The New ReligionA Reasonable Theory of Worship conformable to the Eternal and Unalterable Laws of Nature.
The New Religion
A Reasonable Theory of Worship conformable to the Eternal and Unalterable Laws of Nature.
“The title does not cover all the ground,” he murmured as he read.—“And yet how am I to designate it? It is a vast subject, and presents different branches of treatment, and, after all said and done, I may have wasted my time in planning it. Most likely I have,—but there is no scientist living who would refuse to accept it. The question is, shall I ever finish it?—shall I ever know positively that there IS, without doubt, a conscious, personal Something or Some one after death who enters at once upon another existence? My new experiment will decide all—if Iseethe Soul of Lilith, all hesitation will be at an end—I shall be sure of everything which now seems uncertain. And then the triumph!—then the victory!”
His eyes sparkled, and, dipping his pen in the ink, he prepared to write, but ere he did so the message which the monk had left for him to read recurred with a chill warning to his memory,—
“Beware the end! With Lilith’s love comes Lilith’s freedom.”
He considered the words for a moment apprehensively,—and then a proud smile played round his mouth.
“For a Master who has attained to some degree of wisdom, his intuition is strangely erroneous this time,” he muttered. “For if there be any dream of love in Lilith, that dream, that love is mine! And being mine, who shall dispute possession,—who shall take her from me? No one,—not even God,—for He does not break through the laws of Nature. And by those laws I have kept Lilith—and even so I will keep her still.”
Satisfied with his own conclusions, he began to write, taking up the thread of his theory of religion where he had left it on the previous day. He had a brilliant and convincing style, and was soon deep in an elaborate and eloquent disquisition on the superior scientific reasoning contained in the ancient Eastern faiths, as compared with the modern scheme of Christianity, which limits God’s power to this world only, and takes no consideration of the fate of other visible and far more splendid spheres.
Thefew days immediately following the visit of the mysterious monk from Cyprus were quiet and uneventful enough. El-Râmi led the life of a student and recluse; Féraz, too, occupied himself with books and music, thinking much, but saying little. He had solemnly sworn never again to make allusion to the forbidden subject of his brother’s great experiment, and he meant to keep his vow. For, though he had in very truth absolutely forgotten the name “Lilith,” he had not forgotten the face of her whose beauty had surprised his senses and dazzled his brain. She had become to him a nameless Wonder,—and from the sweet remembrance of her loveliness he gained a certain consolation and pleasure which he jealously and religiously kept to himself. He thought of her as a poet may think of an ideal goddess seen in a mystic dream,—but he never ventured to ask a question concerning her. And even if he had wished to do so,—even if he had indulged the idea of encouraging Zaroba to follow up the work she had begun by telling him all she could concerning the beautiful tranced girl, that course was now impossible. For Zaroba seemed stricken dumb as well as deaf,—what had chanced to her he could not tell,—but a mysterious silence possessed her; and, though her large black eyes were sorrowfully eloquent, she never uttered a word. She came and went on various household errands, always silently and with bent head,—she looked older, feebler, wearier and sadder, but not so much as a gesture escaped her that could be construed into a complaint. Once Féraz made signs to her of inquiry after her health and well-being—she smiled mournfully, but gave no other response, and, turning away, left him hurriedly. He mused long and deeply upon all this,—and, though he felt sure that Zaroba’s strange but resolute speechlessness was his brother’s work, he dared not speculate too far or inquire too deeply. For he fully recognised El-Râmi’s power,—a power so scientifically balanced, and used with such terrible and unerring precision, that there could be no opposition possible unless one were of equal strength and knowledge. Féraz knew he could no more compete with such a force than a mouse can wield a thunderbolt,—he therefore deemed it best to resign himself to his destiny and wait the course of events.
“For,” he said within himself, “it is not likely one man should be permitted to use such strange authority over natural forces long,—it may be that God is trying him,—putting him to the proof, as it were, to find out how far he will dare to go,—and then—ah then!—whatthen? If his heart were dedicated to the service of God I should not fear,—but—as it is, I dread the end!”
His instinct was correct in this,—for in spite of his poetic and fanciful temperament he had plenty of quick perception and he saw plainly what El-Râmi himself was not very willing to recognise,—namely, that in all the labour of his life, so far as it had gone, he, El-Râmi, had rather opposed himself to the unseen divine, than striven to incorporate himself with it. He preferred to believe in natural Force only; his inclination was to deny the possibility of anything behind that. He accepted the idea of Immortality to a certain extent, because natural Force was for ever giving him proofs of the perpetual regeneration of life—but that there was a primal source of this generating influence,—One, great and eternal, who would demand an account of all lives, and an accurate summing-up of all words and actions,—in this, though he might assume the virtue of faith, Féraz very well knew he had it not. Like the greater majority of scientists and natural philosophers generally, what Self could comprehend, he accepted,—but all that extended beyond Self,—all that made of Self but a grain of dust in a vast infinitude,—all that forced the creature to prostrate himself humbly before the Creator and cry out “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner!” this he tacitly and proudly rejected. For which reasons the gentle, dreamy Féraz had good cause to fear,—and a foreboding voice for ever whispered in his mind that man without God was as a world without light,—a black chaos of blank unfruitfulness.
With the ensuing week the grand “reception” to which El-Râmi and his brother had been invited by Lord Melthorpe came off with greatéclat. Lady Melthorpe’s “crushes” were among the most brilliant of the season, and this one was particularly so, as it was a special function held for the entertainment of the distinguished Crown Prince of a great nation. True, the distinguished Crown Prince was only “timed” to look in a little after midnight for about ten minutes, but the exceeding brevity of his stay was immaterial to the fashionable throng. All that was needed was just the piquant flavour,—the “passing” of a Royal Presence,—to make the gathering socially complete. The rooms were crowded—so much so indeed that it was difficult to take note of any one person in particular, yet, in spite of this fact, there was a very general movement of interest and admiration when El-Râmi entered with his young and handsome brother beside him. Both had a look and manner too distinctly striking to escape observation:—their olive complexions, black melancholy eyes, and slim yet stately figures, were set off to perfection by the richness of the Oriental dresses they wore; and the grave composure and perfect dignity of their bearing offered a pleasing contrast to the excited pushing, waddling, and scrambling indulged in by the greater part of the aristocratic assemblage. Lady Melthorpe herself, a rather pretty woman attired in a very æsthetic gown, and wearing her brown hair all towzled and arrangedà la Grecque, in diamond bandeaux, caught sight of them at once, and was delighted. Such picturesque-looking creatures were really ornaments to a room, she thought with much interior satisfaction; and, wreathing her face with smiles, she glided up to them.
“I am so charmed, my dear El-Râmi!” she said, holding out her jewelled hand.—“So charmed to seeyou—you so very seldom will come to me!Andyour brother! So glad! Why did you never tell me you had a brother? Naughty man! What is your brother’s name? Féraz? Delightful!—it makes one think of Hafiz and Sadi and all those very charming Eastern people. I must find some one interesting to introduce to you. Will you wait here a minute—the crowd is so thick in the centre of the room that really I’m afraid you will not be able to get through it—dowait here, and I’ll bring the Baroness to you—don’t you know the Baroness? Oh, she’s such a delightful creature—so clever at palmistry! Yes—just stay where you are,—I’ll come back directly!”
And with sundry good-humoured nods her ladyship swept away, while Féraz glanced at his brother with an expression of amused inquiry.
“That is Lady Melthorpe?” he asked.
“That is Lady Melthorpe,” returned El-Râmi—“our hostess, and Lord Melthorpe’s wife; his, ‘to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honour, and cherish till death do them part,’” and he smiled somewhat satirically.—“It seems odd, doesn’t it?—I mean, such solemn words sound out of place sometimes. Do you like her?”
Féraz made a slight sign in the negative.
“She does not speak sincerely,” he said in a low tone.
El-Râmi laughed.
“My dear boy, you mustn’t expect any one to be ‘sincere’ in society. You said you wanted to ‘see life’—very well, but it will never do to begin by viewing it in that way. An outburst of actual sincerity in this humanmêlée”—and he glanced comprehensively over the brilliant throng—“would be like a match to a gunpowder magazine—the whole thing would blow up into fragments and be dispersed to the four winds of heaven, leaving nothing behind but an evil odour.”
“Better so,” said Féraz dreamily, “than that false hearts should be mistaken for true.”
El-Râmi looked at him wistfully;—what a beautiful youth he really was, with all that glow of thought and feeling in his dark eyes! How different was his aspect from that of the jaded, cynical, vice-worn young men of fashion, some of whom were pushing their way past at that moment,—men in the twenties who had the air of being well on in the forties, and badly preserved at that—wretched, pallid, languid, exhausted creatures who had thrown away the splendid jewel of their youth in a couple of years’ stupid dissipation and folly. At that moment Lord Melthorpe, smiling and cordial, came up to them and shook hands warmly, and then introduced with a few pleasant words a gentleman who had accompanied him as,—“Roy Ainsworth, the famous artist, you know!”
“Oh, not at all!” drawled the individual thus described, with a searching glance at the two brothers from under his drowsy eyelids.—“Not famous by any means—not yet. Only trying to be. You’ve got to paint something startling and shocking nowadays before you are considered ‘famous’;—and even then, when you’ve outraged all the proprieties, you must give a banquet, or take a big house and hold receptions, or have an electrically-lit-up skeleton in your studio, or something of that sort, to keep the public attention fixed upon you. It’s such a restless age.”
El-Râmi smiled gravely.
“The feverish outburst of an unnatural vitality immediately preceding dissolution,” he observed.
“Ah!—you think that? Well—it may be,—I’m sure I hope it is. I, personally, should be charmed to believe in the rapidly-approaching end of the world. We really need a change of planet as much as certain invalids require a change of air. Your brother, however”—and here he flashed a keen glance at Féraz—“seems already to belong to quite a different sphere.”
Féraz looked up with a pleased yet startled expression.
“Yes,—but how did you know it?” he asked.
It was now the artist’s turn to be embarrassed. He had used the words “different sphere” merely as a figure of speech, whereas this intelligent-looking young fellow evidently took the phrase in a literal sense. It was very odd!—and he hesitated what to answer, so El-Râmi came to the rescue.
“Mr. Ainsworth only means that you do not look quite like other people, Féraz, that’s all. Poets and musicians often carry their own distinctive mark.”
“Is he a poet?” inquired Lord Melthorpe with interest.—“And has he published anything?”
El-Râmi laughed good-humouredly.
“Not he! My dear Lord Melthorpe, we are not all called upon to give the world our blood and brain and nerve and spirit. Some few reserve their strength for higher latitudes. To give greedy humanity everything of one’s self is rather too prodigal an expenditure.”
“I agree with you,” said a chill yet sweet voice close to them.—“It was Christ’s way of work,—and quite too unwise an example for any of us to follow.”
Lord Melthorpe and Mr. Ainsworth turned quickly to make way for the speaker,—a slight fair woman, with a delicate thoughtful face full of light, languor, and scorn, who, clad in snowy draperies adorned here and there with the cold sparkle of diamonds, drew near them at the moment. El-Râmi and his brother both noted her with interest,—she was so different from the other women present.
“I am delighted to see you!” said Lord Melthorpe as he held out his hand in greeting.—“It is so seldom we have the honour! Mr. Ainsworth you already know,—let me introduce my Oriental friends here,—El-Râmi Zarânos and his brother Féraz Zarânos,—Madame Irene Vassilius—you must have heard of her very often.”
El-Râmi had indeed heard of her,—she was an authoress of high repute, noted for her brilliant satirical pen, her contempt of press criticism, and her influence over, and utter indifference to, all men. Therefore he regarded her now with a certain pardonable curiosity as he made her his profoundest salutation, while she returned his look with equal interest.
“It is you who said that we must not give ourselves wholly away to the needs of humanity, is it not?” she said, letting her calm eyes dwell upon him with a dreamy yet searching scrutiny.
“I certainly did say so, Madame,” replied El-Râmi.—“It is a waste of life,—and humanity is always ungrateful.”
“You have proved it? But perhaps you have not tried to deserve its gratitude.”
This was rather a home-thrust, and El-Râmi was surprised and vaguely annoyed at its truth. Irene Vassilius still stood quietly observing him,—then she turned to Roy Ainsworth.
“There is the type you want for your picture,” she said, indicating Féraz by a slight gesture.—“That boy, depicted in the clutches of your Phryne, would make angels weep.”
“If I could makeyouweep I should have achieved something like success,” replied the painter, his sleepy eyes dilating with a passion he could not wholly conceal.—“But icebergs neither smile nor shed tears,—and intellectual women are impervious to emotion.”
“That is a mistaken idea,—one of the narrow notions common to men,” she answered, waving her fan idly to and fro.—“You remind me of the querulous Edward Fitzgerald, who wrote that he was glad Mrs. Barrett Browning was dead, because there would be no moreAurora Leighs. He condescended to say she was a ‘woman of Genius,’ but what was the use of it? ‘She and her Sex,’ he said, ‘would be better minding the Kitchen and their Children.’ He andhisSex always consider the terrible possibilities to themselves of a badly-cooked dinner and a baby’s screams. His notion about the limitation of woman’s sphere is man’s notion generally.”
“It is not mine,” said Lord Melthorpe.—“I think women are cleverer than men.”
“Ah, you are not a reviewer!” laughed Madame Vassilius—“so you can afford to be generous. But as a rule men detest clever women, simply because they are jealous of them.”
“They have cause to be jealous ofyou,” said Roy Ainsworth.—“You succeed in everything you touch.”
“Success is easy,” she replied indifferently,—“Resolve upon it, and carry out that resolve—and the thing is done.”
El-Râmi looked at her with new interest.
“Madame, you have a strong will!” he observed.—“But permit me to say that all your sex are not like yourself, beautiful, gifted, and resolute at one and the same time. The majority of women are deplorably unintelligent and uninteresting.”
“That is precisely how I find the majority of men!” declared Irene Vassilius, with that little soft laugh of hers which was so sweet, yet so full of irony.—“You see, we view things from different standpoints. Moreover, the deplorably unintelligent and uninteresting women are the very ones you men elect to marry, and make the mothers of the nation. It is the way of masculine wisdom,—so full of careful forethought and admirable calculation!” She laughed again, and continued—“Lord Melthorpe tells me you are a seer,—an Eastern prophet arisen in these dull modern days—now will you solve me a riddle that I am unable to guess,—myself?—and tell me if you can, who am I and what am I?”
“Madame,” replied El-Râmi bowing profoundly, “I cannot in one moment unravel so complex an enigma.”
She smiled, not ill pleased, and met his dark, fiery, penetrating glance unreservedly,—then, drawing off her long loose glove, she held out her small beautifully-shaped white hand.
“Try me,” she said lightly, “for if there is any truth in ‘brain-waves’ or reflexes of the mind the touch of my fingers ought to send electric meanings through you. I am generally judged as of a frivolous disposition because I am small in stature, slight in build, and have curly hair—all proofs positive, according to the majority, of latent foolishness. Colossal women, however, are always astonishingly stupid, and fat women lethargic—but a mountain of good flesh is always more attractive to man than any amount of intellectual perception. Oh, I am not posing as one of the ‘misunderstood’; not at all—I simply wish you to look well at me first and take in my ‘frivolous’ appearance thoroughly, before being misled by the messages of my hand.”
El-Râmi obeyed her in so far that he fixed his eyes upon her more searchingly than before,—a little knot of fashionable loungers had stopped to listen, and now watched her face with equal curiosity. No rush of embarrassed colour tinged the cool fairness of her cheeks—her expression was one of quiet, half-smiling indifference—her attitude full of perfect self-possession.
“No one who looks at your eyes can call you frivolous Madame,” said El-Râmi at last.—“And no one who observes the lines of your mouth and chin could suspect you of latent foolishness. Your physiognomy must have been judged by the merest surface-observers. As for stature, we are aware that goes for naught,—most of the heroes and heroines of history have been small and slight in build. I will now, if you permit me, take your hand.”
She laid it at once in his extended palm,—and he slowly closed his own fingers tightly over it. In a couple of minutes, his face expressed nothing but astonishment.
“Is it possible?” he muttered—“can I believe——” he broke off hurriedly, interrupted by a chorus of voices exclaiming—“Oh, what is it?—dotell us!” and so forth.
“May I speak, Madame?” he inquired, bending towards Irene, with something of reverence.
She smiled assent.
“If I am surprised,” he then said slowly, “it is scarcely to be wondered at, for it is the first time I have ever chanced across the path of a woman whose life was so perfectly ideal. Madame, to you I must address the words of Hamlet—‘pure as ice, chaste as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.’ Such an existence as yours, stainless, lofty, active, hopeful, patient, and independent, is a reproach to men, and few will love you for being so superior. Those who do love you, will probably love in vain,—for the completion of your existence is not here—but elsewhere.”
Her soft eyes dilated wonderingly,—the people immediately around her stared vaguely at El-Râmi’s dark impenetrable face.
“Then shall I be alone all my life as I am now?” she asked, as he released her hand.
“Are you sure you are alone?” he said with a grave smile.—“Are there not more companions in the poet’s so-called solitude than in the crowded haunts of men?”
She met his earnest glance, and her own face grew radiant with a certain sweet animation that made it very lovely.
“You are right,” she replied simply—“I see you understand.”
Then, with a graceful salutation, she prepared to move away—Roy Ainsworth pressed up close to her.
“Are you satisfied with your fortune, Madame Vassilius?” he asked rather querulously.
“Indeed I am,” she answered. “Why should I not be?”
“If loneliness is a part of it,” he said audaciously, “I suppose you will never marry?”
“I suppose not,” she said with a ripple of laughter in her voice.—“I fear I should never be able to acknowledge a man my superior!”
She left him then, and he stood for a moment looking after her with a vexed air,—then he turned anew towards El-Râmi, who was just exchanging greetings with Sir Frederick Vaughan. This latter young man appeared highly embarrassed and nervous, and seemed anxious to unburden himself of something which apparently was difficult to utter. He stared at Féraz, pulled the ends of his long moustache, and made scrappy remarks on nothing in particular, while El-Râmi observed him with amused intentness.
“I say, do you remember the night we saw the new Hamlet?” he blurted out at last.—“You know—I haven’t seen you since——”
“I remember most perfectly,” said El-Râmi composedly—“‘To be or not to be’ was the question then with you, as well as with Hamlet—but I suppose it is all happily decided now as ‘to be.’”
“What is decided?” stammered Sir Frederick—“I mean, how do you know everything is decided, eh?”
“When is your marriage to take place?” asked El-Râmi.
Vaughan almost jumped.
“By Jove!—you are an uncanny fellow!” he exclaimed.—“However, as it happens, you are right. I’m engaged to Miss Chester.”
“It is no surprise to me, but pray allow me to congratulate you!” and El-Râmi smiled.—“You have lost no time about it, I must say! It is only a fortnight since you first saw the lady at the theatre. Well!—confess me a true prophet!”
Sir Frederick looked uncomfortable, and was about to enter into an argument concerning theprosandconsof prophetic insight, when Lady Melthorpe suddenly emerged from the circling whirlpool of her fashionable guests and sailed towards them with a swan-like grace and languor.
“I cannot find the dear Baroness,” she said plaintively. “She is so much in demand! Do you know, my dear El-Râmi, she is really almost as wonderful as you are! Not quite—oh, not quite, but nearly! She can tell you all your past and future by the lines of your hand, in the most astonishing manner! Can you do that also?”
El-Râmi laughed.
“It is a gipsy’s trick,” he said,—“and thebonâ-fidegipsies who practise it in country lanes for the satisfaction of servant girls get arrested by the police for ‘fortune-telling.’ The gipsies of the London drawing-rooms escape scot-free.”
“Oh, you are severe!” said Lady Melthorpe, shaking her finger at him with an attempt at archness—“You are really very severe! You must not be hard on our little amusements,—you know, in this age, we are all so very much interested in the supernatural!”
El-Râmi grew paler, and a slight shudder shook his frame. The supernatural! How lightly people talked of that awful Something, that like a formless Shadow waits behind the portals of the grave!—that Something that evinced itself, suggested itself, nay, almost declared itself, in spite of his own doubts, in the momentary contact of a hand with his own, as in the case of Irene Vassilius. For in that contact he had received a faint, yet decided thrill through his nerves—a peculiar sensation which he recognised as a warning of something spiritually above himself,—and this had compelled him to speak of an “elsewhere” for her, though for himself he persisted in nourishing the doubt that an “elsewhere” existed. Roy Ainsworth, the artist, observing him closely, noted how stern and almost melancholy was the expression of his handsome dark face,—then glancing from him to his brother, was surprised at the marked difference between the two. The frank, open, beautiful features of Féraz seemed to invite confidence, and, acting on the suggestion made to him by Madame Vassilius, he spoke abruptly.
“I wish you would sit to me,” he said.
“Sit to you? For a picture, do you mean?” and Féraz looked delighted yet amazed.
“Yes. You have just the face I want. Are you in town?—can you spare the time?”
“I am always with my brother”—began Féraz hesitatingly.
El-Râmi heard him, and smiled rather sadly.
“Féraz is his own master,” he said gently, “and his time is quite at his own disposal.”
“Then come and let us talk it over,” said Ainsworth, taking Féraz by the arm. “I’ll pilot you through this crowd, and we’ll make for some quiet corner where we can sit down. Come along!”
Out of old habit Féraz glanced at his brother for permission, but El-Râmi’s head was turned away; he was talking to Lord Melthorpe. So through the brilliant throng of fashionable men and women, many of whom turned to stare at him as he passed, Féraz went, half eager, half reluctant, his large fawn-like eyes flashing an innocent wonderment on the scene around him,—a scene different from everything to which he had been accustomed. He was uncomfortably conscious that there was something false and even deadly beneath all this glitter and show,—but his senses were dazzled for the moment, though the poet-soul of him instinctively recoiled from the noise and glare and restless movement of the crowd. It was his first entry into so-called “society”;—and, though attracted and interested, he was also somewhat startled and abashed—for he felt instinctively that he was thrown upon his own resources,—that, for the present at any rate, his brother’s will no longer influenced him, and with the sudden sense of liberty came the sudden sense of fear.
Towardsmidnight the expected Royal Personage came and went; fatigued but always amiable, he shed the sunshine of his stereotyped smile on Lady Melthorpe’s “crush”—shook hands with his host and hostess, nodded blandly to a few stray acquaintances, and went through all the dreary duties of social boredom heroically, though he was pining for his bed more wearily than any work-worn digger of the soil. He made his way out more quickly than he came in, and with his departure a great many of the more “snobbish” among the fashionable set disappeared also, leaving the rooms freer and cooler for their absence. People talked less loudly and assertively,—little groups began to gather in corners and exchange friendly chit-chat,—men who had been standing all the evening found space to sit down beside their favoured fair ones, and indulge themselves in talking a little pleasant nonsense,—even the hostess herself was at last permitted to occupy an arm-chair and take a few moments’ rest. Some of the guests had wandered into the music-saloon, a quaintly-decorated oak-panelled apartment which opened out from the largest drawing-room. A string band had played there till Royalty had come and gone, but now “sweet harmony” no longer “wagged her silver tongue,” for the musicians were at supper. The grand piano was open, and Madame Vassilius stood near it, idly touching the ivory keys now and then with her small white, sensitive-looking fingers. Close beside her, comfortably ensconced in a round deep chair, sat a very stout old lady with a curiously large hairy face and a beaming expression of eye, who appeared to have got into her pink silk gown by some cruelly unnatural means, so tightly was she laced, and so much did she seem in danger of bursting. She perspired profusely and smiled perpetually, and frequently stroked the end of her very pronounced moustache with quite a mannish air. This was the individual for whom Lady Melthorpe had been searching,—the Baroness von Denkwald, noted for her skill in palmistry.
“Ach! it is warm!” she said in her strong German accent, giving an observant and approving glance at Irene’s white-draped form.—“You are ze one womans zat is goot to look at. A peach mit ice-cream,—dot is yourself.”
Irene smiled pensively, but made no answer.
The Baroness looked at her again, and fanned herself rapidly.
“It is sometings bad mit you?” she asked at last.—“You look sorrowful? Zat Eastern mans—he say tings disagreeable? You should pelieveme,—I have told you of your hand—ach! what a fortune!—splendid!—fame,—money, title,—a grand marriage——”
Irene lifted her little hand from the keyboard of the piano, and looked curiously at the lines in her pretty palm.
“Dear Baroness, there must be some mistake,” she said slowly.—“I was a lonely child,—and some people say that as you begin, so will you end. I shall never marry—I am a lonely woman, and it will always be so.”
“Always, always—not at all!” and the Baroness shook her large head obstinately. “You will marry; and Gott in Himmel save you from a husband such as mine! He is dead—oh yes—a goot ting;—he is petter off—and so am I. Moch petter!”
And she laughed, the rise and fall of her ample neck causing quite a cracking sound in the silk of her bodice.
Madame Vassilius smiled again,—and then again grew serious. She was thinking of the “elsewhere” that El-Râmi had spoken of,—she had noticed that all he said had seemed to be uttered involuntarily,—and that he had hesitated strangely before using the word “elsewhere.” She longed to ask him one or two more questions,—and scarcely had the wish formed itself in her mind, than she saw him advancing from the drawing-room, in company with Lord Melthorpe, Sir Frederick Vaughan, and the pretty frivolous Idina Chester, who, regardless of all that poets write concerning the unadorned simplicity of youth, had decked herself, American fashion, with diamonds enough for a dowager.
“It’s too lovely!” the young lady was saying as she entered.—“I think, Mr. El-Râmi, you have made me out a most charming creature! “Unemotional, harmless, and innocently worldly”—that was it, wasn’t it? Well now, I think that’s splendid! I had an idea you were going to find out something horrid about me;—I’m so glad I’m harmless! You’re sure I’m harmless?”
“Quite sure!” said El-Râmi with a slight smile. “And there you possess a great superiority over most women.”
And he stepped forward in obedience to Lady Melthorpe’s signal, to be introduced to the “dear” Baroness, whose shrewd little eyes dwelt upon him curiously.
“Do you believe in palmistry?” she asked him, after the ordinary greetings were exchanged.
“I’m afraid not,” he answered politely—“though I am acquainted with the rules of the art as practised in the East, and I know that many odd coincidences do occur. But,—as an example—takemyhand—I am sure you can make nothing of it.”
He held out his open palm for her inspection—she bent over it, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. There were none of the usual innumerable little criss-cross lines upon it—nothing, in fact, but two deep dents from left to right, and one well-marked line running from the wrist to the centre.
“It is unnatural!” cried the Baroness in amazement.—“It is a malformation! There is no hand like it!”
“I believe not,” answered El-Râmi composedly.—“As I told you, you can learn nothing from it—and yet my life has not been without its adventures. This hand of mine is my excuse for not accepting palmistry as an absolutely proved science.”
“Must everything be ‘proved’ for you?” asked Irene Vassilius suddenly.
“Assuredly, Madame!”
“Then have you ‘proved’ the elsewhere of which you spoke to me?”
El-Râmi flushed a little,—then paled again.
“Madame, the message of your inner spirit, as conveyed first through the electric medium of your brain, and then through the magnetism of your touch, told me of an ‘elsewhere.’ I may not personally or positively know of any ‘elsewhere,’ than this present state of being,—but your interior Self expects an ‘elsewhere,’—apparently knows of it better than I do, and conveys that impression and knowledge to me, apart from any consideration as to whether I may be fitted to understand or receive it.”
These words were heard with evident astonishment by the little group of people who stood by, listening.
“Dear me! Howve—rycurious!” murmured Lady Melthorpe.—“And we have always looked upon dear Madame Vassilius as quite a free-thinker,”—here she smiled apologetically, as Irene lifted her serious eyes and looked at her steadily—“I mean, as regards the next world and all those interesting subjects. In some of her books, for instance, she is terribly severe on the clergy.”
“Not more so than many of them deserve, I am sure,” said El-Râmi with sudden heat and asperity.—“It was not Christ’s intention, I believe, that the preachers of His Gospel should drink and hunt, and make love to their neighbours’ wivesad libitum, which is what a great many of them do. The lives of the clergy nowadays offer very few worthy examples to the laity.”
Lady Melthorpe coughed delicately and warningly. She did not like plain speaking,—she had a “pet clergyman” of her own,—moreover, she had been bred up in the provinces among “county” folk, some of whom still believe that at one period of the world’s history “God” was always wanting the blood of bulls and goats to smell “as a sweet savour in His nostrils.” She herself preferred to believe in the possibility of the Deity’s having “nostrils,” rather than take the trouble to consider the effect of His majestic Thought as evinced in the supremely perfect order of the planets and solar systems.
El-Râmi, however, went on regardlessly.
“Free-thinkers,” he said, “are for the most part truth-seekers. If everybody gave way to the foolish credulity attained to by the believers in the ‘Mahatmas’ for instance, what an idiotic condition the world would be in! We want free-thinkers,—as many as we can get,—to help us to distinguish between the false and the true. We want to separate the Actual from the Seeming in our lives,—and there is so much Seeming and so little Actual that the process is difficult.”
“Why, dat is nonsense!” said the Baroness von Denkwald. “Mit a Fact, zere is no mistake—you prove him. See!” and she took up a silver penholder from the table near her.—“Here is a pen,—mit ink it is used to write—zere is what you call ze Actual.”
El-Râmi smiled.
“Believe me, my dear Madame, it is only a pen so long as you elect to view it in that light. Allow me!”—and he took it from her hand, fixing his eyes upon her the while. “Will you place the tips of your fingers—the fingers of the left hand—yes—so! on my wrist? Thank you!”—this, as she obeyed with a rather vague smile on her big fat face.—“Now you will let me have the satisfaction of offering you this spray of lilies—the first of the season,” and he gravely extended the silver penholder.—“Is not the odour delicious?”
“Ach! it is heavenly!” and the Baroness smelt at the penholder with an inimitable expression of delight. Everybody began to laugh—El-Râmi silenced them by a look.
“Madame you are under some delusion,” he said quietly.—“You have no lilies in your hand, only a penholder.”
She laughed.
“You are very funny!” she said—“but I shall not be deceived. I shall wear my lilies.”
And she endeavoured to fasten the penholder in the front of her bodice,—when suddenly El-Râmi drew his hand away from hers. A startled expression passed over her face, but in a minute or two she recovered her equanimity and twirled the penholder placidly between her fingers.
“Zere is what you call ze Actual,” she said, taking up the conversation where it had previously been interrupted.—“A penholder is always a penholder—you can make nothing more of it.”
But here she was surrounded by the excited onlookers—a flood of explanations poured upon her, as to how she had taken that same penholder for a spray of lilies, and so forth, till the old lady grew quite hot and angry.
“I shall not pelieve you!” she said indignantly.—“It is impossible. You haf a joke—but I do not see it. Irene”—and she looked appealingly to Madame Vassilius, who had witnessed the whole scene—“it is not true, is it?”
“Yes, dear Baroness, it is true,” said Irene soothingly.—“But it is a nothing after all. Your eyes were deceived for the moment—and Mr. El-Râmi has shown us very cleverly, by scientific exposition, how the human sight can be deluded—he conveyed an impression of lilies to your brain, and you saw lilies accordingly. I quite understand,—it is only through the brain that we receive any sense of sight. The thing is easy of comprehension, though it seems wonderful.”
“It is devilry!” said the Baroness solemnly, getting up and shaking out her voluminous pink train with a wrathful gesture.
“No, Madame,” said El-Râmi earnestly, with a glance at her which somehow had the effect of quieting her ruffled feelings. “It is merely science. Science was looked upon as ‘devilry’ in ancient times,—but we in our generation are more liberal-minded.”
“But what shall it lead to, all zis science?” demanded the Baroness, still with some irritation.—“I see not any use in it. If one deceive ze eye so quickly, it is only to make peoples angry to find demselves such fools!”
“Ah, my dear lady, if we could all know to what extent exactly we could be fooled,—not only as regards our sight, but our other senses and passions, we should be wiser and more capable of self-government than we are. Every step that helps us to the attainment of such knowledge is worth the taking.”
“And you have taken so many of those steps,” said Irene Vassilius, “that I suppose it would be difficult to deceiveyou?”
“I am only human, Madame,” returned El-Râmi, with a faint touch of bitterness in his tone, “and therefore I am capable of being led astray by my own emotions as others are.”
“Are we not getting too analytical?” asked Lord Melthorpe cheerily. “Here is Miss Chester wanting to know where your brother Féraz is. She only caught a glimpse of him in the distance,—and she would like to make his closer acquaintance.”
“He went with Mr. Ainsworth,” began El-Râmi.
“Yes—I saw them together in the conservatory,” said Lady Melthorpe. “They were deep in conversation—but it is time they gave us a little of their company—I’ll go and fetch them here.”
She went, but almost immediately returned, followed by the two individuals in question. Féraz looked a little flushed and excited,—Roy Ainsworth calm and nonchalant as usual.
“I’ve asked your brother to come and sit to me to-morrow,” the latter said, addressing himself at once to El-Râmi. “He is quite willing to oblige me,—and I presume you have no objection?”
“Not the least in the world!” responded El-Râmi with apparent readiness, though the keen observer might have detected a slight ring of satirical coldness in his tone.
“He is a curious fellow,” continued Roy, looking at Féraz where he stood, going through the formality of an introduction to Miss Chester, whose bold bright eyes rested upon him in frank and undisguised admiration. “He seems to know nothing of life.”
“What do you call ‘life’?” demanded El-Râmi, with harsh abruptness.
“Why, life as we men live it, of course,” answered Roy, complacently.
“‘Life, as we men live it!’” echoed El-Râmi. “By Heaven, there is nothing viler under the sun than life lived so! The very beasts have a more decent and self-respecting mode of behaviour,—and the everyday existence of an ordinary ‘man about town’ is low and contemptible as compared with that of an honest-hearted dog!”
Ainsworth lifted his languid eyes with a stare of amazement;—Irene Vassilius smiled.
“I agree with you!” she said softly.
“Oh, of course!” murmured Roy sarcastically—“Madame Vassilius agrees with everything that points to, or suggests, the utter worthlessness of Man!”
Her eyes flashed.
“Believe me,” she said, with some passion, “I would give worlds to be able to honour and revere men,—and there are some whom I sincerely respect and admire,—but I frankly admit that the majority of them awaken nothing in me but the sentiment of contempt. I regret it, but I cannot help it.”
“You want men to be gods,” said Ainsworth, regarding her with an indulgent smile; “and when they can’t succeed, poor wretches, you are hard on them. You are a born goddess, and to you it comes quite naturally to occupy a throne on Mount Olympus, and gaze with placid indifference on all below,—but to others the process is difficult. For example, I am a groveller. I grovel round the base of the mountain and rather like it. A valley is warmer than a summit, always.”
A faint sea-shell pink flush crept over Irene’s cheeks, but she made no reply. She was watching Féraz, round whom a bevy of pretty women were congregated, like nineteenth-century nymphs round a new Eastern Apollo. He looked a little embarrassed, yet his very diffidence had an indefinable grace and attraction about it which was quite novel and charming to the jaded fashionable fair ones who for the moment made him their chief object of attention. They were pressing him to give them some music, and he hesitated, not out of any shyness to perform, but simply from a sense of wonder as to how such a spiritual, impersonal, and divine thing as Music could be made to assert itself in the midst of so much evident frivolity. He looked appealingly at his brother,—but El-Râmi regarded him not. He understood this mute avoidance of his eyes,—he was thrown upon himself to do exactly as he chose,—and his sense of pride stimulated him to action. Breaking from the ring of his fair admirers, he advanced towards the piano.
“I will play a simple prelude,” he said, “and, if you like it, you shall hear more.”
There was an immediate silence. Irene Vassilius moved a little apart and sat on a low divan, her hands clasped idly in her lap;—near her stood Lord Melthorpe, Roy Ainsworth, and El-Râmi;—Sir Frederick Vaughan and hisfiancée, Idina Chester, occupied what is known as a “flirtation chair” together; several guests flocked in from the drawing-rooms, so that thesalonwas comparatively well filled. Féraz poised his delicate and supple hands on the keyboard,—and then—why, what then? Nothing!—only music!—music divinely pure and sweet as a lark’s song,—music that spoke of things as yet undeclared in mortal language,—of the mystery of an angel’s tears—of the joy of a rose in bloom,—of the midsummer dreams of a lily enfolded within its green leaf-pavilion,—of the love-messages carried by silver beams from bridegroom-stars to bride-satellites,—of a hundred delicate and wordless marvels the music talked eloquently in rounded and mystic tone. And gradually, but invincibly, upon all those who listened, there fell the dreamy nameless spell of perfect harmony,—they did not understand, they could not grasp the far-off heavenly meanings which the sounds conveyed, but they knew and felt such music was not earthly. The quest of gold, or thirst of fame, had nothing to do with such composition—it was above and beyond all that. When the delicious melody ceased, it seemed to leave an emptiness in the air,—an aching regret in the minds of the audience; it had fallen like dew on arid soil, and there were tears in many eyes, and passionate emotions stirring many hearts, as Féraz pressed his finger-tips with a velvet-like softness on the closing chord. Then came a burst of excited applause which rather startled him from his dreams. He looked round with a faint smile of wonderment, and this time chanced to meet his brother’s gaze earnestly fixed upon him. Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and, playing a few soft notes by way of introduction, he said aloud, almost as though he were talking to himself—
“There are in the world’s history a few old legends and stories, which, whether they are related in prose or rhyme, seem to set themselves involuntarily to music. I will tell you one now, if you care to hear it,—the Story of the Priest Philemon.”
There was a murmur of delight and expectation, followed by profound silence as before.
Féraz lifted his eyes,—bright stag-like eyes, now flashing with warmth and inspiration,—and, pressing the piano pedals, he played a few slow solemn chords like the opening bars of a church chant; then, in a soft, rich, perfectly modulated voice, he began.
“Long, long ago, in a far-away province of the Eastern world, there was once a priest named Philemon. Early and late he toiled to acquire wisdom—early and late he prayed and meditated on things divine and unattainable. To the Great Unknown his aspirations turned; with all the ardour of his soul he sought to penetrate behind the mystic veil of the supreme centre of creation; and the joys and sorrows, hopes and labours of mortal existence seemed to him but worthless and contemptible trifles when compared with the eternal marvels of the incomprehensible Hereafter, on which, in solitude, he loved to dream and ponder.”
Here Féraz paused,—and, touching the keys of the piano with a caressing lightness, played a soft minor melody, which, like a silver thread of sound, accompanied his next words.
“And so, by gradual and almost imperceptible degrees, the wise priest Philemon forgot the world;—forgot men, and women, and little children,—forgot the blueness of the skies, the verdure of the fields,—forgot the grace of daisies growing in the grass,—forgot the music of sweet birds singing in the boughs,—forgot indeed everything, except—himself!—and his prayers, and his wisdom, and his burning desire to approach more closely every hour to that wondrous goal of the Divine from whence all life doth come, and to which all life must, in due time, return.”
Here the musical accompaniment changed to a plaintive tenderness.
“But, by and by, news of the wise priest Philemon began to spread in the town near where he had his habitation,—and people spoke of his fastings and his watchings with awe and wonder, with hope and fear,—until at last there came a day when a great crowd of the sick and sorrowful and oppressed surrounded his abode, and called upon him to pray for them, and give them comfort.
“‘Bestow uponussome of the Divine consolation!’ they cried, kneeling in the dust and weeping as they spoke—‘for we are weary and worn with labour,—we suffer with harsh wounds of the heart and spirit,—many of us have lost all that makes life dear. Pity us, O thou wise servant of the Supreme—and tell us out of thy stores of heavenly wisdom whether we shall ever regain the loves that we have lost!’
“Then the priest Philemon rose up in haste and wrath, and going out before them said—
“‘Depart from me, ye accursed crew of wicked worldlings! Why have ye sought me out, and what have I to do with your petty miseries? Lo, ye have brought the evils of which ye complain upon yourselves, and justice demands that ye should suffer. Ask not from me one word of pity—seek not from me any sympathy for sin. I have severed myself from ye all, to escape pollution,—my life belongs to God, not to Humanity!’
“And the people hearing him were wroth, and went their way homewards, sore at heart, and all uncomforted. And Philemon the priest, fearing lest they might seek him out again, departed from that place for ever, and made for himself a hut in the deep thickness of the forest where never a human foot was found to wander save his own. Here in the silence and deep solitude he resolved to work and pray, keeping his heart and spirit sanctified from every soiling touch of nature that could separate his thoughts from the Divine.”
Again the music changed, this time to a dulcet rippling passage of notes like the flowing of a mountain stream,—and Féraz continued,—
“One morning, as, lost in a rapture of holy meditation, he prayed his daily prayer, a small bird perched upon his window-sill, and began to sing. Not a loud song, but a sweet song—full of the utmost tenderness and playful warbling,—a song born out of the leaves and grasses and gentle winds of heaven,—as delicate a tune as ever small bird sang. The priest Philemon listened, and his mind wandered. The bird’s singing was sweet; oh, so sweet, that it recalled to him many things he had imagined long ago forgotten,—almost he heard his mother’s voice again,—and the blithe and gracious days of his early youth suggested themselves to his memory like the lovely fragments of a poem once familiar, but now scarce remembered. Presently the bird flew away, and the priest Philemon awoke as from a dream,—his prayer had been interrupted; his thoughts had been drawn down to earth from heaven, all through the twittering of a foolish feathered thing not worth a farthing! Angry with himself, he spent the day in penitence,—and on the following morning betook himself to his devotions with more than his usual ardour. Stretched on his prayer-mat he lay entranced; when suddenly a low sweet trill of sound broke gently through the silence,—the innocent twittering voice of the little bird once more aroused him,—first to a sense of wonder, then of wrath. Starting up impatiently he looked about him, and saw the bird quite close, within his reach,—it had flown inside his hut, and now hopped lightly over the floor towards him, its bright eyes full of fearless confidence, its pretty wings still quivering with the fervour of its song. Then the priest Philemon seized a heavy oaken staff, and slew it where it stood with one remorseless blow, and flung the little heap of ruffled feathers out into the woodland, saying fiercely—
“‘Thou, at least, shalt never more disturb my prayers!’
“And, even as he thus spoke, a great light shone forth suddenly, more dazzling than the brightness of the day, and lo! an Angel stood within the hut, just where the dead bird’s blood had stained the floor. And the priest Philemon fell upon his face and trembled greatly, for the Vision was more glorious than the grandest of his dreams. And a Voice called aloud, saying—
“‘Philemon, why hast thou slain My messenger?’
“And Philemon looked up in fear and wonderment, answering—
“‘Dread Lord, what messenger? I have slain nothing but a bird.’
“And the voice spake again, saying—
“‘O thou remorseless priest!—Knowest thou not that every bird in the forest is Mine,—every leaf on the trees is Mine,—every blade of grass and every flower is Mine, and is a part of Me! The song of that slain bird was sweeter than thy many prayers;—and when thou didst listen to its voice thou wert nearer Heaven than thou hast ever been! Thou hast rebelled against My law;—in rejecting Love, thou hast rejected Me,—and when thou didst turn the poor and needy from thy doors, refusing them all comfort, even so did I turn My Face from thee and refuse thy petitions. Wherefore hear now thy punishment. For the space of a thousand years thou shalt live within this forest;—no human eye shall ever find thee,—no human foot shall ever track thee—no human voice shall ever sound upon thy ears. No companions shalt thou have but birds and beasts and flowers,—from these shalt thou learn wisdom, and through thy love of these alone shalt thou make thy peace with Heaven! Pray no more,—fast no more,—for such things count but little in the eternal reckonings,—butlove!—and learn to make thyself beloved, even by the least and lowest, and by this shalt thou penetrate at last the mystery of the Divine!’
“The voice ceased—the glory vanished, and when the priest Philemon raised his eyes he was alone.”
Here, altering by a few delicate modulations the dreamy character of the music he had been improvising, Féraz reverted again to the quaint, simple, and solemn chords with which he had opened the recitation.
“Humbled in spirit, stricken at heart, conscious of the justice of his doom, yet working as one not without hope, Philemon began his heaven-appointed task. And to this day travellers’ legends tell of a vast impenetrable solitude, a forest of giant trees, where never a human step has trod, but where, it is said, strange colonies of birds and beasts do congregate,—where rare and marvellous plants and flowers flourish in their fairest hues,—where golden bees and dazzling butterflies gather by thousands,—where all the songsters of the air make the woods musical,—where birds of passage, outward or homeward bound, rest on their way, sure of a pleasant haven,—and where all the beautiful, wild, and timid inhabitants of field, forest, and mountain are at peace together, mutually content in an Eden of their own. There is a guardian of the place,—so say the country people,—a Spirit, thin and white, and silver-haired, who understands the language of the birds, and knows the secrets of the flowers, and in whom all the creatures of the woods confide—a mystic being whose strange life has lasted nearly a thousand years. Generations have passed—cities and empires have crumbled to decay,—and none remember him who was once called Philemon,—the ‘wise’ priest, grown wise indeed at last, with the only wisdom God ever sanctifies—the Wisdom of Love.”
With a soft impressive chord the music ceased,—the story was ended,—and Féraz rose from the piano to be surrounded at once by a crowd of admirers, all vying with each other in flattering expressions of applause and delight; but, though he received these compliments with unaffected and courteous grace enough, his eyes perpetually wandered to his brother’s face,—that dark, absorbed beloved face,—yes, beloved!—for, rebel as he might against El-Râmi’s inflexible will and despotic power, Féraz knew he could never wrench from out his heart the deep affection and reverence for him which were the natural result of years of tender and sympathetic intercourse. If his brother had commanded him, he had also loved him,—there could be no doubt of that. Was he displeased or unhappy now, that he looked so sad and absorbed in gloomy and perplexed thought? A strange pained emotion stirred Féraz’s sensitive soul,—some intangible vague sense of separation seemed to have arisen between himself and El-Râmi, and he grew impatient with this brilliant assembly of well-dressed chattering folk, whose presence prevented him from giving vent to the full expression of his feelings. Lady Melthorpe talked to him in dulcet languid tones, fanning herself the while, and telling him sweetly what a “wonderful touch” he had,—what an “exquisite speaking voice”—and so forth, all which elegantly turned phrases he heard as in a dream. As soon as he could escape from her and those of her friends who were immediately round him, he made his way to El-Râmi and touched his arm.
“Let me stay beside you!” he said in a low tone in which there was a slight accent of entreaty.
El-Râmi turned, and looked at him kindly.
“Dear boy, you had better make new friends while you can, lest the old be taken from you.”
“Friends!” echoed Féraz—“Friends—here?” He gave a gesture more eloquent than speech, of doubt and disdain,—then continued, “Might we not go now? Is it not time to return home and sleep?”
El-Râmi smiled.
“Nay, are we not seeing life? Here we are among pretty women, well-bred men—the rooms are elegant,—and the conversation is as delightfully vague and nearly as noisy as the chattering of monkeys—yet, with all these advantages, you talk of sleep!”
Féraz laughed a little.
“Yes, I am tired,” he said. “It does not seem to me real, all this—there is something shadowy and unsubstantial about it. I think sleep is better.”
At that moment Irene Vassilius came up to them.
“I am just going,” she said, letting her soft serious eyes dwell on Féraz with interest, “but I feel I must thank you for your story of the ‘Priest Philemon.’ Is it your own idea?—or does such a legend exist?”
“Nothing is really new,” replied Féraz—“but, such as it is, it is my own invention.”
“Then you are a poet and musician at one and the same time,” said Irene. “It seems a natural combination of gifts, yet the two do not always go together. I hope”—she now addressed herself to El-Râmi—“I hope very much you will come and see me, though I’m afraid I’m not a very popular person. My friends are few, so I cannot promise you much entertainment. Indeed, as a rule, people do not like me.”
“Ilike you!” said Féraz, quickly and impulsively.
She smiled.
“Yes? That is good of you. And I believe you, for you are too unworldly to deal in flatteries. But I assure you that, generally speaking, literary women are never social favourites.”
“Not even when they are lovely like you?” questioned Féraz, with simple frankness.
She coloured at the evident sincerity of his admiration and the boyish openness with which it was thus expressed. Then she laughed a little.
“Loveliness is not acknowledged as at all existent in literary females,” she replied lightly, yet with a touch of scorn,—“even if they do possess any personal charm, it only serves as a peg for the malicious to hang a slander on. And, of the two sexes, men are most cruel to a woman who dares to think for herself.”
“Are you sure of that, Madame?” asked El-Râmi gently. “May not this be an error of your judgment?”
“I would that it were!” she said with intense expression—“Heaven knows how sincerely I should rejoice to be proved wrong! But I am not wrong. Men always judge women as their inferiors, not only physically (which they are) but mentally (which they are not), and always deny them an independent soul and independent emotions,—the majority of men, indeed, treat them pretty much as a sort of superior cattle;—but, nevertheless, there is a something in what the French call ‘L’Éternel Féminin.’ Women are distinctly the greatest sufferers in all suffering creation,—and I have often thought that for so much pain and so much misjudgment, endured often with such heroic silence and uncomplaining fortitude, the compensation will be sweeter and more glorious than we, half drowned in our own tears, can as yet hope for, or imagine!”
She paused—her eyes were dark with thought and full of a dreamy sorrow,—then, smiling gently, she held out her hand.
“I talk too much, you will say—women always do! Come and see me if you feel disposed—not otherwise; I will send you my card through Lady Melthorpe—meantime, good-night!”
El-Râmi took her hand, and, as he pressed it in his own, felt again that curious thrill which had before communicated itself to his nerves through the same contact.
“Surely you must be a visionary, Madame!” he said, abruptly and with a vague sense of surprise—“and you see things not at all of this world!”
Her faint roseate colour deepened, giving singular beauty to her face.
“What a tell-tale hand mine is!” she replied, withdrawing it slowly from his clasp. “Yes—you are right,—if I could not see things higher than this world, I could not endure my existence for an hour. It is because I feel the future so close about me that I have courage for, and indifference to, the present.”
With that, she left them, and both El-Râmi and Féraz followed her graceful movements with interested eyes, as she glided through the rooms in her snowy trailing robes, with the frosty flash of diamonds in her hair, till she had altogether disappeared; then the languid voice of Lady Melthorpe addressed them.
“Isn’t she an odd creature, that Irene Vassilius? So quaint and peculiar in her ideas! People detest her, you know—she is so dreadfully clever!”
“There could not be a better reason for hatred!” said El-Râmi.
“You see, she says such unpleasant things,” went on Lady Melthorpe, complacently fanning herself,—“she has such decided opinions, and will not accommodate herself to people’s ways. I must confess I always find herde tropmyself.”
“She was your guest to-night,” said Féraz suddenly, and with such a sternness in his accent as caused her ladyship to look at him in blank surprise.
“Certainly! One must always ask a celebrity.”
“If one must always ask, then one is bound always to respect,” said Féraz coldly. “In ourcode d’honneur, we never speak ill of those who have partaken of our hospitality.”
So saying, he turned on his heel and walked away with so much haughtiness of demeanour that Lady Melthorpe stood as though rooted to the spot, staring speechlessly after him. Then rousing herself, she looked at El-Râmi and shrugged her shoulders.
“Really,” she began,—“really, Mr. El-Râmi, your brother’s manner is very strange——”
“It is,” returned El-Râmi quickly—“I admit it. His behaviour is altogether unpolished—and he is quite unaccustomed to society. I told Lord Melthorpe so,—and I was against his being invited here. He says exactly what he thinks, without fear or favour, and in this regard is really a mere barbarian. Allow me to apologise for him!”
Lady Melthorpe bowed stiffly,—she saw, or fancied she saw, a faint ironical smile playing on El-Râmi’s lips beneath his dark moustache. She was much annoyed,—the idea of a “boy,” like Féraz, presuming to talk to her, a leader of London fashion, about acode d’honneur! The thing was monstrous,—absurd! And as for Irene Vassilius, why should not she be talked about?—she was a public person; a writer of books which Mrs. Grundy in her church-going moods had voted as “dangerous.” Truly Lady Melthorpe considered she had just cause to be ruffled, and she began to regret having invited these “Eastern men,” as she termed them, to her house at all. El-Râmi perceived her irritation, but he made no further remark; and, as soon as he could conveniently do so, he took his formal leave of her. Quickly threading his way through the now rapidly thinning throng, he sought out Féraz, whom he found in the hall talking to Roy Ainsworth and making final arrangements for the sitting he was to give the artist next day.
“I should like to make a study of your head too,” said Roy, with a keen glance at El-Râmi as he approached—“but I suppose you have no time.”
“No time—and still less inclination!” responded El-Râmi laughingly; “for I have sworn that no ‘counterfeit presentment’ of my bodily form shall ever exist. It would always be a false picture—it would never be me, because it would only represent the perishable, whilst I am the imperishable.”
“Singular man!” said Roy Ainsworth. “What do you mean?”
“What should I mean,” replied El-Râmi quickly, “save what all your religions and churches mean, if in truth they have any meaning. Is there not something else besides this fleshly covering? If you can paint the imagined Soul of a man looking out of his eyes, you are a great artist,—but if you could paint the Soul itself, stripped of its mortal disguise, radiant, ethereal, brilliant as lightning, beautiful as dawn, you would be greater still. And the soul is the Me,—these features of mine, this Appearance, is mere covering,—we want a Portrait, not a Costume.”
“Your argument applies to your brother as well as yourself,” said Ainsworth, wondering at the eloquent wildness of this strange El-Râmi’s language, and fascinated by it in spite of himself.
“Just so! Only the earth-garment of Féraz is charming and becoming—mine is not. It is a case of ‘my hair is white but not with years’—the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ sort of thing. Good-night!”
“Good-night!” and the artist shook hands warmly with both brothers, saying to Féraz as he parted from him—“I may expect you then to-morrow? You will not fail?”
“You may rely upon me!” and Féraz nodded lightly in adieu, and followed El-Râmi out of the house into the street, where they began to walk homeward together at a rapid rate. As they went, by some mutual involuntary instinct they lifted their eyes to the dense blue heavens, where multitudes of stars were brilliantly visible. Féraz drew a long deep breath.
“There,” he said, “is the Infinite and Real,—what we have seen of life to-night is finite and unreal.”
El-Râmi made no reply.
“Do you not think so?” persisted Féraz earnestly.
“I cannot say definitely what is Real and what is Unreal,” said El-Râmi slowly—“both are so near akin. Féraz, are you aware you offended Lady Melthorpe to-night?”
“Why should she be offended? I only said just what I thought.”
“Good heavens, my dear boy, if you always go about saying just what you think, you will find the world too hot to hold you. To say the least of it, you will never be fit for society.”
“I don’t want to be fit for it,” said Féraz disdainfully, “if Lady Melthorpe’s ‘at home’ is a picture of it. I want to forget it,—the most of it, I mean. I shall remember Madame Vassilius because she is sympathetic and interesting. But for the rest!—my dearest brother, I am far happier with you.”
El-Râmi took his arm gently.
“Yet you leave me to-morrow to gratify an artist’s whim!” he said. “Have you thought of that?”
“Oh, but that is nothing—only an hour or two’s sitting. He was so very anxious that I could not refuse. Does it displease you?”
“My dear Féraz, I am displeased at nothing. You complained of my authority over you once—and I have determined you shall not complain again. Consider yourself free.”
“I do not want my liberty,” said Féraz almost petulantly.
“Try it!” responded El-Râmi with a smile and half a sigh. “Liberty is sweet,—but, like other things, it brings its own responsibilities.”
They walked on till they had almost reached their own door.
“Your story of the priest Philemon was very quaint and pretty,” said El-Râmi then abruptly. “You meant it as a sort of allegory for me, did you not?”
Féraz looked wistfully at him, but hesitated to reply.
“It does not quite fit me,” went on El-Râmi gently. “I am not impervious to love—for I loveyou. Perhaps the angels will take that fact into consideration when they are settling my thousand or million years’ punishment.”
There was a touch of quiet pathos in his voice which moved Féraz greatly, and he could not trust himself to speak. When they entered their own abode, El-Râmi said the usual “Good-night” in his usual kindly manner,—but Féraz reverently stooped and kissed the hand extended to him,—the potent hand that had enriched his life with poesy and dowered it with dreams.