument were stronger you would probably see the clasp go all round the dusky violet body like a bright ring, and probably, too, an ashen light within it, such as we see on the dark side of the moon. By-and-by, as we get nearer, we shall study the markings of the terminator, and a shallow notch that is just visible on the inner edge 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 intercepting the 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 the planet Venus--not even the length of her day. Some think it is eight months long, others twenty-four hours. We shall see. I have begun to keep a record of our discoveries, and some day--when I return to town--I hope to read a paper on the subject before the most potent, grave, and learned Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society--I rather think I shall surprise them--I do not say startle--it is impossible to startle the Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society--or even to astonish them--you might as well hope to tickle the Sphinx--but I fancy it will stir them up a little, especially my friend Professor Sylvanus Pettifer Possil. However, I must take care not to give them the slightest hint of what they are to expect beforehand, otherwise they will declare they knew all about it already.”

“Has it struck you that up here the stars appear of different colours at various distances,” said Miss Carmichael.

“Oh, yes,” answered Gazen, “and in the pure atmosphere of the desert, or on the summit of high mountains, we notice a similar effect. The stars have been compared to the trees of a forest, in different stages of growth and decay. Some of them are growing in splendour, and others again are dying out. Arcturus, a red star, for example, is fast cooling to a cinder. Capella, over there, is a yellow star, like our own sun, and past his prime. Sirius, that brilliant white or bluish star, which flashes like a diamond in the south, is one of the fiercest. He is a double star, his companion being seven and himself thirteen times massier than the sun; but they are fifty times brighter, and a million times further off, that is to say, one hundred billion miles away. These double or twin stars are often very beautiful. The twins are of all colours, and generally match well with each other--for instance, purple and orange--green and orange--red and green--blue and pale green--white and ruby. One of the prettiest lies in the constellation Cygnus. 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 light sapphire blue.”

“Some of the star groups and nebulæ are just as pretty,” observed Gazen, turning his telescope to another part of the heavens; “most of the stars are white, but there is a sprinkling of yellow, blue, and red amongst them--I mean, of course, to our view, for the absorption of our atmosphere 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 of vigour in the Cosmos--no great sign of decrepitude; but we must remember that we see the younger and brighter stars better than the others, and for aught we know there are many dark suns or extinct stars, as well as planets and their satellites. I should not like to say that the population of space is going down; but on the whole it may be stationary. I wish I could show you the cluster in Toucan, a rosy star in a ring of white ones.”

“Like a brooch of pearls,” said Miss Carmichael.

“Yes--not unlike that,” responded Gazen, evidently amused at her comparison. “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 the instrument. “It looks to me like a golden hoop, with diamond dust inside.”

I do not know where Miss Carmichael got her knowledge of jewellery, for to 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 the telescope, “and if so, the nebula are the orchids; for they imitate crabs, birds, dumb-bells, spirals, and so forth. Take a look at this one, 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 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 constitution 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 noble 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 assume 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 constitution. 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 attitude 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.