EPILOGUE
It was night in Paris,—a heavy night, laden with the almost tropical heat and languor common to the end of an unusually warm summer. The street-lamps twinkled dimly through vapour which seemed to ooze upwards from the ground, like smoke from the fissures of a volcano, and men walked along listlessly with heads uncovered to the faint and doubtful breeze, some few occasionally pausing to glance at the sky, the aspect of which was curiously divided between stars and clouds, brilliancy and blackness. From the southern side of the horizon a sombre mass of purple grey shadows crept slowly and stealthily onward, blotting out by gradual degrees the silvery glittering of Orion and drawing a nun-like veil over the full-orbed beauty of the moon, while at long intervals a faint roll of thunder suggested the possibility of an approaching storm. But the greater part of the visible heavens remained fair and calm, some of the larger planets sparkling lustrously with strange, flashing fire-gleams of sapphire and gold, and seeming to palpitate like immense jewels swung pendant in the vast blue dome of air.
In the spacious marble court of a certain great house in the Avenue Bois de Boulogne, the oppressive sultriness of the night was tempered by the delicious coolness of a fountain in full play which flung a quivering column of snow-white against the darkness and tinkled its falling drops into a bronze basin below with a musical softness as of far-distant sleigh-bells. The court itself was gracefully built after Athenian models,—its slender Ionic columns supported a domed roof which by daylight would have shown an exquisite sculptured design, but which now was too dimly perceived for even its height to be guessed. Beyond the enclosure stretched the vague outline of a garden which adjoined the Bois, and here there were tall trees and drooping branches that moved mysteriously now and then, as though touched by an invisible finger-tip. Within each corner of the court great marble vases stood, brimming over with growing blossoms,—pale light streaming from an open window or door in the house shed a gleam on some statue of a god or goddess half hidden among flowers,—and here in this cool quietness of stately and beautiful surroundings sat, or rather reclined, Diana, on a cushioned bench, her head turned towards her sole companion, Féodor Dimitrius. He sat in a lounge chair opposite to her, and his dark and brilliant eyes studied her fair features with wistful gravity.
“I think I have told you all,” he said, speaking in slow, soft tones. “Poor Chauvet’s death was sudden, but from his written instructions I fancy he was not unprepared. He has no relatives,—and he must have found great consolation in making his will in your favour. For he cared very greatly for you,—he told me he had asked you to marry him.”
Diana moved a little restlessly. As she did so a rosy flash glittered from a great jewel she wore round her neck,—the famous “Eye of Rajuna,” whose tragic history she had heard from Chauvet himself.
“Yes,” she answered—“That is true. But—I forgot!”
“You forgot?” he echoed, wonderingly. “You forgot a proposal of marriage? And yet—when you came to me first in Geneva you thought love was enough for everything,—your heart was hungry for love——”
“When I had a heart—yes!” she said. “But now I have none. And I do not hunger for what does not exist! I am sorry I forgot the kind Professor. But I did,—completely! And that he should have left me all he possessed is almost a punishment!”
“You should not regard it as such,” he answered. “It is hardly your fault if you forgot. Your thoughts are, perhaps, elsewhere?” He paused,—but she said nothing. “As I have told you,” he went on, “Chauvet has left you an ample fortune, together with this house and all it contains—its unique library, its pictures and curios, to say nothing of his famous collection of jewels, worth many thousands of pounds—and as everything is in perfect order you will have no trouble. Personally, I had no idea he was such a wealthy man.”
She was still silent, looking at him more or less critically. He felt her eyes upon him, and some impulse stung him into sudden fervour.
“You look indifferent,” he said, “and no doubt youareindifferent. Your nature now admits of no emotion. But, so far as you are woman, your circumstances are little changed. You are as you were when you first became my ‘subject’—‘of mature years, and alone in the world without claims on your time or your affections.’ Is it not so?”
A faint, mysterious smile lifted the corners of her lovely mouth.
“It is so!” she answered.
“You are alone in the world,—alone, alone, alone!” he repeated with a kind of fierce intensity. “Alone!—for I know that neither your father nor your mother recognise you. Am I right or wrong?”
Still smiling, she bent her head.
“Right, of course!” she murmured, with delicate irony. “How couldyoube wrong!”
“Your own familiar friend will have none of you,” he went on, with almost angry emphasis. “To the world you once knew, you are dead! The man who was your lover—the man who, as you told me, spoilt your life and on whom you seek to be revenged——”
She lifted one hand with an interrupting gesture.
“That is finished,” she said. “I seek vengeance no longer. No man is worth it! Besides, Iamavenged.”
She half rose from her reclining attitude, and he waited for her next word.
“I am avenged!” she went on, in thrilling accents—“And in a way that satisfies me. My lover that was,—never a true lover at best,—is my lover still—but with such limitations as are torture to a man whose only sense of love is—Desire! My beauty fills him with longing,—the thought of me ravages his soul and body—it occupies every thought and every dream!—and with this passion comes the consciousness of age. Age!—the great breakdown!—the end of all forhim!—I have willed that he shall feel its numbing approach each day,—that he shall know the time is near when his step shall fail, his sight grow dim,—when the rush of youthful life shall pass him by and leave him desolate. Yes!—I am avenged!—he is ‘old enough now to realise that we are better apart!’”
Her eyes glowed like stars,—her whole face was radiant. Dimitrius gazed at her almost sternly.
“You are pitiless!” he said.
She laughed.
“Ashewas,—yes!”
And rising to her full height, she stood up like a queen. She wore a robe of dull amber stuff interwoven with threads of gold,—a small circlet of diamonds glittered in her hair, and Chauvet’s historic Eastern jewel, the “Eye of Rajuna,” flamed like fire on her white neck.
“Féodor Dimitrius,” she said,—and her voice had such a marvellously sweet intonation that he felt it penetrate through every nerve—“You say, and you say rightly, that ‘so far as I am woman’—my circumstances are not changed from what they were when I first came to you in Geneva. But only ‘so far as I am woman.’ Now—how do you know I am woman at all?”
He lifted himself in his chair, gripping both arms of it with clenched nervous hands. His dark eyes flashed a piercing inquiry into hers.
“What do you mean?” he half whispered. “What—what would you make me believe?”
She smiled.
“Oh, marvellous man of science!” she exclaimed—“Must I teach you your own discovery? You, who have studied and mastered the fusion of light and air with elemental forces and the invisible whirl of electrons with perpetually changing forms, must I, your subject, explain to you what you have done? You have wrested a marvellous secret from Nature—you can unmake and remake the human body, freeing it from all gross substance, as a sculptor can mould and unmould a statue,—and do you not see that you have made of me a new creature, no longer of mere mortal clay, but of an ethereal matter which has never walked on earth before?—and with which earth has nothing in common? What have such as I to do with such base trifles as human vengeance or love?”
He sprang up and approached her.
“Diana,” he said slowly—“If this is true,—and may God be the arbiter!—one thing in your former circumstances is altered—you are not ‘without claims on your time and your affections.’Iclaim both! I have made you as you are!—you are mine!”
She smiled proudly and retreated a step or two.
“I am no more yours,” she said, “than are the elements of which your science has composed the new and youthful vesture of my unchanging Soul! I admit no claim. When I served you as your ‘subject,’ you were ready to sacrifice my life to your ambition; now when you are witness to the triumph of your ‘experiment,’ you would grasp what you consider as your lawful prize. Self!—all Self! But I have a Self as well—and it is a Self independent of all save its own elements.”
He caught her hands suddenly.
“Love is in all elements,” he said. “There would be no world, no universe without love!”
Her eyes met his as steadily as stars.
“There is no such thing as Love in all mankind!” she said. “The race is cruel, destructive, murderous. What men call love is merely sex-attraction—such as is common to all the animal world. Children are to be born in order that man may be perpetuated.Why, one cannot imagine! His civilisations perish—he himself is the merest grain of dust in the universe,—unless he learns to subdue his passions and progresses to a higher order of being on this earth, which he never will. All things truly are possible, save man’s own voluntary uplifting. And without this uplifting there is no such thing as Love.”
He still held her hands.
“May I not endeavour to reach this height?” he asked, and his voice shook a little. “Have patience with me, Diana! You have beauty, wealth, youth——”
She interrupted him.
“You forget! ‘Mature years’ are in my brain and heart,—I am not really young.”
“Youare,” he rejoined—“Younger than you can as yet realise. You see your own outward appearance, but you have had no time yet to test your inward emotions——”
“I have none!” she said.
He dropped her hands.
“Not even an angel’s attribute—mercy?”
A faint sigh stirred her bosom where the great “Eye of Rajuna” shone like a red star.
“Perhaps!——” she said—“I do not know—it may be possible!”
To-day in Paris one of the loveliest women in the world holds undisputed sway as a reigning beauty. The “old,” now the “young” Diana is the envy of her sex and the despair of men. Years pass over her and leave no change in her fair face or radiant eyes,—a creature of light and magnetic force, she lives for the most part the life of a student and recluse, and any entertaining of society in her house is rare, though the men of learning and science who were friends of Professor Chauvet are always welcomed by their adorable hostess, who to them has become a centre of something like worship. So far as she herself is concerned, she is untouched by either admiration or flattery. Each day finds her further removed from the temporary joys and sorrows of humanity, and more enwrapt in a strange world of unknown experience to which she seems to belong. She is happy, because she has forgotten all that might have made her otherwise. She feels neither love nor hate: and Féodor Dimitrius, now alone in the world, his mother having passed away suddenly in her sleep, wanders near her, watchfully, but more or less aimlessly, knowing that his beautiful “experiment” has out-mastered him, and that in the mysterious force wherewith his science has endowed her, she has gone beyond his power. His “claim” upon her lessens day by day, rendering him helpless to contend with what he imagined he had himself created. The Marchese Farnese, catching a passing glimpse of her in Paris, became so filled with amazement that he spread all sorts of rumours respecting her real “age” and the “magic art” of Dimitrius, none of which were believed, of course, but which added to the mystery surrounding her—though she herself never condescended to notice them. To this day she holds herself apart and invisible to all save those whom she personally chooses to receive. No man can boast of any favour at her hands,—not even Dimitrius. And,—as was said at the beginning of this veracious narrative—there is no end for Diana May. She lives as the light lives,—fair and emotionless,—as all may live who master the secret of living,—a secret which, though now apparently impregnable, shall yield itself to those, who, before very long, will grasp the Flaming Sword and “take and eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life.” The Sword turns every way—but the blossom is behind the blade. And in this Great Effort neither the love of man nor the love of woman have any part, nor any propagation of an imperfect race,—for those who would reach the goal must relinquish all save the realisation of that “new heaven and new earth” of splendid and lasting youth and vitality when “old things are passed away.”
THE END