Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 7. Karel Čapek

and woful deeds of men.

      And, weary with her world-wide pilgrimage,

      Maremna’s steps have sought her early haunts.

      Hoping for rest where childhood once did play.

      Rest for Maremna!

      An idle thought; a foolish sentiment!

      Unto the brain which God has bidden “Think”

      No rest can come from Solitude’s retreat;

      For solitude breeds thought, and shapes its course

      And bids it live within the form of speech,

      Or bids the mighty pen proclaim its life,

      And write its words upon the scrolls of men.

      Thus with Maremna.

      Rest she has sought, hut sought it all in vain.

      What God decrees no mortal hand can stay.

      “Think.” He ordains, and lo! the brain must think,

      Nor close its eyes upon the mammoth truth.

      Truth must prevail! Truth must be held aloft!

      What matter if the cold world sneers or scoffs?

      Sneering and scoffing is the work of man,

      Truth, the almighty handiwork of God.

      It may be dimm’d, it may be blurr’d from sight.

      Yet must it triumph in the end, and win;

      For is not truth a sun which cannot die.

      Though unbelief may cloud it for a time?

      Maremna sleeps;

      Sleeps where in childhood oft she lay and dream’d,

      Dream’d of fantastic worlds and fairy realms.

      And now, in sleep, Maremna dreams again.

      But dreams no more of elves and laughing sprites.

      Hers, though a dream, is stern reality.

      Mingled with visions of a future day;

      Hers is a dream of hideous, living wrong,

      Wrong which ’tis woman’s duty to proclaim

      And man’s to right, and right right speedily.

      Or crush the form of justice underfoot.

      Maremna sleeps.

      And in her sleep a vision fills her brain.

      This is Maremna’s Dream.

      Book I

      I

      “I AM tired, mother.”

      “Tired, child! And why?”

      “Mother, I have been spouting to the wild sea waves.”

      “And what have you been saying to them, Gloria?”

      “Ah, mother! ever so much.”

      Let us look at the speakers, a mother and child, the former as she stands leaning against a stone balustrade, which overlooks a small Italian garden, upon which the sun is shining brightly. Far out beyond is the gleaming sea, and on its sparkling, silvery sheen the woman’s eyes are absently fixed as she hearkens to the complaining prattle of the child by her side. She is a beautiful woman is Speranza de Lara, one upon whom Dame Nature has showered her favours freely. As the stranger, looking upon her for the first time, would deem her but a girl in years, and exclaim admiringly at her beauty, it would be difficult to convince him that her age is thirty-five, as in effect it is.

      Speranza’s eyes are blue, with the turquoise shade lighting up their clear depths, and a fringe of silky auburn eyelashes confining them within bounds. Her magnificent hair is of a slightly lighter hue, and as the sun plays on the heavy coil that is twisted gracefully upon her noble head, the golden sparks dance merrily around it, like an aureole of gold.

      And the child? We must look nearer still at her, for she not only is beautiful, but there is writ upon her face the glowing sign of genius. Like her mother, Gloriana, or, as we shall prefer to call her, Gloria, has blue eyes, but they are the blue of the sapphire, deep in contradistinction to the turquoise shade, which characterises those of Speranza. Auburn eyelashes, too, fringe the child’s wonderful eyes, but again these are many shades darker than the mother’s, while masses of auburn curls play negligently and unconfined, covering the girl’s back like a veil of old-gold. Such is Gloriana de Lara at the age of twelve.

      “Won’t Gloria tell mother what that ‘ever so much’ was?”

      She puts the question gently, does Speranza. She has never moved from the position in which we first found her, and her eyes are still dreamily searching the waste of blue waters beyond. But as she speaks the child puts her arm caressingly through that of the mother’s, and lays her golden head against that mother’s shoulder.

      “Ah! yes, mother, of course I will tell you.”

      “Then tell me, Gloria.”

      “I was imagining the foam flakelets to be girls, mother, and I looked upon them as my audience. I told them, mother darling, of all the wrongs that girls and women have to suffer, and then I bade them rise as one to right these wrongs. I told them all I could think of to show them how to do so, and then I told them that I would be their leader, and lead them to victory or die. And the wavelets shouted, mother. I seemed to hear them cheer me on, I seemed to see them rising into storm, the wind uprose them, and their white foam rushed towards me, and I seemed to see in this sudden change the elements of a great revolution.”

      “Like a dream, Gloria.”

      “A living dream, mother; at least it was so to me. It brought a feeling to my heart, mother, which I know will never leave it more, until, until”

      The girl pauses, and the great tears rise to her eyes.

      Speranza raises herself suddenly, and, confronting the child, lays both hands upon her shoulders .

      “Until what, child?”

      “Until I’ve won, mother,” cries Gloria, as she raises her glorious eyes, in which the tears still tremble, to her mother’s face.

      “Ah, Gloria! the odds are against you, my darling.”

      “Don’t I know that, mother; don’t I know that well? But I am not afraid. I made a vow, mother, today, I made it to those waves; and something tells me that I shall keep that vow and win, though in doing so I may die.”

      “Hush, Gloria, hush, child; don’t talk like that.”

      “And don’t you want me to win, mother? After all you have suffered, after all you have taught me, would you have your child turn back from the path she has set herself to follow, because perhaps at that path’s end lies death?”

      “Child, it is a cause I would gladly lay down my life for, but how can I bring myself to wish you to sacrifice yourself?”

      “What is sacrifice in a great cause, mother? I fear no sacrifice, no pain, no consequence, so long as victory crowns me in the end.”

      The mother’s arms are round her child’s neck now, her head is bending down and the bright gold of Speranza’s lovely hair is close beside the glossy, wandering dark gold curls of Gloria. In the heart of the former a new-born hope is rising, vague, undefinable, yet still there, and which fills it with a happiness she has not known for many and many a day.

      “My child,” she exclaims softly, “can it be, that after all these years of weary, lonely suffering, I am awaking to find in you, you, the offspring of a forbidden love, the messenger that shall awake the world to woman’s wrongs, and make suffering such as I have endured no longer possible?”

      “Yes, mother, I feel it,” answers Gloria earnestly; “and that is why I have made my plans today. Everything must have a beginning you know, mother,