CHAPTER VIII
“Now,” said Plucritus, as the scene cleared, “I think it is time for lunch. Neither of us enjoyed our breakfast, and we shall eat all the more heartily.”
We were by this time in a large, light, comfortable room, and on looking through the window I saw it faced on to a wide and handsome street, so long that I was unable to tell the length of it. On either side were mansions of great beauty, built in different styles and material, so that the effect was most strange and interesting.
Many beautiful statues and worked columns ran down the centre, and arched colonnades, twined with rich creepers, ran nearer to the sides.
Plucritus came and stood beside me. “It is a pity,” he observed. “You should witness some of our convocations and assemblies. We have a special roof designed to arch across from side to side. And it is worked from wealth and loveliness that all the nations of the earth could never buy. We do not meet again for some considerable time, and you may miss the sight.”
“You think it probable I may leave you, then.”
He smiled.
“Well,” he said, “I have had a little study in medicines. I think you are going to die.”
“That is consoling,” I remarked. “What will the transition lead me to?”
“You know best yourself,” he said.
During the repast he did not speak much; but when it was over he took me to a smaller room, a comfortable and private little place fitted with every luxury.
There was a fire burning there, for always in the air, despite the many flowers that grew outside, there was a sharpness which was very pleasant to those who could appreciate it.
He threw himself down on a sofa and I took an easy chair opposite to him. I was tired, with that weariness and lassitude which takes the place of bodily infirmity. After a while he took out a pipe and filled it with a substance from a cedar box upon the mantelpiece.
“I will not offer you this,” he told me. “You would not appreciate it, though it is far superior to any earthly thing of the same class.”
He lay back smoking in quiet contentment, and I watched him, a certain amount of interest keeping my eyes open, otherwise I should have fallen asleep.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked at length.
“Nothing particular. I was studying you to the best of my poor ability.”
“Do you find me very beautiful?”
“Is not the term misapplied? It would be more applicable to Vestné.”
“And Vestasian?”
“Well, perhaps so. He seemed to me a very curious combination.”
“Yes. That is his chief charm. No matter how ill-tempered I may be (and you will have perceived I occasionally get that way), he always has the power to convert me once again to sublimity.”
“Do you appreciate Vestasian’s wife?” I queried.
“Oh! I see. You mean that pretty creature who comes to stay with him sometimes. Have you met her?”
“No. He simply told me of her.”
“Ah! Yes. I appreciate her very much. If I had my way I’d put her outside the gates, to go back as best she could, where she could. That is another peculiarity of his. If anybody else had played the trick on him that she did he would have followed him like the avenging angel to the end of time. But because she cries and frets and generally makes a disturbance every time she comes down here, he invariably gives in to her, and thinks it’s a laughing matter.”
He looked over to me and smiled.
“You should see her. She is very beautiful after a certain style. You would like her too, for till she becomes too ill to go about she is as merry as a bird, and as light.”
“Can she retain that lightness even in hell?” I asked.
“Why, yes. She is very deeply in love with him, so that there is nothing particularly saintly in it. And beyond that it pays her to be agreeable to him, because then she gets her own way at the end.”
I laughed.
“You certainly bring it down to a very matter-of-fact level,” I remarked.
“Well, she was an arch-deceiver, but because she looked the other thing we were all taken in. However, she did not do much good with all her manœuvring, and I expected the next time she came down here she would have passed me by without a word.”
“What had you done?”
“Oh, nothing. But I was mistaken, she was no different from before. Since then she has come and gone; how much harm she does is not to be told, but, being a philosopher, I have come to take it quietly.”
“Has she a good influence on you all, then?”
“She has no influence on anyone except Vestasian—and not much on him. But the same applies to spirits as to mortals. No man should ever allow himself to be governed by a woman, not in the slightest. If so, she will drag him over the most perilous path he ever trod, whether to Heaven or Hell.”
“What about Vestné?”
“She neither drags me back nor pulls me forward. We walk evenly together, pace for pace.”
“Have you many cities as grand as this?” I questioned, gazing out of the window and seeing, from where I sat, the turrets of many beautiful buildings without.
“Oh, yes. Their name is legion, and they are all built on different principles. It is a pity that you refuse to take medicine. I think you would enjoy being here after a time.”
“I had as lief pass away,” I asserted. “If I am to be other than myself I am the more content with a total dissolution.”
“And Deborah?”
“I cannot say,” I answered. “Being powerless, I am speechless.”
“You should have taken my advice and left her long ago. Or you should have cultivated writing moral stories for young girls; it would have been amusing.”
“I never appreciated young girls. If they are not moral without reading moral stories, they never will be.”
“I think,” he said, after a pause, “I will write a biography of myself, it seems to be the fashion.”
He jumped up and knocked the few ashes from the pipe into the fire.
“Do you wish to walk through the city?” he queried lazily.
“No. I have judged it from these windows.”
“Then we may prepare for home.”
Several pages are here omitted.
When we returned it was just to be in time for dinner. I remember Vestasian was there, and a friend of Vestné, a very simple, lovely woman, who, I heard, had come a long distance to pay a visit.
That the evening passed off brilliantly I was well aware. For the most part they talked on subjects of which I was entirely ignorant, yet this was due to myself rather than any lack of kindness on their part.
Afterwards the new guest sang for us, and accompanied herself upon the harp. She sang with exquisite taste, both in choice and expression. Later in the evening she sent for some sketches she said she had once taken when on a visit to earth.
One or two of them I knew. They were exquisitely done, and we all admired them.
The evening passed quickly, and I remember Plucritus gave us a sketch of a love scene he had just witnessed on the earth before leaving it. It was very amusing, or he had a way of making it appear so—I cannot quite tell which.
Vestasian stayed late, and he and Plucritus walked back through the grounds together. I went to bed, and as I looked through the open window I saw them standing on the bridge by the little gate deep in conversation.
It seemed now and again as if a laugh travelled thence to the palace; but, tired and, I may confess it, ill, I soon retired to rest.
The experiences of the day had not been happy. However they might have amused my companion, I had not shared his feeling. It had made me think with unavailing sorrow on the littleness of life, and I longed, even as a prisoner cooped in some foul dungeon longs for light and air, for some ennobling aspect from which humanity might at least be treated as a subject somewhat higher than a jest. For myself, I had begun to think and feel less. The sense of unreality and insecurity which had, up till now, enveloped me was passing. I saw the shadow of Death creeping ever nearer, and tried to fathom what my sin had been that I should thus die in hell.
Then I smiled. I was no more a judge of my own actions than anyone else can be, and I recognised simply that my duty was to bear without complaint until the end.
Any form of prayer was quite beyond me. Only those who have been in this iron kingdom have any conception how prayer is crushed in the head of him who prays. No form of comfort could approach me, nor now did I feel that I needed any; for life—what one terms life—had been slowly sapped from me as the long unheeded days had passed.
Thus, half sleeping, half waking, the night went by me, and in the morning I learnt Plucritus had returned to earth. I was not sorry. Vestné of late had taken to leaving me alone, and I was grateful for it. I remember in the days that followed her friend often played and sang to me. It was the one thing I enjoyed; for the rest, time hung heavily on my hands.
Vestasian came across every day and spent much time with us.
I can remember his kindness to me now, though I am afraid he could not think me very thankful at the time. Then for two or three days he did not come, and when he did I was sitting alone, the others being away.
“I have been preparing for my wife,” he said. “She comes to-morrow.”
I think I must have received this intelligence with something akin to pleasure, because he looked pleased.
“You must come across to see us,” he suggested, “as she rarely goes beyond the grounds. I think you will be friends,” and he looked at me curiously in a way I neither understood nor cared to understand.
I went to bed that night more feeble than before. I dismissed the attendant on entering the room and lay down in excessive weakness. I gave a heavy sigh, hoping to find relief, but I found that sigh followed sigh; it was the gasping pain of which they all complained, though silently. Then I knew this was going to be my end, and I was thankful I was alone, since when the pain had passed the rest would come, by total death or change. Gazing over to the wall I saw an altar shining, and a crucifix above. I rose from the bed. Must I go too? All so far had done so in the cells. Each died beside the altar. And there I went, and in great weakness stumbled forward, dying from weakness by its crimson side.
A light fell from the crucifix, and on a sudden a wild, clear cry rang through the stillness.
“Come! Come away—away,” and the last word tingled till it pierced something, I think it must have been the blackness.
With a strength which could not be my own I rose and moved unquestioning toward the door. I passed out into the silent corridor, down the white steps to the door that led into the church. This place I had not visited since first I came, and now in the clear white light of night each jewelled throne and golden pillar shone like brilliant eyes all watching me. Silently down the nave I moved toward the doors, and through them, out onto the marble steps, away through the wooded grounds down to the avenue by which I came—along the dark, grand road, even unto the heavy portal which swung open silently and let me pass. Then came the wilderness with marsh lights shining in the distance, faint will-o’-the-wisps, which lead mortals to the awful bogs. On, on, along the one hard track I journeyed, and the ghost-winds whistled round me as I flew. The mighty forest flung its shadow o’er me as I sped into its gloomy shade. But one wide track led onward, and at the end there shone a light so clear and pure that its rays poured like softest sunbeams into the darkness round.
End of Part II