“How beautiful is all this visible world!How glorious in its action and itself!But we who name ourselves its sovereigns, weHalf dust, half deity, alike unfitTo sink or soar, with our mix’d essence makeA conflict of its elements, and breatheThe breath of degradation and of pride,Contending with low wants and lofty will.Till our mortality predominates,And men are,—what they name not to themselves,And trust not to each other.”
“How beautiful is all this visible world!How glorious in its action and itself!But we who name ourselves its sovereigns, weHalf dust, half deity, alike unfitTo sink or soar, with our mix’d essence makeA conflict of its elements, and breatheThe breath of degradation and of pride,Contending with low wants and lofty will.Till our mortality predominates,And men are,—what they name not to themselves,And trust not to each other.”
“How beautiful is all this visible world!
How glorious in its action and itself!
But we who name ourselves its sovereigns, we
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar, with our mix’d essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will.
Till our mortality predominates,
And men are,—what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other.”
“Now that passage is every whit as fine as anything in Shakespeare,” thought Kremlin—“and the whole secret of human trouble is in it;—it is not the world that is wrong, but we—we ‘who make a conflict of its elements.’ The question is, if we are really ‘unfit to sink or soar’ is it our fault?—and may we not ask without irreverence why we were made so incomplete? Ah, my clever friend El-Râmi Zarânos has set himself a superhuman task on the subject of this ‘Why,’ and I fancy I shall find out the riddle of Mars, and many another planet besides, before he ‘proves,’ as he is trying to do, the conscious and individual existence of the soul.”
He turned over the pages of “Manfred” thoughtfully, and then stopped, his gaze riveted on the splendid lines in which the unhappy hero of the tragedy flings his last defiance to the accusing demons—
“The mind which is immortal makes itselfRequital for its good or evil thoughts—Is its own origin of ill and end—And its own place and time—its innate sense,When stripped of this mortality, derivesNo colour from the fleeting things without,But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,Born from the knowledge of its own desert.Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt;I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—But was my own destroyer, and will beMy own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!The hand of death is on me,—but not yours!”
“The mind which is immortal makes itselfRequital for its good or evil thoughts—Is its own origin of ill and end—And its own place and time—its innate sense,When stripped of this mortality, derivesNo colour from the fleeting things without,But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,Born from the knowledge of its own desert.Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt;I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—But was my own destroyer, and will beMy own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!The hand of death is on me,—but not yours!”
“The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts—
Is its own origin of ill and end—
And its own place and time—its innate sense,
When stripped of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt;
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me,—but not yours!”
“And yet people will say that Byron was an immoral writer!” murmured Kremlin—“In spite of the tremendous lesson conveyed in those lines! There is something positively terrifying in that expression—
‘But was my own destroyer, and will beMy own hereafter.’
‘But was my own destroyer, and will beMy own hereafter.’
‘But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.’
What a black vista of possibilities——”
Here he broke off, suddenly startled by a snaky blue glare that flashed into the room like the swift sweep of a sword-blade. Springing up from the table he rubbed his dazzled eyes.
“Why—what was that?” he exclaimed.
“Lightning!” replied Karl, just entering at the moment—“and a very nasty specimen of it. ... I’d better put all the knives and steel things by.”
And he proceeded to do this, while Kremlin still stood in the centre of the room, his sight yet a little confused by the rapidity and brilliancy of that unexpected storm-flash. A long low ominous muttering of thunder, beginning far off and rolling up nearer and nearer till it boomed like a volley of cannon in unison with the roar of the sea, followed,—then came silence. No rain fell, and the wind only blew moderately enough to sway the shrubs in front of the house lightly to and fro.
“It will be a stormy night,” said Dr. Kremlin then, recovering himself and taking up his Byron—“I am sorry for the sailors! You had better see well to all the fastenings of the doors and windows.”
“Trust me!” replied Karl sententiously—“You shall not be carried out to sea against your will if I can help it—nor have I any desire to make such a voyage myself. I hope, Herr Doctor”—he added with a touch of anxiety—“you are not going to spend this evening in the tower?”
“I certainly am!” answered Kremlin, smiling—“I have work up there, and I cannot afford to be idle on account of a thunderstorm. Why do you look so scared? There is no danger.”
“I didn’t say there was”—and Karl fidgeted uneasily—“but—though I’ve never been inside it, I should think the tower was lonesome, and I should fancy there might be too close a view of the lightning to be quite pleasant.”
Kremlin looked amused, and, walking to the window, pushed back one of the curtains.
“I believe it was a false alarm,” he said, gazing at the sea—“That flash and thunder-peal were the parting notes of a storm that has taken place somewhere else. See!—the clouds are clearing.”
So in truth they were; the evening, though very dark, seemed to give promise of a calm. One or two stars twinkled faintly in a blackish-blue breadth of sky, and, perceiving these shining monitors and problems of his life’s labour, Kremlin wasted no more time in words, but abruptly left the room and ascended to his solitary studio. Karl, listening, heard the closing of the heavy door aloft and the grating of the key as it turned in the lock,—and he also heard that strange perpetual whirring noise above, which, though he had in a manner grown accustomed to it, always remained for him a perplexing mystery. Shaking his head dolefully, and with a somewhat troubled countenance, he cleared the dining-table, set the room in order, went down to his kitchen, cleaned, rubbed, and polished everything till his surroundings were as bright as it was possible for them to be, and then, pleasantly fatigued, sat down to indite a letter to his mother in the most elaborate German phraseology he could devise. He was rather proud of his “learning,” and he knew his letters home were read by nearly all the people in his native village as well as by his maternal parent, so that he was particularly careful in his efforts to impress everybody by the exceeding choiceness of his epistolary “style.” Absorbed in his task, he at first scarcely noticed the gradual rising of the wind, which, having rested for a few hours, now seemed to have awakened in redoubled strength and fury. Whistling under the kitchen door it came, with a cold and creepy chill,—it shook the windows angrily, and then, finding the door of the outside pantry open, shut it to with a tremendous bang, like an irate person worsted in an argument. Karl paused, pen in hand; and, as he did so, a dismal cry echoed round the house, the sound seeming to fall from a height and then sweep over the earth with the wind, towards the sea.
“It’s that brute of a bird!” said Karl half aloud—“Nice cheerful voice he has, to be sure!”
At that moment the kitchen was illuminated from end to end by a wide blue glare of lightning, followed, after a heavy pause, by a short loud clap of thunder. The hovering storm had at last gathered together its scattered forces, and, concentrating itself blackly above the clamorous sea, now broke forth in deadly earnest.
Kremlinmeanwhile had reached his tower in time to secure a glimpse of the clearer portion of the sky before it clouded over again. Opening the great window, he leaned out and anxiously surveyed the heavens. There was a little glitter of star-groups above his head, and immediately opposite an almost stirless heavy fleece of blackness, which he knew by its position hid from his sight the planet Mars, the brilliant world he now sought to make the chief centre of his observations. He saw that heavy clouds were slowly rolling up from the south, and he was quite prepared for a fresh outbreak of storm and rain, but he was determined to take advantage, if possible, of even a few moments of temporary calm. And with this intention he fixed his gaze watchfully on the woolly-looking dark mass of vapour that concealed the desired star from his view, having first carefully covered the steadily revolving Disc with its thick sable curtain. Never surely was there a more weird and solemn-looking place than the tower-room as it now appeared; no light in it at all save a fitful side-gleam from the whirling edge of the Disc,—all darkness and monotonous deep sound, with that patient solitary figure leaning at the sill of the wide-open window, gazing far upward at the pallid gleam of those few distant stars that truly did no more than make “darkness visible.” The aged scientist’s heart beat quickly; the weight of long years of labour and anxiety seemed to be lifted from his spirit, and it was with almost all the ardour of his young student days that he noted the gradual slow untwisting and dividing of those threads of storm-mist, that like a dark web, woven by the Fates, veiled the “red planet” whose flashing signal might prove to be the key to a thousand hitherto unexplored mysteries. It was strange that just at this particular moment of vague suspense his thoughts should go wandering in a desultory wilful fashion back to his past,—and that the history of his bygone life seemed to arrange itself, as it were, in a pattern as definite as the wavy lines on his “Light-Maps” and with just asindefinite a meaning. He, who had lived that life, was as perplexed concerning its ultimate intention as he was concerning the ultimate meanings conveyed by the light-vibrations through air. He tried to keep his ideas centred on the scientific puzzle he was attempting to unravel,—he strove to think of every small fact that bore more or less on that one central object,—he repeated to himself the A B C of his art, concerning the vibrations of light on that first natural reflector, the human eye,—how, in receiving the impression of the colour red, for instance, the nerves of the eye are set quiveringfour hundred and eighty-two millions of millions of times; or, of the colour violet, seven hundred and seven millions of millions of timesper second. How could he hope to catch the rapid flash of the “Third Ray” under these tremendous conditions? Would it not vanish from the very face of the Disc before he had time to track its circuit? But, though he strove to busy his brain with conjectures and calculations, he was forced, in spite of himself, to go on groping into the Past; that wonderful Past when he had been really young—young with a youth not born of El-Râmi’s secret concoctions,—but youth as it is received fresh and perfect from the hand of Divinity—the talisman which makes all the world an Eden of roses without thorns. He saw himself as he used to be, a slim student, fair-haired and blue-eyed, absorbed in science, trying strange experiments, testing new chemical combinations, ferreting out the curious mysteries of atmospheric phenomena, and then being gradually led to consider the vast amount ofapparently unnecessaryLightper second, that pours upon us from every radiating object in the firmament, bearing in mind the fact that our Earth itself radiates through Space, even though its glimmer be no more than that of a spark amid many huge fires. He remembered how he had pored over the strange but incontestable fact that two rays of light starting from the same point and travelling in the same direction frequently combine to produce darkness, by that principle which is known in the science of optics as theinterferenceof the rays of light,—and how, in the midst of all this, his work had been suddenly interrupted and put a stop to by a power the stars in their courses cannot gainsay—Love. Yes—he had loved and been beloved,—this poor, gentle, dreamy man;—one winter in Russia—one winter when the snows lay deep on the wild steppes and the wolves were howling for hunger in the gloom of the forests,—he had dreamed his dream, and wakened from it—broken-hearted. She whom he loved, a beautiful girl connected with the Russian nobility, was associated, though he knew it not, with a secret society of Nihilists, and was all at once arrested with several others and accused of being party to a plot for the assassination of the Tsar. Found guilty, she was sentenced to exile in Siberia, but before the mandate could be carried out she died by her own hand, poisoned in her prison cell. Kremlin, though not “suspect,” went almost mad with grief, and fled from Russia never to set his foot on its accursëd soil again. People said that the excess of his sorrow, rage and despair had affected his brain, which was possible, as his manner and mode of living, and the peculiar grooves of study into which he fell, were undoubtedly strange and eccentric—and yet—tenderness for his dead love, self-murdered in her youth and beauty, kept him sensitively alive to human needs and human suffering,—there was no scorn or bitterness in his nature, and his faith in the unseen God was as great as El-Râmi’s doubt. But, left as he was all alone in the world, he plunged into the obscure depths of science with greater zest than ever, striving to forget the dire agony of that brief love-drama, the fatal end of which had nearly closed his own career in madness and death. And so the years drifted on and on in work that every day grew more abstruse and perplexing, till he had suddenly, as it were, found himself old,—too old, as he told himself with nervous trembling, ever to complete what he had begun. Then he had sent for El-Râmi; El-Râmi whom he had met and wondered at, during his travels in the East years ago ... and El-Râmi, at his desire, by strange yet potent skill, had actually turned back time in its too rapid flight—and a new lease of life was vouchsafed to him;—he had leisure,—long, peaceful leisure in which to carry out his problems to perfection, if to carry them out were at all possible. For had not El-Râmi said—“You cannot die, except by violence”?
And thus, like the “star-patterns,” all the fragments of his personal history came into his mind to-night as he waited at his tower-window, watching the black pavilion under which the world of Mars swung round in its fiery orbit.
“Why do I think of all these bygone things just now?” he asked himself wonderingly—“I who so seldom waste my time in looking back, my work being all for the Future?”
As he murmured the words half aloud, a rift showed itself in the cloud he was observing,—a rift which widened gradually and broke up the dark mass by swift and ever swifter degrees. Fold after fold of mist dissolved and dispersed itself along the sky, swept by the wings of the newly-arisen wind, and Mars, angrily crimson and stormily brilliant, flashed forth a lurid fire ... In less time than imagination can depict, Kremlin had noiselessly flung the black curtain back from his disc, ... and with his eyes riveted upon its gleaming pearly surface he waited ... scarcely breathing, ... every nerve in his body seeming to contract and grow rigid with expectation and something like dread. A pale light glistened on the huge disc ... it was gone! ... another flash, ... and this remained trembling in wavy lines and small revolving specks—now ... now ... the Third!—and Kremlin craned his head forward eagerly ... it came!—like a drop of human blood it fell, and raced more rapidly than quicksilver round and round the polished surface of the disc, paling in tint among the other innumerable silvery lines ... flashed again redly ... and ... disappeared! A cry of irrepressible disappointment broke from Kremlin’s lips.
“Impossible! ... my God! ... impossible!”
Ay!—impossible surely to track such velocity of motion—impossible to fix the spot where first its dazzling blood-like hue fell, and where it at last vanished. And yet Kremlin waited on in feverish expectancy,—his lips apart, his breath coming and going in quick uneasy gasps, his straining eyes fixed on that terrible, inscrutable creation of his own skill, that fearful Mirror of the heavens which reflected so much and betrayed so little! ... Heedless of the muttering roar of the wind which now suddenly assailed the tower, he stood, fascinated by the dazzling play of light that illumined the disc more brilliantly than usual. A dismal scream,—the cry of the cormorant perched on the roof above him, echoed faintly in his ears, but he scarcely heard it, so absorbed was he in his monstrous Enigma; till—all at once, a blue shaft of lightning glared in at the window, its brief reflection transforming the disc for a second to an almost overwhelming splendour of glittering colour. The strong blaze dazzled Kremlin’s eyes,—and as the answering thunder rattled through the sky he reluctantly moved from his position and went towards the window to shut it against the threatening storm. But when he reached it he saw that the planet Mars was yet distinctly visible; the lightning and thunder came from that huge bank of clouds in the south he had before noticed,—clouds which were flying rapidly up, but had not yet entirely obscured the heavens. In eager and trembling haste he hurried back to the disc,—it seemed alive with light, and glistened from point to point like a huge jewel as it whirled and hummed its strange monotonous music,—and, shading his eyes, he remained close beside it, determined to watch it still, hoping against hope that another red flash like the one he had lately seen might crimson the quivering mass of silvery intersecting lines which he knew were not so much the light-vibrations of stars now as reflexes of the electricity pent up in the tempestuous atmosphere.
“Patience ... patience!” he murmured aloud—“A moment more, and perhaps I shall see, ... I shall know ... I shall find what I have sought. ...”
The last words were yet trembling on his lips when a fearful forkëd tongue of red flame leaped from the clouds, descending obliquely like a colossal sword, ... it smote the tower, splitting its arched roof and rending its walls asunder,—and with the frightful boom and bellow of thunder that followed, echoing over land and sea for miles and miles there came another sound, ... a clanging jangle of chains and wires and ponderous metals, ... the mighty mass of the glittering Star-Dial swirled round unsteadily once ... twice ... quivered ... stopped ... and then ... slipping from its wondrous pendulum, hurled itself forward like a monster shield and fell! ... fell with an appalling crash and thud, bringing the roof down upon itself in a blinding shower of stones and dust and mortar. ... And then ... why, then nothing! Nothing but dense blackness, muttering thunder, and the roaring of the wind.
Outside, frantic with fear, Karl shook and battered at the firmly-locked and bolted door of the tower. When that forked flash of lightning had struck the house, it had stretched him senseless in his kitchen,—he had, however, recovered after a few minutes’ unconsciousness, dazed and stunned, but otherwise unhurt, and, becoming gradually alive to the immediate dangers of the situation, he had, notwithstanding the fury of the gale and the deafening peals of thunder, rushed out of doors instinctively to look at the tower. One glance showed him what had happened,—it was split asunder, and showed dimly against the stormy night like a yawning ruin round which in time the ivy might twist and cling. Breathless and mad with terror, he had rushed back to the house and up the stairs, and now stood impatiently clamouring outside the impenetrable portal whose firm interior fastenings resisted all his efforts. He called, he knocked, he kicked,—and then, exhausted with the vain attempt, stopped to listen. ... Nothing! ... not a sound! He made a hollow of his hands and put his mouth to the keyhole.
“Herr Doctor! ... Herr Doctor!”
No answer,—except the stormy whistle of the blast.
“No help for it!” he thought desperately, tears of excitement and alarm gathering in his eyes—“I must call for assistance,—rouse the neighbours and break open the door by force.”
He ran downstairs and out of the house bareheaded, to be met by a sudden sweep of rain which fell in a straight unpremeditated way from the clouds in stinging torrents. Heedless of wind and wet he sped along, making direct for some fishermen’s cottages whose inhabitants he knew and whom in a manner he was friendly with, and, having roused them up by shouts and cries, explained to them as briefly as possible what had happened. As soon as they understood the situation four stout fellows got ready to accompany him, and taking pickaxes, crowbars, boathooks, and any other such implements as were handy, they ran almost as quickly as Karl himself to the scene of the catastrophe. Their excitement was to the full as great as his, till they reached the top of the staircase and stood outside the mysterious door—there they hung back a moment hesitatingly.
“Call him again”—one whispered to Karl. “Mebbe he’s in there safe and sound and did not hear ye at fust.”
To satisfy the man’s scruples Karl obeyed, and called and called, and knocked and knocked again and yet again,—with the same result,—no answer, save the derisive yell of the gale.
“He be dead an’ gone for sure”—said a second man, with a slight pallor coming over his sea-tanned face—“Well ... well! ... if so be as wemustbreak down th’ door——”
“Here, give me one of those things”—cried Karl impatiently, and snatching a crowbar he began dealing heavy blows at the massive nail-studded oaken barrier. Seeing him so much in earnest, his companions lost the touch of superstitious dread that had made them hesitate, and also set themselves to work with a will, and in a few minutes—minutes which to the anxious Karl seemed ages,—the door was battered in, ... and they all rushed forward, ... but the fierce wind, tearing wildly around them, caught the flame of the lamp they carried and extinguished it, so that they were left in total darkness. But over their heads the split roof yawned, showing the black sky, and about their feet was a mass of fallen stones and dust and indistinguishable ruin. As quickly as possible they re-lit the lamp and, holding it aloft, looked tremblingly, and without speaking a word, at the havoc and confusion around them. At first little could be seen but heaped-up stones and bricks and mortar, but Karl’s quick eyes roving eagerly about caught sight suddenly of something black under a heap of débris,—and quickly bending down over it he began with his hands to clear away the rubbish,—the other men, seeing what he was trying to do, aided him in his task, and in about twenty minutes’ time they succeeded in uncovering a black mass, huge and inanimate.
“What is it?” whispered one of the men—“It’s ... it’s not him?”
Karl said nothing—he felt himself turning sick with dread, ... he touched that doubtful blackness—it was a thick cloth like a great pall—it concealed ... what? Recklessly he pulled and tugged at it, getting his hands lacerated by a tangled mesh of wires and metals,—till, yielding at last to a strong jerk, it came away in weighty clinging folds, disclosing what to him seemed an enormous round stone, which, as the lamp-light flashed upon it, glistened mysteriously with a thousand curious hues. Karl grasped its edge in an effort to lift it—his fingers came in contact with something moist and warm, and, snatching them away in a sort of vague horror, he saw that they were stained with blood.
“Oh my God! my God!” he cried—“He is down there,—underneath this thing! ... help me to lift it, men!—lift it for Heaven’s sake!—lift it, quick—quick!”
But, though they all dragged at it with a will, the work was not so easy—the great Disc had fallen flat, and lay solemnly inert—and that oozing blood,—the blood of the too daring student of the stars who had designed its mystic proportions,—trickled from under it with sickening rapidity. At last, breathless and weary, they were about to give up the task in despair, when Karl snatched from out the ruins the iron needle or pendulum on which the Disc had originally swung, and, all unknowing what it was, thrust it cautiously under the body of the great stone to aid in getting a firmer hold of it, ... to his amazement and terror the huge round mass caught and clung to it, like warm sealing-wax to a piece of paper, and in an instant seemed to have magically dispensed with all its weight, for as, with his unassisted strength, he lifted the pendulum, the Disc lifted itself lightly and easily with it! A cry of fear and wonder broke from all the men,—Karl himself trembled in every limb, and big drops of cold sweat broke out on his forehead at what he deemed the devilish horror of this miracle. But as he, with no more difficulty than he would have experienced in heaving up a moderate-sized log of wood, raised the Disc and flung it back and away from him shudderingly, pendulum and all, his eyes fell onwhathad lain beneath it, ... a crushed pulp of human flesh and streaming blood—and reverend silver hairs ... and with a groan that seemed to rend his very heart Karl gave one upward sick stare at the reeling sky, and fainted, ... as unconscious for the time being as that indistinguishable mangled mass of perished mortality that once had been his master.
Gently and with compassionate kindness, the rough fishers who stood by lifted him up and bore him out of the tower and down the stairs,—and, after a whispered consultation, carried him away from the house altogether to one of their own cottages, where they put him under the care of one of their own women. None of them could sleep any more that night; they stood in a group close by their humble habitations, watching the progress of the storm, and ever and anon casting awe-stricken glances at the shattered tower.
“The devil was in it”—said one of the men at last, as he lit his pipe and endeavoured to soothe his nerves by several puffs at that smoky consoler—“or else how would it rise up like that as light as a feather at the touch of an iron pole?”
“It must ’a weighed twenty stun at least”—murmured another man meditatively.
“Whatwasit?” demanded a third—“I should ’a took it for a big grindstone if it hadn’t sparkled up so when the light fell on it.”
“Well, it may stay where it is for all I care,” said the first speaker—“I wouldn’t touch it again for a hundred pound!”
“Nor I.” “Nor I.”
They were all agreed on that point.
“Wotever he were a-doin’ on,”—said the fourth man gravely—“whether it were God’s work or the devil’s, it’s all over now. He’s done for, poor old chap! It’s an awful end—God rest his soul!”
The others lifted their caps and murmured “Amen” with simple reverence. Then they looked out at the dark wallowing trough of the sea.
“How the wind roars!” said the last speaker.
“Ay, it do roar,” replied the man who was his mate in the boat when they went fishing; “and did ye hear a cormorant scream a while ago?”
“Ay, ay! I heard it!” They were silent then, and turned in, after making inquiries concerning Karl at the cottage where they had left him. He was still unconscious.
A coupleof days later, El-Râmi was engaged in what was not a very favourite occupation with him,—he was reading the morning’s newspaper. He glanced over the cut-and-dry chronicle of “Storms and Floods”—he noted that a great deal of damage had been wrought by the gale at Ilfracombe and other places along the Devonshire coast,—but there was nothing of any specially dreadful import to attract his attention, and nothing either in politics or science of any pressing or vital interest. There were two or three reviews of books, one of these being pressed into a corner next to the advertisement of a patent pill; there were announcements of the movements of certain human units favoured with a little extra money and position than ordinary, as being “in” or “out” of town, and there was a loftily-patronising paragraph on the “Theosophical Movement,” or, as it is more frequently termed, the “Theosophical Boom.” From this, El-Râmi learned that a gentleman connected with the Press, who wrote excessively commonplace verse, and thereby had got himself and his name (through the aforesaid press connection) fairly well known, had been good enough to enunciate the following amazing platitude:—“That, as a great portion of the globe is composed of elements which cannot be seen, and as the study of the invisible may be deemed as legitimate as the study of the visible, he” (the press-connected versifier) “is inclined to admit that there are great possibilities on the lines of that study.”
“Inclined to admit it, is he!” and El-Râmi threw aside the paper and broke into a laugh of the sincerest enjoyment, “Heavens! what fools there are in this world, who call themselves wise men! This little poetaster, full of the conceit common to his imitative craft, is ‘inclined to admit’ that there are great possibilities in the study of the invisible! Excellent condescension! How the methods of life have turned topsy-turvy since the ancient days! Then the study of the Invisible was the first key to the study of the Visible,—the things which are seen being considered only as the reflexes of the things which are unseen—the Unseen being accepted as Cause, the Seen as Effect. Now we all drift the other way,—taking the Visible as Fact,—the Invisible as Fancy!”
Féraz, who was writing at a side-table, looked up at him.
“Surely you are inconsistent?” he said—“You yourself believe in nothing unless it isproved.”
“But then, my dear fellow, Icanprove the Invisible and follow the grades of it, and the modes by which it makes itself the Visible,—to a certain extent—but only to a certain extent. Beyond the provable limit I do not go. You, on the contrary, aided by the wings of imagination, outsoar that limit, and profess to find angels, star-kingdoms, and God Himself. I cannot go so far as this. But, unlike our blown-out frog of a versifier here, who would fain persuade mankind he is a bull, I am not only ‘inclined’ to admit—Idoadmit that there are ‘great possibilities’—only I must test them all before I can accept them as facts made clear to my comprehension.”
“Still, you believe in the Invisible?”
“Naturally. I believe in the millions of suns in the Milky Way, though they can scarcely be called ‘visible.’ I should be a fool if I did not believe in the Invisible, under the present conditions of the Universe. But I cannot be tricked by ‘shams’ of the Invisible. The Theosophical business is a piece of vulgar imposture, in which the professors themselves are willing to delude their own imaginations, as well as the imaginations of others—they are the most wretched imitators that ever were of the old Eastern sorcerers,—the fellows who taught Moses and Aaron how to frighten their ignorant cattle-like herds of followers. None of the modern ‘mediums,’ as they are called, have the skill over atmospheric phenomena, metals, and light-reflexes that Apollonius of Tyana had, or Alexander the Paphlagonian. Both these scientific sorcerers were born about the same time as Christ, and Apollonius, like Christ, raised a maiden from the dead. Miracles were the fashion in that period of time,—and, according to the monotonous manner in which history repeats itself, they are coming into favour again in this century. All that we know now has been already known. The ancient Greeks had their ‘penny-in-the-slot’ machine for the purpose of scattering perfume on their clothes as they passed along the streets—they had their ‘syphon’ bottles and vases as we have, and they had their automatically opening and closing doors. Compare the miserable ‘spiritualistic phenomena’ of the Theosophists with the marvels wrought by Hakem, known as Mokanna! Mokanna could cause an orb like the moon to rise from a well at a certain hour and illumine the country for miles and miles around. How did he do it? By a knowledge of electric force applied to air and water. The ‘bogies’ of a modernséancewho talk bad grammar and pinch people’s toes and fingers are very coarse examples of necromancy, compared with the scientific skill of Mokanna and others of this tribe. However, superstition is the same in all ages, and there will always be fools ready to believe in ‘Mahatmas’ or anything else,—and the old ‘incantation of the Mantra’ will, if well done, influence the minds of the dupes of the nineteenth century quite as effectively as it did those of the bygone ages before Christ.”
“What is the incantation of the Mantra?” asked Féraz.
“A ridiculous trick”—replied El-Râmi—“known to every Eastern conjurer and old woman who professes to see the future. You take your dupe, and fling a little water over him, fixing upon him your eyes and all the force of your will,—then, you take a certain mixture of chemical substances and perfumes, and set them on fire—the flames and fumes produce a dazzling and drowsy effect on the senses of your ‘subject,’ who will see whatever you choose him to see, and hear whatever you intend him to hear. But Will is the chief ingredient of the spell,—and if I, for example, choose to influence any one, I can dispense with both water and fire—I can do it alone and without any show of preparation.”
“I know you can!” said Féraz meaningly, with a slight smile, and then was silent.
“I wonder what the art of criticism is coming to nowadays!” exclaimed El-Râmi presently, taking up the paper again—“Here is a remark worthy of Dogberry’s profundity—‘This is a book that must be read to be understood.’[3]Why, naturally! Who can understand a book without reading it?”
Féraz laughed—then his eyes darkened.
“I saw an infamous so-called critique of one of Madame Vassilius’s books the other day”—he said—“I should like to have thrashed the man who wrote it. It was not criticism at all—it was a mere piece of scurrilous vulgarity.”
“Ah, but that sort of thing pays!” retorted El-Râmi satirically. “The modern journalist attains his extremest height of brilliancy when he throws the refuse of his inkpot at the name and fame of a woman more gifted than himself. It’s nineteenth-century chivalry you know,—above all ... it’s manly!”
Féraz shrugged his shoulders with a faint gesture of contempt.
“Then—if there is any truth in old chronicles—men are not what they were;”—he said.
“No—they are not what they were, my dear boy—because all things have changed. Women were once the real slaves and drudges of men,—now, they are very nearly their equals, or can be so if they choose. And men have to get accustomed to this—at present they are in the transition state and don’t like it. Besides, there will always be male tyrants and female drudges as long as the world lasts. Men are not what they were,—and, certes, they are not what they might be.”
“They might be gods;”—said Féraz—“but I suppose they prefer to be devils.”
“Precisely!” agreed El-Râmi—“it is easier, and more amusing.”
Féraz resumed his writing in silence. He was thinking of Irene Vassilius, whom he admired;—and also of that wondrous Sleeping Beauty enshrined upstairs whose loveliness he did not dare to speak of. He had latterly noticed a great change in his brother,—an indefinable softness seemed to have imperceptibly toned down the habitual cynicism of his speech and manner,—his very expression of countenance was more gracious and benign,—he looked handsomer,—his black eyes shot forth a less fierce fire,—and yet, with all his gentleness and entire lack of impatience, he was absorbed from morning to night in such close and secret study as made Féraz sometimes fear for its ultimate result on his health.
“Do you really believe in prayer, Féraz?” was the very unexpected question he now asked, with sudden and startling abruptness; “I mean, do you think any one in the invisible realmshearsus when we pray?”
Féraz laid down his pen, and gazed at his brother for a moment without answering. Then he said slowly—
“Well, according to your own theories the air is a vast phonograph,—so it follows naturally that everything isheardandkept. But as to prayer, that depends, I think, altogether on how you pray. I do not believe in it at all times. And I’m afraid my ideas on the subject are quite out of keeping with those generally accepted——”
“Never mind—let me have them, whatever they are”—interrupted El-Râmi with visible eagerness—“I want to know when and how you pray?”
“Well, the fact is I very seldom pray”—returned Féraz—“I offer up the best praise I can in mortal language devise, both night and morning—but I neveraskfor anything. It would seem so vile to ask for more, having already so much. And I am sure God knows best—in which case I have nothing to ask, except one thing.”
“And that is——?” queried his brother.
“Punishment!” replied Féraz emphatically; “I pray for that—I crave for that—I implore that I may be punished at once when I have done wrong, that I may immediately recognise my error. I would rather be punished here, than hereafter.”
El-Râmi paled a little, and his lips trembled.
“Strange boy!” he murmured—“All the churches are praying God to take away the punishments incurred for sin,—you, on the contrary, ask for it as if it were a blessing.”
“So it is a blessing”—declared Féraz—“It must be a blessing—and it is absurd of the churches to pray against a Law. For it is a Law. Nature punishes us, when we physically rebel against the rules of health, by physical suffering and discomfort,—God punishes us in our mental rebellions by mental wretchedness. This is as it should be. I believe we get everything in this world that we deserve—no more and no less.”
“And do you never pray”—continued El-Râmi slowly, “for the accomplished perfection of some cherished aim,—the winning of some special joy——”
“Not I”—said Féraz—“because I know that if it be good for me I shall have it,—if bad, it will be withheld; all my prayers could not alter the matter.”
El-Râmi sat silent for a few minutes,—then, rising, he took two or three turns up and down the room, and gradually a smile, half scornful, half sweet, illumined his dark features.
“Then, O young and serene philosopher, I will not pray!” he said, his eyes flashing a lustrous defiance—“I have a special aim in view—I mean to grasp a joy!—and whether it be good or bad for me, I will attempt it unassisted.”
“If it be good you will succeed;”—said Féraz with a glance expressive of some fear as well as wonderment. “If it be bad, you will not. God arranges these things for us.”
“God—God—always God!” cried El-Râmi with some impatience—“No God shall interfere with me!” At that moment there came a hesitating knock at the street door. Féraz went to open it, and admitted a pale grief-stricken man whose eyes were red and heavy with tears and whose voice utterly failed him to reply when El-Râmi exclaimed in astonishment:
“Karl! ... Karl! You here? Why, what has happened?”
Poor Karl made a heroic struggle to speak,—but his emotion was too strong for him—he remained silent, and two great drops rolled down his cheeks in spite of all his efforts to restrain them.
“You are ill;”—said Féraz kindly, pushing him by gentle force into a chair and fetching him a glass of wine—“Here, drink this—it will restore you.”
Karl put the glass aside tremblingly, and tried to smile his gratitude,—and presently gaining a little control over himself he turned his piteous glances towards El-Râmi whose fine features had become suddenly grave and fixed in thought.
“You ... you ... have not heard, sir——” he stammered.
El-Râmi raised his hand gently, with a solemn and compassionate gesture.
“Peace, my good fellow!—no, I have not heard,—but I can guess;—Kremlin, ... your master ... is dead.”
And he was silent for many minutes. Fresh tears trickled from Karl’s eyes, and he made a pretence of tasting the wine that Féraz pressed upon him—Féraz, who looked as statuesque and serene as a young Apollo.
“You must console yourself;”—he said cheerfully to Karl, “Poor Dr. Kremlin had many troubles and few joys—now he has gone where he has no trouble and all joy.”
“Ah!” sighed Karl dolefully—“I wish I could believe that, sir,—I wish I could believe it! But it was the judgment of God upon him—it was indeed!—that is what my poor mother would say,—the judgment of God!”
El-Râmi moved from his meditative attitude with a faint sense of irritation. The words he had so lately uttered—“No God shall interfere with me”—re-echoed in his mind. And now here was this man,—this servant, weeping and trembling and talking of the “judgment of God” as if it were really something divinely directed and inexorable.
“What do you mean?” he asked, endeavouring to suppress the impatience in his voice—“Of course, I know he must have had some violent end, or else he could not”—and he repeated the words impressively—“could not have died,—but was there anything more than usually strange in the manner of his death?”
Karl threw up his hands.
“More than usually strange! Ach, Gott!” and, with many interpolations of despair and expressions of horror, he related in broken accents the whole of the appalling circumstances attending his master’s end. In spite of himself a faint shudder ran through El-Râmi’s warm blood as he heard—he could almost see before him the horrible spectacle of the old man’s mangled form lying crushed under the ponderous Disc his daring skill had designed; and under his breath he murmured, “Oh Lilith, oh my too happy Lilith! and yet you tell me there is no death!” Féraz, however, the young and sensitive Féraz, listened to the sad recital with quiet interest, unhorrified, apparently unmoved,—his eyes were bright, his expression placid.
“He could not have suffered;”—he observed at last, when Karl had finished speaking—“The flash of lightning must have severed body and spirit instantly and without pain. I think it was a good end.”
Karl looked at the beautiful smiling youth in vague horror. What!—to be flattened out like a board beneath a ponderous weight of fallen stone—to be so disfigured as to be unrecognisable—to be only a mangled mass of flesh difficult of decent burial,—and call that “a good end”! Karl shuddered and groaned;—he was not versed in the strange philosophies of young Féraz—hehad never been out of his body on an ethereal journey to the star-kingdoms.
“It was the judgment of God,”—he repeated dully—“Neither more nor less. My poor master studied too hard, and tried to find out too much, and I think he made God angry——”
“My good fellow,” interrupted El-Râmi rather irritably—“do not talk of what you do not understand. You have been faithful, hard-working and all the rest of it,—but as for your master trying to find out too much, or God getting angry with him, that is all nonsense. We were placed on this earth to find out as much as we can, about it and about ourselves, and do the best that is possible with our learning,—and the bare idea of a great God condescending to be ‘angry’ with one out of millions upon millions of units is absurd——”
“But even if an unit rebels against the Law the Law crushes him”—interrupted Féraz softly—“A gnat flies into flame—the flame consumes it—the Law is fulfilled,—and the Law is God’s Will.”
El-Râmi bit his lip vexedly.
“Well, be that as it may, one must needs find out what the Lawisfirst, before it can either be accepted or opposed,” he said.
Féraz made no answer. He was thinking of the simplicity of certain Laws of Spirit and Matter which were accepted and agreed to by the community of men of whom the monk from Cyprus was the chief master.
Karl meanwhile stared bewilderedly from Féraz to El-Râmi and from El-Râmi back to Féraz again. Their remarks were totally beyond his comprehension; he never could understand, and never wanted to understand, these subtle philosophies.
“I came to ask you, sir”—he said after a pause—“whether you would not, now you know all, manage to take away that devilish thing that killed my master? I’m afraid to touch it myself, and no one else will—and there it lies up in the ruined tower shining away like a big lamp, and sticking like a burr to the iron rod I lifted it with, If it’s any good to you, I’m sure you’d better have it—and by the bye, I found this, sir, in my master’s room addressed to you.”
He held out a sealed envelope, which El-Râmi opened. It contained a folded paper, on which were scratched these lines—