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BY
DANTE G. ROSSETTI
'Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman'
and complex character of the psychological Dane for himself, with the result that even the listless, languid, generally impassive occupants of the stalls, many of whom had no doubt heard a hundred Hamlets, were roused for once out of their chronic state of boredom into something like attention, as the familiar lines fell on their ears with a slow and meditative richness of accent not commonly heard on the modern stage. This new Hamlet chose his attitudes well,--instead of walking or rather strutting about as he uttered the soliloquy, he seated himself and for a moment seemed lost in silent thought;-- then, without changing his position he began, his voice gathering deeper earnestness as the beauty and solemnity of the immortal lines became more pronounced and concentrated.
"To die--to sleep;--
To sleep!--perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause..."
Here there was a brief and impressive silence. In that short interval,
and before the actor could resume his speech, a man entered the theatre
with noiseless step and
seated himself in a vacant stall of the second row. A few heads were instinctively turned to look at him, but in the semi-gloom of the auditorium, his features could scarcely be discerned, and Hamlet's sad rich voice again compelled attention.
"Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action."
The scene went on to the despairing interview with Ophelia, which was
throughout performed with such splendid force and feeling as to awaken a
perfect hurricane of applause;--then the curtain went down, the lights
went up, the orchestra recommenced, and again inquisitive eyes were turned
towards the latest new-comer in the stalls who had made his quiet entrance
in the very midst of the great philosophical Soliloquy.
He was immediately discovered to be a person well worth observing; and observed he was accordingly, though he seemed quite unaware of the attention he was attracting. Yet he was singular-looking enough to excite a little curiosity even among modern fashionable Londoners, who are accustomed to see all sorts of eccentric beings, both male and female, æsthetic and common-place, and he was so distinctively separated from ordinary folk by his features and bearing, that the rather loud whisper of an irrepressible young American woman--"I'd give worlds to know who that man is!" was almost pardonable under the circumstances. His skin was dark as a mulatto's,--yet smooth, and healthily coloured by the warm blood flushing through the olive tint,--his eyes seemed black, but could scarcely be seen on account of the extreme length and thickness of their dark lashes,--the fine, rather scornful curve of his short upper lip was partially hidden by a black moustache; and with all this blackness and darkness about his face, his hair, of which he seemed to have an extraordinary profusion, was perfectly white. Not merely a
silvery white, but a white as pronounced as that of a bit of washed fleece or newly-fallen snow. In looking at him it was impossible to decide whether he was old or young,--because, though he carried no wrinkles or other defacing marks of Time's power to destroy, his features wore an impress of such stern and deeply resolved thought as is seldom or never the heritage of those to whom youth still belongs. Nevertheless, he seemed a long way off from being old,--so that, altogether, he was a puzzle to his neighbours in the stalls, as well as to certain fair women in the boxes, who levelled their opera-glasses at him with a pertinacity which might have made him uncomfortably self-conscious had he looked up. Only he did not look up; he leaned back in his seat with a slightly listless air, studied his programme intently, and appeared half asleep, owing to the way in which his eyelids drooped, and the drowsy sweep of his lashes. The irrepressible American girl almost forgot "Hamlet," so absorbed was she in staring at him, in spite of the sotto-voce remonstrances of her decorous mother, who sat beside her,--and presently,
as if aware of, or annoyed by, her scrutiny, he lifted his eyes, and looked full at her. With an instinctive movement she recoiled,--and her own eyes fell. Never in all her giddy, thoughtless little life had she seen such fiery, brilliant, night-black orbs,--they made her feel uncomfortable,--gave her the "creeps," as she afterwards declared;--she shivered, drawing her satin opera-wrap more closely about her, and stared at the stranger no more. He soon removed his piercing gaze from her to the stage, for now the great "Play scene" of "Hamlet" was in progress, and was from first to last a triumph for the actor chiefly concerned. At the next fall of the curtain, a fair, dissipated-looking young fellow leaned over from the third row of stalls, and touched the white-haired individual lightly on the shoulder.
"My dear El-Râmi! You here? At a theatre? Why, I should
never have thought you capable of indulging in such frivolity!"
"Do you consider 'Hamlet' frivolous?" queried
the other, rising from his seat to shake hands, and showing himself to be a
man of medium height, though having such
peculiar dignity of carriage as made him appear taller than he really was.
"Well, no!"--and the young man yawned rather
effusively. "To tell you the truth, I find him insufferably
dull."
"You do?" and the person addressed as El-Râmi smiled
slightly. "Well,--naturally you go with the opinions of your
age. You would no doubt prefer a burlesque?"
"Frankly speaking, I should! And now I begin to think of it, I
don't know really why I came here. I had intended to look in at the
Empire--there's a new ballet going on there--but a fellow at
the club gave me this stall, said it was a 'first-night,' and
all the rest of it--and so--"
"And so Fate decided for you," finished El-Râmi
sedately. "And instead of admiring the pretty ladies without proper
clothing at the Empire, you find yourself here, wondering why the deuce
Hamlet the Dane could not find anything better to do than bother himself
about his father's ghost! Exactly! But, being here, you are here for a
purpose, my friend;" and he lowered his voice to a confidential
whisper. "Look!--Over there--
observe her well!--sits your future wife;"--and he indicated, by the slightest possible nod, the American girl before alluded to. "Yes,--the pretty creature in pink, with dark hair. You don't know her? No, of course you don't--but you will. She will be introduced to you to-night before you leave this theatre. Don't look so startled--there's nothing miraculous about her, I assure you! She is merely Miss Chester, only daughter of Jabez Chester, the latest New York millionaire. A charmingly shallow, delightfully useless, but enormously wealthy little person!--you will propose to her within a month, and you will be accepted. A very good match for you, Vaughan--all your debts paid, and everything set straight with certain Jews. Nothing could be better, really--and, remember,--I am the first to congratulate you!"
He spoke rapidly, with a smiling, easy air of conviction; his friend
meanwhile stared at him in profound amazement and something of fear.
"By Jove, El-Râmi!"--he began
nervously--"you know, this is a little too much of a
good thing. It's all very well to play prophet sometimes, but it can be overdone."
"Pardon!" and El-Râmi turned to resume his seat.
"The play begins again. Insufferably dull as 'Hamlet' may
be, we are bound to give him some slight measure of attention."
Vaughan forced a careless smile in response, and threw himself
indolently back in his own stall, but he looked annoyed and puzzled. His
eyes wandered from the back of El-Râmi's white head to the
half-seen profile of the American heiress who had just been so coolly and
convincingly pointed out to him as his future wife.
"I don't know the girl from Adam,"--he thought
irritably, "and I don't want to know her. In fact, I won't
know her. And if I won't, why, I shan't know her. Will is
everything, even according to El-Râmi. The fellow's always so
confoundedly positive of his prophecies. I should like to confute him for
once and prove him wrong."
Thus he mused, scarcely heeding the progress of Shakespeare's great
tragedy, till, at the close of the scene of Ophelia's burial,
he saw El-Râmi rise and prepare to leave the auditorium. He at once rose himself.
"Are you going?" he asked.
"Yes;--I do not care for 'Hamlet's' end, or
for anybody's end in this particular play. I don't like the hasty
and wholesale slaughter that concludes the piece. It is
inartistic."
"Shakespeare inartistic?" queried Vaughan, smiling.
"Why yes, sometimes. He was a man, not a god;--and no
man's work can be absolutely perfect. Shakespeare had his faults like
everybody else,--and with his great genius he would have been the
first to own them. It is only your little mediocrities who are never wrong.
Are you going also?"
"Yes; I mean to damage your reputation as a prophet, and avoid the
chance of an introduction to Miss Chester--for this evening, at any
rate."
He laughed as he spoke, but El-Râmi said nothing. The two passed
out of the stalls together into the lobby, where they had to wait a few
minutes to get their hats and overcoats, the man in charge of the cloakroom
having gone to cool his chronic thirst
at the convenient "bar." Vaughan made use of the enforced delay to light his cigar.
"Did you think it a good 'Hamlet'?" he asked his
companion carelessly while thus occupied.
"Excellent," replied El-Râmi. "The leading actor
has immense talent, and thoroughly appreciates the subtlety of the part he
has to play;--but his supporters are all sticks,--hence the
scenes drag where he himself is not in them. That is the worst of the
'star' system,--a system which is perfectly ruinous to
histrionic art. Still--no matter how it is performed,
'Hamlet' is always interesting. Curiously inconsistent, too,
but impressive."
"Inconsistent? how?" asked Vaughan, beginning to puff rings
of smoke into the air, and to wonder impatiently how much longer the keeper
of the cloak-room meant to stay absent from his post.
"Oh, in many ways. Perhaps the most glaring inconsistency of the
whole conception comes out in the great soliloquy, 'To be or not to
be.'"
"Really?" and Vaughan became interested.
--"I thought that was considered one of the finest bits in the play."
"So it is. I am not speaking of the lines themselves, which are
magnificent, but of their connection with 'Hamlet's' own
character. Why does he talk of a 'bourne from whence no traveller
returns,' when he has, or thinks he has, proof positive of the return
of his own father in spiritual form;--and it is just concerning that
return that he makes all the pother? Don't you see inconsistency
there?"
"Of course,--but I never thought of it," said Vaughan,
staring. "I don't believe anyone but yourself has ever thought
of it. It is quite unaccountable. He certainly does say 'no traveller
returns,'--and he says it after he has seen the ghost
too."
"Yes," went on El-Râmi, warming with his subject.
"And he talks of the 'dread of something after death,' as
if it were only a 'dread,' and not a Fact;--whereas if he
is to believe the spirit of his own father, which he declares is 'an
honest ghost,' there is no possibility of doubt on the matter. Does
not the mournful phantom say--
"'But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres;
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end. . .'?"
"By Jove! I say, El-Râmi; don't look at me like
that!" exclaimed Vaughan uneasily, backing away from a too close
proximity to the brilliant flashing eyes and absorbed face of his
companion, who had recited the lines with extraordinary passion and
solemnity.
El-Râmi laughed.
"Did I scare you? Was I too much in earnest? I beg your pardon!
True enough,--'this eternal blazon must not be, to ears of flesh
and blood!' But, the 'something after death' was a
peculiarly aggravating reality to that poor ghost, and Hamlet knew that it
was so when he spoke of it as a mere 'dread.' Thus, as I say,
he was inconsistent, or, rather, Shakespeare did not argue the case
logically."
"You would make a capital actor,"--said Vaughan, still
gazing at him in astonishment.
"Why, you went on just now as if,--well, as if you meant it, you know."
"So I did mean it," replied El-Râmi
lightly--"for the moment! I always find 'Hamlet' a
rather absorbing study; so will you, perhaps, when you are my
age."
"Your age?" and Vaughan shrugged his shoulders. "I
wish I knew it! Why, nobody knows it. You may be thirty or a
hundred--who can tell?"
"Or two hundred--or even three hundred?" queried
El-Râmi, with a touch of satire in his tone;--"why stint
the measure of limitless time? But here comes our recalcitrant
knave"--this, as the keeper of the cloakroom made his appearance
from a side-door with a perfectly easy and unembarrassed air, as though he
had done rather a fine thing than otherwise in keeping two gentlemen
waiting his pleasure. "Let us get our coats, and be well away before
the decree of Fate can be accomplished in making you the winner of the
desirable Chester prize. It is delightful to conquer Fate--if one
can!"
His black eyes flashed curiously, and
Vaughan paused in the act of throwing on his overcoat to look at him again in something of doubt and dread.
At that moment a gay voice exclaimed:
"Why, here's Vaughan!--Freddie Vaughan--how
lucky!" and a big handsome man of about two or three and thirty
sauntered into the lobby from the theatre, followed by two ladies.
"Look here, Vaughan, you're just the fellow I wanted to see.
We've left Hamlet in the thick of his fight, because we're going
on to the Somers's ball,--will you come with us? And I say,
Vaughan, allow me to introduce to you my friends--Mrs. Jabez Chester,
Miss Idina Chester--Sir Frederick Vaughan."
For one instant Vaughan stood inert and stupefied; the next he
remembered himself, and bowed mechanically. His presentation to the
Chesters was thus suddenly effected by his cousin, Lord Melthorpe, to whom
he was indebted for many favours, and whom he could not afford to offend by
any show of brusquerie. As soon as the necessary salutations were
exchanged, however, he looked round vaguely, and in a sort of
superstitious terror, for the man who had so surely prophesied this introduction. But El-Râmi was gone. Silently and without adieu he had departed, having seen his word fulfilled.
Vaughan smiled at this description.
"He is certainly rather singular in personal appearance," he
began, when his cousin, Lord Melthorpe, interrupted him.
"You mean El-Râmi? It was El-Râmi,
wasn't it? Ah, I thought so. Why did he give us the slip, I wonder? I
wish he had waited a minute--he is a most interesting
fellow."
"But who is he?" persisted Miss Chester. She
was now comfortably ensconced in her luxurious brougham, her mother beside
her, and two men of "title" opposite to her--a position which exactly suited the aspirations of her soul. "How very tiresome you both are! You don't explain him a bit; you only say he is 'interesting,' and of course one can see that; people with such white hair and such black eyes are always interesting, don't you think so?"
"Well, I don't see why they should be," said Lord
Melthorpe dubiously. "Now, just think what horrible chaps Albinos
are, and they have white hair and pink eyes--"
"Oh, don't drift off on the subject of Albinos,
please!" pleaded Miss Chester, with a soft laugh. "If you do, I
shall never know anything about this particular person--El-Râmi,
did you say? Isn't it a very odd name? Eastern, of course?"
"Oh yes! he is a pure Oriental thoroughbred," replied Lord
Melthorpe, who took the burden of the conversation upon himself, while he
inwardly wondered why his cousin Vaughan was in such an evidently taciturn
mood. "That is, I mean, he is an Oriental of the very old stock, not
one of the modern Indian mixtures of vice and knavery. But
when he came from the East, and why he came from the East, I don't suppose anyone could tell you. I have only met him two or three times in society, and on those occasions he managed to perplex and fascinate a good many people. My wife, for instance, thinks him quite a marvellous man; she always asks him to her parties, but he hardly ever comes. His name in full is El-Râmi-Zarânos, though I believe he is best known as El-Râmi simply."
"And what is he?" asked Miss Chester. "An
artist?--a literary celebrity?"
"Neither, that I am aware of. Indeed, I don't know what he
is, or how he lives. I have always looked upon him as a sort of
magician--a kind of private conjurer, you know."
"Dear me!" said fat Mrs. Chester, waking up from a
semi-doze, and trying to get interested in the subject. "Does he do
drawing-room tricks?"
"Oh no, he doesn't do tricks;" and Lord Melthorpe
looked a little amused. "He isn't that sort of man at all;
I'm afraid I explain myself badly. I mean that he can
tell you extraordinary things about your past and future--"
"Oh, by your hand--I know!" and the pretty
Idina nodded her head sagaciously. "There really is something awfully
clever in palmistry. I can tell fortunes that way!"
"Can you?" Lord Melthorpe smiled indulgently, and went
on,--"But it so happens that El-Râmi does not tell
anything by the hand,--he judges by the face, figure, and movement. He
doesn't make a profession of it; but, really, he does foretell events
in rather a curious way now and then."
"He certainly does!" agreed Vaughan, rousing himself from a
reverie into which he had fallen, and fixing his eyes on the small piquante
features of the girl opposite him. "Some of his prophecies are quite
remarkable."
"Really! How very delightful!" said Miss Chester, who was
fully aware of Sir Frederick's intent, almost searching, gaze, but
pretended to be absorbed in buttoning one of her gloves. "I must ask
him to tell me what sort of fate is in store for me--something awful,
I'm positive! Don't you
think he has horrid eyes?--splendid, but horrid? He looked at me in the theatre--"
"My dear, you looked at him first," murmured Mrs.
Chester.
"Yes; but I'm sure I didn't make him shiver. Now, when
he looked at me, I felt as if someone were pouring cold water very slowly
down my back. It was such a creepy sensation! Do fasten this,
mother--will you?" and she extended the hand with the refractory
glove upon it to Mrs. Chester, but Vaughan promptly interposed:
"Allow me!"
"Oh, well! if you know how to fix a button that is almost
off!" she said laughingly, with a blush that well became her
transparent skin.
"I can make an attempt"--said Vaughan, with due
humility. "If I succeed, will you give me one or two dances
presently?"
"With pleasure!"
"Oh! you are coming in to the Somers's,
then!" said Lord Melthorpe, in a pleased tone. "That's
right. You know, Fred, you're so absent-minded to-night, that you
never said 'Yes' or 'No' when I asked you to accompany us."
"Didn't I? I'm awfully sorry!" and, having
fastened the glove with careful daintiness, he smiled. "Please set
down my rudeness and distraction to the uncanny influence of El-Râmi;
I can't imagine any other reason."
They all laughed carelessly, as people in an idle humour laugh at
trifles, and the carriage bore them on to their destination--a great
house in Queen's Gate, where a magnificent entertainment was being
held in honour of some Serene and Exalted foreign potentate who had taken
it into his head to see how London amused itself during a
"season." The foreign potentate had heard that the splendid
English capital was full of gloom and misery--that its women were
unapproachable, and its men difficult to make friends with; and all these
erroneous notions had to be dispersed in his serene and exalted brain, no
matter what his education cost the "Upper Ten" who undertook to
enlighten his barbarian ignorance.
Meanwhile, the subject of Lord Mel-
thorpe's conversation--El-Râmi, or El-Râmi-Zarânos, as he was called by those of his own race--was walking quietly homewards with that firm, swift, yet apparently unhasting pace which so often distinguishes the desert-born savage, and so seldom gives grace to the deportment of the cultured citizen. It was a mild night in May; the weather was unusually fine and warm; the skies were undarkened by any mist or cloud, and the stars shone forth with as much brilliancy as though the city lying under their immediate ken had been the smiling fairy, Florence, instead of the brooding giant, London. Now and again El-Râmi raised his eyes to the sparkling belt of Orion, which glittered aloft with a lustre that is seldom seen in the hazy English air;--he was thinking his own thoughts, and the fact that there were many passers to and fro in the streets besides himself did not appear to disturb him in the least, for he strode through their ranks, without any hurry or jostling, as if he alone existed, and they were but shadows.
"What fools are the majority of men!" he mused. "How
easy to gull them, and
how willing they are to be gulled! How that silly young Vaughan marvelled at my prophecy of his marriage!--as if it were not as easy to foretell as that two and two inevitably make four! Given the characters of people in the same way that you give figures, and you are certain to arrive at a sum-total of them in time. How simple the process of calculation as to Vaughan's matrimonial prospects! Here are the set of numerals I employed: Two nights ago I heard Lord Melthorpe say he meant to marry his cousin Fred to Miss Chester, daughter of Jabez Chester, of New York,--Miss Chester herself entered the room a few minutes later on, and I saw the sort of young woman she was. To-night at the theatre I see her again;--in an opposite box, well back in shadow, I perceive Lord Melthorpe. Young Vaughan, whose character I know to be of such weakness that it can be moulded whichever way a stronger will turns it, sits close behind me; and I proceed to make the little sum-total. Given Lord Melthorpe, with a determination that resembles the obstinacy of a pig rather than of a man;
Frederick Vaughan, with no determination at all; and the little Chester girl, with her heart set on an English title, even though it only be that of a baronet, and the marriage is certain. What was uncertain was the possibility of their all meeting to-night; but they were all there, and I counted that possibility as the fraction over,--there is always a fraction over in character-sums; it stands as Providence or Fate, and must always be allowed for. I chanced it,--and won. I always do win in these things,--these ridiculous trifles of calculation, which are actually accepted as prophetic utterances by people who never will think out anything for themselves. Good heavens! what a monster-burden of crass ignorance and wilful stupidity this poor planet has groaned under ever since it was hurled into space! Immense!--incalculable! And for what purpose? For what progress? For what end?"
He stopped a moment; he had walked from the Strand up through
Piccadilly, and was now close to Hyde Park. Taking out his watch, he
glanced at the time--it was close upon midnight. All at once he was
struck fiercely from behind, and the watch he held was snatched from his hand by a man who had no sooner committed the theft than he uttered a loud cry, and remained inert and motionless. El-Râmi turned quietly round, and surveyed him.
"Well, my friend?" he inquired blandly--"What did
you do that for?"
The fellow stared about him vaguely, but seemed unable to
answer,--his arm was stiffly outstretched, and the watch was clutched
fast within his palm.
"You had better give that little piece of property back to
me," went on El-Râmi, coldly smiling,--and, stepping close
up to his assailant, he undid the closed fingers one by one, and, removing
the watch, restored it to his own pocket. The thief's arm at the same
moment fell limply at his side; but he remained where he was, trembling
violently as though seized with a sudden ague-fit.
"You would find it an inconvenient thing to have about you, I
assure you. Stolen goods are always more or less of a bore, I believe. You
seem rather discomposed? Ah! you have had a little shock,--that's
all.
You've heard of torpedos, I dare say? Well, in this scientific age of ours, there are human torpedos going about; and I am one of them. It is necessary to be careful whom you touch nowadays,--it really is, you know! You will be better presently--take time!"
He spoke banteringly, observing the thief meanwhile with the most
curious air, as though he were some peculiar specimen of beetle or frog.
The wretched man's features worked convulsively, and he made a gesture
of appeal:
"Yer won't 'ave me took up!" he muttered hoarsely.
"I'm starvin'!"
"No, no!" said El-Râmi persuasively--"you
are nothing of the sort. Do not tell lies, my friend; that is a great
mistake--as great a mistake as thieving. Both things, as you practise
them, will put you to no end of trouble,--and to avoid trouble is the
chief aim of modern life. You are not starving--you are as plump as a
rabbit,"--and, with a dexterous touch, he threw up the
man's loose shirt-sleeve, and displayed the full, firm flesh of the
strong and sinewy arm beneath. "You have had more meat in you to-day
than I
can manage in a week; you will do very well. You are a professional thief,--a sort of--lawyer, shall we say? Only, instead of protesting the right you have to live, politely by means of documents and red-tape, you assert it roughly by stealing a watch. It's very frank conduct,--but it is not civil; and, in the present state of ethics, it doesn't pay--it really doesn't. I'm afraid I'm boring you! You feel better? Then--good-evening!"
He was about to resume his walk, when the now-recovered rough took a
hasty step towards him.
"I wanted to knock yer down!" he began.
"I know you did,"--returned El-Râmi composedly.
"Well--would you like to try again?"
The man stared at him, half in amazement, half in fear.
"Yer see," he went on, "yer pulled out yer watch, and
it was all jools and sparkles--"
"And it was a glittering temptation"--finished
El-Râmi. "I see. I had no business to pull it out; I grant it;
but, being
pulled out, you had no business to want it. We were both wrong; let us both endeavour to be wiser in future. Good-night!"
"Well, I'm blowed if ye're not a rum un, and an orful
un!" ejaculated the man, who had certainly received a fright, and was
still nervous from the effects of it. "Blowed if he ain't the
rummest card!"
But the "rummest card" heard none of these observations. He
crossed the road, and went on his way serenely, taking up the thread of his
interrupted musings as though nothing had occurred.
"Fools--fools all!" he murmured. "Thieves steal,
murderers slay, labourers toil, and all men and women lust and live and
die--to what purpose? For what progress? For what end? Destruction or
new life? Heaven or hell? Wisdom or caprice? Kindness or cruelty? God or
the Devil? Which? If I knew that I should be wise,--but
till I know, I am but a fool also,--a fool among fools,
fooled by a Fate whose secret I mean to discover and conquer--and
defy!"
He paused,--and, drawing a long, deep
breath, raised his eyes to the stars once more. His lips moved as though he repeated inwardly some vow or prayer, then he proceeded at a quicker pace, and stopped no more till he reached his destination, which was a small, quiet and unfashionable square off Sloane Street. Here he made his way to an unpretentious-looking little house, semi-detached, and one of a row of similar buildings; the only particularly distinctive mark about it being a heavy and massively-carved ancient oaken door, which opened easily at the turn of his latch-key, and closed after him without the slightest sound as he entered.
turned on the electric burner, which, in the form of a large flower, depended from the ceiling by quaintly-worked silver chains, and was connected by a fine wire with a shaded reading-lamp on the table. There was not much of either beauty or value in the room,--yet without being at all luxurious, it suggested luxury. The few chairs were of the most ordinary make, all save one, which was of finely carved ebony, and was piled with silk cushions of amber and red,--the table was of plain painted deal, covered with a dark woollen cloth worked in and out with threads of gold,--there were a few geometrical instruments about,--a large pair of globes,--a rack on the wall stocked with weapons for the art of fence,--and one large book-case full of books. An ebony-cased pianette occupied one corner,--and on a small side-table stood a heavily-made oaken chest, brass-bound and double-locked. The furniture was completed by a plain camp-bedstead such as soldiers use, which at the present moment was partly folded up and almost hidden from view by a rough bearskin thrown carelessly across it.
El-Râmi sat down in the big ebony chair and looked at a pile of
letters lying on his writing-table. They were from all sorts of
persons,--princes, statesmen, diplomats, financiers, and artists in
all the professions,--he recognised the handwriting on some of the
envelopes, and his brows contracted in a frown as he tossed them aside
still unopened.
"They must wait," he said half aloud. "Curious that it
is impossible for a man to be original without attracting around him a set
of unoriginal minds, as though he were a honey-pot and they the flies! Who
would believe that I, poor in worldly goods, and living in more or less
obscurity, should, without any wish of my own, be in touch with
kings?--should know the last new policy of governments before it is
made ripe for public declaration?--should hold the secrets of
'my lord' and 'my lady' apart from each
other's cognisance, and be able to amuse myself with their little
ridiculous matrimonial differences, as though they were puppets playing
their parts for use at a marionette show! I do not ask these people to
confide in me,--I do not want them to
seek me out,--and yet the cry is, 'still they come!'--and the attributes of my own nature are such, that like a magnet, I attract, and so am never left in peace. Yet perhaps it is well it should be thus,--I need the external distraction,--otherwise my mind would be too much like a bent bow,--fixed on the one centre,--the Great Secret,--and its powers might fail me at the last. But no!--failure is impossible now. Steeled against love,--hate,--and all the merely earthly passions of mankind as I am,--I must succeed--and I will!"
He leaned his head on one hand, and seemed to suddenly concentrate his
thoughts on one particular subject,--his eyes dilated and grew luridly
brilliant as though sparks of fire burnt behind them. He had not sat thus
for more than a couple of minutes, when the door opened gently, and a
beautiful youth clad in a loose white tunic and vest of Eastern fashion,
made his appearance, and standing silently on the threshold seemed to wait
for some command.
"So, Féraz! you heard my summons?" said El-Râmi
gently.
"I heard my brother speak,"--responded Féraz in
a low melodious voice that had a singularly dreamy far-away tone within
it--"Through a wall of cloud and silence his beloved accents
fell like music on my ears;--he called me and I came."
And sighing lightly, he folded his arms cross-wise on his breast and
stood erect and immovable, looking like some fine statue just endowed by
magic with the flush of life. He resembled El-Râmi in features, but
was fairer-skinned,--his eyes were softer and more femininely
lovely,--his hair, black as night, clustered in thick curls over his
brow, and his figure, straight as a young palm-tree, was a perfect model of
strength united with grace. But just now he had a strangely absorbed
air,--his eyes, though they were intently fixed on
El-Râmi's face, looked like the eyes of a sleep-walker, so
dreamy were they while wide-open,--and as he spoke he smiled vaguely
as one who hears delicious singing afar off.
El-Râmi studied him intently for a minute or two,--then,
removing his gaze, pressed a small silver hand-bell at his side. It rang
sharply out on the silence.
"Féraz!"
Féraz started,--rubbed his eyes,--glanced about him,
and then sprang towards his brother with quite a new expression,--one
of grace, eagerness and animation, that intensified his beauty and made him
still more worthy the admiration of a painter or a sculptor.
"El-Râmi! at last! How late you are! I waited for you
long--and then I slept. I am sorry! But you called me in the usual
way, I suppose?--and I did not fail you? Ah no! I should come to you
if I were dead!"
He dropped on one knee, and raised El-Râmi's hand caressingly
to his lips.
"Where have you been all the evening?" he went on. "I
have missed you greatly--the house is so silent."
El-Râmi touched his clustering curls tenderly.
"You could have made music in it with your lute and voice,
Féraz, had you chosen," he said. "As for me, I went to
see 'Hamlet.'"
"Oh, why did you go?" demanded Féraz
impetuously. "I would not see it--no! not for worlds! Such poetry must needs be spoilt by men's mouthing of it,--it is better to read it, to think it, to feel it,--and so one actually sees it,--best."
"You talk like a poet,"--said El-Râmi
indulgently. "You are not much more than a boy, and you think the
thoughts of youth. Have you any supper ready for me?"
Féraz smiled and sprang up, left the room, and returned in a few
minutes with a daintily arranged tray of refreshments, which he set before
his brother with all the respect and humility of a well-trained domestic in
attendance on his master.
"You have supped?" El-Râmi asked, as he poured out
wine from the delicately shaped Italian flask beside him.
Féraz nodded.
"Yes. Zaroba supped with me. But she was cross to-night--she
had nothing to say."
El-Râmi smiled. "That is unusual!"
Féraz went on. "There have been many people
here,--they all wanted to see you. They have left their cards. Some of
them
asked me my name and who I was. I said I was your servant--but they would not believe me. There were great folks among them--they came in big carriages with prancing horses. Have you seen their names?"
"Not I."
"Ah, you are so indifferent," said Féraz
gaily,--he had now quite lost his dreamy and abstracted look, and
talked on in an eager boyish way that suited his years,--he was barely
twenty. "You are so bent on great thoughts that you cannot see little
things. But these dukes and earls who come to visit you do not consider
themselves little,--not they!"
"Yet many of them are the least among little men," said
El-Râmi with a touch of scorn in his mellow accents. "Dowered
with great historic names which they almost despise, they do their best to
drag the memory of their ancient lineage into dishonour by vulgar passions,
low tastes, and a scorn as well as lack of true intelligence. Let us not
talk of them. The English aristocracy was once a magnificent tree, but
its broad boughs are fallen,--lopped off and turned into saleable timber,--and there is but a decaying stump of it left. And so Zaroba said nothing to you to-night?"
"Scarce a word. She was very sullen. She bade me tell you all was
well,--that is her usual formula. I do not understand it;--what
is it that should be well or ill? You never explain your
mystery!"
He smiled, but there was a vivid curiosity in his fine eyes,--he
looked as if he would have asked more had he dared to do so.
El-Râmi evaded his questioning glance. "Speak of
yourself," he said. "Did you wander at all into your Dreamland
today?"
"I was there when you called me," replied Féraz
quickly. "I saw my home,--its trees and flowers,--I
listened to the ripple of its fountains and streams. It is harvest-time
there, do you know? I heard the reapers singing as they carried home the
sheaves."
His brother surveyed him with a fixed and wondering scrutiny.
"How absolute you are in your faith!" he said half
enviously. "You think it is your
home,--but it is only an idea after all,--an idea, born of a vision."
"Does a mere visionary idea engender love and longing?"
exclaimed Féraz impetuously. "Oh no, El-Râmi,--it
cannot do so! I know the land I see so often in what you call
a 'dream,'--its mountains are familiar to me,--its
people are my people; yes!--I am remembered there, and so are
you,--we dwelt there once,--we shall dwell there again. It is
your home as well as mine,--that bright and far-off star where there
is no death but only sleep,--why were we exiled from our happiness,
El-Râmi? Can your wisdom tell?"
"I know nothing of what you say," returned El-Râmi
brusquely. "As I told you, you talk like a poet,--harsher men
than I, would add, like a madman. You imagine you were born or came into
being in a different planet to this,--that you lived there,--that
you were exiled from thence by some mysterious doom, and were condemned to
pass into human existence here;--well, I repeat,
Féraz--this is your own fancy,--the result of the strange
double life
you lead, which is not by my will or teaching. I believe only in what can be proved--and this that you tell me is beyond all proof."
"And yet," said Féraz
meditatively,--"though I cannot reason it out, I am sure of what
I feel. My 'dream' is more life-like than life
itself,--and as for my beloved people yonder, I tell you I have heard
them singing the harvest-home."
And with a quick soft step, he went to the piano, opened it and began to
play. EI-Râmi leaned back in his chair mute and absorbed,--did
ever common keyed instrument give forth such enchanting sounds? Was ever
written music known that could, when performed, utter such divine and
dulcet eloquence? There was nothing earthly in the tune,--it seemed to
glide from under the player's fingers like a caress upon the
air,--and an involuntary sigh broke from El-Râmi's lips as
he listened. Féraz heard that sigh, and turned round smiling.
"Is there not something familiar in the strain?" he asked.
"Do you not see them all, so fair and light and lithe of limb, coming
over the fields homewards as the red Ring
burns low in the western sky? Surely--surely you remember?"
A slight shudder shook El-Râmi's frame,--he pressed his
hands over his eyes, and seemed to collect himself by a strong
effort,--then walking over to the piano, he took his young
brother's hands from the keys and held them for a moment against his
breast.
"Keep your illusions"--he said in a low voice that
trembled slightly. "Keep them,--and your faith,--together.
It is for you to dream, and for me to prove. Mine is the hardest lot. There
may be truth in your dreams,--there may be deception in my
proofs--Heaven only knows! Were you not of my own blood, and dearer to
me than most human things, I should, like every scientist worthy of the
name, strive to break off your spiritual pinions and make of you a mere
earth-grub even as most of us are made,--but I cannot do it,--I
have not the heart to do it,--and if I had the heart"--he
paused a moment,--then went on slowly--"I have not the
power. Good-night!"
He left the room abruptly without another
word or look,--and the beautiful young Féraz gazed after his retreating figure doubtfully and with something of wondering regret. Was it worth while, he thought, to be so wise, if wisdom made one at times so sad?--was it well to sacrifice Faith for Fact, when Faith was so warm and Fact so cold? Was it better to be a dreamer of things possible, or a worker-out of things positive? And how much was positive after all? and how much possible? He balanced the question lightly with himself,--it was like a discord in the music of his mind, and disturbed his peace. He soon dismissed the jarring thought, however, and closing the piano, glanced round the room to make sure that nothing more was required for his brother's service or comfort that night, and then he went away to resume his interrupted slumbers,--perchance to take up the chorus of his "people" singing in what he deemed his native star.
hung with pale clambering roses and purple passion-flowers,--on the upper half among the blossoms sat a meditative cupid, pressing a bud against his pouting lips, while below him, stretched in full-length desolation on a bent bough, his twin brother wept childishly over the piteous fate of a butterfly that lay dead in his curled pink palm. El-Râmi stared so long and persistently at the pretty picture that it might have been imagined he was looking at it for the first time and was absorbed in admiration, but truth to tell he scarcely saw it. His thoughts were penetrating beyond all painted semblances of beauty,--and,--as in the case of his young brother Féraz,--those thoughts were speedily answered. A key turned in the lock,--the door opened, and a tall old woman, bronze-skinned, black-eyed, withered, uncomely yet imposing of aspect, stood in the aperture.
"Enter, El-Râmi!" she said in a low yet harsh
voice--"The hour is late,--but when did ever the lateness
of hours change or deter your sovereign will! Yet truly as God liveth, it
is hard that I should seldom be permitted to pass a night in
peace!"
El-Râmi smiled indifferently, but made no reply, as it was useless
to answer Zaroba. She was stone deaf, and therefore not in a condition to
be argued with. She preceded him into a small ante-room, provided with no
other furniture than a table and chair;--one entire side of the wall
however was hung with a magnificent curtain of purple velvet bordered in
gold. On the table were a slate and pencil, and these implements
El-Râmi at once drew towards him.
"Has there been any change to-day?" he wrote.
Zaroba read the words.
"None," she replied.
"She has not moved?"
"Not a finger."
He paused, pencil in hand,--then he wrote--
"You are ill-tempered. You have your dark humour upon
you."
Zaroba's eyes flashed, and she threw up her skinny hands with a
wrathful gesture.
"Dark humour!" she cried in accents that were almost
shrill--"Ay!--and if it be so, El-Râmi, what is my
humour to you? Am
I anything more to you than a cipher,--a mere slave? What have the thoughts of a foolish woman, bent with years and close to the dark gateways of the tomb, to do with one who deems himself all wisdom? What are the feelings of a wretched perishable piece of flesh and blood to a self-centred god and opponent of Nature like El-Râmi-Zarânos!" She laughed bitterly. "Pay no heed to me, great Master of the Fates invisible!--superb controller of the thoughts of men!--pay no heed to Zaroba's 'dark humours' as you call them. Zaroba has no wings to soar with--she is old and feeble, and aches at the heart with a burden of unshed tears,--she would fain have been content with this low earth whereon to tread in safety,--she would fain have been happy with common joys,--but these are debarred her, and her lot is like that of many a better woman,--to sit solitary among the ashes of dead days and know herself desolate!"
She dropped her arms as suddenly as she had raised them. El-Râmi
surveyed her with a touch of derision, and wrote again on the slate.
"I thought you loved your charge?"
Zaroba read, and drew herself up proudly, looking almost as dignified as
El-Râmi himself.
"Does one love a statue?" she demanded. "Shall I
caress a picture? Shall I rain tears or kisses over the mere semblance of a
life that does not live,--shall I fondle hands that never return my
clasp? Love! Love is in my heart--yes! like a shut-up fire in a
tomb,--but you hold the key, El-Râmi, and the flame dies for
want of air."
He shrugged his shoulders, and putting the pencil aside, wrote no more.
Moving towards the velvet curtain that draped the one side of the room he
made an imperious sign. Zaroba, obeying the gesture mechanically and at
once, drew a small pulley, by means of which the rich soft folds of stuff
parted noiselessly asunder, displaying such a wonderful interior of luxury
and loveliness as seemed for the moment almost unreal. The apartment opened
to view was lofty and perfectly circular in shape, and was hung from top to
bottom with silken hangings of royal purple embroidered all over with
curious arabesque patterns in gold. The same rich material was caught up from the edges of the ceiling to the centre, like the drapery of a pavilion or tent, and was there festooned with golden fringes and tassels. From out the midst of this warm mass of glistening colour, swung a gold lamp which shed its light through amber-hued crystal,--while the floor below was carpeted with the thickest velvet pile, the design being pale purple pansies on a darker ground of the same almost neutral tint. A specimen of everything beautiful, rare and costly seemed to have found its way into this one room, from the exquisitely wrought ivory figure of a Psyche on her pedestal, to the tall vase of Venetian crystal which held lightly up to view, dozens of magnificent roses that seemed born of full midsummer, though as yet in the capricious English climate, it was scarcely spring. And all the beauty, all the grace, all the evidences of perfect taste, art, care and forethought, were gathered together round one centre,--one unseeing, unresponsive centre,--the figure of a sleeping girl. Pillowed on a raised couch such as
might have served a queen for costliness, she lay fast bound in slumber,--a matchless piece of loveliness,--stirless as marble,--wondrous as the ideal of a poet's dream. Her delicate form was draped loosely in a robe of purest white, arranged so as to suggest rather than conceal its exquisite outline,--a silk coverlet was thrown lightly across her feet, and her head rested on cushions of the softest, snowiest satin. Her exceedingly small white hands were crossed upon her breast over a curious jewel,--a sort of giant ruby cut in the shape of a star, which scintillated with a thousand sparkles in the light, and coloured the under-tips of her fingers with a hue like wine, and her hair, which was of extraordinary length and beauty, almost clothed her body down to the knee, as with a mantle of shimmering gold. To say merely that she was lovely would scarcely describe her,--for the loveliness that is generally understood as such, was here so entirely surpassed and intensified that it would be difficult if not impossible to express its charm. Her face had the usual attributes of what might be deemed perfection,--that
is, the lines were purely oval,--the features delicate, the skin most transparently fair, the lips a dewy red, and the fringes of the closed eyes were long, dark and delicately upcurled;--but this was not all. There was something else,--something quite undefinable, that gave a singular glow and radiance to the whole countenance, and suggested the burning of a light through alabaster,--a creeping of some subtle fire through the veins which made the fair body seem the mere reflection of some greater fairness within. If those eyes were to open, one thought, how wonderful their lustre must needs be!--if that perfect figure rose up and moved, what a harmony would walk the world in maiden shape!--and yet,--watching that hushed repose, that scarcely perceptible breathing, it seemed more than certain that she would never rise,--never tread earthly soil in common with earth's creatures,--never be more than what she seemed,--a human flower, gathered and set apart--for whom? For God's love? or Man's pleasure? Either, neither, or both?
El-Râmi entered the rich apartment
followed by Zaroba, and stood by the couch for some minutes in silence. Whatever his thoughts were, his face gave no clue to them,--his features being as impassive as though cast in bronze. Zaroba watched him curiously, her wrinkled visage expressive of some strongly-suppressed passion. The sleeping girl stirred and smiled in her sleep,--a smile that brightened her countenance as much as if a sudden glory had circled it with a halo.
"Ay, she lives for you!" said Zaroba. "And she grows
fairer every day. She is the sun, and you the snow. But the snow is bound
to melt in due season,--and even you, El-Râmi-Zarânos,
will hardly baffle the laws of Nature!"
El-Râmi turned upon her with a fierce mute gesture that had
something of the terrible in it,--she shrank from the cold glance of
his intense eyes, and in obedience to an imperative wave of his hand moved
away to a further corner of the room, where, crouching down upon the floor,
she took up a quaint implement of work, a carved triangular frame of ebony,
with which she
busied herself, drawing glittering threads in and out of it with marvellous speed and dexterity. She made a weird picture there, squatted on the ground in her yellow cotton draperies, her rough gray hair gleaming like spun silk in the light, and the shining threadwork in her withered hands. El-Râmi looked at her sitting thus, and was suddenly moved with compassion--she was old and sad,--poor Zaroba! He went up to her where she crouched, and stood above her, his ardent fiery eyes seeming to gather all their wonderful lustre into one long, earnest and pitiful regard. Her work fell from her hands, and as she met that burning gaze, a vague smile parted her lips,--her frowning features smoothed themselves into an expression of mingled placidity and peace.
"Desolate Zaroba!" said El-Râmi slowly lifting his
hands. "Widowed and solitary soul! Deaf to the outer noises of the
world, let the ears of thy spirit be open to my voice--and hear thou
all the music of the past! Lo, the bygone years return to thee and picture
themselves afresh upon thy tired brain!--again thou dost listen to the
voices
of thy children at play,--the wild Arabian desert spreads out before thee in the sun like a sea of gold,--the tall palms lift themselves against the burning sky--the tent is pitched by the cool spring of fresh water,--and thy savage mate, wearied out with long travel, sleeps, pillowed on thy breast. Thou art young again, Zaroba!--young, fair and beloved!--be happy so! Dream and rest!"
As he spoke he took the aged woman's unresisting hands and laid her
gently, gently, by gradual degrees down in a recumbent posture, and placing
a cushion under her head watched her for a few seconds.
"By Heaven!" he muttered, as he heard her regular breathing
and noted the perfectly composed expression of her face. "Are dreams
after all the only certain joys of life? A poet's fancies,--a
painter's visions--the cloud-castles of a boy's
imaginings--all dreams!--and only such dreamers can be called
happy. Neither Fate nor Fortune can destroy their pleasure,--they make
sport of kings and hold great nations as the merest toys of
thought--oh sublime audacity of Vision! Would I could dream
so!--or
rather, would I could prove my dreams not dreams at all, but the reflections of the absolute Real! 'Hamlet' again!
Imagine it!--to die and dream of Heaven--or Hell,--and all the while if there should be no reality in either!"
"To die--to sleep--
To sleep, perchance to dream--ay! there's the rub!"
With one more glance at the now soundly slumbering Zaroba, he went back
to the couch, and gazed long and earnestly at the exquisite maiden there
reclined,--then bending over her, he took her small fair left hand in
his own, pressing his fingers hard round the delicate wrist.
"Lilith!--Lilith!" he said in low, yet commanding
accents. "Lilith!--Speak to me! I am here!"
"Lilith! Where are you?"
The sweet lips parted, and a voice soft as whispered music
responded--
"I am here!"
"Is all well with you?"
"All is well!"
And a smile irradiated the fair face with such a light as to suggest
that the eyes must have opened,--but no!--they were fast
shut.
El-Râmi resumed his strange interrogation.
"Lilith! What do you see?"
There was a moment's pause,--then came the slow
response--
"Many things,--things beautiful and wonderful. But you are
not among them. I hear your voice and I obey it, but I cannot see
you--I have never seen you."
El-Râmi sighed, and pressed more closely the soft small hand
within his own.
"Where have you been?"
"Where my pleasure led me"--came the answer in a sleepy
yet joyous tone--"My pleasure and--your will."
El-Râmi started, but immediately controlled himself, for Lilith
stirred and threw her other arm indolently behind her head, leaving the
great ruby on her breast flashingly exposed to view.
"Away, away, far, far away!" she said, and her accents
sounded like subdued singing--"Beyond,--in those regions
whither I
was sent--beyond--" her voice stopped and trailed off into drowsy murmurings--"beyond--Sirius--I saw--"
She ceased, and smiled--some happy thought seemed to have rendered
her mute.
El-Râmi waited a moment, then took up her broken speech.
"Far beyond Sirius you saw--what?"
Moving, she pillowed her cheek upon her hand, and turned more fully
round towards him.
"I saw a bright new world"--she said, now speaking
quite clearly and connectedly--"A royal world of worlds; an
undiscovered Star. There were giant oceans in it,--the noise of many
waters was heard throughout the land,--and there were great cities
marvellously built upon the sea. I saw their pinnacles of white and
gold-spires of coral, and gates that were studded with pearl,--flags
waved and music sounded, and two great Suns gave double light from heaven.
I saw many thousands of people--they were beautiful and
happy--they sang and danced and gave thanks in the everlasting
sunshine, and knelt in crowds upon
their wide and fruitful fields to thank the Giver of life immortal."
"Life immortal!" repeated El-Râmi,--"Do not
these people die, even as we?"
A pained look, as of wonder or regret, knitted the girl's fair
brows.
"There is no death--neither here nor there"--she
said steadily--"I have told you this so often, yet you will not
believe. Always you bid me seek for death,--I have looked, but cannot
find it."
She sighed, and El-Râmi echoed the sigh.
"I wish"--and her accents sounded
plaintively--"I wish that I could see you! There is some cloud
between us. I hear your voice and I obey it, but I cannot see who it is
that calls me."
El-Râmi paid no heed to these dove-like
murmurings,--moreover, he seemed to have no eyes for the wondrous
beauty of the creature who lay thus tranced and in his power,--set on
his one object, the attainment of a supernatural knowledge, he looked as
pitiless and impervious to all charm as any Grand Inquisitor of old
Spain.
"Speak of yourself and not of me"--he said
authoritatively,--"How can you say there is no death?"
"I speak truth. There is none."
"Not even here?"
"Not anywhere."
"O daughter of vision, where are the eyes of your spirit!"
demanded El-Râmi angrily--"Search again and see! Why
should all Nature arm itself against Death if there be no death?"
"You are harsh,"--said Lilith sorrowfully
--"Should I tell you what is not true? If I would, I cannot.
There is no death--there is only change. Beyond Sirius, they
sleep."
El-Râmi waited; but she had paused again.
"Go on"--he said--"They sleep--why and
when?"
"When they are weary"--responded Lilith. "When
all is done that they can do, and when they need rest, they sleep, and in
their sleep they change;--the change is--
She ceased.
"The change is death,"--said El-Râmi
positively,--"for death is everywhere."
"Not so!" replied Lilith quickly, and in a ringing tone of
clarion-like sweetness. "The change is life,--for Life is
everywhere!"
There ensued a silence. The girl turned away, and bringing her hand
slowly down from behind her head, laid it again upon her breast over the
burning ruby gem. El-Râmi bent above her closely.
"You are dreaming, Lilith,"--he said as though he would
force her to own something against her will. "You speak unwisely and
at random."
Still silence.
"Lilith!--Lilith!" he called.
No answer;--only the lovely tints of her complexion, the smile on
her lips and the tranquil heaving of her rounded bosom indicated that she
lived.
"Gone!" and El-Râmi's brow clouded; he laid back
the little hand he held in its former position and looked at the girl long
and steadily--"And so firm in her assertion!--as foolish an
assertion as any of the
fancies of Féraz. No death?--Nay--as well say no life. She has not fathomed the secret of our passing hence; no, not though her flight has outreached the realm of Sirius.
Ay, puzzles the will and confounds it! But must I be baffled then?--or is it my own fault that I cannot believe? Is it truly her spirit that speaks to me?--or is it my own brain acting upon hers in a state of trance? If it be the latter, why should she declare things that I never dream of, and which my reason does not accept as possible? And if it is indeed her Soul, or the ethereal Essence of her that thus soars at periodic intervals of liberty into the Unseen, how is it that she never comprehends Death or Pain? Is her vision limited only to behold harmonious systems moving to a sound of joy?"
"'But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will.'
And seized by a sudden resolution, he caught both the hands of the
tranced girl and held them in his own, the while he fixed his eyes upon her
quiet face with a glance that seemed to shoot forth flame.
"Lilith! Lilith! By the force of my will and mastery over thy
life, I bid thee return to me! O flitting spirit, ever bent on errands of
pleasure, reveal to me the secrets of pain! Come back, Lilith! I call
thee--come!"
A violent shudder shook the beautiful reposeful figure,--the smile
faded from her lips, and she heaved a profound sigh.
"I am here!"
"Listen to my bidding!" said El-Râmi, in measured
accents that sounded almost cruel. "As you have soared to heights
ineffable, even so descend to lowest depths of desolation! Understand and
seek out sorrow,--pierce to the root of suffering,-explain the cause
of unavailing agony! These things exist. Here in this planet of which you
know nothing save my voice,--here, if nowhere else in the wide
Universe, we gain our bread with bitterness and drink our wine with tears.
Solve me the mystery of Pain,--of Injustice,--of an innocent
child's anguish on its death-bed,--ay! though you tell me there
is no death!--of a good man's ruin,--of an evil woman's
triumph,--of
despair--of self-slaughter,--of all the horrors upon horrors piled, which make up this world's present life. Listen, O too ecstatic and believing Spirit!--we have a legend here that a God lives,--a wise all-loving God,--and He, this wise and loving one, has out of His great bounty invented for the torture of his creatures,--HELL! Find out this Hell, Lilith!--Prove it!--bring the plan of its existence back to me. Go,--bring me news of devils,--and suffer, if spirits can suffer, in the unmitigated sufferings of others! Take my command and go hence,--find out God's Hell!--so shall we afterwards know the worth of Heaven!"
He spoke rapidly,--impetuously,--passionately;--and now
he allowed the girl's hands to fall suddenly from his clasp. She
moaned a little,--and instead of folding them one over the other as
before, raised them palm to palm in an attitude of prayer. The colour faded
entirely from her face,--but an expression of the calmest, grandest
wisdom, serenity and compassion came over her features as of a saint
prepared for martyrdom. Her breathing grew fainter and
fainter till it was scarcely perceptible,--and her lips parted in a short sobbing sigh,--then they moved and whispered something. El-Râmi stooped over her more closely.
"What is it?" he asked eagerly--"what did you
say?"
"Nothing ... only ... farewell!" and the faint tone stirred
the silence like the last sad echo of a song--"And yet ... once
more ... farewell!"
He drew back, and observed her intently. She now looked like a recumbent
statue, with those upraised hands of hers so white and small and
delicate,--and El-Râmi remembered that he must keep the machine
of the Body living, if he desired to receive through its medium the
messages of the Spirit. Taking a small phial from his breast, together with
the necessary surgeon's instrument used for such purposes, he pricked
the rounded arm nearest to him, and carefully injected into the veins a
small quantity of a strange sparkling fluid which gave out a curiously
sweet and pungent odour;--as he did this, the lifted hands fell gently
into their original position, crossed over the ruby star.
The breathing grew steadier and lighter,--the lips took fresh colour,--and El-Râmi watched the effect with absorbed interest and attention.
"One might surely preserve her body so for ever," he mused
half aloud. "The tissues renewed,--the blood
re-organized,--the whole system completely nourished with absolute
purity; and not a morsel of what is considered food, which contains so much
organic mischief, allowed to enter that exquisitely beautiful mechanism,
which exhales all waste upon the air through the pores of the skin as
naturally as a flower exhales perfume through its leaves. A wonderful
discovery!--if all men knew it, would not they deem themselves truly
immortal, even here? But the trial is not over yet,--the experiment is
not perfect. Six years has she lived thus, but who can say whether indeed
Death has no power over her? In those six years she has changed,--she
has grown from childhood to womanhood,--does not change imply
age?--and age suggest death, in spite of all science? O inexorable
Death!--I will pluck its secret out if I die in the effort!"
He turned away from the couch,--then seemed struck by a new
idea.
"If I die, did I say? But can I die? Is
her Spirit right? Is my reasoning wrong? Is there no pause
anywhere?--no cessation of thought?--no end to the insatiability
of ambition? Must we plan and work and live--FOR EVER?"
A shudder ran through him,--the notion of his own perpetuity
appalled him. Passing a long mirror framed in antique silver, he caught
sight of himself in it,--his dark handsome face, rendered darker by
the contrasting whiteness of his hair,--his full black eyes,-his fine
but disdainful mouth,--all looked back at him with the scornful reflex
of his own scornful regard.
He laughed a little bitterly.
"There you are, El-Râmi Zarânos!" he murmured
half aloud. "Scoffer and scientist,--master of a few common
magnetic secrets such as the priests of ancient Egypt made sport of, though
in these modern days of 'culture,' they are sufficient to make
most men your tools! What now? Is there no rest for the inner calculations
of your mind?
Plan and work and live for ever? Well, why not? Could I fathom the secrets of a thousand universes, would that suffice me? No! I should seek for the solving of a thousand more!"
He gave a parting glance round the room,--at the fair tranced form
on the couch, at the placid Zaroba slumbering in a corner, at the whole
effect of the sumptuous apartment, with its purple and gold, its roses, its
crystal and ivory adornments,--then he passed out, drawing to the
velvet curtains noiselessly behind him. In the small anteroom, he took up
the slate and wrote upon it--
"I shall not return hither for forty-eight hours. During this interval admit as much full daylight as possible. Observe the strictest silence, and do not touch her.
"EL-RÂMI."
The speaker was a stoutish, able-bodied individual in clerical dress,
with rather a handsome face and an easy agreeable manner. He addressed
himself to El-Râmi, who, seated at his writing-table, observed him
with something of a satirical air.
"You wrote me this letter?" queried El-Râmi, selecting
one from a heap beside him. The clergyman bent forward to look, and
recognising his own handwriting, smiled a bland assent.
"You are the Rev. Francis Anstruther, Vicar of Laneck,--a
great favourite with the Bishop of your diocese, I understand?"
The gentleman bowed blandly again,--
then assumed a meek and chastened expression.
"That is, I was a favourite of the Bishop's at
one time"--he murmured regretfully-"and I suppose I am
now, only I fear that this matter of conscience--"
"Oh, it is a matter of conscience?" said
El-Râmi slowly--"You are sure of that?"
"Quite sure of that!" and the Reverend Francis Anstruther
sighed profoundly.
"'Thus conscience does make cowards of us
all--'"
"I beg your pardon?" and the clergyman opened his eyes a
little.
"Nay, I beg yours!--I was quoting
'Hamlet.'"
"Oh!"
There was a silence. El-Râmi bent his dark flashing eyes on his
visitor, who seemed a little confused by the close scrutiny. It was the
morning after the circumstances narrated in the previous chapter,--the
clock marked ten minutes to noon,--the weather was brilliant and
sunshiny, and the temperature warm for the uncertain English month of May.
El-Râmi rose suddenly and threw
open the window nearest him, as if he found the air oppressive.
"Why did you seek me out?" he demanded, turning towards the
reverend gentleman once more.
"Well, it was really the merest accident--"
"It always is!" said El-Râmi with a slight dubious
smile.
"I was at Lady Melthorpe's the other day, and I told her my
difficulty. She spoke of you, and said she felt certain you would be able
to clear up my doubts--"
"Not at all. I am too busy clearing up my own," said
El-Râmi brusquely.
The clergyman looked surprised.
"Dear me!--I thought, from what her ladyship said, that you
were scientifically certain of--"
"Of what?" interrupted El-Râmi--"Of myself?
Nothing more uncertain in the world than my own humour, I assure you! Of
others? I am not a student of human caprice. Of life?--of death?
Neither. I am simply trying to prove the existence of a 'something
after death'--but I am certain
of nothing, and I believe in nothing, unless proved."
"But," said Mr. Anstruther anxiously--"you will,
I hope, allow me to explain that you leave a very different impression on
the minds of those to whom you speak, than the one you now suggest. Lady
Melthorpe, for instance,--"
"Lady Melthorpe believes what it pleases her to
believe,"--said El-Râmi quietly--"All pretty,
sensitive, imaginative women do. That accounts for the immense success of
Roman Catholicism with women. It is a graceful, pleasing, comforting
religion,--moreover it is really becoming to a woman,--she looks
charming with a rosary in her hand, or a quaint old missal,--and she
knows it. Lady Melthorpe is a believer in ideals,--well, there is no
harm in ideals,--long may she be able to indulge in them."
"But Lady Melthorpe declares that you are able to tell the past
and the future," persisted the clergyman--"And that you
can also read the present;--if that is so, you must surely possess
visionary power?"
El-Râmi looked at him stedfastly.
"I can tell you the past;"--he said--"And I
can read your present;--and from the two portions of your life I can
calculate the last addition, the Future,--but my calculation may be
wrong. I mean wrong as regards coming events;--past and present I can
never be mistaken in, because there exists a natural law, by which you are
bound to reveal yourself to me."
The Reverend Francis Anstruther moved uneasily in his chair, but managed
to convey into his countenance the proper expression of politely
incredulous astonishment.
"This natural law," went on El-Râmi, laying one hand
on the celestial globe as he spoke, "has been in existence ever since
man's formation, but we are only just now beginning to discover it, or
rather re-discover it, since it was tolerably well-known to the priests of
ancient Egypt. You see this sphere;"--and he moved the celestial
globe round slowly--"It represents the pattern of the heavens
according to our solar system. Now a Persian poet of old time, declared in
at few wild verses, that solar systems taken in a mass, could be considered
the brain of
heaven, the stars being the thinking, moving molecules of that brain. A sweeping idea,--what your line-and-pattern critics would call 'far-fetched'--but it will serve me just now for an illustration of my meaning. Taking this 'brain of heaven' by way of simile then, it is evident we--we human pigmies,--are, notwithstanding our ridiculous littleness and inferiority, able to penetrate correctly enough into some of the mysteries of that star-teeming intelligence,--we can even take patterns of its shifting molecules"--and again he touched the globe beside him,--"we can watch its modes of thought--and calculate when certain planets will rise and set,--and when we cannot see its action, we can get its vibrations of light, to the marvellous extent of being able to photograph the moon of Neptune, which remains invisible to the eye even with the assistance of a telescope. You wonder what all this tends to?--well,--I speak of vibrations of light from the brain of heaven,--vibrations which we know are existent; and which we prove by means of photography; and because we see the results in black and white, we believe in them. But
there are other vibrations in the Universe, which cannot be photographed,--the vibrations of the human brain, which like those emanating from the 'brain of heaven' are full of light and fire, and convey distinct impressions or patterns of thought. People speak of 'thought-transference' from one subject to another as if it were a remarkable coincidence,--whereas you cannot put a stop to the transference of thought,--it is in the very air, like the germs of disease or health,--and nothing can do away with it."
"I do not exactly understand"--murmured the clergyman
with some bewilderment.
"Ah, you want a practical demonstration of what seems a merely
abstract theory? Nothing easier!"--and moving again to the table
he sat down, fixing his dark eyes keenly on his visitor--"As the
stars pattern heaven in various shapes, like the constellation Lyra, or
Orion, so you have patterned your brain with pictures or photographs of
your past and your present. All your past, every scene of it,
is impressed in the curious little brain-particles that lie in their
various cells,--
you have forgotten some incidents, but they would all come back to you if you were drowning or being hung;--because suffocation or strangulation would force up every infinitesimal atom of brain-matter into extraordinary prominence for the moment. Naturally your present existence is the most vivid picture with you, therefore perhaps you would like me to begin with that?"
"Begin?--how?" asked Mr. Anstruther, still in
amazement.
"Why,--let me take the impression of your brain upon my own.
It is quite simple, and quite scientific. Consider yourself the
photographic negative, and me the sensitive paper to receive the
impression! I may offer you a blurred picture, but I do not think it
likely. Only if you wish to hide anything from me I would advise you not to
try the experiment."
"Really, sir,--this is very extraordinary!--I am at a
loss to comprehend--"
"Oh, I will make it quite plain to you--" said
El-Râmi with a slight smile--"There is no witchcraft in
it--no trickery,--nothing but the commonest A B C science. Will
you try?--or would you prefer to leave the matter alone? My demonstration will not convince you of a 'future state,' which was the subject you first spoke to me about,--it will only prove to you the physiological phenomena surrounding your present constitution and condition."
The Reverend Francis Anstruther hesitated. He was a little startled by
the cold and convincing manner with which El-Râmi spoke,--at the
same time he did not believe in his words, and his own incredulity inclined
him to see the "experiment," whatever it was. It would be all
hocus-pocus, of course,--this Oriental fellow could know nothing about
him,--he had never seen him before, and must therefore be totally
ignorant of his private life and affairs. Considering this for a moment, he
looked up and smiled.
"I shall be most interested and delighted,"--he
said--"to make the trial you suggest. I am really curious. As
for the present picture or photograph on my brain, I think it will only
show you my perplexity as to my position with the Bishop in my wavering
state of mind--"
"Or conscience--" suggested
El-Râmi--"You said it was a matter of
conscience."
"Quite so--quite so! And conscience is the most powerful
motor of a man's actions Mr.--Mr. El-Râmi! It is indeed the
voice of God!"
"That depends on what it says, and how we hear it--"
said El-Râmi rather dryly--"Now if we are to make this
'demonstration,' will you put your left hand here, in my left
hand? So,--your left palm must press closely upon my left
palm,--yes--that will do. Observe the position, please;--you
see that my left fingers rest on your left wrist, and are therefore
directly touching the nerves and arteries running through your heart from
your brain. By this, you are, to use my former simile, pressing me, the
sensitive paper, to your photographic negative--and I make no doubt we
shall get a fair impression. But to prevent any interruption to the
brainwave rushing from you to me, we will add this little trifle,"
and he dexterously slipped a steel band over his hand and that of his
visitor as they rested thus together on the table, and snapt it
to,--"a sort of handcuff,
as you perceive. It has nothing in the world to do with our experiment. It is simply placed there to prevent your moving your hand away from mine, which would be your natural impulse if I should happen to say anything disagreeably true. And to do so, would of course cut the ethereal thread of contact between us. Now, are you ready?"
The clergyman grew a shade paler. El-Râmi seemed so very sure of
the result of this singular trial, that it was a little bit disagreeable.
But having consented to the experiment, he felt he was compelled to go
through with it, so he bowed a nervous assent. Whereupon El-Râmi
closed his brilliant eyes, and sat for one or two minutes silent and
immovable. A curious fidgetiness began to trouble the Reverend Francis
Anstruther,--he tried to think of something ridiculous, something
altogether apart from himself, but in vain,--his own personality, his
own life, his own secret aims seemed all to weigh upon him like a sudden
incubus. Presently tingling sensations pricked his arm as with burning
needles,--the hand that was fettered to that of El-Râmi felt as
hot as
though it were being held to a fire. All at once El-Râmi spoke in a low tone, without opening his eyes--
"The shadow-impression of a woman. Brown-haired,
dark-eyed,--of a full, luscious beauty, and a violent, unbridled,
ill-balanced will. Mindless, but physically attractive. She dominates your
thought."
A quiver ran through the clergyman's frame,--if he could only
have snatched away his hand he would have done it then.
"She is not your wife--" went on
El-Râmi--"she is the wife of your wealthiest neighbour.
You have a wife,--an invalid,--you have also eight
children,--but these are not prominent in the picture at present. The
woman with the dark eyes and hair is the chief figure. Your plans are made
for her--"
He paused, and again the wretched Mr. Anstruther shuddered.
"Wait--wait!" exclaimed El-Râmi suddenly in a
tone of animation--"Now it comes clearly. You have decided to
leave the Church, not because you do not believe in a future
state,--for this you never have
believed at any time--but because you wish to rid yourself of all moral and religious responsibility. Your scheme is perfectly distinct. You will make out a 'case of conscience' to your authorities, and resign your living,--you will then desert your wife and children,--you will leave your country in the company of the woman whose secret lover you are--"
"Stop!" cried the Reverend Mr. Anstruther, savagely
endeavouring to wrench away his hand from the binding fetter which held it
remorselessly to the hand of El-Râmi--"Stop! You are
telling me a pack of lies!"
El-Râmi opened his great flashing orbs and surveyed him first in
surprise, then with a deep unutterable contempt. Unclasping the steel band
that bound their two hands together, he flung it by, and rose to his
feet.
"Lies?" he echoed indignantly. "Your whole life is a
lie, and both Nature and Science are bound to give the reflex of it. What!
would you play a double part with the Eternal Forces and think to succeed
in such desperate fooling? Do you imagine you can deceive supreme
Omniscience, which
holds every star and every infinitesimal atom of life in a network of such instant vibrating consciousness and contact, that in terrible truth there are and can be 'no secrets hid'? You may if you like act out the wretched comedy of feigning to deceive your God--the God of the Churches,--but beware of trifling with the real God,--the absolute EGO SUM of the Universe."
His voice rang out passionately upon the stillness,--the clergyman
had also risen from his chair, and stood, nervously fumbling with his
gloves, not venturing to raise his eyes.
"I have told you the truth of yourself,"--continued
El-Râmi more quietly--"You know I have. Why then do you
accuse me of telling you lies? Why did you seek me out at all if you wished
to conceal yourself and your intentions from me? Can you deny the testimony
of your own brain reflected on mine? Come, confess! be honest for
once,--do you deny it?"
"I deny everything;"--replied the clergyman,--but
his accents were husky and indistinct.
"So be it!"--and El-Râmi gave a short
laugh of scorn. "Your 'case of conscience' is evidently very pressing! Go to your Bishop--and tell him you cannot believe in a future state,--I certainly cannot help you to prove that mystery. Besides, you would rather there were no future state,--a 'something after death' must needs be an unpleasant point of meditation for such as you. Oh yes!--you will get your freedom;--you will get all you are scheming for, and you will be quite a notorious person for awhile on account of the delicacy of your sense of honour and the rectitude of your principles. Exactly!--and then your final coup,--your running away with your neighbour's wife will make you notorious again--in quite another sort of fashion. Ah!--every man is bound to weave the threads of his own destiny, and you are weaving yours;--do not be surprised if you find you have made of them a net wherein to become hopelessly caught, tied and strangled. It is no doubt unpleasant for you to hear these things,--what a pity you came to me!"
The Reverend Francis Anstruther buttoned his glove carefully.
"Oh, I do not regret it," he said. "Any other man
might perhaps feel himself insulted, but--"
"But you are too much of a 'Christian' to take
offence--yes, I dare say!" interposed El-Râmi
satirically,--"I thank you for your amiable forbearance! Allow
me to close this interview"--and he was about to ring the bell,
when his visitor said hastily and with an effort at appearing
unconcerned--
"I suppose I may rely on your secrecy respecting what has
passed?"
"Secrecy?" and El-Râmi raised his black eyebrows
disdainfully--"What you call secrecy I know not. But if you mean
that I shall speak of you and your affairs,--why, make yourself quite
easy on that score. I shall not even think of you after you have left this
room. Do not attach too much importance to yourself, reverend
sir,--true, your name will soon be mentioned in the newspapers, but
this should not excite you to an undue vanity. As for me, I have other
things to occupy me, and clerical 'cases of conscience' such as
yours, fail to attract either my wonder or admiration!" Here he
touched
the bell.--"Féraz!" this, as his young brother instantly appeared--"The door!"
The Reverend Francis Anstruther took up his hat, looked into it, glanced
nervously round at the picturesque form of the silent Féraz, then
with a sudden access of courage, looked at El-Râmi. That handsome
Oriental's fiery eyes were fixed upon him,--the superb head, the
dignified figure, the stately manner, all combined to make him feel
uncomfortable and awkward; but he forced a faint smile--it was evident
he must say something.
"You are a very remarkable man, Mr. ...
El-Râmi"--he stammered.... "It has been a most
interesting ... and ... instructive morning!"
El-Râmi made no response other than a slight frigid bow.
The clergyman again peered into the depths of his hat.
"I will not go so far as to say you were correct in anything you
said"--he went on--"but there was a little truth in
some of your allusions,--they really applied, or might be made to
apply to past events,--by-gone circumstances ... you understand?
.."
El-Râmi took one step towards him.
"No more lies in Heaven's name!" he said in a stern
whisper. "The air is poisoned enough for to-day. Go!"
Such a terrible earnestness marked his face and voice that the Reverend
Francis retreated abruptly in alarm, and stumbling out of the room hastily,
soon found himself in the open street with the great oaken door of
El-Râmi's house shut upon him. He paused a moment, glanced at
the sky, then at the pavement, shook his head, drew a long breath, and
seemed on the verge of hesitation; then he looked at his
watch,--smiled a bland smile, and hailing a cab, was driven to lunch
at the Criterion, where a handsome woman with dark hair and eyes, met him
with mingled flattery and upbraiding, and gave herself pouting and
capricious airs of offence, because he had kept her ten minutes
waiting.
"You are very patient with me, Féraz!" he
said--"And I know I am as sullen as a bear."
"You think too much;"--replied Féraz
gently--"And you work too hard."
"Both thought and labour are necessary," said
El-Râmi--"You would not have me live a life of merely
bovine repose?"
Féraz gave a deprecating gesture.
"Nay--but surely rest is needful. To be happy, God Himself
must sometimes sleep."
"You think so?" and El-Râmi smiled--"Then
it must be during His hours of repose and oblivion that the business of
life goes wrong, and Darkness and the Spirit of Confusion walk abroad. The
Creator should never sleep."
"Why not, if He has dreams?" asked
Féraz--"For if Eternal Thought becomes Substance, so a
God's Dream may become Life."
"Poetic as usual, my Féraz"--replied his
brother--"and yet perhaps you are not so far wrong in your
ideas. That Thought
becomes substance, even with man's limited powers, is true enough;--the thought of a perfect, form grows up embodied in the weight and Substance of marble, with the sculptor,--the vague fancies of a poet, being set in ink on paper, become Substance in book-shape, solid enough to pass from one hand to the other;--even so may a God's mere Thought of a world create a Planet. It is my own impression that thoughts, like atoms, are imperishable, and that even dreams, being forms of thought, never die. But I must not stay here talking,--adieu! Do not sit up for me to-night--I shall not return,--I am going down to the coast."
"To Ilfracombe?" questioned Féraz--"So
long a journey, and all to see that poor mad soul?"
El-Râmi looked at him stedfastly.
"No more 'mad,' Féraz, than you are with your
notions about your native star! Why should a scientist who amuses himself
with the reflections on a Disc of magnetic crystal be deemed
'mad'? Fifty years ago the electric inventions of Edison would
have been called 'impossible,'--and he, the
in-
ventor, considered hopelessly insane. But now we know these seeming 'miracles' are facts, we cease to wonder at them. And my poor friend with his Disc is a harmless creature;--his 'craze,' if it be a craze, is as innocent as yours."
"But I have no craze"--said Féraz
composedly,--"all that I know and see, lives in my brain like
music,--and though I remember it perfectly, I trouble no one with the
story of my past."
"And he troubles no one with what he deems may be the story of the
future"--said El-Râmi--"Call no one
'mad' because he happens to have a new idea--for time may
prove such 'madness' a merely perfected method of reason. I
must hasten, or I shall lose my train."
"If it is the 2.40 from Waterloo, you have time," said
Féraz--"It is not yet two o'clock. Do you leave any
message for Zaroba?"
"None. She has my orders."
Féraz looked full at his brother, and a warm flush coloured his
handsome face.
"Shall I never be worthy of your
con-
fidence?" he asked in a low voice--"Can you never trust me with your great secret, as well as Zaroba?"
El-Râmi frowned darkly.
"Again, this vulgar vice of curiosity? I thought you were exempt
from it by this time."
"Nay, but hear me, El-Râmi"--said Féraz
eagerly, distressed at the anger in his brother's eyes--"It
is not curiosity,--it is something else,--something that I can
hardly explain, except.... Oh, you will only laugh at me if I tell you ...
but yet--"
"But what?" demanded El-Râmi sternly.
"It is as if a voice called me,"--answered Féraz
dreamily--"a voice from those upper chambers, which you keep
closed, and of which only Zaroba has the care--a voice that asks for
freedom and for peace. It is such a sorrowful voice,--but
sweet,--more sweet than any singing. True, I hear it but
seldom,--only when I do, it haunts me for hours and hours. I know you
are at some great work up there,--but can you make such voices ring
from a merely scientific laboratory? Now you are angered!"
His large soft brilliant eyes rested appealingly upon his brother, whose
features had grown pale and rigid.
"Angered!" he echoed, speaking as it seemed with some
effort,--"Am I ever angered at your--your fancies? For
fancies they are, Féraz,--the voice you hear is like the
imagined home in that distant star you speak of,--an image and an echo
on your brain--no more. My 'great work,' as you call it,
would have no interest for you;--it is nothing but a test-experiment,
which, if it fails, then I fail with it, and am no more
El-Râmi-Zarânos, but the merest fool that ever clamoured for
the moon." He said this more to himself than to his brother, and
seemed for the moment to have forgotten where he was,--till suddenly
rousing himself with a start, he forced a smile.
"Farewell for the present, gentle visionary!" he said
kindly,--"You are happier with your dreams than I with my
facts,--do not seek out sorrow for yourself by rash and idle
questioning."
With a parting nod he went out, and Féraz, closing the door after
him, remained
in the hall for a few moments in a sort of vague reverie. How silent the house seemed, he thought with a half-sigh. The very atmosphere of it was depressing, and even his favourite occupation, music, had just now no attraction for him. He turned listlessly into his brother's study,--he determined to read for an hour or so, and looked about in search of some entertaining volume. On the table he found a book open,--a manuscript, written on vellum in Arabic, with curious uncanny figures and allegorical designs on the headings and margins. El-Râmi had left it there by mistake,--it was a particularly valuable treasure which he generally kept under lock and key. Féraz sat down in front of it, and resting his head on his two hands, began to read at the page where it lay open. Arabic was his native tongue,--yet he had some difficulty in making out this especial specimen of the language, because the writing was anything but distinct, and some of the letters had a very odd way of vanishing before his eyes, just as he had fixed them on at word. This was puzzling as well as irritating,--he must have something the matter with
his sight or his brain, he concluded, as these vanishing letters always came into position again after a little. Worried by the phenomenon, he seized the book and carried it to the full light of the open window, and there succeeded in making out the meaning of one passage which was quite sufficient to set him thinking. It ran as follows:
* "Wherefore, touching
illusions and impressions, as also strong emotions of love, hatred,
jealousy or revenge, these nerve and brain sensations are easily conveyed
from one human subject to another by Suggestion. The first process is to
numb the optic nerve. This is done in two ways--I. By causing the
subject to fix his eyes steadily on a round shining case containing a
magnet, while you shall count two hundred beats of time. II. By wilfully
making your own eyes the magnet, and fixing your subject thereto. Either of
these operations will temporarily paralyze the optic nerves, and arrest the
motion of the blood in the vessels pertaining. Thus the brain becomes
insensible to
___________________* From "The Natural Law
of Miracles," written in Arabic 400 B.C.
Page 95
external impressions, and is only awake to internal suggestions, which you may make as many and as devious as you please. Your subject will see exactly what you choose him to see, hear what you wish him to hear, do what you bid him do, so long as you hold him by your power, which if you understand the laws of light, sound, and air-vibrations, you may be able to retain for an indefinite period. The same force applies to the magnetising of a multitude as of a single individual."
Féraz read this over and over again,--then returning to the
table, laid the book upon it with a deeply engrossed air. It had given him
unpleasant matter for reflection.
"A dreamer--a visionary, he calls me--" he mused,
his thoughts reverting to his absent brother--"Full of fancies
poetic and musical,--now can it be that I owe my very dreams to his
dominance? Does he make me subservient to him, as I am, or is
my submission to his will, my own desire? Is my
'madness' or 'craze,' or whatever he calls it, of
his working? and should I be more like other men if I were
separated
from him? And yet what has he ever done to me, save make me happy? Has he placed me under the influence of any magnet such as this book describes? Certainly not that I am aware of. He has made my inward spirit clearer of comprehension, so that I hear him call me even by a thought,--I see and know beautiful things of which grosser souls have no perception,--and am I not content?--Yes, surely I am!--surely I should be,--though at times there seems a something missing,--a something to which I cannot give a name."
He sighed,--and again buried his head between his hands,--he
was conscious of a dreary sensation, unusual to his bright and fervid
nature,--the very sunshine streaming through the window seemed to lack
true brilliancy. Suddenly a hand was laid upon his shoulder,--he
started and rose to his feet with a bewildered air,--then smiled, as
he saw that the intruder was only Zaroba.
"El-Râmi has gone?" she asked.
Féraz nodded. He generally made her understand him either by
signs, or the use of the finger-alphabet, at which he was very
dexterous.
"On what quest?" she demanded.
Féraz explained rapidly and mutely that he had gone to visit a
friend residing at a distance from town.
"Then he will not return to-night;"--muttered Zaroba
thoughtfully--"He will not return to-night."
She sat down, and clasping her hands across her knees, rocked herself to
and fro for some minutes in silence. Then she spoke, more to herself than
to her listener.
"He is an angel or a fiend," she said in low meditative
accents. "Or maybe he is both in one. He saved me from death
once--I shall never forget that. And by his power he sent me back to
my native land last night--I bound my black tresses with pearl and
gold, and laughed and sang,--I was young again!"--and with
a sudden cry she raised her hands above her head and clapped them fiercely
together, so that the silver bangles on her arms jangled like
bells;--"As God liveth, I was young! You know what
it is to be young"--and she turned her dark orbs half enviously
upon Féraz, who, leaning against his brother's
writing-table, regarded her with interest and something of awe--"or you should know it! To feel the blood leap in the veins, while the happy heart keeps time like the beat of a joyous cymbal,--to catch the breath and tremble with ecstasy as the eyes one loves best in the world flash lightning-passion into your own,--to make companions of the roses, and feel the pulses quicken at the songs of birds,--to tread the ground so lightly as to scarcely know whether it is earth or air--this is to be young!--young!--and I was young last night. My love was with me,--my love, my more than lover--'Zaroba, beautiful Zaroba!' he said, and his kisses were as honey on my lips--'Zaroba, pearl of passion! fountain of sweetness in a desert land!--thine eyes are fire in which I burn my soul,--thy round arms the prison in which I lock my heart! Zaroba, beautiful Zaroba!'--Beautiful! Ay!--through the power of El-Râmi I was fair to see--last night! ... only last night!"
Her voice sank down into a feeble wailing, and Féraz gazed at her
compassionately and in a little wonder,--he was accustomed to
see her in various strange and incomprehensible moods, but she was seldom so excited as now.
"Why do you not laugh?" she asked suddenly and with a touch
of defiance--"Why do you not laugh at me?--at me, the
wretched Zaroba,--old and unsightly--bent and
wrinkled!--that I should dare to say I was once beautiful!--It is
a thing to make sport of--an old forsaken woman's dream of her
dead youth."
With an impulsive movement that was as graceful as it was becoming,
Féraz, for sole reply, dropped on one knee beside her, and taking
her wrinkled hand, touched it lightly but reverently with his lips. She
trembled, and great tears rose in her eyes.
"Poor boy!" she muttered--"Poor child!--a
child to me, and yet a man! As God liveth, a man!" She looked at him
with a curious stedfastness. "Good Féraz, forgive me--I
did you wrong--I know you would not mock the aged, or make wanton
sport of their incurable woes,--you are too gentle. I would in truth
you were less mild of spirit--less womanish of heart!"
"Womanish!" and Féraz leaped up, stung by the word,
he knew not why. His heart beat strangely--his blood tingled,--it
seemed to him that if he had possessed a weapon, his instinct would have
been to draw it then. Never had he looked so handsome; and Zaroba, watching
his expression, clapped her withered hands in a sort of witch-like
triumph.
"Ha!"--she cried--"The man's mettle
speaks! There is something more than the dreamer in you
then--something that will help you to explain the mystery of your
existence--something that says--'Féraz, you are the
slave of destiny--up! be its master! Féraz, you
sleep--awake!'" and Zaroba stood up tall and imposing,
with the air of an inspired sorceress delivering a
prophecy--"Féraz, you have manhood--prove