A hand was at her bridle rein, though invisible to her sight; but she yielded with confidence to its guidance.
“Dearest,” she said, “must that draft which you accepted for my sake from Solarion part us on earth henceforth, or may we be fully reunited here?”
“I took the risk, beloved,” he replied. “What will be the outcome I cannot tell. We love each other, and love’s gains must always be greater than its sacrifices, for any sacrifice in that cause can but give each of us to the other the more. But it seems to me that the halo of which Lamara told me must be the reward of a soul so loyal, loving, and magnanimous as to give all for the sole happiness of giving. No other gift is pure enough to be divine.”
Tears gushed to Miriam’s eyes; and she bent down and kissed the forehead of the little gnome who lay lifeless across her saddle.
The flames of the ring subsided as they dropped in wide circlings toward Saturn. The choral dance had ceased, and the people had retired to their places. But the planet bloomed with a fresh, unprecedented beauty; the air rang with birdsongs, and was rich with flower-fragrance. When Miriam alighted on the turf in front of the amphitheater, a deputation of the little Nature people were awaiting her. They took Jim’s body and laid it on a bier which they had brought, made of green boughs woven together and covered with flowers, and bore it away, to the music of quaint chantings, just as Lamara and some others came up the slope from the sea.
LAMARA took Miriam in her arms and kissed her. The caress revived the girl’s drooping strength and sent currents of joyous sunshine rippling through her veins. A glorious light invested Lamara herself, as if from a divine baptism.
“Saturn will bless you forever,” Lamara said. “You have brought us a new era. We were relaxed in a dangerous ease, too well content with what we were, and too little mindful that what we receive loses its virtue if it be not passed on to others. Tor was a lesson never to be forgotten. The worst fate was barely averted; and it will be our happy task to create there a state of life less gloomy and cruel than they have known till now. Torpeon is gone; but we pray for his forgiveness; for much of the sin of his transgression lies at our door. Zarga—we hope for her return, but she is long absent.”
“Zarga is at peace,” said Solarion, who had joined the group unobserved. “The wound she received in the cavern, which she never disclosed, bled inwardly. It could never have been healed in this world. She made amends; and love will find her out.”
Miriam gazed hopefully from one to another face of those who surrounded her. But the face her soul longed for was not visible, nor was the sense of his presence any longer felt as before. She had not courage to ask the question that trembled on her lips. But all looked tenderly upon her. Argon, whose cheeks were wet with the tears shed for his sister, took her hand and kissed it. Aunion’s eyes dwelt upon her with deep benignity; but there was silence till Solarion addressed her.
“The mystery of life and death is never solved on earth, little sister,” he said; “nor can it be known when or why one will be taken and another left. But lovers who know love have believed that what seems parting may be the means of a dearer union; because they found that kisses of mortal lips foretold more than they could fulfill.”
“It is not that I would call him back, if he is gone,” she replied tremulously, “but that I might follow where he is.”
Solarion smiled and said: “It is not far to go.”
“But you will return to your home again,” added Lamara, putting an arm around her. “Your father has need of you; and Mary Faust would speak with you. You have seen and known things they will be glad to hear. You will find all prepared for your reception. Come, now, and let us spend a farewell hour together.”
But Miriam bent her head upon Lamara’s bosom and wept.
“I have no strength for more farewells,” she said. “I can have faith that there may be happiness for me; but it shines so far away, and the path to it seems so lonely, and I am so weary of journeying, and fear of myself is so heavy upon me, that I wish to be put upon my way at once. If I delayed here, my heart would still seek for my beloved, and I could find no rest.
“I know”—she looked sadly at Solarion—“that, after all is done, I may not find him; but there is comfort in the seeking; to pause and turn aside even among you, friends who are so dear, would breed shadows in me which would throw their darkness over you. Your world is too bright and great for me. My mind cannot compass it; my nature is not formed to its measure; its joys are all too sublime, its thoughts too profound. Had you not—as I feel you have—screened its full splendors from my senses, I could not have endured them.
“God, I think, fashions each of us to fit the world to which we are born, and has made the spaces that separate them so vast as an admonition to us to hold to our own. I can bring to my home people no message wiser than this. They are restless and ambitious and reach out after remote and hidden things; they create wealth and torture Nature to make her reveal her secrets; in their anxiety to miss no gain and lose no pleasure, they hurry to and fro, and perish in pursuit of a fantom whose substance was all the while beside them. I have shared their errors; but among you I have gathered some truth.
“The only knowledge that enriches comes from within; all that is immortally loveable comes to us as spontaneously and simply as the songs of birds and the perfume and colors of flowers. You have taught me much; but he from whom I have learned most is the one whom I had least regarded till near the end; the little being whose only self was his loyalty to others, who made the great voyage from no motive but to serve those he loved; and, when his end was gained, died with a smile on his lips in the act of resigning his last chance of life to insure their safety. Your Nature people have taken his body; I pray God that I may have become worthy, when I die, to be near the place where God keeps his soul!”
Solarion and Lamara exchanged a glance.
“The flowers on Jim’s grave,” Solarion said, “will draw their perfume and beauty from the pure devotion which the rough rind of his nature concealed. Death discloses the loveliness in him which was disguised while he lived by the veil of his humility. He is a word of the spirit, spoken through the letter of a humble and mutilated body, which being now interpreted, will sweeten and enlighten the world.”
“Nevertheless,” observed Lamara—and something in her tone caused a secret hope to stir in Miriam’s heart—“not every flower owes its bloom and fragrance to a grave!”
With Aunion preceding, the friends now entered the amphitheater, whose august interior was first revealed to Miriam. But it was no longer filled with countless thousands of human creatures, nor did the judges sit upon their thrones. Instead, the enormous crater of the auditorium was thronged from base to summit with roses of all tints; the vines clambered luxuriantly from bench to bench, peeped from every aperture, blushed and blanched from side to side of the sun-steeped bowl, and tossed their joyful faces toward the sky from the topmost parapets. From the fervent gold of their hearts was dispensed an incense that seemed to find its way into the very soul of the beholder and to feed the inmost springs of life with sumptuous delight. The soft yet imperial splendor of each blossom added its gracious potency to its neighbors, till the whole arena palpitated in an apotheosis of the flower-queen—the rapturous triumph of the immortal rose. To breathe was ecstasy; and the eye drank unappeasable drafts of delicate intoxication. As Miriam moved forward, her spirit subdued to a harmonious tranquility, the rich notes of nightingales welled out upon her ear, transmuting by their alchemy the realms of color and perfume into song.
And now, bestowed by what hand she knew not, she felt the clustering of roses on her head; their petals caressed her cheeks; the heavy blooms mantled her shoulders and trailed even to her feet; no bride prepared for her nuptials was ever so attired. She was drawing near to a bower erected in the center of the arena—a structure woven of roses, white as a virgin’s soul without, within rose red as the pure passion of her heart. Into that glow she entered, and found a golden altar, before which she knelt and closed her eyes.
Ah, if the bridegroom would come!
AN East Indian reclining chair, eased with soft pillows and placed in the embrasure of a western window, took the rays of the sinking sun, and was breathed upon by the light evening air. The window was open, and across a breadth of green park enclosure was visible the broad gleam of the Hudson, flowing seaward beneath its parapets of brown rock. Miriam, as she lay in the chair, had just opened her eyes upon this familiar scene; and not less familiar was the spacious room which she knew she could see by turning her head; she had often sat there on summer evenings like this, holding discourse with Mary Faust on matters, deep or trifling, of heaven and earth. There was a wonderful scent of roses in the room, and when she lifted a hand indolently to her head she was surprised to find herself wearing a crown of roses; roses, too, trailed along the sides of the chair and hung down to the floor, as if she were lying upon a bed of them. Magnificent flowers they were, and not of any species that she remembered. Where had they come from?
As she idly debated this question in her mind, she was conscious of a sort of gentle puzzlement in her thoughts; the continuity of events seemed broken; she could not recall what had preceded her coming to this room. Had she fallen asleep, and had Mary caused her to be conveyed hither in that condition? She was not wont to take naps at this hour. Had she been ill? That seemed still more unlikely; illness and she were strangers. Had Mary, for some undisclosed purpose, thrown her into a trance? Least probable of all!
What had they been doing that day? She had arrived early; she had found Mary absorbed in mathematical calculations of the transcendent order; they had exchanged a few words, and then Miriam had gone alone into the laboratory. There she had paced up and down for a while, revolving the great enterprise which they had so long been working on together. Would it, after all, prove actually practicable? Theoretically, there seemed to be no opening for doubt; and yet— Finally, the better to pursue her meditations, she remembered seating herself in the chair of the psycho-physical engine; and her hand—her right hand—had rested on the head of the great lever. Would anything really happen were she to press it down?
She recalled the flitting of that thought through her brain. The lever was so nicely adjusted as to move at a very slight impulse; and then—
She uttered a sharp cry—a cry of terror. She huddled down in the chair, half raising her hands as if to ward off a blow. She panted as from a race. Her feeling was that a world was falling down upon her to crush her. After a few moments she pressed her hands over her eyes and quick moans broke from her. She felt a hand laid gently on her head—a cool, soothing hand. By and by she sat up and stared fearfully about her.
“Oh, Mary, what happened?” she muttered. “Was it true?”
“Take your time, dear,” Mary replied. “You got back safe. It’s all right. Shall I tell Jenny to bring you a cup of tea?”
“Jenny! But she was—we were taken up in a moment. Oh, my poor Jenny!”
“Jenny was my affair,” said Mary Faust, with her grave smile. “I furnished her, and of course I provided for her return. She is none the worse for the trip.”
Miriam had not yet recovered her spiritual footing. “Saturn!” she murmured. “Lamara—Zarga! Torpeon!”
Suddenly she snatched at the right sleeve of her dress, and tore it across, exposing the shoulder. She scrutinized it eagerly. The mark was still there, but instead of red it now appeared as a white scar. Mary Faust eyed it with interest.
“He must have stamped it deep!” she observed. “It has survived your Saturnian incarnation. But its power is gone; it’s only a memento now.”
“I was there!” said Miriam wonderingly; “and this is our own earth again!”
“It was a trying experience,” said her friend in a matter-of-fact tone; “but our science is vindicated, and we need never repeat the experiment. We’ll talk it over at our leisure some other time. What lovely roses you brought back with you! The place looked like a conservatory! We understand the principle, of course; but it was exquisitely done! I wish I could have been with you; but I kept in touch as well as I could.”
“They know and honor you there; and Solarion!” “Yes, I have much to thank him for. But don’t be agitated, dear; things will take their proper places by degrees. The world will be under a great obligation to you. Your departure was a little premature, but after all it was better so. There was only one sad thing about it; and that, too, has beauty and consolation. Dear little Jim!”
Miriam turned and bent upon her friend a long and poignant look. She tried to command herself, but her lips quivered and tears ran down her face.
“So may worlds,” she faltered, “and death in all of them! Jim was a hero, and he died for me; but why must the other be taken, and I be left? Without him, what use am I? I had begun to know what love is; and now I am alone! Mary, his spirit was with me in that last terrible scene; I could even see him and hear his voice. Why couldn’t he stay with me, if only as a spirit? God has all power, in heaven and on earth!”
“The scope of science does not include such problems,” said Mary Faust composedly. “But I should suppose that any conscious intercourse between the two planes of life must be exceptional and transient—in our present stage of development, at any rate. Spirit consorts with spirit, and flesh with flesh; that is normal and wholesome. To overstep the boundaries is dangerous and leads to confusions. Neither side can be of use in its place if it is continually trespassing upon the other. If I had a lover, and knew that he was still alive and loved me, why should I mourn because his senses and mine function for a while under different conditions, and are themselves of a different order? If he had ceased to be, or loved me no more, that might be a cause for mourning.”
“You are wise and reasonable,” said Miriam, with a sigh; “but it seems to me to be cause for mourning, too, that a warm, loving, beating human heart must survive in the ice of your logic, with only a memory and a hope—which may become frozen, too.”
“Matters may turn out better than you think,” was Mary Faust’s reply. “Meanwhile, your father is waiting in the next room. Will you go to him?”
“Dearest father!” exclaimed Miriam rising. “Yes, there are more loves than one.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks, and with the rose-wreaths still clinging about her, followed her friend into the shadowy spaces of the laboratory.
From the gloom the sturdy figure of the white-headed old contractor started forward, grasped his daughter by the shoulders with trembling hands, and gazed into her face with a devouring look.
“Me own colleen!” he cried in a breaking voice. “Come back safe and alive to her old daddy! Glory be to God and all the blessed saints! Oh, honey, honey, don’t ye never be doin’ the likes again. Sure, the heart was most bruck in me!” He held her to him with an almost desperate clutch. “Take all ye want in this world—marry any man ye like—but, stay where the old daddy that loves ye can feast his eyes on ye.”
“Darling daddy!” murmured she; “You’re all I have left; thank God for you.”
“Long live Oireland!” rejoined the old man fervently but incoherently.
Two tall figures stood in the background; one of them began to come forward, not quickly, but with an inevitableness like the drawing of planet to planet. The other, with a cigar between his fingers, watched the scene with an amused but genuine interest.
Miriam did not observe the newcomer till he was close upon her. Without directly looking at him, she involuntarily drew back a little, with a feeling that no outsider should intrude upon this meeting. At this moment Mary Faust touched a button, and the room was filled with light.
Miriam’s arms fell to her sides, nor was there strength in her to lift a finger. Nor had her lips power to form themselves into a smile; but the soul within her rushed into her widely opened eyes with such a radiance of speechless joy that the others turned aside and retired noiselessly into a remote part of the great chamber, realizing that the place of these two was holy ground. He came forward another step; but not yet did she believe that this was more than a return of that blessed vision which had been granted her on the other side of space. Oh, was not this happiness enough!
She seemed to herself to be floating in a shining void of heaven, with the glow of a great warmth suffusing her. How real, how near seemed his face. Or was it that she herself had unawares been borne to paradise, and they were met to part no more!
“I cannot bear it, love!” she whispered. “It seems too real. And then to have you go again.”
But now she felt a touch; his arms, firm and strong, were round her; his lips were upon her lips, and no illusion or magic prevented them. Her cry sprang forth like the warbling of a bird—joy, passion, and music in one:
“Oh, Jack; my darling, my love, my own! It’s you; it’s you, you, your own blessed self! Jack, it’s forever!” Her hands caught at him, gripped him hard, his arms, his shoulders, his face; her fingers plunged in his hair. “Oh, love, you were dead, and are alive again!”
Twilight had entered into night when the lovers compelled themselves to issue from their paradise, and join the others where they sat at a table near an open window in the laboratory. The window was wide and high, and commanded a large view of the heavens in that quarter. A great star hung midway aloft, giving out a serene light. The lights in the room had been lowered, as if not to detract from its radiance. Miriam’s hold upon her lover’s arm tightened:
“Jack, we were there”
“Eight hundred million miles!” said he.
“And you went there for me!”
“I would go to Sirius for you; the universe is not large enough to keep me from you. Nothing is too far for love.”
The tall man who had been Jack’s companion rose from the table, and came forward with a jolly bow and smile. Miriam recognized Sam Paladin.
“I’m very glad to see you home again, Miss Mayne,” he said, grasping her hand. “I used to fancy I’d done some trotting about, but I shall sit at your feet henceforth. As for that boy Jack, he deserves less credit. Who wouldn’t do as much for such an object?”
“Sure and I’d have gone meself, if they’d let me,” said Terence Mayne.
Jenny brought the tea, curtsying happily to her mistress and looking more natural than ever.
After some chat about some business and politics, chiefly between Terence and Sam, Mary Faust suddenly excused herself and went out. She returned after a few minutes.
“I have had a message from our friends,” she said, addressing Miriam and Jack more especially, and with as much simplicity as if the message were from down-town. “Lamara and the judges have conferred, and she wishes you to know the result. Will you follow me—all of you?”
They got up, and she led them to a part of the laboratory partitioned off from the main room, and fitted up somewhat after the manner of an oratory. Neither the lovers nor the other two had any notion of what was to happen.
There was an oval window looking to the south and east, through which the rays of the planet Saturn fell and rested upon a couch, draped with a robe of white samite, bordered with blue. Mary Faust, with a reverent gesture, turned back this coverlet, and the body of Jim was revealed, with his crutch beside him. There was no other illumination in the place than what proceeded from the planet: but as the eyes of the spectators grew accustomed to the dimness, the face of the little gnome was distinctly visible. There was a trace of the good-humored grin on his lips, with which he had met all the vagaries of fortune; but also an innocent lovableness which his indomitable spirit had disguised during his earthly life. All gazed upon this spectacle with affectionate sympathy.
“Lamara told me,” said Mary Faust, breaking the silence, “that the highest honor among Saturnians is indicated by a halo, symbolizing the perfect love that has no thought of self. It is bestowed by the ruler of the planet, sitting in counsel with the wisest of the realm; but the gift does not come from them, but from the Source of life and love, who communicates it to them as almoners. And she asked me to bring you here for witness.”
As they stood about the couch, Miriam’s hand in Jack’s, Sam and Terence gravely attentive, the faint, diffused light gathered more definitely upon the dead urchin’s head. At length it seemed as if the light emanated therefrom, rather than from the distant globe. Still it brightened, and now assumed the form of a ring of purest radiance, shining above his forehead; if a circle of pearls could be fire, they would appear thus. It was visible for several minutes; and whether it then vanished, or whether the eyes of the onlookers were unable any longer to discern it, was doubtful. Perhaps it was a thing which only persons of good will and pure heats could have seen at all.
They went out in silence; but the meaning of the halo sank deep into the lovers’ souls, and its light guided their life.