“WHOM SAY YE THAT I AM?”
“WHOM SAY YE THAT I AM?”
“WHOM SAY YE THAT I AM?”
The question seemed to him for the moment all-paramount, he could not shake off the sense of pertinacious demand with which it impressed him.
“A good Man,”—he said aloud, staring fixedly at the divine Face and Figure, with its eloquent expression of exalted patience, grandeur and sweetness. “A good Man, misled by noble enthusiasm and unselfish desire to benefit the poor. A man with a wise knowledge of human magnetism and the methods of healing in which it can be employed,—a man, too, somewhat skilled in the art of optical illusion. Yet when all is said and done, agoodMan—too good and wise and pure for the peace of the rulers of the world,—too honest and clear-sighted to deserve any other reward but death. Divine?—No!—save in so far as in our highest moments we are all divine. Existing now?—a Prince of Heaven, a Pleader against Punishment? Nay, nay!—no more existing than the Soul of Lilith,—that soul for which I search, but which I feel I shall never find!”
And he drew nearer to the ivory-satin couch on which lay the lovely sleeping wonder and puzzle of his ambitious dreams. Leaning towards her he touched her hands,—they were cold, but as he laid his own upon them they grew warm and trembled. Closer still he leaned, his eyes drinking in every detail of her beauty with eager, proud and masterful eyes.
“Lilith!—myLilith!” he murmured—“After all, why should we put off happiness for the sake of everlastingness, when happiness can be had, at any rate for a few years. One can but live and die and there an end. And Love comes but once, ... Love!—how I have scoffed at it and made a jest of it as if it were a plaything. And even now while my whole heart craves for it, I question whether it is worth having! Poor Lilith!—only a woman after all,—a woman whose beauty will soon pass—whose days will soon be done,—only a woman—not an immortal Soul,—there is, there can be, no such thing as an immortal Soul.”
Bending down over her, he resolutely unclasped the fair crossed arms, and seized the delicate small hands in a close grip.
“Lilith! Lilith!” he called imperiously.
A long and heavy pause ensued,—then the girl’s limbs quivered violently as though moved by a sudden convulsion, and her lips parted in the utterance of the usual formula—
“I am here.”
“Here at last, but you have been absent long”—said El-Râmi with some reproach, “Too long. And you have forgotten your promise.”
“Forgotten!” she echoed—“O doubting spirit! Do such as I am, ever forget?”
Her thrilling accents awed him a little, but he pursued his own way with her, undauntedly.
“Then why have you not fulfilled it?” he demanded—“The strongest patience may tire. I have waited and watched, as you bade me—but now—now I am weary of waiting.”
Oh, what a sigh broke from her lips!
“I am weary too”—she said—“The angels are weary. God is weary. All Creation is weary—of Doubt.”
For a moment he was abashed,—but only for a moment; in himself he considered Doubt to be the strongest part of his nature,—a positive shield and buckler against possible error.
“You cannot wait,”—went on Lilith, speaking slowly and with evident sadness—“Neither can we. We have hoped,—in vain! We have watched—in vain! The strong man’s pride will not bend, nor the stubborn spirit turn in prayer to its Creator. Therefore what is not bent must be broken,—and what voluntarily refuses Light must accept Darkness. I am bidden to come to you, my beloved,—to come to you as I am, and as I ever shall be,—I will come—but how will you receive me?”
“With ecstasy, with love, with welcome beyond all words or thoughts!” cried El-Râmi in passionate excitement. “O Lilith, Lilith! you who read the stars, cannot you read my heart? Do you not see that I—I who have recoiled from the very thought of loving,—I, who have striven to make of myself a man of stone and iron rather than flesh and blood, am conquered by your spells, victorious Lilith!—conquered in every fibre of my being by some subtle witchcraft known to yourself alone. Am I weak!—am I false to my own beliefs? I know not,—I am only conscious of the sovereignty of beauty which has mastered many a stronger man than I. What is the fiercest fire compared with this fever in my veins? I worship you, Lilith! I love you!—more than the world, life, time and hope of heaven, I love you!”
Flushed with eagerness and trembling with his own emotion, he rained kisses on the hands he held, but Lilith strove to withdraw them from his clasp. Pale as alabaster she lay as usual with fast-closed eyes, and again a deep sigh heaved her breast.
“You love my Shadow,”—she said mournfully—“not Myself.”
But El-Râmi’s rapture was not to be chilled by these words. He gathered up a glittering mass of the rich hair that lay scattered on the pillow and pressed it to his lips.
“Oh Lilith mine, is this ‘Shadow’?” he asked—“All this gold in which I net my heart like a willingly-caught bird, and make an end of my boasted wisdom? Are these sweet lips, these fair features, this exquisite body, all ‘shadow’? Then blessed must be the light that casts so gracious a reflection! Judge me not harshly, my Sweet,—for if indeed you are divine, and this beauty I behold is the mere reflex of Divinity, let me see the divine form of you for once, and have a guarantee for faith through love! If there is another and a fairer Lilith than the one whom I now behold, deny me not the grace of so marvellous a vision! I am ready!—I fear nothing—to-night I could face God Himself undismayed!”
He paused abruptly—he knew not why. Something in the chill and solemn look of Lilith’s face checked his speech.
“Lilith—Lilith!” he began again whisperingly—“Do I ask too much? Surely not!—not if you love me! And you do love me—I feel, I know you do!”
There was a long pause,—Lilith might have been made of marble for all the movement she gave. Her breathing was so light as to be scarcely perceptible, and when she answered him at last, her voice sounded strangely faint and far-removed. “Yes, I love you”—she said—“I love you as I have loved you for a thousand ages, and as you have never loved me. To win your love has beenmytask—to repel my love has beenyours.”
He listened, smitten by a vague sense of compunction and regret.
“But you have conquered, Lilith”—he answered—“yours is the victory. And have I not surrendered, willingly, joyfully? O my beautiful Dreamer, what would you have me do?”
“Pray!” said Lilith, with a sudden passionate thrill in her voice—“Pray! Repent!”
El-Râmi drew himself backward from her couch, impatient and angered.
“Repent!” he cried aloud—“And why should I repent? What have I done that calls for repentance? For what sin am I to blame? For doubting a God who, deaf to centuries upon centuries of human prayer and worship, will not declare Himself? and for striving to perceive Him through the cruel darkness by which we are surrounded? What crime can be discovered there? The world is most infinitely sad,—and life is most infinitely dreary,—and may I not strive to comfort those amid the struggle who fain would ‘prove’ and hold fast to the things beyond? Nay!—let the heavens open and cast forth upon me their fiery thunderbolts, I willnotrepent! For, vast as my doubt is, so vast would be my faith, if God would speak and say to His creatures but once—‘Lo! I am here!’ Tortures of hell-pain would not terrify me, if in the end His Being were made clearly manifest—a cross of endless woe would I endure, to feel and see Him near me at the last, and more than all, to make the world feel and see Him—to prove to wondering, trembling, terror-stricken, famished, heart-broken human beings that He exists,—that He is aware of their misery,—that He cares for them, that it is all well for them,—that thereisEternal Joy hiding itself somewhere amid the great star-thickets of this monstrous universe—that we are not desolate atoms whirled by a blind fierce Force into life against our will, and out of it again without a shadow of reason or a glimmer of hope. Repent for such thoughts as these? I will not! Pray to a God of such inexorable silence? I will not! No, Lilith—my Lilith whom I snatched from greedy death—even you may fail me at the last,—you may break your promise,—the promise that I should see with mortal eyes your own Immortal Self—who can blame you for the promise of a dream, poor child! You may prove yourself nothing but woman; woman, poor, frail, weak, helpless woman to be loved and cherished and pitied and caressed in all the delicate limbs, and kissed in all the dainty golden threads of hair, and then—then—to be laid down like a broken flower in the tomb that has grudged me your beauty all this while,—all this may be, Lilith, and yet I will not pray to an unproved God, nor repent of an unproved sin!”
He uttered his words with extraordinary force and eloquence—one would have thought he was addressing a multitude of hearers instead of that one tranced girl, who, though beautiful as a sculptured saint on a sarcophagus, appeared almost as inanimate, save for the slow parting of her lips when she spoke.
“O superb Angel of the Kingdom!” she murmured—“It is no marvel that you fell!”
He heard her, dimly perplexed; but strengthened in his own convictions by what he had said, he was conscious of power,—power to defy, power to endure, power to command. Such a sense of exhilaration and high confidence had not possessed him for many a long day, and he was about to speak again, when Lilith’s voice once more stole musically on the silence.
“You would reproach God for the world’s misery. Your complaint is unjust. There is a Law,—a Law for the earth as for all worlds; and God cannot alter one iota of that Law without destroying Himself and His Universe. Shall all Beauty, all Order, all Creation come to an end because wilful Man is wilfully miserable? Your world trespasses against the Law in almost everything it does—hence its suffering. Other worlds accept the Law and fulfil it,—and with them, all is well.”
“Who is to know this Law?” demanded El-Râmi impatiently. “And how can the world trespass against what is not explained?”
“It is explained;”—said Lilith—“The explanation is in every soul’s inmost consciousness. You all know the Law and feel it—but knowing, you ignore it. Men were intended by Law—God’s Law—to live in brotherhood; but your world is divided into nations all opposed to each other,—the result is Evil. There is a Law of Health, which men can scarcely be forced to follow—the majority disobey it; again, the result is Evil. There is a Law of ‘Enough’—men grasp more than enough, and leave their brother with less than enough,—the result is Evil. There is a Law of Love—men make it a Law of Lust,—the result is Evil. All sin, all pain, all misery, are results of the Law’s transgression,—and God cannot alter the Law, He Himself being part of it and its fulfilment.”
“And is Death also the Law?” asked El-Râmi—“Wise Lilith!—Death, which concludes all things, both in Law and Order?”
“There is no death,” responded Lilith—“I have told you so. What you call by that name is Life.”
“Prove it!” exclaimed El-Râmi excitedly, “Prove it, Lilith! Show me Yourself! If there is another You than this beloved beauty of your visible form, let me behold it, and then—then will I repent of doubt,—then will I pray for pardon!”
“You will repent indeed,”—said Lilith sorrowfully—“And you will pray as children pray when first they learn ‘Our Father.’ Yes, I will come to you; watch for me, O my erring Belovëd!—watch!—for neither my love nor my promise can fail. But O remember that you are not ready—that your will, your passion, your love, forces me hither ere the time,—that, if I come, it is but to depart again—for ever!”
“No, no!” cried El-Râmi desperately—“Not to depart, but to remain!—to stay with me, my Lilith, my own—body and soul,—for ever!”
The last words sounded like a defiance flung at some invisible opponent. He stopped, trembling—for a sudden and mysterious wave of sound filled the room, like a great wind among the trees, or the last grand chord of an organ-symphony. A chill fear assailed him,—he kept his eyes fixed on the beautiful form of Lilith with a strained eagerness of attention that made his temples ache. She grew paler and paler,—and yet, ... absorbed in his intent scrutiny he could not move or speak. His tongue seemed tied to the roof of his mouth,—he felt as though he could scarcely breathe. All life appeared to hang on one supreme moment of time, which like a point of light wavered between earth and heaven, mortality and infinity. He,—one poor atom in the vast Universe,—stood, audaciously waiting for the declaration of God’s chiefest Secret. Would it be revealed at last?—or still withheld?
Allat once, while he thus closely watched her, Lilith, with a violent effort, sat up stiffly erect and turned her head slowly towards him. Her features were rigidly statuesque, and white as snow,—the strange gaunt look of her face terrified him, but he could not cry out or utter a word—he was stricken dumb by an excess of fear. Only his black eyes blazed with an anguish of expectation,—and the tension of his nerves seemed almost greater than he could endure.
“In the great Name of God and by the Passion of Christ,”—said Lilith solemnly, in tones that sounded far-off and faint and hollow—“do not look at this Shadow of Me! Turn, turn away from this dust of Earth which belongs to the Earth alone,—and watch for the light of Heaven which comes from Heaven alone! O my love, my belovëd!—if you are wise, if you are brave, if you are strong, turn away from beholding this Image of Me, which is not Myself,—and look for me where the roses are—there will I stand and wait!”
As the last word left her lips she sank back on her pillows, inert, and deathly pale; but El-Râmi, dazed and bewildered though he was, retained sufficient consciousness to understand vaguely what she meant,—he was not to look at her as she lay there,—he was to forget that such a Lilith as he knew existed,—he was to look for another Lilith there—“where the roses are.” Mechanically, and almost as if some invisible power commanded and controlled his volition, he turned sideways round from the couch, and fixed his gaze on the branching flowers, which from the crystal vase that held them lifted their pale-pink heads daintily aloft as though they took the lamp that swung from the ceiling for some little new sun, specially invented for their pleasure. Why,—there was nothing there ... “Nothing there!” he half muttered with a beating heart, rubbing his eyes and staring hard before him, ... nothing—nothing at all, but the roses themselves, and ... and ... yes!—a Light behind them!—a light that wavered round them and began to stretch upward in wide circling rings!
El-Râmi gazed and gazed, ... saying over and over again to himself that it was the reflection of the lamp, ... the glitter of that stray moonbeam there, ... or something wrong with his own faculty of vision, ... and yet he gazed on, as though for the moment all his being were made of eyes. The roses trembled and swayed to and fro delicately as the strange Light widened and brightened behind their blossoming clusters,—a light that seemed to palpitate with all the wondrous living tints of the rising sun when it shoots forth its first golden rays from the foaming green hollows of the sea. Upward, upward and ever upward the deepening glory extended, till the lamp paled and grew dimmer than the spark of a feeble match struck as a rival to a flash of lightning,—and El-Râmi’s breath came and went in hard panting gasps as he stood watching it in speechless immobility.
Suddenly, two broad shafts of rainbow luminance sprang, as it seemed, from the ground, and blazed against the purple hangings of the room with such a burning dazzle of prismatic colouring in every glittering line that it was well-nigh impossible for human sight to bear it, and yet El-Râmi would rather have been stricken stone-blind than move. Had he been capable of thought, he might have remembered the beautiful old Greek myths which so truthfully and frequently taught the lesson that to look upon the purely divine meant death to the purely human; but he could not think,—all his own mental faculties were for the time rendered numb and useless. His eyes ached and smarted as though red-hot needles were being plunged into them, but though he was conscious of, he was indifferent to, the pain. His whole mind was concentrated on watching the mysterious radiance of those wing-shaped rays in the room,—and now ... now while he gazed, he began to perceive an outline between the rays, ... a Shape, becoming every second more and more distinct, as though some invisible heavenly artist were drawing the semblance of Beauty in air with a pencil dipped in morning-glory. ... O wonderful, ineffable Vision!—O marvellous breaking-forth of the buds of life that are hid in the quiet ether!—where, where in the vast wealth and reproduction of deathless and delicate atoms, is the Beginning of things?—where the End? ...
Presently appeared soft curves, and glimmers of vapoury white flushed with rose, suggestive of fire seen through mountain-mist,—then came a glittering flash of gold that went rippling and ever rippling backward, like the flowing fall of lovely hair; and the dim Shape grew still more clearly visible, seeming to gather substance and solidity from the very light that encircled it. Had it any human likeness? Yes;—yet the resemblance it bore to humanity was so far away, so exalted and ideal, as to be no more like our material form than the actual splendour of the sun is like its painted image. The stature and majesty and brilliancy of it increased,—and now the unspeakable loveliness of a Face too fair for any mortal fairness began to suggest itself dimly; ... El-Râmi, growing faint and dizzy, thought he distinguished white outstretched arms, and hands uplifted in an ecstasy of prayer;—nay,—though he felt himself half swooning in the struggle he made to overcome his awe and fear, he would have sworn that two star-like eyes, full-orbed and splendid with a radiant blue as of Heaven’s own forget-me-nots, were turned upon him with a questioning appeal, a hope, a supplication, a love beyond all eloquence! ... But his strength was rapidly failing him;—unsupported by faith, his mere unassisted flesh and blood could endure no more of this supernatural sight, and ... all suddenly, ... the tension of his nerves gave way, and morbid terrors shook his frame. A blind frenzied feeling that he was sinking,—sinking out of sight and sense into a drear profound, possessed him, and, hardly knowing what he did, he turned desperately to the couch where Lilith, the Lilith he knew best, lay, and looking,——
“Ah God!” he cried, pierced to the heart by the bitterest anguish he had ever known,—Lilith—hisLilith was withering before his very eyes! The exquisite Body he had watched and tended was shrunken and yellow as a fading leaf,—the face, no longer beautiful, was gaunt and pinched and skeleton-like—the lips were drawn in and blue,—and strange convulsions shook the wrinkling and sunken breast!
In one mad moment he forgot everything,—forgot the imperishable Soul for the perishing Body,—forgot his long studies and high ambitions,—and could think of nothing, except that this human creature he had saved from death seemed now to be passing into death’s long-denied possession,—and throwing himself on the couch he clutched at his fading treasure with the desperation of frenzy.
“Lilith!—Lilith!” he cried hoarsely, the extremity of his terror choking his voice to a smothered wild moan—“Lilith! My love, my idol, my spirit, my saint! Come back!—come back!”
And clasping her in his arms he covered with burning kisses the thin peaked face—the shrinking flesh,—the tarnished lustre of the once bright hair.
“Lilith! Lilith!” he wailed, dry-eyed and fevered with agony—“Lilith, I love you! Has love no force to keep you? Lilith, love Lilith! You shall not leave me,—you are mine—mine! I stole you from death—I kept you from God!—from all the furies of heaven and earth!—youshallcome back to me—I love you!”
And lo! ... as he spoke the body he held to his heart grew warm,—the flesh filled up and regained its former softness and roundness—the features took back their loveliness—the fading hair brightened to its wonted rich tint and rippled upon the pillows in threads of gold—the lips reddened,—the eyelids quivered, the little hands, trembling gently like birds’ wings, nestled round his throat with a caress that thrilled his whole being and calmed the tempest of his grief as suddenly as when of old the Master walked upon the raging sea of Galilee and said to it “Peace, be still!”
Yet this very calmness oppressed him heavily,—like a cold hand laid on a fevered brow it chilled his blood even while it soothed his pain. He was conscious of a sense of irreparable loss,—and moreover he felt he had been a coward,—a coward physically and morally. For, instead of confronting the Supernatural, or what seemed the Supernatural, calmly, and with the inquisitorial research of a scientist, he had allowed himself to be overcome by It, and had fled back to the consideration of the merely human, with all the delirious speed of a lover and fool. Nevertheless he had his Lilith—his own Lilith,—and, holding her jealously to his heart, he presently turned his head tremblingly and in doubt to where the roses nodded drowsily in their crystal vase;—only the roses now were there! The marvellous Wingëd Brightness had fled, and the place it had illumined seemed by contrast very dark. The Soul,—the Immortal Self—had vanished;—the subtle Being he had longed to see, and whose existence and capabilities he had meant to “prove”; and he, who had consecrated his life and labour to the attainment of this one object, had failed to grasp the full solution of the mystery at the very moment when it might have been his. By his own weakness he had lost the Soul,—by his own strength he had gained the Body, or so he thought, and his mind was torn between triumph and regret. He was not yet entirely conscious of what had chanced to him—he could formulate no idea,—all he distinctly knew was that he held Lilith, warm and living, in his arms, and that he felt her light breath upon his cheek.
“Love is enough!” he murmured, kissing the hair that lay in golden clusters against his breast—“Waken, my Lilith!—waken!—and in our perfect joy we will defy all gods and angels!”
She stirred in his clasp,—he bent above her, eager, ardent, expectant,—her long eyelashes trembled,—and then,—slowly, slowly, like white leaves opening to the sun, the lids upcurled, disclosing the glorious eyes beneath, eyes that had been closed to earthly things for six long years,—deep, starry violet-blue eyes that shone with the calm and holy lustre of unspeakable purity and peace,—eyes that in their liquid softness held all the appeal, hope, supplication and eloquent love, he had seen (or fancied he had seen) in the strange eyes of the only half-visible Soul! The Soul indeed was looking through its earthly windows for the last time, had he known it,—but he did not know it. Raised to a giddy pinnacle of delight as suddenly as he had been lately plunged into an abyss of grief and terror, he gazed into those newly-opened wondrous worlds of mute expression with all a lover’s pride, passion, tenderness and longing.
“Fear nothing, Lilith!” he said—“It is I! I whose voice you have answered and obeyed,—I, your lover and lord! It is I who claim you, my belovëd!—I who bid you waken from death to life!”
Oh, what a smile of dazzling rapture illumined her face!—it was as if the sun in all his glory had suddenly broken out of a cloud to brighten her beauty with his purest beams. Her childlike, innocent, wondering eyes remained fixed upon El-Râmi,—lifting her white arms languidly she closed them round about him with a gentle fervour that seemed touched by compassion,—and he, thrilled to the quick by that silent expression of tenderness, straightway ascended to a heaven of blind, delirious ecstasy. He wanted no word from her ... what use of words!—her silence was the perfect eloquence of love! All her beauty was his own—his very own! ... he had willed it so,—and his will had won its way,—the iron Will of a strong wise man without a God to help him!—and all he feared was that he might die of his own excess of triumph and joy! ... Hush! ... hush! ... Music again!—that same deep sound as of the wind among trees, or the solemn organ-chord that closes the song of departing choristers. It was strange,—very strange!—but, though he heard, he scarcely heeded it; unearthly terrors could not shake him now,—not now, while he held Lilith to his heart, and devoured her loveliness with his eyes, curve by curve, line by line, till with throbbing pulses, and every nerve tingling in his body, he bent his face down to hers, and pressed upon her lips a long, burning, passionate kiss! ...
But, even as he did so, she was wrenched fiercely out of his hold by a sudden and awful convulsion,—her slight frame writhed and twisted itself away from his clasp with a shuddering recoil of muscular agony—once her little hands clutched the air, ... and then, ... then, the brief struggle over, her arms dropped rigidly at her sides, and her whole body swerved and fell backward heavily upon the pillows of the couch, stark, pallid and pulseless! ... And he,—he, gazing upon her thus with a vague and stupid stare, wondered dimly whether he were mad or dreaming? ...
What ... what was this sudden ailment? ... this ... this strange swoon? What bitter frost had stolen intoherveins? ... what insatiable hell-fire was consuminghis? Those eyes, ... those just unclosed, innocent lovely eyes of Lilith, ... was it possible, could it be true that all the light had gone out of them?—gone, utterly gone? And what was that clammy film beginning to cover them over with a glazing veil of blankness? ... God! ... God! ... he must be in a wild nightmare, he thought! ... he should wake up presently and find all this seeming disaster unreal,—the fantastic fear of a sick brain ... the “clangour and anger of elements” imaginative, not actual, ... and here his reeling terror found voice in a hoarse, smothered cry—
“Lilith! ... Lilith! ...”
But stop, stop! ... was it Lilith indeed whom he thus called? ...That? ... that gaunt, sunken, rigid form, growing swiftly hideous! ... yes—hideous, with those dull marks of blue discoloration coming here and there on the no longer velvety fair skin!
“Lilith! ... Lilith!”
The name was lost and drowned in the wave of solemn music that rolled and throbbed upon the air, and El-Râmi’s distorted mind, catching at the dread suggestiveness of that unearthly harmony, accepted it as a sort of invisible challenge.
“What, good Death! brother Death, are you there?” he muttered fiercely, shaking his clenched fist at vacancy—“Are you here, and are you everywhere? Nay, we have crossed swords before now in desperate combat ... and I have won! ... and I will win again! Hands off, rival Death! Lilith is mine!”
And, snatching from his breast a phial of the liquid with which he had so long kept Lilith living in a trance, he swiftly injected it into her veins, and forced some drops between her lips ... in vain ... in vain! No breath came back to stir that silent breast—no sign whatever of returning animation evinced itself, only ... at the expiration of the few moments which generally sufficed the vital fluid for its working, there chanced a strange and terrible thing. Wherever the liquid had made its way, there the skin blistered, and the flesh blackened, as though the whole body were being consumed by some fierce inward fire; and El-Râmi, looking with strained wild eyes at this destructive result of his effort to save, at last realised to the full all the awfulness, all the dire agony of his fate! The Soul of Lilith had departed for ever; ... even as the Cyprian monk had said, it had outgrown its earthly tenement, ... its cord of communication with the body had been mysteriously and finally severed,—and the Body itself was crumbling into ashes before his very sight, helped into swifter dissolution by the electric potency of his own vaunted “life-elixir”! It was horrible ... horrible! ... was therenoremedy?
Staring himself almost blind with despair, he dashed the phial on the ground, and stamped it under his heel in an excess of impotent fury, ... the veins in his forehead swelled with a fulness of aching blood almost to bursting, ... he could do nothing, ... nothing! His science was of no avail;—his Will,—his proud inflexible Will was “as a reed shaken in the wind!” ... Ha! ... the old stock phrase! ... it had been said before, in old times and in new, by canting creatures who believed in Prayer. Prayer!—would it bring back beauty and vitality to that blackening corpse before him? ... that disfigured, withering clay he had once called Lilith! ... How ghastly It looked! ... Shuddering violently he turned away,—turned,—to meet the grave sweet eyes of the pictured Christ on the wall, ... to read again the words, “Whom say ye that I am?” The letters danced before him in characters of flame, ... there seemed a great noise everywhere as of clashing steam-hammers and great church-bells,—the world was reeling round him as giddily as a spun wheel.
“Robber of the Soul of Lilith!” he muttered between his set teeth—“Whoever you be, whether God or Devil, I will find you out! I will pursue you to the uttermost ends of vast infinitude! I will contest her with you yet, for surely she is mine! What right have you, O Force Unknown, to steal my love from me? Answer me! prove yourself God, as I prove myself Man! Declaresomething, O mute Inflexible!Dosomething other than mechanically grind out a reasonless, unexplained Life and Death for ever! O Lilith!—faithless Angel!—did you not say that love was sweet?—and could not love keep you here,—here, with me, your lover, Lilith?”
Involuntarily and with cowering reluctance, his eyes turned again towards the couch,—but now—now ... the horror of that decaying beauty, interiorly burning itself away to nothingness, was more than he could bear ... a mortal sickness seized him,—and he flung up his arms with a desperate gesture as though he sought to drag down some covering wherewith to hide himself and his utter misery.
“Defeated, baffled, befooled!” he exclaimed frantically—“Conquered by the Invisible and Invincible after all! Conquered! I! ... Who would have thought it! Hear me, earth and heaven!—hear me, O rolling world of human Wretchedness, hear me!—for I have proved a Truth! Thereisa God!—a jealous God—jealous of the Soul of Lilith!—a God tyrannical, absolute, and powerful—a God of infinite and inexorable Justice. O God, I know you!—I own you—I meet you! I am part of you as the worm is!—and you can change me, but you cannot destroy me! You have done your worst,—you have fought against your own Essence in me, till light has turned to darkness and love to bitterness;—you have left me no help, no hope, no comfort; what more remains to do, O terrible God of a million Universes! ... what more? Gone—gone is the Soul of Lilith—but Where? Where in the vast Unknowable shall I find my love again? ... Teach methat, O God! ... give me that one small clue through the million million intricate webs of star-systems, and I too will fall blindly down and adore an Imaginary Good in visible and all-paramount Evil! ... I too will sacrifice reason, pride, wisdom and power and become as a fool for Love’s sake! ... I too will grovel before an unproved Symbol of Divinity as a savage grovels before his stone fetish, ... I will be weak, not strong, I will babble prayers with the children, ... only take me where Lilith is, ... bring me to Lilith ... angel Lilith! ... love Lilith! ... my Lilith! ... ah God! God! Have mercy ... mercy! ...”
His voice broke suddenly in a sharp jarring shriek of delirious laughter,—blood sprang to his mouth,—and with a blind movement of his arms, as of one in thick darkness seeking light, he fell heavily face forward, insensible on the couch where the Body he had loved, deprived of its Soul, lay crumbling swiftly away into hideous disfigurement and ashes.
“Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and Life begins.”
The words sounded so distinctly in his ears that the half-roused Féraz turned drowsily on his pillows and opened his eyes, fully expecting to see the speaker of them in his room. But there was no one. It was early morning,—the birds were twittering in the outer yard, and bright sunshine poured through the window. He had had a long and refreshing sleep,—and sitting up in his bed he stretched himself with a sense of refreshment and comfort, the while he tried to think what had so mysteriously and unpleasantly oppressed him with forebodings on the previous night. By and by he remembered the singing voices in the air and smiled.
“All my fancy of course!” he said lightly, springing up and beginning to dash the fresh cold water of his morning bath over his polished bronze-like skin, till all his nerves tingled with the pleasurable sensation—“I am always hearing music of some sort or other. I believe music is pent up in the air, and loosens itself at intervals like the rain. Why not? There must be such a wealth of melody aloft,—all the songs of all the birds,—all the whisperings of all the leaves;—all the dash and rush of the rivers, waterfalls and oceans,—it is all in the air, and I believe it falls in a shower sometimes and penetrates the brains of musicians like Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner.”
Amused with his own fantastic imaginings he hummed a tunesotto voceas he donned his easy and picturesque attire,—then he left his room and went to his brother’s study to set it in order for the day, as was his usual custom.
He opened the door softly and with caution, because El-Râmi often slept there on the hard soldier’s couch that occupied one corner,—but this morning all was exactly as it had been left at night,—the books and papers were undisturbed,—and, curiously enough, the little sanctum presented a vacant and deserted appearance, as though it would dumbly express a fear that its master was gone from it for ever. How such a notion suggested itself to Féraz, he could not tell,—but he was certainly conscious of a strange sinking at the heart, as he paused in the act of throwing open one of the windows, and looked round the quiet room. Had anything been moved or displaced during the night that he should receive such a general impression of utter emptiness? Nothing—so far as he could judge;—there was his brother’s ebony chair wheeled slightly aside from the desk,—there were the great globes, terrestrial and celestial,—there were the various volumes lately used for reference,—and, apart from these, on the table, was the old vellum book in Arabic that Féraz had once before attempted to read. It was open,—a circumstance that struck Féraz with some surprise, for he could not recall having seen it in that position last evening. Perhaps El-Râmi had come down in the night to refer to it and had left it there by accident? Féraz felt he must examine it more nearly, and, approaching, he rested his elbows on the table and fixed his eyes on the Arabic page before him which was headed in scrolled lettering “The Mystery of Death.” As he read the words, a beautiful butterfly flew in through the open window and circled joyously round his head, till, presently espying the bunch of heliotrope in the glass where Féraz had set it the previous day, it fluttered off to that, and settled on the scented purple bloom, its pretty wings quivering with happiness. Mechanically Féraz watched its flight,—then his eyes returned and dwelt once more on the time-stained lettering before him; “The Mystery of Death,”—and following the close lines with his forefinger, he soon made out the ensuing passages. “The Mystery of Death. Whereas, of this there is no mystery at all, as the ignorant suppose, but only a clearing up of many intricate matters. When the body dies,—or to express it with more pertinacious exactitude, when the body resolves itself into the living organisms of which earth is composed, it is because the Soul has outgrown its mortal habitation and can no longer endure the cramping narrowness of the same. We speak unjustly of the aged, because by their taciturnity and inaptitude for worldly business, they seem to us foolish, and of a peevish weakness; it should however be remembered that it is a folly to complain of the breaking of the husk when the corn is ripe. In old age the Soul is weary of and indifferent to earthly things, and makes of its tiresome tenement a querulous reproach,—it has exhausted earth’s pleasures and surpassed earth’s needs, and palpitates for larger movement. When this is gained, the husk falls, the grain sprouts forth—the Soul is freed,—and all Nature teaches this lesson. To call the process ‘death’ and a ‘mystery’ is to repeat the error of barbarian ages,—for once the Soul has no more use for the Body, you cannot detain it,—you cannot compress its wings,—you cannot stifle its nature,—and, being Eternal, it demands Eternity.”
“All that is true enough;”—murmured Féraz—“As true as any truth possible, and yet people will not accept or understand it. All the religions, all the preachers, all the teachers seem to avail them nothing,—and they go on believing in death far more than in life. What a sad and silly world it is!—always planning for itself and never for God, and only turning to God in imminent danger like a coward schoolboy who says he is sorry because he fears a whipping.”
Here he lifted his eyes from the book, feeling that some one was looking at him, and, true enough, there in the doorway stood Zaroba. Her withered face had an anxious expression and she held up a warning finger.
“Hush! ...” she said whisperingly. ... “No noise! ... where is El-Râmi?”
Féraz replied by a gesture, indicating that he was still upstairs at work on his mysterious “experiment.”
Zaroba advanced slowly into the room, and seated herself on the nearest chair.
“My mind misgives me;”—she said in low awe-stricken tones,—“My mind misgives me; I have had dreams—suchdreams! All night I have tossed and turned,—my head throbs here,”—and she pressed both hands upon her brow,—“and my heart—my heart aches! I have seen strange creatures clad in white,—ghostly faces of the past have stared at me,—my dead children have caressed me,—my dead husband has kissed me on the lips,—a kiss of ice, freezing me to the marrow. What does it bode? No good—no good!—but ill! Like the sound of the flying feet of the whirlwind that brings death to the sons of the desert, there is a sound in my brain which says—‘Sorrow! Sorrow!’ again and yet again ‘Sorrow!’”
Sighing, she clasped her hands about her knees and rocked herself to and fro, as though she were in pain. Féraz stood gazing at her wistfully and with a somewhat troubled air,—her words impressed him uncomfortably,—her very attitude suggested misery. The sunlight beaming across her bent figure, flashed on the silver bangles that circled her brown arms, and touched her rough gray hair to flecks of brightness,—her black eyes almost hid themselves under their tired drooping lids,—and when she ceased speaking her lips still moved as though she inwardly muttered some weird incantation. Growing impatient with her, he knew not why, the young man paced slowly up and down the room; her deafness precluded him from speaking to her, and he just now had no inclination to communicate with her in the usual way by writing. And while he thus walked about, she continued her rocking movement, and peered at him dubiously from under her bushy gray brows.
“It is ill work meddling with the gods;”—she began again presently—“In old time they were vengeful,—and have they changed because the times are new? Nay, nay! The nature of a man may alter with the course of his passions,—but the nature of a god!—who shall make it otherwise than what it has been from the beginning? Cruel, cruel are the ways of the gods when they are thwarted;—there is no mercy in the blind eyes of Fate! To tempt Destiny is to ask the thunderbolt to fall and smite you,—to oppose the gods is as though a babe’s hand should essay to lift the Universe. Have I not prayed the Master, the wise and the proud El-Râmi Zarânos, to submit and not contend? As God liveth, I say, let us submit while we can like the slaves that we are, for in submission alone is safety!”
Féraz heard her with increasing irritation,—why need she come to him with all this melancholy jabbering, he thought angrily. He leaned far out of the open window and looked at the ugly houses of the little square,—at the sooty trees, the sparrows hopping and quarrelling in the road, the tradesmen’s carts that every now and again dashed to and from their various customers’ doors in the aggravatingly mad fashion they affect, and tried to realise that he was actually in busy practical London, and not, as seemed at the moment more likely, in some cavern of an Eastern desert, listening to an ancient sibyl croaking misfortune. Just then a neighbouring clock struck nine, and he hastily drew in his head from the outer air, and, making language with his eloquent fingers, he mutely asked Zaroba if she were going upstairs now, or whether she meant to wait till El-Râmi himself came down?
She left off rocking to and fro, and half rose from her chair,—then she hesitated.
“I have never waited”—she said—“before,—and why? Because the voice of the Master has roused me from my deepest slumbers,—and, like a finger of fire laid on my brain, his very thought has summoned my attendance. But this morning no such voice has called,—no such burning touch has stirred my senses,—how should I know what I must do? If I go unbidden, will he not be angered?—and his anger works like a poison in my blood! ... yet ... it is late, ... and his silence is strange——”
She paused, passing her hand wearily across her eyes,—then stood up, apparently resolved.
“I will obey the voices that whisper to me,”—she said, with a certain majestic resignation and gravity—“The voices that cry to my heart ‘Sorrow! Sorrow!’ and yet again ‘Sorrow!’ If grief must come, then welcome, grief!—one cannot gainsay the Fates. I will go hence and prove the message of the air,—for the air holds invisible tongues that do not lie.”
With a slow step she moved across the room,—and on a sudden impulse Féraz sprang towards her exclaiming, “Zaroba!—stay!”—then recollecting she could not hear a word, he checked himself and drew aside to let her pass, with an air of indifference which he was far from feeling. He was in truth wretched and ill at ease,—the exhilaration with which he had arisen from sleep had given way to intense depression, and he could not tell what ailed him.
“Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins.” Those were the strange words he had heard the first thing on awaking that morning,—what could they mean, he wondered rather sadly? If dreams were indeed to end, he would be sorry,—and if life, as mortals generally lived it, were to begin for him, why then, he would be sorrier still. Troubled and perplexed, he began to set the breakfast in order, hoping by occupation to divert his thoughts and combat the miserable feeling of vague dread which oppressed him, and which, though he told himself how foolish and unreasonable it was, remained increasingly persistent. All at once such a cry rang through the house as almost turned his blood to ice,—a cry wild, despairing and full of agony. It was repeated with piercing vehemence,—and Féraz, his heart beating furiously, cleared the space of the room with one breathless bound and rushed upstairs, there to confront Zaroba tossing her arms distractedly and beating her breast like a creature demented.
“Lilith!” she gasped,—“Lilith has gone ... gone! ... and El-Râmi is dead!”
Pushingthe panic-stricken woman aside, Féraz dashed back the velvet curtains, and for the second time in his life penetrated the mysterious chamber. Once in the beautiful room, rich with its purple colour and warmth, he stopped as though he were smitten with sudden paralysis,—every artery in his body pulsated with terror,—it was true! ... true that Lilith was no longer there! This was the first astounding fact that bore itself in with awful conviction on his dazed and bewildered mind;—the next thing he saw was the figure of his brother, kneeling motionless by the vacant couch. Hushing his steps and striving to calm his excitement, Féraz approached more nearly, and throwing his arms round El-Râmi’s shoulders endeavoured to raise him,—but all his efforts made no impression on that bent and rigid form. Turning his eyes once more to the ivory blankness of the satin couch on which the maiden Lilith had so long reclined, he saw with awe and wonder the distinct impression of where her figure had been, marked and hollowed out into deep curves and lines, which in their turn were outlined by a tracing of fine grayish-white dust, like sifted ashes. Following the track of this powdery substance, he still more clearly discerned the impress of her vanished shape; and, shuddering in every limb, he asked himself—Could that—that dust—be all—all that was left of ... of Lilith? ... What dire tragedy had been enacted during the night?—what awful catastrophe had chanced toher—tohim, his beloved brother, whom he strove once more to lift from his kneeling position, but in vain. Zaroba stood beside him, shivering, wailing, staring, and wringing her hands, till Féraz dry-eyed and desperate, finding his own strength not sufficient, bade her, by a passionate gesture, assist him. Trembling violently, she obeyed, and between them both they at last managed to drag El-Râmi up from the ground and get him to a chair, where Féraz chafed his hands, bathed his forehead, and used every possible means to restore animation. Did his heart still beat? Yes, feebly and irregularly;—and presently one or two faint gasping sighs came from the labouring breast.
“Thank God!” muttered Féraz—“Whatever has happened, he lives!—Thank God he lives! When he recovers, he will tell me all;—there can be no secrets now between him and me.”
And he resumed his quick and careful ministrations, while Zaroba still wailed and wrung her hands, and stared miserably at the empty couch, whereon her beautiful charge had lain, slumbering away the hours and days for six long years. She too saw the little heaps and trackings of gray dust on the pillows and coverlid, and her feeble limbs shook with such terror that she could scarcely stand.
“The gods have taken her!” she whispered faintly through her pallid lips—“The gods are avenged! When did they ever have mercy! They have claimed their own with the breath and the fire of lightning, and the dust of a maiden’s beauty is no more than the dust of a flower! The dreadful, terrible gods are avenged—at last ... at last!”
And sinking down upon the floor, she huddled herself together, and drew her yellow draperies over her head, after the Eastern manner of expressing inconsolable grief, and covered her aged features from the very light of day.
Féraz heeded her not at all, his sole attention being occupied in the care of his brother, whose large black eyes now opened suddenly and regarded him with a vacant expression like the eyes of a blind man. A great shudder ran through his frame,—he looked curiously at his own hands as Féraz gently pressed and rubbed them,—and he stared all round the room in vaguely-inquiring wonderment. Presently his wandering glance came back to Féraz, and the vacancy of his expression softened into a certain pleased mildness,—his lips parted in a little smile, but he said nothing.
“You are better, El-Râmi, my brother?” murmured Féraz caressingly, trembling and almost weeping in the excess of his affectionate anxiety, the while he placed his own figure so that it might obstruct a too immediate view of Lilith’s vacant couch, and the covered crouching form of old Zaroba beside it—“You have no pain? ... you do not suffer?”
El-Râmi made no answer for the moment;—he was looking at Féraz with a gentle but puzzled inquisitiveness. Presently his dark brows contracted slightly, as though he were trying to connect some perplexing chain of ideas,—then he gave a slight gesture of fatigue and indifference.
“You will excuse me, I hope,—” he then said with plaintive courtesy—“I have forgotten your name. I believe I met you once, but I cannot remember where.”
The heart of poor Féraz stood still, ... a great sob rose in his throat. But he checked it bravely,—he would not, he could not, he dared not give way to the awful fear that began to creep like a frost through his warm young blood.
“You cannot remember Féraz?” he said gently—“Your own Féraz? ... your little brother, to whom you have been life, hope, joy, work—everything of value in the world!” Here his voice failed him, and he nearly broke down.
El-Râmi looked at him in grave surprise.
“You are very good!” he murmured, with a feebly polite wave of his hand;—“You overrate my poor powers. I am glad to have been useful to you—very glad!”
Here he paused;—his head sank forward on his breast, and his eyes closed.
“El-Râmi!” cried Féraz, the hot tears forcing their way between his eyelids—“Oh, my belovëd brother!—have you no thought for me?”
El-Râmi opened his eyes and stared;—then smiled.
“No thought?” he repeated—“Oh, you mistake!—I have thought very much,—very much indeed, about many things. Not about you perhaps,—but then I do not know you. You say your name is Féraz,—that is very strange; it is not at all a common name. I only knew one Féraz,—he was my brother, or seemed so for a time,—but I found out afterwards, ... hush! ... come closer! ...” and he lowered his voice to a whisper,—“that he was not a mortal, but an angel,—the angel of a Star. The Star knew him better than I did.”
Féraz turned away his head,—the tears were falling down his cheeks—he could not speak. He realised the bitter truth,—the delicate overstrained mechanism of his brother’s mind had given way under excessive pain and pressure,—that brilliant, proud, astute, cold and defiant intellect was all unstrung and out of gear, and rendered useless, perchance for ever.
El-Râmi however seemed to have some glimmering perception of Féraz’s grief, for he put out a trembling hand and turned his brother’s face towards him with gentle concern.
“Tears?” he said in a surprised tone—“Why should you weep? There is nothing to weep for;—God is very good.”
And with an effort, he rose from the chair in which he had sat, and standing upright, looked about him. His eye at once lighted on the vase of roses at the foot of the couch and he began to tremble violently. Féraz caught him by the arm,—and then he seemed startled and afraid.
“She promised, ... she promised!” he began in an incoherent rambling way—“and you must not interfere,—you must let me do her bidding. ‘Look for me where the roses are; there will I stand and wait!’ She said that,—and she will wait, and I will look, for she is sure to keep her word—no angel ever forgets. You must not hinder me;—I have to watch and pray,—you must help me, not hinder me. I shall die if you will not let me do what she asks;—you cannot tell how sweet her voice is;—she talks to me and tells me of such wonderful things,—things too beautiful to be believed, yet they are true. I know so well my work;—work that must be done,—you will not hinder me?”
“No, no!”—said Féraz, in anguish himself, yet willing to say anything to soothe his brother’s trembling excitement—“No, no! You shall not be hindered,—I will help you,—I will watch with you,—I will pray ...” and here again the poor fellow nearly broke down into womanish sobbing.
“Yes!” said El-Râmi, eagerly catching at the word—“Pray! You will pray—and so will I;—that is good,—that is what I need,—prayer, they say, draws all Heaven down to earth. It is strange,—but so it is. You know”—he added, with a faint gleam of intelligence lighting up for a moment his wandering eyes—“Lilith is not here! Not here, nor there, ... she is Everywhere!”
A terrible pallor stole over his face, giving it almost the livid hue of death,—and Féraz, alarmed, threw one arm strongly and resolutely about him. But El-Râmi crouched and shuddered, and hid his eyes as though he strove to shelter himself from the fury of a whirlwind.
“Everywhere!” he moaned—“In the flowers, in the trees, in the winds, in the sound of the sea, in the silence of the night, in the slow breaking of the dawn,—in all these things is the Soul of Lilith! Beautiful, indestructible, terrible Lilith! She permeates the world, she pervades the atmosphere, she shapes and unshapes herself at pleasure,—she floats, or flies, or sleeps at will;—in substance, a cloud;—in radiance, a rainbow! She is the essence of God in the transient shape of an angel—never the same, but for ever immortal. She soars aloft—she melts like mist in the vast Unseen!—and I—I—I shall never find her, never know her, never see her, never, never again!”
The harrowing tone of voice in which he uttered these words pierced Féraz to the heart, but he would not give way to his own emotion.
“Come, El-Râmi!” he said very gently—“Do not stay here,—come with me. You are weak,—rest on my arm; you must try and recover your strength,—remember, you have work to do.”
“True, true!” said El-Râmi, rousing himself—“Yes, you are right,—there is much to be done. Nothing is so difficult as patience. To be left all alone, and to be patient, is very hard,—but I will come,—I will come.”
He suffered himself to be led towards the door,—then, all at once he came to an abrupt standstill, and looking round, gazed full on the empty couch where Lilith had so long been royally enshrined. A sudden passion seemed to seize him—his eyes sparkled luridly,—a sort of inward paroxysm convulsed his features, and he clutched Féraz by the shoulder with a grip as hard as steel.
“Roses and lilies and gold!” he muttered thickly—“They were all there, those delicate treasures, those airy nothings of which God makes woman! Roses for the features, lilies for the bosom, gold for the hair!—roses, lilies, and gold! They were mine,—but I have burned them all!—I have burned the roses and lilies, and melted the gold. Dust!—dust and ashes! But the dust is not Lilith. No!—it is only the dust of the roses, the dust of the lilies, the dust of gold. Roses, lilies, and gold! So sweet they are and fair to the sight, one would almost take them for real substance; but they are Shadows!—shadows that pass as we touch them,—shadows that always go, when most we would have them stay!”
He finished with a deep shuddering sigh, and then, loosening his grasp of Féraz, began to stumble his way hurriedly out of the apartment, with the manner of one who is lost in a dense fog and cannot see whither he is going. Féraz hastened to assist and support him, whereupon he looked up with a pathetic and smiling gratefulness.
“You are very good to me,” he said, with a gentle courtesy, which in his condition was peculiarly touching—“I thought I should never need any support;—but I was wrong—quite wrong,—and it is kind of you to help me. My eyes are rather dim,—there was too much light among the roses, ... and I find this place extremely dark, ... it makes me feel a little confusedhere;”—and he passed his hand across his forehead with a troubled gesture, and looked anxiously at Féraz, as though he would ask him for some explanation of his symptoms.
“Yes, yes!” murmured Féraz soothingly—“You must be tired—you will rest, and presently you will feel strong and well again. Do not hurry,—lean on me,”—and he guided his brother’s trembling limbs carefully down the stairs, a step at a time, thinking within himself in deep sorrow—Could this be the proud El-Râmi, clinging to him thus like a weak old man afraid to move? Oh, what a wreck was here!—what a change had been wrought in the few hours of the past night!—and ever the fateful question returned again and again to trouble him—What had become of Lilith? That she was gone was self-evident,—and he gathered some inkling of the awful truth from his brother’s rambling words. He remembered that El-Râmi had previously declared Lilith to bedead, so far as her body was concerned, and only keptapparentlyalive by artificial means;—he could easily imagine it possible for those artificial means to lose their efficacy in the end, ... and then, ... for the girl’s beautiful body to crumble into that dissolution which would have been its fate long ago, had Nature had her way. All this he could dimly surmise,—but he had been kept so much in the dark as to the real aim and intention of his brother’s “experiment” that it was not likely he would ever understand everything that had occurred;—so that Lilith’s mysterious evanishment seemed to him like a horrible delusion;—it could not be! he kept on repeating over and over again to himself, and yet it was!
Moving with slow and cautious tread, he got El-Râmi at last into his own study, wondering whether the sight of the familiar objects he was daily accustomed to, would bring him back to a reasonable perception of his surroundings. He waited anxiously, while his brother stood still, shivering slightly and looking about the room with listless, unrecognising eyes. Presently, in a voice that was both weary and petulant, El-Râmi spoke.
“You will not leave me alone, I hope?” he said; “I am very old and feeble, and I have done you no wrong,—I do not see why you should leave me to myself. I should be glad if you would stay with me a little while, because everything is at present so strange to me;—I shall no doubt get more accustomed to it in time. You are perhaps not aware that I wished to live through a great many centuries—and my wish was granted;—I have lived longer than any man, especially since She left me,—and now I am growing old, and I am easily tired. I do not know this place at all—is it a World or a Dream?”
At this question, it seemed to Féraz that he heard again, like a silver clarion ringing through silence, the mysterious voice that had roused him that morning saying, “Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins!” ... He understood, and he bent his head resignedly,—he knew now what the “life” thus indicated meant;—it meant a sacrificing of all his poetic aspirations, his music, and his fantastic happy visions,—a complete immolation of himself and his own desires, for the sake of his brother. His brother, who had once ruled him absolutely, was now to be ruledbyhim;—helpless as a child, the once self-sufficient and haughty El-Râmi was to be dependent for everything upon the very creature who had lately been his slave,—and Féraz, humbly reading in these reversed circumstances the Divine Law of Compensation, answered his brother’s plaintive query—“Is it a World or a Dream?” with manful tenderness.
“It is a World,”—he said—“not a Dream, beloved El-Râmi—but a Reality. It is a fair garden belonging to God and the things of God”—he paused, seeing that El-Râmi smiled placidly and nodded his head as though he heard pleasant music,—then he went on steadily—“a garden in which immortal spirits wander for a time self-exiled, till they fully realise the worth and loveliness of the higher lands they have forsaken. Do you understand me, O dear and honoured one?—do you understand? None love their home so dearly as those who have left it for a time—and it is only for a time—a short, short time,”—and Féraz, deeply moved by his mingled sorrow and affection, kissed and clasped his brother’s hands—“and all the beauty we see here in this beautiful small world, is made to remind us of the greater beauty yonder. We look, as it were, into a little mirror, which reflects, in exquisite miniature, the face of Heaven! See!”—and he pointed to the brilliant blaze of sunshine that streamed through the window and illumined the whole room—“There is the tiny copy of the larger Light above,—and in that little light the flowers grow, the harvests ripen, the trees bud, the birds sing, and every living creature rejoices,—but in the other Greater Light, God lives, and angels love and have their being;”—here Féraz broke off abruptly, wondering if he might risk the utterance of the words that next rose involuntarily to his lips, while El-Râmi gazed at him with great wide-open eager eyes like those of a child listening to a fairy story.
“Yes, yes!—what next?” he demanded impatiently—“This is good news you give me;—the angels love, you say, and God lives,—yes!—tell me more, ... more!”
“All angels love and have their being in that Greater Light,”—continued Féraz softly and steadily—“And there too is Lilith—beautiful—deathless,—faithful——”
“True!” cried El-Râmi, with a sort of sobbing cry—“True! ... She is there,—she promised—and I shall know, ... I shall know where to find her after all, for she told me plainly—‘Look for me where the roses are,—there will I stand and wait.’”
He tottered, and seemed about to fall;—but when Féraz would have supported him, he shook his head, and pointing tremblingly to the amber ray of sunshine pouring itself upon the ground:
“Into the light!”—he murmured—“I am all in the dark;—lead me out of the darkness into the light.”
And Féraz led him, where he desired, and seated him in his own chair in the full glory of the morning radiance that rippled about him like molten gold, and shone caressingly on his white hair,—his dark face that in its great pallor looked as though it were carved in bronze,—and his black, piteous, wandering eyes. A butterfly danced towards him in the sparkling shower of sunbeams, the same that had flown in an hour before and alighted on the heliotrope that adorned the centre of the table. El-Râmi’s attention was attracted by it—and he watched its airy flutterings with a pleased, yet vacant smile. Then he stretched out his hands in the golden light, and lifting them upward, clasped them together and closed his eyes.
“Our Father!” ... he murmured; “which art in Heaven! ... Hallowed be Thy Name!”
Féraz, bending heedfully over him, caught the words as they were faintly whispered,—caught the hands as they dropped inert from their supplicating posture and laid them gently back;—then listened again with strained attention, the pitying tears gathering thick upon his lashes.
“Our Father!” ... once more that familiar appeal of kinship to the Divine stole upon the air like a far-off sigh,—then came the sound of regular and quiet breathing;—Nature had shed upon the overtaxed brain her balm of blessed unconsciousness,—and like a tired child, the proud El-Râmi slept.
Upstairsmeanwhile, in the room that had been Lilith’s there reigned the silence of a deep desolation. The woman Zaroba still crouched there, huddled on the floor, a mere heap of amber draperies,—her head covered, her features hidden. Now and then a violent shuddering seized her,—but otherwise she gave no sign of life. Hours passed;—she knew nothing, she thought of nothing; she was stupefied with misery and a great inextinguishable fear. To her bewildered, darkly superstitious, more than pagan mind, it seemed as if some terrible avenging angel had descended in the night and torn away her beautiful charge out of sheer spite and jealousy lest she should awake to the joys of earth’s life and love. It had always been her fixed idea that the chief and most powerful ingredient of the Divine character (and of the human also) was jealousy; and she considered therefore that all women, as soon as they were born, should be solemnly dedicated to the ancient goddess Anaïtis. Anaïtis was a useful and accommodating deity, who in the old days, had unlimited power to make all things pure. A woman might have fifty lovers, and yet none could dare accuse her of vileness if she were a “daughter” or “priestess” of Anaïtis. She might have been guilty of any amount of moral enormity, but she was held to be the chastest of virgins if Anaïtis were her protectress and mistress. And so, in the eyes of Zaroba, Anaïtis was the true patroness of love,—she sanctified the joys of lovers and took away from them all imputation of sin; and many and many a time had the poor, ignorant, heathenish old woman secretly invoked the protection of this almost forgotten pagan goddess for the holy maiden Lilith. And now—now she wondered tremblingly, if in this she had done wrong? ... More than for anything in the world had she longed that El-Râmi, the “wise man” who scoffed at passion with a light contempt, should love with a lover’s wild idolatry the beautiful creature who was so completely in his power;—in her dull, half-savage, stupid way, she had thought that such a result of the long six years’ “experiment” could but bring happiness to both man and maid; and she spared no pains to try and foster the spark of mere interest which El-Râmi had for his “subject” into the flame of a lover’s ardour. For this cause she had brought Féraz to look upon the tranced girl, in order that El-Râmi knowing of it, might feel the subtle prick of that perpetual motor, jealousy,—for this she had said all she dared say, concerning love and its unconquerable nature;—and now, just when her long-cherished wish seemed on the point of being granted, some dreadful Invisible Power had rushed in between the two, and destroyed Lilith with the fire of wrath and revenge;—at any rate that was how she regarded it. The sleeping girl had grown dear to her,—it war impossible not to love such a picture of innocent, entrancing, ideal beauty,—and she felt as though her heart had been torn open and its very core wrenched out by a cruel and hasty hand. She knew nothing as yet of the fate that had overtaken El-Râmi himself,—for as she could not hear a sound of the human voice, she had only dimly seen that he was led from the room by his young brother, and that he looked ill, feeble, and distraught. What she realised most positively and with the greatest bitterness, was the fact of Lilith’s loss,—Lilith’s evident destruction. This was undeniable,—this was irremediable;—and she thought of it till her aged brain burned as with some inward consuming fire, and her thin blood seemed turning to ice.
“Who has done it?” she muttered—“Who has claimed her? It must be the Christ,—the cold, quiet, pallid Christ, with His bleeding hands and beckoning eyes! He is a new god,—He has called, and she, Lilith, has obeyed! Without love, without life, without aught in the world save the lily-garb of untouched holiness,—it is what the pale Christ seeks, and He has found it here,—here, with the child who slept the sleep of innocent ignorance—here where no thought of passion ever entered unlessIbreathed it,—or perchance he—El-Râmi—thought it—unknowingly. O what a white flower for the Christ in Heaven, is Lilith!—What a branch of bud and blossom! ... Ah, cruel, cold new gods of the Earth!—how long shall their sorrowful reign endure! Who will bring back the wise old gods,—the gods of the ancient days,—the gods who loved and were not ashamed,—the gods of mirth and life and health,—they would have left me Lilith,—they would have said—‘Lo, how this woman is old and poor,—she hath lost all that she ever had,—let us leave her the child she loves, albeit it is not her own but ours;—we are great gods, but we are merciful!’ Oh, Lilith, Lilith! child of the sun and air, and daughter of sleep! would I had perished instead of thee!—Would I had passed away into darkness, and thou been spared to the light!”
Thus she wailed and moaned, her face hidden, her limbs quivering, and she knew not how long she had stayed thus, though all the morning had passed and the afternoon had begun. At last she was roused by the gentle yet firm pressure of a hand on her shoulder, and, slowly uncovering her drawn and anguished features she met the sorrowful eyes of Féraz looking into hers. With a mute earnest gesture he bade her rise. She obeyed, but so feebly and tremblingly, that he assisted her, and led her to a chair, where she sat down, still quaking all over with fear and utter wretchedness. Then he took a pencil and wrote on the slate which his brother had been wont to use,—
“A great trouble has come upon us. God has been pleased to so darken the mind of the beloved El-Râmi, that he knows us no longer, and is ignorant of where he is. The wise man has been rendered simple,—and the world seems to him as it seems to a child who has everything in its life to learn. We must accept this ordinance as the Will of the Supreme, and bring our own will in accordance with it, believing the ultimate intention to be for the Highest Good. But for his former life, El-Râmi exists no more,—the mind that guided his actions then is gone.”
Slowly, and with pained, aching eyes Zaroba read these words,—she grasped their purport and meaning thoroughly, and yet, she said not a word. She was not surprised,—she was scarcely affected;—her feelings seemed blunted or paralysed. El-Râmi was mad? To her, he had always seemed mad,—with a madness born of terrible knowledge and power. To be mad now was nothing; the loss of Lilith was amply sufficient cause for his loss of wit. Nothing could be worse in her mind than to have loved Lilith and lost her,—what was the use of uttering fresh cries and ejaculations of woe! It was all over,—everything was ended,—so far as she, Zaroba, was concerned. So she sat speechless,—her grand old face rigid as bronze, with an expression upon it of stern submission, as of one who waits immovably for more onslaughts from the thunderbolts of destiny.
Féraz looked at her very compassionately, and wrote again—
“Good Zaroba, I know your grief. Rest—try to sleep. Do not see El-Râmi to-day. It is better I should be alone with him. He is quite peaceful and happy,—happier indeed than he has ever been. He has so much to learn, he says, and he is quite satisfied. For to-day we must be alone with our sorrows,—to-morrow we shall be able to see more clearly what we must do.”
Still Zaroba said nothing. Presently however she arose, and walked totteringly to the side of Lilith’s couch, ... there with an eloquently tragic gesture of supremest despair, she pointed to the gray-white ashes that were spread in that dreadfully suggestive outline on the satin coverlet and pillows. Féraz, shuddering, shut his eyes for a moment;—then, as he opened them again, he saw, confronting him, the uncurtained picture of the “Christ and His Disciples.” He remembered it well,—El-Râmi had bought it long ago from among the despoiled treasures of an old dismantled monastery,—and besides being a picture it was also a reliquary. He stepped hastily up to it and felt for the secret spring which used, he knew, to be there. He found and pressed it,—the whole of the picture flew back like a door on a hinge, and showed the interior to be a Gothic-shaped casket, lined with gold, at the back of which was inserted a small piece of wood, supposed to have been a fragment of the “True Cross.” There was nothing else in the casket,—and Féraz leaving it open, turned to Zaroba who had watched him with dull, scarcely comprehending eyes.
“Gather together these sacred ashes,”—he wrote again on the slate,—“and place them in this golden recess,—it is a holy place fit for such holy relics. El-Râmi would wish it, I know, if he could understand or wish for anything,—and wherever we go, the picture will go with us, for one day perhaps he will remember, ... and ask, ...”
He could trust himself to write no more,—and stood sadly enrapt, and struggling with his own emotion.
“The Christ claims all!” muttered Zaroba wearily, resorting to her old theme—“The crucified Christ, ... He must have all; the soul, the body, the life, the love, the very ashes of the dead,—He must have all ... all!”
Féraz heard her,—and taking up his pencil once more, wrote swiftly—