ITHE SUPREME SIN
“Et Diabolus incarnatus est. Et homo factus est.”
—From the Litany of the Damnéd Saints.
“Shall no new sin be born for men’s trouble?”
—Swinburne.
“Let us deny Satan!”
—Sar Péladan.
Idly tapping the metal-topped table of the café with his stick, Oswald Invern waited for the Hollin boys. They had promised, the night before, to be punctual. It was past eleven and the pair had not turned up; he was bored, irritated. If they couldn’t remember their engagement, well and good; but why——!
“Oswald, have we kept you waiting?” intoned two pleasant tenor voices. There they were at last! Oswald made room for them on the divan and at once the twin brothers began smoking. Harry fetched a pipe from the bulging pocket of his coat and Willy lighted a cigarette. It was their pet affectation to pretend that they disliked any suggestion of twinship. Willy wore high heels and fashionably cut clothes so as to appear taller than hisbrother, while Harry sported Bohemian velvet and a broad-brimmed hat. But both agreed as to art and brotherly love. People endured them for these salient traits, though Oswald declared that it only made them the more stupid.
“No headache this morning, Oswald?”
“No heartache this morning, Oswald?”
The young man envied them as they pulled their fan-shaped beards and sipped their vermouth-citron. They were in key with the cosmos and he was not.
“Neither one nor the other,” he absently replied.
“But is not Miss Tilney a charmer? I saw you looking at her the entire evening. Come now, say?” Harry Hollin spoke with enthusiasm. Invern slowly shook his head and he continued to gaze down the Boulevard de Vaugirard. The café stood at the meeting of this boulevard and the Place du Maine, across from the Gare Mont-Parnasse. The Avenue du Maine intersected the Place and, while beyond lay the choicer precincts of the Quarter, there was no spot on the “left bank” that was gayer in silent weather or duller when the rain fell. This particular morning the sky reported a delicate pigeon-blue, a nuance that occasionally may be seen in Paris after a storm; it had withdrawn above the housetops and was immeasurably far away; a melochromatic horizon was tinged with flushes of pink and ochre.The twins followed Oswald’s eyes and boiled over ecstatically:
“What tones!” cried Harry.
“I could model them in precious gems!” exclaimed his brother.
“There you go, with your atelier slang,” muttered their companion. “I’ve been in Paris ten years longer than you and you beat me as a Frenchman.”
“Ça ne biche pas?” Harry continued. “It’s lovely.”
“Oui, c’est kif—kif!” chimed his brother. Invern watched them, the echo of a smile sounding across his compressed lips. He was not more than twenty-eight; a slender figure proclaimed his youth. The head was well set on his shoulders. It was the expression of his frowning forehead and large, dark, heavy eyes that made the man look much older. Not dissipation, rather discontent, marred features of a Byzantine type. Yes, he had been thirteen years in Paris and these foolish good-hearted fellows only three; but they knew the argot of the Beaux-Arts better than he, and they openly boasted their anti-Americanism. He asked them:
“Frankly, what are you going to do with yourselves in America—when you get there?” They answered in happy unison: “Make money.”
He shook his head.
“Make money by selling tombstones—that’syou, Willy!—and painting society dames in impossible attitudes, tints, and expressions—that’s you, Harry.”
“Never mind us, Invern. You may never go, but if you do—a comic opera with a howling success is our wish.”
“I’ll never return—now,” said Invern. “The cursed microbe of artistic Paris is in my system. And, what’s more, I’ll never do anything. When a Yankee comes over here to paint he tries to paint like a Frenchman. Look at the three Salons with their half-baked imitations. Let me finish”—the brothers had lifted angry shoulders—“and if a Yankee studies music here he composes French music ever afterward—French music which is a sad mixture of German and Italian; eclectic style, the wise ones call it.”
“And if he goes to Germany?” demanded Harry.
“Then he composes German music.” Suddenly Willy stood up.
“I have solved the mystery. This pessimism, Oswald, is the result of—of—why, you’re in love, man! I know her name. It’s Miss Tilney—June Tilney. The secret is out.”
“Is her name June?” asked Oswald irrelevantly.
“It’s June and she’s rich as the sound of her name.” The Hollin boys were irrepressible this gay morning.
“So! But why June?”
“You’re interested. Listen,” interpolated Harry. “She’s a Yankee girl with a Russian mother—or had one—and she was educated in London, Russia, Italy, Germany, Paris——”
“Go on! Why not New York?”
“She never saw New York, but she speaks United States.”
“And,” added Willy, “the Count hates it like the dickens.”
“What a pair of rattles you are! Who’s the Count?”
“Why, Count Van Zorn, her guardian, of course. Haven’t you met old Van Zorn yet? He’s very musical, goes to all the swell musical Salons of Paris, to the Princesse de Brancovan, to the Comtesse de Blanzay, to Duchesse de Bellune, to the Princesse de Bibesco—” Oswald held up his hands in consternation.
“Stop! I don’t care a sou where he goes. Who is he?”
“He’s very rich and looks after June Tilney’s affairs. And—they say—wants to marry her—only thirty years’ difference—she won’t have it, though she likes the old codger and is seen everywhere with him—and they say the Rasta—he’s from Roumania or South America—goes in for magic and puts spells upon the girl.”
“Drop the mufle,” interrupted Oswald. “The main thing now is breakfast. And, incidentally, why don’t you marry the girl yourself, Willy?”
“C’est à Bibi!” exclaimed Harry, pointingto himself. “Willy has signed over all rights and interests to his loving brother. And we have the cabot on the run—he will be here in five minutes”; the brothers were embarrassed after this statement. Their friend stared at them shrewdly for a moment and then laughed—one of his rare “Rosmersholm” laughs, as the brothers had christened such a happening.
“So that’s the game? Coming here to déjeuner! Miss June with him?” They blushed over the tops of their beards. Invern began grumbling.
“Oswald!” exclaimed the boys deprecatingly; they were fond of him, notwithstanding his frowns and gloomy moods. A waiter was summoned and the order given for the mid-day meal. “Five plates, Louis, and have the whitest table linen in the house, please!”
After the introductions Oswald again admired the girl he had seen the previous night. She had accompanied the fraternal pair much against the wish of her guardian to a ball in the Quarter and she had not, she said, found it wonderfully diverting. The color of her eyes was hazel—they were wide with golden flecks in them, the same curious gold as her hair—and her little ears and nose with its tiny nostrils, that became inflated when she was interested, held the gaze of the young man. Under his dyed eyebrows Count Van Zorn regarded the company. It was not quite to his liking, the Hollin brothers soon discovered, so theyengaged him in conversation and paid him exaggerated compliments. His bird-like profile, with the dull, prominent eyes, moved slowly from one brother to the other.
“Who’s your friend?” he finally asked. He was told all sorts of impossible things; Invern was the coming composer; he had not arrived yet, but—! The Count grunted. He had heard this blague before. In Paris all your artistic friends are just about to, but never do, arrive. Miss Tilney spoke to Invern.
“It is charming to think of an American giving up his great country for the sake of music—preferring notes to gold.” He made a gesture of disapproval.
“Ah, don’t play the modest genius,” she gayly cried. “You know, I am very sensitive to genius. I’ve never heard your music, yet I’m sure you are doomed to greatness—or sorrow.” She added these last two words under her breath. Oswald heard them. He started and looked into her eyes, but he might as well have questioned two pools of light; they reflected no sentiment, nor did they directly return his glance. Across the table the Count made a motion and she colored; he summoned at the same time the attention of the young composer.
“You write music, do you?” he asked in a grating voice. “I am a composer myself. I studied with a great Russian musician, now dead. I——”
“Tell us aboutSarMerodack Péladan,” interruptedthe vivacious Willy; “tell us if you ever witnessed his incantations.” Every one but the Count and Invern laughed. The girl rapidly said something to her guardian. It must have been in Russian. He shook his head.
“Not to-day,” he answered in French.
“No secrets!” the brothers adjured. At last the crowd began to modulate into that hazy amiable humor which follows a copious breakfast. As they drank coffee conversational themes were preluded, few developed; the ball of dialogue was lightly tossed and Oswald noticed that Miss Tilney could, at will, be American, French, German, Russian, and English, and again Russian. Like a many-colored skein she unwound her various temperaments according to her mood. With him she was sombre; once she flashed anger at the Count and showed her teeth; for the two Hollins she played any tune they wished. The real June Tilney—what was she? Oswald wondered. But, when he fancied himself near the edge of a revelation, his mind must have collided with her guardian’s—Van Zorn’s expression was repellent. Invern greatly disliked him. The talk drifted to art, thence to religion, and one of the Hollins jested about the Devil. Count Van Zorn fixed him at once.
“No one must mock sacred things in my presence,” he coldly announced. The others were startled.
“M. Van Zorn!” said Miss Tilney. Oswaldsaw her hands fluttering in nervous excitement.
“I mean it,” was the firm response of the Count. “The Devil is the mainspring of our moral system. Mock him and you mock God—who created him. Without him this world would be all light without shadow, and there would be no art, no music—the Devil is the greatest of all musicians. He created the chromatic scale—that’s why Richard Wagner admired the Devil in music—what is Parsifal but a version of the Black Mass! Ah! it is easy to see that Wagner knew Baudelaire only too well in Paris, and was initiated into the mysteries of Satanism by that poet who wrote a Litany to Lucifer, you know, with its diabolic refrain!” These words were fairly pelted upon the ear-drums of his listeners. The girl held her peace, the brothers roared at the joke, but Invern took the phrases as a serious insult. He arose and bowed.
“The Count sees fit to insult my art—very well! But I am not compelled to hear any more.” Before he could leave June plucked at his sleeve and tried to hold him; stranger still was the behavior of the old man. He reached across the table, his hands clasped in supplication.
“My dear young man,” he panted, “I meant no offense. Pray be seated. I adore your art and practise it daily. I am a devout Wagnerian. I was but repeating the wisdom of certain ancientFathers of the Church who ascribed, not without cause, the origin of music to Satan. Do not be annoyed. Beg of him, June, not to go.” Invern fell back in his seat bewildered by this brusque cannonade. The Count held up his ten skinny fingers.
“These claws,” he cried, “are worn to the bone on the keyboard. I belong to an antique generation, for I mingle music and magic. Credit me with good intentions. Better still, visit me soon—to-night—June, we go nowhere to-night, hein! Perhaps as you do not believe in the existence of the Devil, perhaps music—my music—may——”
Oswald received a shock, for a small foot was placed upon his and pressed down with such electric vigor that he almost cried aloud. It told him, this foot, as plainly as if its owner had spoken: “Say no! Say no!” Responding to a stronger will than his own, he did not answer.
“Ha, you fear the Devil! But I assure you the Devil is a gentleman. I have met him, conversed with him.” His voice filed down to a brittle whisper and to the acute perception of the young man an air of melancholy enveloped the speaker. Oswald hung his head, wondering all the while. Was this fanatic really in his sane senses? And the girl—what part did she play in such a life? Her voice cut sharply across his perplexity.
“Dear guardian, stop your Devil talk. I’m sick of it. You spoil our fun. Besides, youknow the Devil is not a gentleman at all—the Devil is a woman.” Shocked at the very tone of her voice, almost as harsh and guttural as her uncle’s, Oswald intercepted a look rapidly exchanged between the Count and his ward. The blood rushed to his head and he slowly balled his fists. Then he arose:
“I don’t know what you boys expect to do to-night, but I’m going to see the Devil—I mean the Count; that is, if he does not withdraw his invitation.” The Hollins looked regretfully at Oswald and Miss Tilney. She had upset the salt and was slowly passing the tips of her fingers over its gritty surface, apparently dreaming, leagues distant. The Count was almost amiable.
“Ah, my dear June, I shall at last have an auditor for my bad Wagner playing! I live, Monsieur Invern, around the corner in the little Impasse du Maine, off the Avenue. We are neighbors, I think, and perhaps it may interest you to know that we, June and myself, inhabit the old atelier of Bastien Lepage, where he painted Sarah Bernhardt, where, also, unfortunate Marie Bashkirtseff was often wheeled to see the dying painter.”
“Oh! oh!” remonstrated the girl in a toneless voice, “first Devil-worship, and now studio scandal. Fie!” Her high spirits had vanished; her face was ash-grey as she bowed to Invern. After shaking hands with the brothers, Count Van Zorn turned to him and said:
“Don’t forget—eleven o’clock. Impasse duMaine. The Devil perhaps; anyhow, Wagner. And the Devil is a gentleman.” He tittered, baring his gums, his painted eyebrows high on his forehead.
“The Devil is a woman,” tremulously insisted the girl. “Have you forgotten Klingsor and his ‘Rose of Hell’?” With Van Zorn she disappeared.
When he reached his room Invern sat on the bed. These new people puzzled him. He had shaken off the Hollin brothers, telling them they were idiots to have introduced such an old lunatic to him.
“But we thought you liked occult Johnnies!” had been their doleful answer; and then Oswald bade them seek the old Nick himself, but leave him to his own thoughts; many had clustered about his consciousness during that afternoon; the principal one, the girl. Who was she? With, all the boastings of the brothers that Count Van Zorn was welcome in distinguished musical circles, Oswald made up his mind to a decided negative. That man never went into the polite world nowadays, though he may have done so years before. An undefinable atmosphere of caducity and malodorous gentility clung to this disciple of music and the arts esoteric. How came it then that June Tilney, so mundane, so charming, so youthfully alert, could tolerate the vulture? What a vulture’s glance suggestinginexpressible horrors was his brief, warning look! Oswald grew dizzy. “By God!” he groaned, “no, not that! But surely some sort of diabolic business!”
Why not go? Nothing but boredom could result at the worst, and boredom in his life was rapidly merging into a contempt for existence, contempt for this damnable Parisian morass. His ambition had winged away years before. Occasionally at dusk, on white summer nights, he seemed to discern a flash of some shining substance aloft, and felt his eyes fill, while in his ears he heard the humming of a great colored melody. Then he would make marks in his note-book and the next day forget his infrequent visitor; he believed in old-fashioned inspiration, but when it did arrive he was too indifferent to open the doors of his heart.
The Devil? Any belief but the dull, cynical unfaith of his existence, any conviction, even a wicked one, any act of the will, rather than the motiveless, stagnant days he was leading. Why not call on the Count? Why not see June Tilney again? He recalled vaguely the freshness of her face, of her presence. Yes, alert was the word, alert, as if she were guarding herself against an enemy. Ah! hiding a secret.Thatwas in her light fencing, feathery raillery, cold despondency, half-smothered anger, fierce outburst, and, at the close, in her obstinate reiteration. What did it all mean? He sat on his bed and wondered.
And in the dim light of early evening he heard his name called, once, twice—with the memory of June Tilney’s warning earlier in the day pressing thick upon his spirit, he rushed into the hallway from whose vacancy came no response to his excited challenge. Yet he could have sworn to the voice, a soundless voice which had said to him: “Don’t go! Don’t go!” Oswald put on his hat, picked up his walking-stick, and left the house....
He wandered up and down the Boul’ Mich’ obsessed by his ideas, and the clocks in the cafés were pointing to five minutes of eleven when he turned from the Avenue du Maine into the little street, closed at one end, which bears the name of the adjacent avenue. Invern had never been before in this Impasse du Maine, though he had passed it daily for ten years. He remembered it as a place where painters and sculptors resided; it was dark, and the buildings for the most part were dingy, yet his impression, as he slowly moved along the lower side of the street, was not a depressing one. He reached the number given him as the bells in the neighboring church began to sound the hour. He had not time to summon the concierge when a hand was laid upon his arm; a woman, wearing a hood, and enveloped in a long cloak, peered at him through a heavy veil. He knew that it was JuneTilney and his heart began to pump up the blood into his temples. She stooped as if endeavoring to hide her identity, and in her hand she carried a little cane.
“Don’t go in!” she adjured the young man who, astounded by this apparition, regarded her with open-mouthed disquiet.
“Don’t go in—there!” she again admonished him. “It means peril to your immortal soul if you do. I caution you for thesecondtime.”
“But how can it harm me?”
“I have warned you,” she answered abruptly—was this his June Tilney of the bright morning airs?—“and I repeat: it is my wish that you do not visit there to-night.” Something in her tone aroused opposition.
“Nevertheless, Miss Tilney, I mean to see the Devil to-night.”
“Then go see her! But deny her if you dare!” She vanished in a doorway across the street....
Shocked as was Oswald, he stolidly pulled the bell until the massive doors opened. A light at the end of a large, dim court showed him the staircase of the atelier. A moment later he had let fall a grinning bronze knocker in the image of a faun’s hoof, and he had hardly time to ask himself the mystery of Miss Tilney’s request, when he was welcomed by Count Van Zorn.
Nothing could have been pleasanter than the apartment into which he was conducted. The Count apologized for the absence of the younglady—Miss Tilney was a slave to social obligations! Invern winced. He looked about while the Count busied himself with carafe and glasses. Decidedly an ideal home for a modern wizard of culture. Book-shelves crowded with superb volumes, pictures of the Barbizon school on the walls, an old-fashioned grand pianoforte, an alcove across which was drawn black velvet drapery; everything signalized the retreat of a man devoted to literature and the arts. There were no enchantments lurking in the corners. Then his glance fell upon a warmly colored panel, a Monticelli, of luscious hues with richly wrought figures. It depicted a band of youths and maidens in flowing costumes, strayed revellers from some secret rites, but full of life’s intoxication; hard-by stood an antique temple, at its portals a wicked smiling garden god. And over all was the flush of a setting sun, a vivid stain of pomegranate.... The desk of the piano held an engraving. Invern approached, but turned away his head. He saw that it was by that man of unholy genius, Félicien Rops. The Count crossed to his visitor and smilingly told him to look again.
“My Rops! You do not admire this Temptation ofSt.Anthony? No? Yet how different in conception from the conventional combination of the vulgar and voluptuous. Wagner’s Parsifal is only a variation on this eternal theme of the Saint tempted by the Sinner. The Woman here is crucified—what a novel idea!”
Invern was ill at ease. The place was not what it seemed. He read the titles of several imposing tomes: the Traité Methodique de Science Occulte, byDr.Papus; Sar Péladan’s Amphitheatre des Sciences Mortes, and Comment on devient mage; Au Seuil du Mystère and Le Serpent de la Genése, by Stanislaus de Guaita. Eliphas Levi, Nicolas Flamel, Ernest Bosc, Saint-Martin, Jules Bois, Nehor, Remy de Gourmont’s Histoires Magiques, and many other mystics were represented. Upon the dados were stamped winged Assyrian bulls, the mystic rose, symbolic figures with the heads of women and anonymous beasts, lion’s paws terminating in fish-tails and serpent scales. Inscriptions in a dead language, possibly Chaldean, streamed over the walls, and the constellations were painted in gold upon a dark-blue ceiling. Luini’s Sacrifice to Pan, an etching of the picture in the Brera at Milan, caught his eye and he wondered why its obvious Satanic quality had been so seldom noted by diabolists. A cumbrous iron lamp of ornate Eastern workmanship, in which burned a wisp of green flame, comprised all that was bizarre in this apartment; otherwise, the broad student’s table, the comfortable chairs and couches, did not differ from hundreds of other studios on the left bank of the Seine.
Count Van Zorn coaxed Invern into a lounging chair and gave him a glass of wine. It was Port, of a quality that to the young man’s palatetasted like velvet fire. He was soon smoking a strong cigar in company with the old man, his fears quite obliterated. But his visitor noted that the Count was engrossed. As he sat, his eyes fastened upon the pattern of the polished parquet, Van Zorn looked like a man planning some grave project, perhaps a great crime. His head was hollowed at the temples, on his forehead the veins were puffy, his eyebrows, black as ink in the morning, were now interspersed with whitish-gray—the dye had worn away. At intervals he groaned snatches of melody, and once Invern heard him gabble in a strange tongue.
“And the music and the magic!” broke in the young man, weary of this interval. Slowly Van Zorn arose and stared at him steadily with his bird-of-prey eyes.
“Have you ever realized,” he finally began in sing-song tones, “what an instrument for good or evil is the art you profess to practise? Hear me out,” he continued, as the composer made a motion of dissent; “I don’t refer to the facile criticism which classifies some music profane, some music sacred. The weaklings who are hurt by sensual operatic music would be equally hurt by a book or a picture; I refer to the music that is a bridge between here and—over there, over there!” His voice sank as he waved his lean brown fingers toward the alcove. “In the days of old, when man was nearer to nature, nearer to the gods, music was the keyto all the mysteries. Pan and Syrinx answered its magic summons. A lost art, lost with the vulgarization of the other beautiful arts, you say? I deny it!” He drew up his rickety figure as if he held the keys of a conquered city.
“No! I repeat, music is still the precious art of arts and across its poisonous gulf of sound, on the other side,over there,”—again he pointed to the alcove, with its sable velvet funeral pall—“the gods await our homage. Wagner—a worshipper at the diabolic shrine—pictured his faith in Parsifal. He is his own Klingsor, and the music he made for the evocation of Kundry came straight from the mouth of hell. Ah! how it burns the senses! How it bites the nerves’—‘Gundryggia there, Kundry here!’ Yes, the gods and the greatest of all the gods, my master. Music is the unique spell that brings him to his worshippers on earth. We near the end of things. This planet has lived its appointed years. All the sins—save the supreme one—have been committed, all the virtues have bleached in vain our cowardly souls. Tell me, young man, tell me,” he grasped Oswald by his wrist, “do you long for a sight of the true master? Through the gates of music will you go with me tomyheaven where dwells the Only One?”
Invern nodded. He was more curious than afraid. With apish agility Van Zorn darted to the pianoforte and literally threw his hands upon its keyboard. A shrill dissonance in Bminor sounded; like the lash of hail in his face the solitary auditor felt the stormy magnetism of the playing. He had sufficient control of his critical faculties—though it seemed as if he were launched into space on the tail of some comet—to realize the desperate quality of the performance. It was not that of a virtuoso; rather the travail of a spirit harshly expressing itself in a language foreign to its nature. The symmetry of the Wagner structure was almost destroyed; yet between the bits of broken bars and splintered tones there emerged the music of some one else, a stranger, newer Wagner. Was the Horla of Wagner buried in this demoniacal prelude to the second act of Parsifal struggling into palpable being! Carried before the banners of this surging army of tones, Oswald clutched his couch and eagerly listened to the evil music of Kundry and Klingsor.
He saw the stony laboratory with its gloomy battlements, from which the necromancer Klingsor witnessed Parsifal defeat the emasculate squires. He saw the mystic abyss hidden in the haze of violet vapor whence, obeying the hoarse summons of her master, Kundry slowly emerged. Her scream, the symphonic scream of woman, beast, or devil, fell upon his ears as though an eternity of damned souls had gnashed their teeth. And the echoes of her laughter reverberated through the porches of hell.
Gundryggia dort! Kundry hier! The succubus, or she-devil, demon, Rose of Hell, aftervainly refusing to obey the demands of the harsh magician, sank with a baffled cry: “Oh! Woe is me!” The vast fabric of Klingsor’s abode shivered, dissipated into nothingness. But there followed no shining garden filled with strange and gorgeous flowers, shapes of delights, wooing maidens with promises of unearthly love on their lips. Vainly Oswald awaited that scene of tropical splendor with its dream-terraces, living arabesques, and harmonious comminglement of sky and mountain, earth and fountain, the fair mirage painted by Klingsor’s dark art. It did not appear. Instead the music became no longer Wagner’s, became no longer music. Van Zorn amid brazen thunders wrenched himself from the keyboard, and prostrate upon the floor fairly kissed its surface, mumbling an awful litany. The room was murky, though violet hues suffused the velvet at the end. Invern became conscious of a third person, where he could not say. An icy vibration like the remote buzzing of monstrous dynamos apprised him that a door or window had been opened in the apartment which permitted the entrance of—what! His heart beat in the same rhythm with the mighty dynamos and the hoarse chanting of the Count.
“O Exiled Prince on whom was wrought such wrong!Who, conquered, still art impious and strong!”“O Satan have mercy on us!”“O Satan, patron saint of evil!”“O Satan take pity on our misery!”“O Prince of Suicide, Maker of music!”“O Satan have pity on us!”“O Father of Pain, King of Desolation, true Master of the House of Planets!”“O Satan have mercy on us!”“O Creator of black despair!”“O Satan take pity on us!”
Indifferent Christian as was Invern, his knees knocked at this sacrilegious Baudelairian invocation. The violet grew in intensity as the prayers of the blasphemer increased. Slowly across the sombre velvet stretched in patibulary attitude a human skeleton. No thorns crowned its grinning skull; instead a live viper wreathed about its bony nest and turned glittering eyes upon the two men. Van Zorn’s voice became a wail, calling down imprecations on earth to men of good-will. He cursed life and praised death, and his refrain was ever:
“O Satan, take pity on our misery!”
Oswald no longer heard him. With hysterical agitation he remarked the transformation of the adumbrated phantom. The skeleton had begun to carnify—its frame was first covered with ivory-white flesh, and then, with amazing velocity, a woman bourgeoned before his eyes. Gone the skull, gone the viper. In their stead emerged the delicate head of a goddess—filleted by Easter lilies—with smiling lips, enticing pose, the figure of a delicious nubility. Hazel were the wide, gold-flecked eyes thatshot forthright shafts into the bosom of Oswald, and charged him with ineffable longing. The arms, exquisite in proportion, the graciously modelled torso, pierced him with an epileptic ecstasy. And the crazy tones of Van Zorn assailed his ears as if from a great distance:
“O Satan, have mercy on us!”
But the entranced youth cared little now for the diabolic litany. One idea seized and was burning up the vital spark of him. As the creature waxed in beauty he knew her—June Tilney! Yes, it was she—or was it the daughter of the devil in the Rops picture?—who drew him toward her with an irresistible caress in her eyes; eyes full of the glamour of Gehenna, eyes charged with sins without joy, penitence without hope. Forgotten her warnings before this Kundry of Golgotha.
“O Satan come down to us,” rhythmically crooned the grovelling old man.
This, Satan? This radiant maiden with the flowery nimbus and beaming eyes, her young breasts carolling a magnificat as they pointed to the zenith—Oswald stumbled to the foot of the gibbet, in his ears the throbbing of death. Her glance of cadent glory transfixed him. Scorched by the vision, some fibre snapped in his brain and he triumphantly cried:
“Thou art a goddess, not the Devil.”
A freezing blast overturned him, the saints ofhell encircled him, as he heard Van Zorn’s grinding sobs:
“Thou hast denied the Devil! Thou hast committed the Supreme Sin! Quickly worship, else be banished forever from the only Paradise!”
Sick, his lips twisting with anguish, Invern had sufficient will to close his eyes and despairingly groan: “Son of Mary, save me!” The apparition crumbled. After a panic plunge he found himself somehow in the wintry street, his forehead wet with fear, his nerves tugging in their sheaths like wild animals leashed, his heart a cinder in a world of smoke....
From Asia Minor, years later, the brothers received a letter signed by Oswald Invern. In it there were misty hints of monastic immurement, and the hopelessness of expiating a certain strange crime, compared with which the sin against the Holy Ghost is but a youthful peccadillo. The Hollin boys giggled in unison.
“What joy!” they exclaimed, “to have invented the Supreme Sin!”