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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'
drunken men reeling homewards,--and lifting his eyes from their studious observation of the floor, he sighed deeply.
"That is the way the great majority of men amuse
themselves,"--he mused. "Drink, stupidity, brutality,
sensuality--all blatant proofs of miserable unresisted
weakness,--can it be possible that God can care for such? Could even
the pity of Christ pardon such wilful workers of their own ruin? The pity
of Christ, said I?--nay, at times even He was pitiless. Did He not
curse a fig-tree because it was barren?--though truly we are not told
the cause of its barrenness. Of course the lesson is that Life--the
fig-tree,--has no right to be barren of results,--but why curse
it, if it is? What is the use of a curse at any time? And what, may equally
be asked, is the use of a blessing? Neither are heard; the curse is seldom
if ever wreaked,--and the blessing, so the sorrowful say, is never
granted."
The noise and the laughter outside died away,--and a deep silence
ensued. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, and
noted his own reflective attitude,--his brooding visage; and studied himself critically as he would have studied a picture.
"You are no Antinous, my friend"--he said aloud,
addressing his own reflection with some bitterness--"A mere
sun-tanned Oriental with a pair of eyes in which the light is more of hell
than heaven. What should you do with yourself, frowning at Fate? You are a
superb Egoist,--no more."
As he spoke, the roses in the vase beside him swayed lightly to and fro,
as though a faint wind had fanned them, and their perfume stole upon the
air like the delicate breath of summer wafted from some distant garden.
There was no window open--and El-Râmi had not stirred, so
that no movement on his part could have shaken the vase,--and yet the
roses quivered on their stalks as if brushed by a bird's wing. He
watched them with a faint sense of curiosity--but with no desire to
discover why they thus nodded their fair heads to an apparently causeless
vibration. He was struggling with
an emotion that threatened to overwhelm him,--he knew that he was not master of himself,--and instinctively he kept his face turned away from the tranced Lilith.
"I must not look upon her--I dare not;" he whispered to
the silence--"Not yet--not yet."
There was a low chair close by, and he dropped into it wearily, covering
his eyes with one hand. He tried to control his thoughts--but they
were rebellious, and ran riot in spite of him. The words of Zaroba rang in
his ears--"For you were the days of Ashtaroth." The days
of Ashtaroth!--for what had they been renowned? For love and the
feasts of love,--for mirth and song and dance--for crowns of
flowers, for shouting of choruses and tinkling of cymbals, for exquisite
luxury and voluptuous pleasures,--for men and women who were not
ashamed of love and took delight in loving;--were there not better,
warmer ways of life in those old times than now--now when cautious and
timid souls make schemes for marriage as they scheme for wealth,--when
they snigger
at "love" as though it were some ludicrous defect in mortal composition, and when real passion of any kind is deemed downright improper, and not to be spoken of before cold and punctilious society?
"Aye, but the passion is there all the same;"--thought
El-Râmi--"Under the ice burns the fire,--all the
fiercer and the more dangerous for its repression."
And he still kept his hand over his eyes, thinking.
"The Christ claims all"--had said Zaroba. Nay, what has
Christ done that He should claim all? "He died for us!" cry the
preachers. Well,--others can die also. "He was Divine!"
proclaim the churches. We are all Divine, if we will but let the Divinity
in us have way. And moved by these ideas, El-Râmi rose up and crossed
to a niche in the purple-pavilioned walls of the room, before which hung a
loose breadth of velvet fringed with gold,--this he drew aside, and
disclosed a picture very finely painted, of Christ standing near the sea,
surrounded by his disciples--underneath it were
in-
scribed the words--"Whom say ye that I am?"
The dignity and beauty of the Face and Figure were truly
marvellous,--the expression of the eyes had something of pride as well
as sweetness, and El-Râmi confronted it as he had confronted it many
times before, with a restless inquisitiveness.
"Whom say ye that I am?"
The painted Christ seemed to audibly ask the question.
"O noble Mystery of a Man, I cannot tell!" exclaimed
El-Râmi suddenly and aloud--"I cannot say who you are, or
who you were. A riddle for all the world to wonder at,--a white Sphinx
with a smile inscrutable,--all the secrets of Egypt are as nothing to
your secret, O simple, pure-souled Nazarene! You, born in miserable plight
in miserable Bethlehem, changed the aspect of the world, altered and
purified the modes of civilization, and thrilled all life with higher
motives for work than it had ever been dowered with before. All this in
three years' work, ending in a criminal's death! Truly
if there was not something Divine in you, then God Himself is an Error!"
The grand Face seemed to smile upon him with a deep and solemn pity, and
"Whom say ye that I am?" sounded in his ears as though it were
spoken by someone in the room.
"I must be getting nervous;"--he muttered, drawing the
curtain softly over the picture again, and looking uneasily round about
him, "I think I cannot be much more than the weakest of
men,--after all."
A faint tremor seized him as he turned slowly but resolutely round
towards the couch of Lilith, and let his eyes rest on her enchanting
loveliness. Step by step he drew nearer and nearer till he bent closely
over her, but he did not call her by name. A loose mass of her hair lay
close to his arm,--with an impetuous suddenness he gathered it in his
hands and kissed it.
"A sheaf of sunbeams!"--he whispered, his lips burning
as they caressed the shining wealth of silken curls--"A golden
web in which kisses might be caught and killed!
Ah Heaven have pity on me!" and he sank by the couch, stifling his words beneath his breath--"If I love this girl--if all this mad tumult in my soul is Love--let her never know it, O merciful Fates!--or she is lost, and so am I. Let me be bound,--let her be free,--let me fight down my weakness, but let her never know that I am weak, or I shall lose her long obedience. No, no! I will not summon her to me now--it is best she should be absent,--this body of hers, this fair fine casket of her spirit is but a dead thing when that spirit is elsewhere. She cannot hear me,--she does not see me--no, not even when I lay this hand--this 'shadow of a hand,' as she once called it, here, to quell my foolish murmurings."
And, lifting Lilith's hand as he spoke, he pressed its roseate palm
against his lips,--then on his forehead. A strange sense of relief and
peace came upon him with the touch of those delicate fingers--it was
as though a cool wind blew, bringing freshness from some quiet mountain
lake or river. Silently he knelt,--and presently, somewhat
calmed, lifted his eyes again to look at Lilith,--she smiled in her deep trance--she was the very picture of some happy angel sleeping. His arm sank in the soft satin coverlid as he laid back the little hand he held upon her breast,--and with eager scrutiny he noted every tint and every line in her exquisite face;--the lovely long lashes that swept the blush-rose of her cheeks,--the rounded chin, dimpled in its curve,--the full white throat, the perfect outline of the whole fair figure as it rested like a branched lily in a bed of snow,--and as he looked, he realized that all this beauty was his--his, if he chose to take Love, and let Wisdom go. If he chose to resign the chance of increasing his knowledge of the supernatural,--if he were content to accept earth for what it is, and heaven for what it may be, Lilith, the bodily incarnation of loveliness, purity and perfect womanhood, was his--his only. He grew dizzy at the thought,--then by an effort conquered the longing of his heart. He remembered what he had sworn to do,--to discover the one great secret before he seized
the joy that tempted him,--to prove the actual, individual, conscious existence of the Being that is said to occupy a temporary habitation in flesh. He knew and he saw the Body of Lilith,--he must know, and he must see her Soul. And while he leaned above her couch entranced, a sudden strain of music echoed through the stillness,--music solemn and sweet, that stirred the air into rhythmic vibrations as of slow and sacred psalmody. He listened, perplexed but not afraid,--he was not afraid of anything in earth or heaven save--himself. He knew that man has his worst enemy in his own Ego,--beyond that, there is very little in life that need give cause for alarm. He had, till now, been able to practise the stoical philosophy of an Epictetus while engaged in researches that would have puzzled the brain of a Plato,--but his philosophy was just now at fault and his self-possession gone to the four winds of heaven--and why? He knew not--but he was certain the fault lay in himself, and not in others. Of an arrogant temper and a self-reliant haughty disposition
he had none of that low cowardice which people are guilty of, who finding themselves in a dilemma, cast the blame at once on others, or on "circumstances" which after all, were most probably of their own creating. And the strange music that ebbed and flowed in sonorous pulsations through the air around him, troubled him not at all,--he attributed it at once to something or other that was out of order in his own mental perceptions. He knew how in certain conditions of the brain, some infinitesimal trifle gone wrong in the aural nerves, will persuade one that trumpets are blowing, violins playing, birds singing or bells ringing in the distance,--just as a little disorder of the visual organs will help to convince one of apparitions. He knew how to cast a "glamour" better than any so-called "Theosophist" in full practice of his trickery,--and being thus perfectly aware how the human sense can be deceived, listened to the harmonious sounds he heard with speculative interest, wondering how long this "fancy" of his would last. Much more startled was he, when amid the rising
and falling of the mysterious melody he heard the voice of Lilith saying softly in her usual manner--
"I am here!"
His heart beat rapidly, and he rose slowly from his kneeling position by
her side. "I did not call you, Lilith!" he said
tremblingly.
"No!" and her sweet lips smiled--"you did not
call, ... I came!"
"Why did you come?" he asked, still faintly.
"For my own joy and yours!" she answered in thrilling
tones--"Sweeter than all the heavens is Love,--and Love is
here!"
An icy cold crept through him as he heard the rapture in her
accents,--such rapture!--like that of a lark singing in the
sunlight on a fresh morning of May. And like the dim sound of a funeral
bell came the words of the monk, tolling solemnly across his memory, in
spite of his efforts to forget them, "With Lilith's love comes
Lilith's freedom."
"No, no!" he muttered within himself--"It cannot
be,--it shall not be!--she is mine,
mine only. Her fate is in my hands; if there be justice in Heaven, who else has so much right to her body or her soul as I?"
And he stood, gazing irresolutely at the girl, who stirred restlessly
and flung her white arms upward on her pillows, while the music he had
heard suddenly ceased. He dared not speak,--he was afraid to express
any desire or impose any command upon this "fine sprite" which
had for six years obeyed him, but which might now, for all he could tell,
be fluttering vagrantly on the glittering confines of realms far beyond his
ken.
Her lips moved,--and presently she spoke again.
"Wonderful are the ways of Divine Law!" she murmured
softly--"and infinite are the changes it works among its
creatures! An old man, despised and poor, by friends rejected, perplexed in
mind, but pure in soul; such Was the Spirit that now Is. Passing me
flame-like on its swift way heavenward,--saved and uplifted, not by
Wisdom, but by Love."
El-Râmi listened, awed and puzzled. Her
words surely seemed to bear some reference to Kremlin?
"Of the knowledge of the stars and the measuring of light there is
more than enough in the Universe;"--went on Lilith
dreamily--"but of faithful love, such as keeps an Angel forever
by one's side, there is little; therefore the Angels on earth are
few."
He could no longer restrain his curiosity.
"Do you speak of one who is dead, Lilith?" he
asked--"One whom I knew--"
"I speak of one who is living,"--she
replied--"and one whom you know. For none are dead;
and Knowledge has no Past, but is all Present."
Her voice sank into silence. El-Râmi bent above her, studying her
countenance earnestly--her lashes trembled as though the eyelids were
about to open,--but the tremor passed and they remained shut. How
lovely she looked!--how more than lovely!
"Lilith!" he whispered, suddenly oblivious of all his former
forebodings, and unconscious of the eager passion vibrating in his
tone--"Sweet Lilith!"
She turned slightly towards him, and lifting her arms from their
indolently graceful position on the pillows, she clasped her hands high
above her head in apparent supplication.
"Love me!" she cried, with such a thrill in her accent that
it rang through the room like a note of music--"Oh my
Belovëd, love me!"
El-Râmi grew faint and dizzy,--his thoughts were all in a
whirl, ... was he made of marble or ice that he should not respond?
Scarcely aware of what he did, he took her clasped hands in his own.
"And do I not, Lilith?" he murmured, half-anguished,
half-entranced--"Do I not love you?"
"No, no!" said Lilith with passionate
emphasis--"Not me,--not me, Myself! Oh my Belovëd!
love Me, not my Shadow!"
He loosened her hands, and recoiled, awed and perplexed. Her appeal
struck at the core of all his doubts,--and for one moment he was
disposed to believe in the actual truth of the Immortal Soul without those
"proofs"
for which he constantly searched,--the next, he rallied himself on his folly and weakness. He dared not trust himself to answer her, so he was silent,--but she soon spoke again with such convincing earnestness of tone that almost ... almost he believed--but not quite.
"To love the Seeming and not the Real," she
said--"is the curse of all sad Humanity. It is the glamour of
the air,--the barrier between Earth and Heaven. The Body is the
Shadow--the Soul is the Substance. The Reflection I cast on
Earth's surface for a little space, is but a Reflection only,--it
is not Me:--I am beyond it!"
For a moment El-Râmi stood irresolute,--then gathering up his
scattered thoughts, he began to try and resolve them into order and
connection. Surely the time was ripe for his great Experiment?--and as
he considered this, his nerves grew more steady,--his self-reliance
returned--all his devotion to scientific research pressed back its
claim upon his mind,--if he were to fail now, he thought, after all
his patience and study,--fail to obtain
any true insight into the spiritual side of humanity, would he not be ashamed, aye, and degraded in his own eyes? He resolved to end all his torture of pain and doubt and disquietude,--and sitting on the edge of Lilith's couch, he drew her delicate hands down from their uplifted position, and laid them one above the other cross-wise on his own breast.
"Then you must teach me, Lilith"--he said softly and
with tender persuasiveness--"you must teach me to know you. If I
see but your Reflection here,--let me behold your Reality. Let me love
you as you are, if now I only love you as you seem. Show yourself to me in
all your spiritual loveliness, Lilith!--it may be I shall die of the
glory,--or--if there is no death as you say,--I shall not
die, but simply pass away into the light which gives you life. Lift the
veil that is between us, Lilith, and let me see you face to face. If this
that seems you"--and he pressed the little hands he
held--"is naught, let me realize the nothingness of so much
beauty beside the greater beauty that
en-
genders it. Come to me as you are, Lilith!--come!"
As he spoke, his heart beat fast with a nervous thrill of expectancy;
what would she answer? ... what would she do? He could not take his eyes
from her face--he half fancied he should see some change there; for
the moment he even thought it possible that she might transform herself
into some surpassing Being, which, like the gods of the Greek mythology,
should consume by its flame-like splendour whatever of mortality dared to
look upon it. But she remained unaltered, and sculpturally calm,--only
her breathing seemed a little quicker, and the hands that he held trembled
against his breast.
Her next words however startled him--
"I will come!" she said, and a faint sigh escaped her
lips--"Be ready for me. Pray!--pray for the blessing of
Christ,--for if Christ be with us, all is well."
At this, his brow clouded,--his eyes drooped gloomily.
"Christ!" he muttered more to himself
than to her--"What is He to me? Who is He that He should be with us?"
"This world's Rescue and all worlds' Glory!"
The answer rang out like a silver clarion, with something full and
triumphant in the sound, as though not only Lilith's voice had uttered
it, but other voices had joined in a chorus. At the same moment, her hands
moved, as if in an effort to escape from his hold. But he held them closely
in a jealous and masterful grasp.
"When will you come to me, Lilith?" he demanded in low but
eager accents--"When shall I see you and know you as Lilith? ...
my Lilith, my own forever?"
"God's Lilith--God's own forever!" murmured
Lilith dreamily, and then was silent.
An angry sense of rebellion began to burn in El-Râmi's mind.
Summoning up all the force of his iron will, he unclasped her hands and
laid them back on each side of her, and placed his own hand on her breast,
just where the ruby talisman shone and glowed.
"Answer me, Lilith!" he said, with
some-
thing of the old sternness which he had used to employ with her on former occasions--"When will you come to me?"
Her limbs trembled violently as though some inward cold convulsed her,
and her answer came slowly, though clearly--
"When you are ready."
"I am ready now!" he cried recklessly.
"No--no!" she murmured, her voice growing fainter and
fainter--"Not yet ... not yet! Love is not strong enough, high
enough, pure enough. Wait, watch and pray. When the hour has come, a sign
will be given--but O my Belovëd, if you would know me, love
Me--love Me! not my Shadow!"
A pale hue fell on her face, robbing it of its delicate
tint,--El-Râmi knew what that pallor indicated.
"Lilith! Lilith!" he exclaimed, "Why leave me thus if
you love me? Stay with me yet a little!"
But Lilith--or rather the strange Spirit that made the body of
Lilith speak,--was gone. And all that night not another sound, either
of music or speech, stirred the silence of the room. Dawn came, misty and gray, and found the proud El-Râmi kneeling before the unveiled picture of the Christ,--not praying, for he could not bring himself down to the necessary humiliation for prayer,--but simply wondering vaguely as to what could be and what might be the one positive reply to that Question propounded of old--
"Whom Say Ye That I Am?"
the Soul,--the Immortal, Individual Ego, be Fable or Fact. Never more than in this, our own period, did people search with such unabated feverish yearning into the things that seem supernatural;--never were there bitterer pangs of recoil and disappointment when trickery and imposture are found to have even temporarily passed for truth. If the deepest feeling in every human heart today were suddenly given voice, the shout "Excelsior!" would rend the air in mighty chorus. For we know all the old earth-stories;--of love, of war, of adventure, of wealth, we know pretty well the beginning and the end,--we read in our histories of nations that were, but now are not, and we feel that we shall in due time go the same way with them,--that the wheel of Destiny spins on in the same round always, and that nothing--nothing can alter its relentless and monotonous course. We tread in the dust and among the fallen columns of great cities, and we vaguely wonder if the spirits of the men that built them are indeed no more,--we gaze on the glorious pile of the Duomo at
Milan and think of the brain that first devised and planned its majestic proportions, and ask ourselves--Is it possible that this, the creation, should be Here, and its creator Nowhere? Would such an arrangement be reasonable or just? And so it happens that when the wielders of the pen essay to tell us of wars, of shipwrecks, of hair-breadth escapes from danger, of love and politics and society, we read their pages with merely transitory pleasure and frequent indifference, but when they touch upon subjects beyond earthly experience,--when they attempt, however feebly, to lift our inspirations to the possibilities of the Unseen, then we give them our eager attention and almost passionate interest. Critics look upon this tendency as morbid, unwholesome and pernicious; but nevertheless the tendency is there,--the demand for "Light! more light!" is in the very blood and brain of the people. It would seem as though this world has grown too narrow for the aspirations of its inhabitants;--and some of us instinctively feel that we are on the brink of strange discoveries respecting the
powers unearthly, whether for good or evil we dare not presume to guess. The nonsensical tenets of "Theosophy" would not gain ground with a single individual man or woman were not this feeling very strong among many,--the tricky "mediums" and "spiritualists" would not have a chance of earning a subsistence out of the gullibility of their dupes, and the preachers of new creeds and new forms would obtain no vestige of attention if it were not for the fact that there is a very general impression all over the world that the time is ripe for a clearer revelation of God and the things of God than we have ever had before. "Give us something that will endure!" is the exclamation of weary humanity--"The things we have, pass; and by reason of their ephemeral nature, are worthless. Give us what we can keep and call our own for ever!" This is why we try and test all things that appear to give proof of the super-sensual element in man,--and when we find ourselves deceived by impostors and conjurers, our disgust and disappointment are too bitter to ever find vent
in words. The happiest are those who, in the shifting up and down of faiths and formulas, ever cling stedfastly to the one pure Example of embodied Divinity in Manhood as seen in Christ. When we reject Christ, we reject the Gospel of Love and Universal Brotherhood, without which the ultimate perfection and progress of the world must ever remain impossible.
A few random thoughts such as these occurred to El-Râmi now and
then as he lived his life from day to day in perpetual expectation of the
"sign" promised by Lilith, which as yet was not forthcoming. He
believed she would keep her word, and that the "sign" whatever
it was would be unmistakable; and,--as before stated--this was
the nearest approach to actual faith he had ever known. His was a nature
which was originally disposed to faith, but which had persistently fought
with its own inclination till that inclination had been conquered. He had
been able to prove as purely natural, much that had seemed
supernatural, and he now viewed everything from two
points--Possi-
bility and Impossibility. His various confusions and perplexities however, generally arose from the frequent discovery he made, that what he had once thought the Impossible, suddenly became through some small chance clue, the Possible. So many times had this occurred that he often caught himself wondering whether anything in very truth could be strictly declared as "impossible." And yet, ... with the body of Lilith under his observation for six years, and an absolute ignorance as to how her intelligence had developed, or where she obtained the power to discourse with him as she did, he always had the lurking dread that her utterances might be the result of his own brain unconsciously working upon hers, and that there was no "soul" or "spirit" in the matter. This too, in spite of the fact that she had actually given him a concise description of certain planets, their laws, their government, and their inhabitants, concerning which he could know nothing,--and that she spoke with a sure conviction of the existence of a personal God, an idea that was
entirely unacceptable to his nature. He was at a loss to explain her "separated consciousness" in any scientific way, and afraid of himself lest he should believe too easily, he encouraged the presence of every doubt in his mind, rather than give entrance to more than the palest glimmer of faith.
And so time went on, and May passed into June, and June deepened into
its meridian-glow of bloom and sunlight, and he remained shut up within the
four walls of his house, seeing no one, and displaying a total indifference
to the fact that the "season" with all its bitter froth and
frivolity was seething on in London in its usual monotonous manner. Unlike
pretenders to "spiritualistic" powers, he had no inclination
for the society of the rich and great,--"titled" people
had no attraction for him save in so far as they were cultured, witty, or
amiable,--"position" in the world, was a very miserable
trifle in his opinion, and though many a gorgeous flunkied carriage at this
time found its way into the unfashionable square where he had his domicile,
no visitors were
admitted to see him,--and "too busy to receive anyone" was the formula with which young Féraz dismissed any would-be intruder. Yet Féraz himself wondered all the while how it was that as a matter of fact, El-Râmi seemed to be just now less absorbed in actual study than he had ever been in his whole life. He read no books save the old Arabic vellum-bound volume which held the explanatory key to so much curious phenomena palmed off as "spiritual miracles" by the Theosophists, and he wrote a good deal,--but he answered no letters, accepted no invitations, manifested no wish to leave the house even for an hour's stroll, and seemed mentally engrossed by some great secret subject of meditation. He was uniformly kind to Féraz, exacting no duties from him save those prompted by interest and affection,--he was marvellously gentle too with Zaroba, who, agitated, restless and perplexed as to his ultimate intentions with respect to the beautiful Lilith, was vaguely uneasy and melancholy, though she deemed it wisest to perform all his commands with exactitude, and, for the
present to hold her peace. She had expected something--though she knew not what--from his last interview with her beautiful charge--but all was unchanged,--Lilith slept on, and the cherished wish of Zaroba's heart, that she should wake, seemed as far off realization as ever. Day after day passed, and El-Râmi lived like a hermit amidst the roar and traffic of mighty London,--watching Lilith for long and anxious hours, but never venturing to call her down to him from wherever she might be,--waiting, waiting for her summons, and content for once to sink himself in the thought of her identity. All his ambitions were now centred on the one great object, ... to see the Soul, as it is, if it is indeed existent, conscious and individual. For, as he argued, what is the use of a "Soul" whose capacities we are not permitted to understand?--and if it be no more to us than the Intelligent Faculty of Brain? The chief proof of a possible Something behind Man's inner consciousness, was, he considered, the quality of Discontent, and, primarily, because Discontent is so universal. No one is contented
in all the world from end to end. From the powerful Emperor on his throne to the whining beggar in the street, all chafe under the goading prick of the great Necessity,--a Something Better,--a Something Lasting. Why should this resonant key-note of Discontent be perpetually resounding through space, if this life is all? No amount of philosophy or argument can argue away Discontent--it is a god-like Disquietude ever fermenting changes among us, ever propounding new suggestions for happiness, ever restless, never satisfied. And El-Râmi would ask himself--Is Discontent the voice of the Soul?--not only the Universal Soul of things, but the Soul of each individual? Then, if Individual, why should not the Individual be made manifest, if manifestation be possible? And if not possible, why should we be called upon to believe in what cannot be manifested?
Thus he argued, not altogether unwisely; he had studied profoundly all
the divers conflicting theories of religion, and would at one time have
become an obstinately confirmed
Positivist, had it not been for the fact that the further his researches led him the more he became aware that there was nothing positive,--that is to say, nothing so apparently fixed and unalterable that it might not, under different conditions, prove capable of change. Perhaps there is no better test-example of this truth than the ordinary substance known as iron. We use in common parlance unthinkingly the phrase "as hard as iron"--while to the smith and engineer who mould and twist it in every form, it proves itself soft and malleable as wax. Again, to the surface-observer, it might and does seem an incombustible metal,--the chemist knows it will burn with the utmost fury. How then form a universal decision as to its various capabilities when it has so many variations of use all in such contrary directions? The same example, modified or enlarged, will be found to apply to all things, wherefore the word "Positivism" seems out of place in merely mortal language. God may be "positive," but we and our surroundings have no such absolute quality.
During this period of El-Râmi's self-elected seclusion and
meditation, his young brother Féraz was very happy. He was in the
midst of writing a poem which he fondly fancied might perhaps--only
perhaps--find a publisher to take it and launch it on its own
merits,--it is the privilege of youth to be over-sanguine. Then too,
his brain was filled with new musical ideas,--and many an
evening's hour he beguiled away by delicious improvisations on the
piano, or exquisite songs to the mandoline. El-Râmi, when he was not
upstairs keeping anxious vigil by the tranced Lilith's side, would sit
in his chair, leaning back with half-closed eyes, listening to the
entrancing melodies like another Saul to a new David, soothed by the
sweetness of the sounds he heard, yet conscious that he took too deep and
ardent a pleasure in hearing, when the songs Féraz chose were of
love. One night Féraz elected to sing the wild and beautiful
"Canticle of Love" written by the late Lord Lytton, when as
"Owen Meredith" he promised to be one of the greatest poets of
our century, and who
would have fulfilled more than that promise if diplomacy had not claimed his brilliant intellectual gifts for the service of his country,--a country which yet deplores his untimely loss. But no fatality had as yet threatened that gallant and noble life in the days when Féraz smote the chords of his mandoline and sang:--
"I once heard an angel by night in the sky
Singing softly a song to a deep golden lute;
The pole-star, the seven little planets and I
To the song that he sang, listened mute,
For the song that he sang was so strange and so sweet,
And so tender the tones of his lute's golden strings
That the seraphs of heaven sat hush'd at his feet
And folded their heads in their wings.
And the song that he sang to the seraphs up there
Is called 'Love'! But the words ... I had heard them elsewhere.
"For when I was last in the nethermost Hell,
On a rock 'mid the sulphurous surges I heard
A pale spirit sing to a wild hollow shell;
And his song was the same, every word,
And so sad was his singing, all Hell to the sound
Moaned, and wailing, complained like a monster in pain
While the fiends hovered near o'er the dismal profound
With their black wings weighed down by the strain;
And the song that was sung to the Lost Ones down there
Is called 'Love'! But the spirit that sang was Despair!"
The strings of the mandoline quivered mournfully in tune with the
passionate beauty of the verse, and from El-Râmi's lips there
came involuntarily a deep and bitter sigh.
Féraz ceased playing and looked at him.
"What is it?" he asked anxiously.
"Nothing!" replied his brother in a tranquil
voice--"What should there be? Only the poem is very beautiful,
and out of the common,--though to me, terribly suggestive of--a
mistake somewhere in creation. Love to the Saved--Love to the
Lost!--naturally it would have different aspects,--but it is an
anomaly--Love, to be true to its name, should have no
'lost' ones in its chronicle."
Féraz was silent.
"Do you believe"--continued
El-Râmi--"that there is a 'nethermost
Hell'?--a place or a state of mind resembling that 'rock
'mid the sulphurous surges'?"
"I should imagine," replied Féraz with some
diffidence, "that there must be a condition in which we are bound to
look back and see where we were wrong,--a condition, too, in which we
have time to be sorry--"
"Unfair and unreasonable!" exclaimed his brother hotly.
"For, suppose we did not know we were wrong? We are left
absolutely without guidance in this world to do as we like."
"I do not think you can quite say that"--remonstrated
Féraz gently--"We do know when we are
wrong--generally; some instinct tells us so--and while we have
the book of Nature, we are not left without guidance. As for looking back
and seeing our former mistakes, I think that is unquestionable,--for
as I grow older, I begin to see where I failed in my former life, and how I
deserved to lose my star-kingdom."
El-Râmi looked impatient.
"You are a dreamer"--he said
decisively--"and your star-kingdom is a dream also. You cannot
tell me truthfully that you remember anything of a former
existence?"
"I am beginning to remember," said Féraz
steadily.
"My dear boy, anybody but myself hearing you, would say you were
mad--hopelessly mad!"
"They would be at perfect liberty to say
so"--and Féraz smiled a little--"Everyone is free to have his own opinion--I have mine. My star exists; and I once existed in it--so did you."
"Well, I know nothing about it then," declared
El-Râmi--"I have forgotten it utterly."
"Oh no! You think you have forgotten"--said
Féraz mildly--"But the truth is, your very knowledge of
science and other things is only--memory."
El-Râmi moved in his chair impatiently.
"Let us not argue;"--he said--"We shall
never agree. Sing to me again!"
Féraz thought a moment, and then laid aside his mandoline and
went to the piano, where he played a rushing rapid accompaniment like the
sound of the wind among trees, and sang the following--
"Winds of the mountain, mingle with my crying,
Clouds of the tempest, flee as I am flying,
Gods of the cloudland, Christus and Apollo,
Follow, O follow!
"Through the dark valleys, up the misty mountains,
Over the black wastes, past the gleaming fountains,
Praying not, hoping not, resting nor abiding,
Lo, I am riding!
Page 38
"Clangour and anger of elements are round me,
Torture has clasped me, cruelty has crown'd me,
Sorrow awaits me, Death is waiting with her,
Fast speed I thither.
"Gods of the storm-cloud, drifting darkly yonder,
Point fiery hands and mock me as I wander;
Gods of the forest glimmer out upon me,
Shrink back and shun me.
"Gods, let them follow!--gods, for I defy them!
They call me, mock me, but I gallop by them;
If they would find me, touch me, whisper to me,
Let them pursue me!"
He was interrupted in the song by a smothered cry from El-Râmi,
and looking round, startled, he saw his brother standing up and staring at
him with something of mingled fear and horror. He came to an abrupt stop,
his hands resting on the piano keys.
"Go on, go on!" cried El-Râmi irritably. "What
wild chant of the gods and men have you there? Is it your own?"
"Mine!" echoed Féraz--"No indeed!--I
wish it were. It is by a living poet of the day, Robert
Buchanan."
"Robert Buchanan!"--and El-Râmi tried to recover
his self-possession--"Ah!--Well,
I wonder what devil possessed him to write it!"
"Don't you like it?" exclaimed Féraz
wonderingly--"To my thinking it is one of the finest poems in
the English language."
"Of course, of course I like it;"--said El-Râmi,
sitting down again, angry with himself for his own emotion--"Is
there more of it?"
"Yes, but I need not finish it,"--and Féraz made
as though he would rise from the piano.
El-Râmi suddenly began to laugh.
"Go on, I tell you, Féraz"--he said
carelessly--"There is a tempest of agitation in the words and in
your music that leaves one hurried and breathless, but the sensation is not
unpleasant,--especially when one is prepared, ... go on!--I want
to hear the end of this ... this-defiance."
Féraz looked at him to see if he were in earnest, and perceiving
he had settled down to give his whole attention to the rest of the ballad,
he resumed his playing, and again the rush of the music filled the
room--
"Faster, O faster! Darker and more dreary
Groweth the pathway, yet I am not weary--
Gods, I defy them! gods, I can unmake them,
Bruise them and break them!
"White steed of wonder with thy feet of thunder,
Find out their temples, tread their high-priests under--
Leave them behind thee--if their gods speed after,
Mock them with laughter.
"Shall a god grieve me? shall a phantom win me?
Nay!--by the wild wind around and o'er and in me--
Be his name Vishnu, Christus or Apollo--
Let the god follow!
"Clangour and anger of elements are round me,
Torture has clasped me, cruelty has crown'd me,
Sorrow awaits me, Death is waiting with her,
Fast speed I thither!"
The music ceased abruptly with a quick clash as of jangling
bells,--and Féraz rose from the piano.
El-Râmi was sitting quite still.
"A fine outburst!" he remarked presently, seeing that his
young brother waited for him to speak--"And you rendered it
finely. In it the voice of the strong man speaks;--Do you
believe it?"
"Believe what?" asked Féraz, a little surprised.
"This--" and El-Râmi quoted slowly--
"Shall a god grieve me? shall a phantom win me?
Nay!--by the wild wind around and o'er and in me--
Be his name Vishnu, Christus or Apollo--
Let the god follow!"
"Do you think"--he continued, "that in the matter
of life's leadership, the 'god' should follow, or we the
god?"
Féraz lifted his delicately marked eyebrows in amazement.
"What an odd question!" he said--"The song is
only a song,--part of a poem entitled, 'The City of
Dream,' which none of the press-critics have ever done justice to. If
Lord Tennyson had written the 'City of Dream' what columns and
columns of praise would have been poured out upon it! What I sang to you is
the chant, or lyrical soliloquy of the 'Outcast Esau,' who in
the poem is evidently 'outcast' from all creeds; and it is
altogether a character which, if I read it rightly, represents the strong
doubter, almost unbeliever, who defies Fate. But we do not receive a mere
poem, no matter how beautiful, as a gospel. And if you speak of
life's leadership, it is devoutly to be hoped that God not only leads, but rules us all."
"Why should you hope it?" asked El-Râmi
gloomily--"Myself, I fear it!"
Féraz came to his side and rested one hand affectionately on his
arm.
"You are worried and out of sorts, my brother,"--he
said gently--"Why do you not seek some change from so much
indoor life? You do not even get the advantages I have of going to and fro
on the household business. I breathe the fresh air every day,--surely
it is necessary for you also?"
"My dear boy, I am perfectly well"--and El-Râmi
regarded him steadily--"Why should you doubt it? I am
only--a little tired. Poor human nature cannot always escape
fatigue."
Féraz said no more,--but there was a certain strangeness in
his brother's manner that filled him with an indefinable uneasiness.
In his own quiet fashion he strove to distract El-Râmi's mind
from the persistent fixity of whatever unknown purpose seemed to so
mysteriously engross him,--and whenever they were together at meals or at other hours of the day, he talked in as light and desultory a way as possible on all sorts of different topics in the hope of awakening his brother's interest more keenly in external affairs. He read much and thought more, and was a really brilliant conversationalist when he chose, in spite of his dreamy fancies--but he was obliged to admit to himself that his affectionate endeavours met with very slight success. True, El-Râmi appeared to give his attention to all that was said, but it was only an appearance,--and Féraz saw plainly enough that he was not really moved to any sort of feeling respecting the ways and doings of the outer world. And when, one morning, Féraz read aloud the account of the marriage of Sir Frederick Vaughan, Bart., with Idina, only daughter of Jabez Chester of New York, he only smiled indifferently and said nothing.
"We were invited to that wedding;"--commented
Féraz.
"Were we?" El-Râmi shrugged his
shoulders and seemed totally oblivious of the fact.
"Why of course we were"--went on Féraz
cheerfully--"And, at your bidding I opened and read the letter
Sir Frederick wrote you, which said that as you had prophesied the
marriage, he would take it very kindly if you would attend in person the
formal fulfilment of your prophecy. And all you did in reply was to send a
curt refusal on plea of other engagements. Do you think that was quite
amiable on your part?"
"Fortunately for me I am not called upon to be
amiable;"--said El-Râmi, beginning to pace slowly up and
down the room--"I want no favours from society, so I need not
smile to order. That is one of the chief privileges of complete
independence. Fancy having to grin and lie and skulk and propitiate people
all one's days!--I could not endure it,--but most men
can--and do!"
"Besides"--he added after a pause--"I cannot
look on with patience at the marriage of fools. Vaughan is a fool, and his
baronetage will scarcely pass for wisdom,--
the little Chester girl is also a fool,--and I can see exactly what they will become in the course of a few years."
"Describe them, in futuro!"
laughed Féraz.
"Well--the man will be 'turfy'; the woman, a
blind slave to her dressmaker. That is all. There can be nothing more. They
will never do any good or any harm--they are simply--nonentities.
These are the sort of folk that make me doubt the immortal soul,--for
Vaughan is less 'spiritual' than a well-bred dog, and little
Chester less mentally gifted than a well-instructed mouse."
"Severe!"--commented Féraz
smiling--"But, man or woman,--mouse or dog, I suppose they
are quite happy just now?"
"Happy!" echoed El-Râmi
satirically--"Well--I daresay they are,--with the only
sort of happiness their intelligences can grasp. She is happy because she
is now 'my lady' and because she was able to wear a
wedding-gown of marvellous make and cost, to trail and rustle and sweep
after her little person up to God's altar with, as though
she sought to astonish the Almighty before whom she took her vows, with the exuberance of her millinery. He is happy because his debts are paid out of old Jabez Chester's millions. There the 'happiness' ends. A couple of months is sufficient to rub the bloom off such wedlock."
"And you really prophesied the marriage?" queried
Féraz.
"It was easy enough"--replied his brother
carelessly--"Given two uninstructed, unthinking bipeds of
opposite sexes--the male with debts, the female with dollars, and an
urbanely obstinate schemer to pull them together like Lord Melthorpe, and
the thing is done. Half the marriages in London are made up like
that,--and of the after-lives of those so wedded, 'there needs
no ghost from the grave' to tell us,--the divorce-courts give
every information."
"Ah!" exclaimed Féraz quickly--"That
reminds me,--do you know I saw something in the evening-paper last
night that might have interested you?"
"Really! You surprise me!" and El-
Râmi laughed--"That is strange indeed, for papers of all sorts, whether morning or evening, are to me the dullest and worst-written literature in the world."
"Oh, for literature one does not go to them"--answered
Féraz.--"But this was a paragraph about a man who came
here not very long ago to see you--a clergyman. He is up as a
co-respondent in some very scandalous divorce case. I did not read it
all--I only saw that his Bishop had caused him to be
'unfrocked,' whatever that means--I suppose he is expelled
from the ministry?"
"Yes. 'Unfrocked' means literally a stripping-off of
clerical dignity," said El-Râmi. "But if it is the man
who came here, he was always naked in that respect. Francis Anstruther was
his name?"
"Exactly--that is the man. He is disgraced for life, and
seems to be one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever lived. He has
deserted his wife and eight children...."
"Spare me and yourself the details!" and El-Râmi gave
an expressively contemptuous
gesture--"I know all about him, and told him what I knew when he came here. But he'll do very well yet--he'll get on capitally in spite of his disgrace."
"How is that possible?" exclaimed Féraz.
"Easily! He can 'boom' himself as a new
'General' Booth, or he can become a 'Colonel' under
Booth's orders--as long as there are fools to support Booth with
money. Or he can go to America or Australia and start a new
creed--he's sure to fall on his feet and make his
fortune--pious hypocrites always do. One would almost fancy there must
be a special Deity to protect the professors of Humbug. It is only the
sincerely honest folk who get wronged in this admirably-ordered
world!"
He spoke with bitterness; and Féraz glanced at him anxiously.
"I do not quite agree with you"--he said; "Surely
honest folk always have their reward?--though perhaps superficial
observers may not be able to perceive where it comes in. I believe in
'walking uprightly' as the Bible says--it seems to me
easier to keep
along a straight open road, than to take dark bye-ways and dubious short cuts."
"What do you mean by your straight open road?" demanded
El-Râmi, looking at him.
"Nature,"--replied Féraz
promptly--"Nature leads us up to God."
El-Râmi broke into a harsh laugh.
"O credulous beautiful lad!" he exclaimed; "You know
not what you say! Nature! Consider her methods of work--her dark and
cunning and cruel methods! Every living thing preys on some other living
thing;--creatures wonderful, innocent, simple or complex, live
apparently but to devour and be devoured;--every inch of ground we
step upon is the dust of something dead. In the horrible depths of the
earth, Nature,--this generous kindly Nature!--hides her dread
volcanic fires,--her streams of lava, her boiling founts of sulphur
and molten lead, which at any unexpected moment may destroy whole
continents crowded with unsuspecting humanity. This is
NATURE,--nothing but Nature! She hides her
trea-
sures of gold, of silver, of diamonds and rubies, in the deepest and most dangerous recesses, where human beings are lost in toiling for them,--buried in darkness and slain by thousands in the difficult search; diving for pearls, the unwary explorer is met by the remorseless monsters of the deep,--in fact, in all his efforts towards discovery and progress, Man, the most naturally defenceless creature upon earth, is met by death or blank discouragement. Suppose he were to trust to Nature alone, what would Nature do for him? He is sent into the world naked and helpless;--and all the resources of his body and brain have to be educated and brought into active requisition to enable him to live at all,--lions' whelps, bears' cubs have a better 'natural' chance than he;--and then, when he has learned how to make the best of his surroundings, he is turned out of the world again, naked and helpless as he came in, with all his knowledge of no more use to him than if he had never attained it. This is NATURE,--if Nature be thus reckless and unreasonable as the 'reflex of God'
--how reckless and unreasonable must be God Himself!"
The beautiful stag-like eyes of Féraz darkened slowly, and his
slim hand involuntarily clenched.
"Ay, if God were so," he said--"the veriest pigmy
among men might boast of nobler qualities than He! But God is not so,
El-Râmi! Of course you can argue any and every way, and I cannot
confute your reasoning. Because you reason with the merely mortal
intelligence; to answer you rightly I should have to reply as a
Spirit,--I should need to be out of the body before I could tell you
where you are wrong."
"Well!" said his brother curiously--"Then why do
you not do so? Why do you not come to me out of the body, and enlighten me
as to what you know?"
Féraz looked troubled.
"I cannot!" he said sadly--"When I go--away
yonder--I seem to have so little remembrance of earthly things--I
am separated from the world by thousands of air-spaces. I am always
conscious that you
exist on earth,--but it is always as of someone who will join me presently--not of one whom I am compelled to join. There is the strangeness of it. That is why I have very little belief in the notion of ghosts and spirits appearing to men--because I know positively that no detached soul willingly returns to or remains on earth. There is always the upward yearning. If it returns, it does so simply because it is for some reason, commanded, not because of its own desire."
"And who do you suppose commands it?" asked El-Ra mi.
"The Highest of all Powers,"--replied Féraz
reverently--"whom we all, whether spirit or mortal,
obey."
"I do not obey,"--said El-Râmi
composedly--"I enforce obedience."
"From whom?" cried Féraz with
agitation--"O my brother, from whom? From mortals
perhaps--yes,--so long as it is permitted to you--but from
Heaven--no! No, not from Heaven can you win obedience. For God's
sake do not boast of such power"
He spoke passionately, and in anxious earnest.
El-Râmi smiled.
"My good fellow, why excite yourself? I do not
'boast'--I am simply--strong! If I am immortal, God
Himself cannot slay me,--if I am mortal only, I can but die. I am
indifferent either way. Only I will not shrink before an imaginary Divine
Terror till I prove what right it has to my submission. Enough!--we
have talked too much on this subject, and I have work to do."
He turned to his writing-table as he spoke and was soon busy there.
Féraz took up a book and tried to read, but his heart beat quickly,
and he was overwhelmed by a deep sense of fear. The daring of his
brother's words smote him with a chill horror,--from time
immemorial, had not the Forces Divine punished pride as the deadliest of
sins? His thoughts travelled over the great plain of History, on which so
many spectres of dead nations stand in our sight as pale warnings of our
own possible fate, and
remembered how surely it came to pass that when men became too proud and defiant and absolute,--rejecting God and serving themselves only, then they were swept away into desolation and oblivion. As with nations, so with individuals--the Law of Compensation is just, and as evenly balanced as the symmetrical motion of the Universe. And the words "Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven," rang through his ears, as he sat heavily silent, and wondering, wondering where the researches of his brother would end, and how?
El-Râmi himself meanwhile was scanning the last pages of his dead
friend Kremlin's private Journal. This was a strange book,--kept
with exceeding care, and written in the form of letters which were all
addressed "To the Beloved Maroussia in Heaven"--and amply
proved that in spite of the separated seclusion and eccentricity of his
life, Kremlin had not only been faithful to the love of his early days, the
girl who had died self-slain in her Russian prison,--but he
had been firm in his acceptance of and belief in the immortality of the soul and the reunion of parted spirits. His last "letter" ran thus--it was unfinished and had been written the night before the fatal storm which had made an end of his life and learning together,--
"I seem to be now on the verge of the discovery for which I have
yearned. Thou knowest, O heart of my heart, how I dream that these
brilliant and ceaseless vibrations of light may perchance carry to the
world some message which it were well and wise we should know. Oh, if this
'Light,' which is my problem and mystery, could but transmit to
my earthly vision one flashing gleam of thy presence, my beloved child! But
thou wilt guide me, so that I presume not too far;--I feel thou art
near me, and that thou wilt not fail me at the last. If in the space of an
earthly ten minutes this marvellous 'Light' can travel
111,600,000 miles, thou as a 'spirit of light' canst not be
very far away. Only till my work for poor humanity is done, do I choose to
be parted from thee
--be the time long or short--we shall meet...."
Here the journal ended.
"And have they met?" thought El-Râmi, as closing the
book he locked it away in his desk--"And do they remember they
were ever mortal? And what are they--and
where are they?"
great golden bubble. El-Râmi's windows were all set open; a big bunch of heliotrope adorned the table, and the subtle fragrance of it stole out delicately to mingle with the faintly stirring evening breeze. Féraz was sitting alone,--his brother had just left the room,--and he was indulging himself in the dolce far niente as only the Southern or Eastern temperament can do. His hands were clasped lightly behind his head, and his eyes were fixed on the shabby little trees in the square which had done their best to look green among the whirling smuts of the metropolis and had failed ignominiously in the attempt, but which now, in the ethereal light of the moon, presented a soft outline of gray and silver like olive-boughs seen in the distance. He was thinking, with a certain serious satisfaction, of an odd circumstance that had occurred to himself that day. It had happened in this wise: Since the time Zaroba had taken him to look upon the beautiful creature who was the "subject" of his brother's experiments, he had always kept the memory of her in his mind without
speaking of her, save that whenever he said a prayer or offered up a thanksgiving, he had invariably used the phrase--"God defend her!" He could only explain "Her" to himself by the simple pronoun, because, as El-Râmi had willed, he had utterly and hopelessly forgotten her name. But now, strange to say he remembered it!--it had flashed across his mind like a beam of light or a heaven-sent signal,--he was at work, writing at his poem, when some sudden inexplicable instinct had prompted him to lift his eyes and murmur devoutly--"God defend Lilith!" Lilith!--how soft the sound of it!--how infinitely bewitching! After having lost it for so long, it had come back to him in a moment--how or why, he could not imagine. He could only account for it in one way--namely, that El-Râmi's will-forces were so concentrated on some particularly absorbing object that his daily influence on his brother's young life was thereby materially lessened. And Féraz was by no means sorry that this should be so.
"Why should it matter that I remember
her name?" he mused--"I shall never speak of her--for I have sworn I will not. But I can think of her to my heart's content,--the beautiful Lilith!"
Then he fell to considering the old legend of that Lilith who it is said
was Adam's first wife,--and he smiled as he thought what a name
of evil omen it was to the Jews, who had charms and talismans wherewith to
exorcise the supposed evil influence connected with it,--while to him,
Féraz, it was a name sweeter than honey-sweet singing. Then there
came to his mind stray snatches of poesy,--delicate rhymes from the
rich and varied stores of one of his favourite poets Dante Gabriel
Rossetti,--rhymes that sounded in his ears just now like the strophes
of a sibylline chant or spell:--
"It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
(Sing Eden Bower!)
Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman."
"And that is surely true!" said Féraz to himself, a
little startled,--"For--if she is dead, as
El-Râmi asserts, and her seeming
life is but the result of his art, then indeed in the case of this Lilith 'not a drop of her blood is human.'"
And the poem ran on in his mind--
"Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden
(Alas, the hour!)
She was the first that thence was driven:
With her was hell, and with Eve was heaven."
"Nay, I should transpose that,"--murmured the young man
drowsily, staring out on the moonlit street--"I should say
'With Eve was hell, and with Lilith heaven.' How strange it is
I should never have thought of this poem before!--and I have often
turned over the pages of Rossetti's book,--since--since I
saw her;--I must have actually seen the name of Lilith printed there,
and yet it never suggested itself to me as being familiar or offering any
sort of clue."
He sighed perplexedly,--the heliotrope odours floated around him,
and the gleam of the lamp in the room seemed to pale in the wide splendour
of the moon-rays pouring through the window,--and still the delicate
sprite of Poesy continued to remind him of
familiar lines and verses he loved, though all the while he thought of Lilith, and kept on wondering vaguely and vainly what would be, what could be, the end of his brother's experiment (whatever that was, for he, Féraz, did not know) on the lovely, apparently living girl who yet was dead. It was very strange--and surely, it was also very terrible!
"The day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part,
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,--
'Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day.'"
to his delicate classic features,--he passed away out of his body, as he would have said, and was no more on earth; or rather as we should say, he fell asleep and dreamed. And the "dream" or the "experience" was this;--
He found himself walking leisurely upon the slopes of a majestic
mountain, which seemed not so much mountain as garden, for all the winding
paths leading to its summit were fringed with flowers. He heard the silvery
plashing of brooks and fountains, and the rustling of thickly-foliaged
trees,--he knew the place well, and realized that he was in his
"star" again,--the mystic Sphere he called his
"home." But he was evidently an exile or an alien in
it,--he had grown to realize this fact and was sorry it should be so,
yet his sorrow was mingled with hope, for he felt it would not always be
so. He wandered along aimlessly and alone, full of a curiously vague
happiness and regret, and as he walked he was passed by crowds of beautiful
youths and maidens, who were all pressing forward eagerly as to some high
festival or great
assembly. They sang blithe songs,--they scattered flowers,--they talked with each other in happy-toned voices,--and he stood aside gazing at them wistfully while they went on rejoicing.
"O land where life never grows old and where love is
eternal!" he mused--"Why am I exiled from thy glory? Why
have I lost thy joy?"
He sighed;--he longed to know what had brought together so bright a
multitude of these lovely and joyous beings,--his own "dear
people" as he felt they were; and yet--yet he hesitated to ask
one of them the least question, feeling himself unworthy. At last he saw a
girl approaching,--she was singing to herself and tying flowers in a
garland as she came,--her loose gold hair streamed behind her, every
glistening tress seeming to flash light as she moved. As she drew near him
she glanced at him kindly and paused as though waiting to be
addressed,--seeing this, he mustered up his courage and spoke.
"Whither are you all going?" he asked,
with a sad gentleness--"I may not follow you, I know,--but will you tell me why, in this kingdom of joy, so much fresh joy seems added?"
She pointed upwards, and as his eyes obeyed her gesture, he saw in the
opal-coloured sky that bent above them, a dazzling blaze of gold and
crimson glory towards the south.
"An Angel passes!" she replied--"Below that line
of light the Earth swings round in its little orbit, and from the Earth She
comes! We go to watch her flight heavenward, and win the benediction that
her passing presence gives. For look you!--all that splendour in the
sky is not light, but wings!"
"Wings!" echoed Féraz dreamily, yet nothing doubting
what she said.
"Wings or rays of glory,--which you will"--said
the maiden, turning her own beautiful eyes towards the flashing brilliancy;
"They are waiting there,--those who come from the furthest
Divine world,--they are the friends of Lilith."
She bent her head serenely, and passed onward and upward, and
Féraz stood still, his gaze fixed in the direction of that southern
light which he now perceived was never still, but quivered as with a
million shafts of vari-coloured fire.
"The friends of Lilith!" he repeated to
himself--"Angels then,--for she is an Angel."
Angels!--angels waiting for Lilith in the glory of the South! How
long--how long would they wait?--when would Lilith herself
appear?--and would the very heavens open to receive her, soaring
upward? He trembled,--he tried to realize the unimaginable
scene,--and then, ... then he seemed to be seized and hurried away
somewhere against his will ... and all that was light grew dark. He
shuddered as with icy cold, and felt that earth again encompassed
him,--and presently he woke--to find his brother looking at
him.
"Why in the world do you go to sleep with the window wide
open?" asked El-Râmi--"Here I find you, literally
bathed
in the moonlight--and moonlight drives men mad they say,--so fast too in the land of Nod that I could hardly waken you. Shut the window, my dear boy, if you must sleep."
Féraz sprang up quickly,--his eyes felt dazzled still with
the remembrance of that "glory of the angels in the South."
"I was not asleep,"--he said--"But certainly
I was not here."
"Ah!--In your Star again of course!" murmured
El-Râmi with the faintest trace of mockery in his tone. But
Féraz took no offence--his one anxiety was to prevent the name
of "Lilith" springing to his lips in spite of himself.
"Yes--I was there"--he answered slowly, "And
do you know all the people in the land are gathering together by thousands
to see an Angel pass heavenward? And there is a glory of her sister-angels,
away in the Southern horizon like the splendid circle described by Dante in
his 'Paradiso.' Thus--
"'There is a light in heaven whose goodly shine
Makes the Creator visible to all
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Created, that in seeing Him alone
Have peace. And in a circle spreads so far
That the circumference were too loose a zone
To girdle in the sun!'"
He quoted the lines with strange eagerness and fervour,--and
El-Râmi looked at him curiously.
"What odd dreams you have!" he said, not
unkindly--"Always fantastic and impossible, but beautiful in
their way. You should set them down in black and white, and see how
earth's critics will bespatter your heaven with the ink of their
office pens! Poor boy!--how limply you would fall from
'Paradise'!--with what damp dejected wings!"
Féraz smiled.
"I do not agree with you"--he said--"If you
speak of imagination,--only in this case I am not imagining,--no
one can shut out that Paradise from me at any time--neither pope nor
king, nor critic. Thought is free, thank God!"
"Yes--perhaps it is the only thing we have to be really
thankful for,"--returned
El-Râmi--"Well--I will leave you to resume your 'dreams'--only don't sleep with the windows open. Summer evenings are treacherous,--I should advise you to get to bed."
"And you?" asked Féraz, moved by a sudden anxiety
which he could not explain.
"I shall not sleep to-night,"--said his brother
moodily--"Something has occurred to me--a
suggestion--an idea, which I am impatient to work out without loss of
time. And, Féraz,--if I succeed in it--you shall know the
result to-morrow."
This promise, which implied such a new departure from
El-Râmi's customary reticence concerning his work, really
alarmed Féraz more than gratified him.
"For Heaven's sake be careful!" he
exclaimed--"You attempt so much,--you want so
much,--perhaps more than can in law and justice be given.
El-Râmi, my brother, leave something to God--you cannot, you
dare not take all!"
"My dear visionary," replied El-Râmi
gently--"You alarm yourself needlessly, I
assure you. I do not want to take anything except what is my own,--and as for leaving something to God, why He is welcome to what He makes of me in the end--a pinch of dust!"
"There is more than dust in your composition--" cried
Féraz impetuously--"There is divinity! And the divinity
belongs to God, and to God you must render it up, pure and perfect. He
claims it from you, and you are bound to give it."
A tremor passed through El-Râmi's frame, and he grew
paler.
"If that be true, Féraz," he said slowly and with
emphasis--"if it indeed be true that there is
Divinity in me,--which I doubt!--why then let God claim and take
His own particle of fire when He will, and as He will!
Good-night!"
Féraz caught his hands and pressed them tenderly in his own.
"Good-night!" he murmured--"God does all things
well, and to His care I commend you, my dearest brother."
And as El-Râmi turned away and left the
room, he gazed after him with a chill sense of fear and desolation,--almost as if he were doomed never to see him again. He could not reason his alarm away, and yet he knew not why he should feel any alarm,--but truth to tell, his interior sense of vision seemed still to smart and ache with the radiance of the light he had seen in his "star" and that roseate sunset-flush of "glory in the south" created by the clustering angels who were "the friends of Lilith." Why were they there?--what did they wait for?--how should Lilith know them or have any intention of joining them, when she was here,--here on the earth, as he, Féraz, knew,--here under the supreme dominance of his own brother? He dared not speculate too far; and, trying to dismiss all thought from his mind, he was proceeding towards his own room there to retire for the night, when he met Zaroba coming down the stairs. Her dark withered face had a serene and almost happy expression upon it,--she smiled as she saw him.
"It is a night for dreams--" she said,
sinking her harsh voice to a soft aImost musical cadence--"And as the multitude of the stars in heaven, so are the countless heart-throbs that pulsate in the world at this hour to the silver sway of the moon. All over the world!--all over the world!--" and she swung her arms to and fro with a slow rhythmical movement, so that the silver bangles on them clashed softly like the subdued tinkling of bells;--then, fixing her black eyes upon Féraz with a mournful yet kindly gaze she added--"Not for you--not for you, gentlest of dreamers! not for you! It is destined that you should dream,--and for you, dreaming is best,--but for me--I would rather live one hour than dream for a century!"
Her words were vague and wild as usual,--yet somehow Féraz
chafed under the hidden sense of them, and he gave a slight petulant
gesture of irritation. Zaroba, seeing it, broke into a low laugh.
"As God liveth,--" she muttered--"The poor
lad fights bravely! He hates the world without ever having known
it,--and recoils
from love without ever having tasted it! He chooses a thought, a rhyme, a song, an art, rather than a passion! Poor lad--poor lad! Dream on, child!--but pray that you may never wake. For to dream of love may be sweet, but to wake without it is bitter!"
Like a gliding wraith she passed him and disappeared. Féraz had a
mind to follow her downstairs to the basement where she had the sort of
rough sleeping accommodation her half-savage nature preferred, whenever she
slept at all out of Lilith's room, which was but seldom,--yet on
second thoughts he decided he would let her alone.
"She only worries me--" he said to himself half vexedly
as he went to his own little apartment--"It was she who first
disobeyed El-Râmi, and made me disobey him also, and though she did
take me to see the wonderful Lilith, what was the use of it? Her matchless
beauty compelled my adoration, my enthusiasm, my reverence, almost my
love--but who could dare to love such a
removed angelic creature? Not even El-Râmi himself,--for he must know, even as I feel, that she is beyond all love, save the Love Divine."
He cast off his loose Eastern dress, and prepared to lie down, when he
was startled by a faint far sound of singing. He listened
attentively;--it seemed to come from outside, and he quickly flung
open his window, which only opened upon a little narrow backyard such as is
common to London houses. But the moonlight transfigured its ugliness,
making it look like a square white court set in walls of silver. The soft
rays fell caressingly too on the bare bronze-tinted shoulders of
Féraz, as half undressed, he leaned out, his eyes upturned to the
halcyon heavens. Surely, surely there was singing somewhere,--why, he
could distinguish words amid the sounds!
Away, away!
Where the glittering planets whirl and swim
And the glory of the sun grows dim
Away, away!
To the regions of light and fire and air
Where the spirits of life are everywhere
Come, oh come away!
Trembling in every limb, Féraz caught the song distinctly, and
held his breath in fear and wonder.
Away, away!
Come, oh come! we have waited long
And we sing thee now a summoning-song
Away, away!
Thou art freed from the world of the dreaming dead,
And the splendours of Heaven are round thee spread--
Come away!--away!
The chorus grew fainter and fainter--yet still sounded like a
distant musical hum on the air.
"It is my fancy"--murmured Féraz at last, as he
drew in his head and noiselessly shut the window--"It is the
work of my own imagination, or what is perhaps more probable, the work of
El-Râmi's will. I have heard such music before,--at his
bidding--no, not such music, but something very like
it."
He waited a few minutes, then quietly knelt down to pray,--but no
words suggested themselves, save the phrase that once before had risen to
his lips that day,--"God defend Lilith!"
He uttered it aloud,--then sprang up confused and half afraid, for
the name had rung out so clearly that it seemed like a call or a
command.
"Well!" he said, trying to steady his
nerves--"What if I did say it? There is no harm in the words
'God defend her.' If she is dead, as El-Râmi says, she
needs no defence, for her soul belongs to God already."
He paused again,--the silence everywhere was now absolutely
unbroken and intense, and repelling the vague presentiments that threatened
to oppress his mind, he threw himself on his bed and was soon sound
asleep.
tranced Lilith had bidden him "wait, watch and pray," she had laid upon him the very injunctions he found most difficult to follow. He could wait and watch if he were certain of results,--but where there was the slightest glimmer of uncertainty, he grew very soon tired of both waiting and watching. As for "praying"--he told himself arrogantly that to ask for what he could surely obtain by the exerted strength of his own will was not only superfluous, but implied great weakness of character. It was then, in the full-armed spirit of pride and assertive dominance that he went up that night to Lilith's chamber, and dismissing Zaroba with more than usual gentleness of demeanour towards her, sat down beside the couch on which his lovely and mysterious "subject" lay, to all appearances inanimate save for her quiet breathing. His eyes were sombre, yet glittered with a somewhat dangerous lustre under their drooping lids;--he was to be duped no longer, he said to himself,--he had kept faithful vigil night after night, hoping against hope, believing against belief, and not the smallest
movement or hint that could be construed into the promised "sign" had been vouchsafed to him. And all his old doubts returned to chafe and fret his brain,--doubts as to whether he had not been deceiving himself all this while in spite of his boasted scepticism,--and whether Lilith, when she spoke, was not merely repeating like a mechanical automaton, the stray thoughts of his own mind reflected upon hers? He had "proved" the possibility of that kind of thing occurring between human beings who were scarcely connected with each other even by a tie of ordinary friendship--how much more likely then that it should happen in such a case as that of Lilith,--Lilith who had been under the sole dominance of his will for six years! Yet while he thus teased himself with misgivings, he knew it was impossible to account for the mystic tendency of her language, or the strange and super-sensual character of the information she gave or feigned to give. It was not from himself or his own information that he had obtained a description of the landscapes in Mars,--its
wondrous red fields,--its rosy foliage and flowers,--its great jagged rocks ablaze with amethystine spar,--its huge conical shells, tall and light, that rose up like fairy towers, fringed with flags and garlands of marine blossom, out of oceans the colour of jasper and pearl. Certainly too, it was not from the testimony of his inner consciousness that he had evoked the faith that seemed so natural to her; her belief in a Divine Personality, and his utter rejection of any such idea, were two things wider asunder than the poles, and had no possible sort of connection. Nevertheless what he could not account for, wearied him out and irritated him by its elusiveness and unprovable character,--and finally, his long, frequent, and profitless reflections on the matter had brought him this night up to a point of determination which but a few months back would have seemed to him impossible. He had resolved to waken Lilith. What sort of a being she would seem when once awakened, he could not quite imagine. He knew she had died in his arms as a child,--and that her seeming
life now, and her growth into the loveliness of womanhood was the result of artificial means evolved from the wonders of chemistry,--but he persuaded himself that though her existence was the work of science and not nature, it was better than natural, and would last as long. He determined he would break that mysterious trance of body in which the departing Intelligence had been, by his skill, detained and held in connection with its earthly habitation,--he would transform the sleeping visionary into a living woman, for--he loved her. He could no longer disguise from himself that her fair face with its heavenly smile, framed in the golden hair that circled it like a halo, haunted him in every minute of time,--he could not and would not deny that his whole being ached to clasp with a lover's embrace that exquisite beauty which had so long been passively surrendered to his experimentings,--and with the daring of a proud and unrestrained nature, he frankly avowed his feeling to himself and made no pretence of hiding it any longer. But it was a far deeper mystery
than his "search for the Soul of Lilith," to find out when and how this passion had first arisen in him. He could not analyse himself so thoroughly as to discover its vague beginnings. Perhaps it was germinated by Zaroba's wild promptings,--perhaps by the fact that a certain unreasonable jealousy had chafed his spirit when he knew that his brother Féraz had won a smile of attention and response from the tranced girl,--perhaps it was owing to the irritation he had felt at the idea that his visitor, the monk from Cyprus, seemed to know more of her than he himself did,--at any rate, whatever the cause, he who had been sternly impassive once to the subtle attraction of Lilith's outward beauty, madly adored that outward beauty now. And as is usual with very self-reliant and proud dispositions, he almost began to glory in a sentiment which but a short time ago he would have repelled and scorned. What was for himself and of himself was good in his sight--his knowledge, his "proved" things, his tested discoveries, all these were excellent in his opinion, and the
"Ego" of his own ability was the pivot on which all his actions turned. He had laid his plans carefully for the awakening of Lilith,--but in one little trifle they had been put out by the absence from town of Madame Irene Vassilius. She, of all women he had ever met, was the one he would have trusted with his secret, because he knew that her life, though lived in the world, was as stainless as though it were lived in heaven. He had meant to place Lilith in her care,--in order that with her fine perceptions, lofty ideals, and delicate sense of all things beautiful and artistic, she might accustom the girl to look upon the fairest and noblest side of life, so that she might not regret the "visions"--yes, he would call them "visions"--she had lost. But Irene was among the mountains of the Austrian Tyrol, enjoying a holiday in the intimate society of the fairest Queen in the world, Margherita of Italy, one of the few living Sovereigns who really strive to bestow on intellectual worth its true appreciation and reward. And her house in London was shut up, and under the
sole charge of the happy Karl, former servant to Dr. Kremlin, who had now found with the fair and famous authoress a situation that suited him exactly. "Wild horses would not tear him from his lady's service" he was wont to say, and he guarded her household interests jealously, and said "Not at home" to undesired visitors like Roy Ainsworth for example, with a gruffness that would have done credit to a Russian bear. To Irene Vassilius, therefore, El-Râmi could not turn for the help he had meant to ask; and he was sorry and disappointed, for he had particularly wished to remove his "sleeper awakened" out of the companionship of both Zaroba and Féraz,--and there was no other woman like Irene,--at once so pure and proud, so brilliantly gifted, and so far removed from the touch and taint of modern social vulgarity. However, her aid was now unattainable, and he had to make up his mind to do without it. And so he resolutely put away the thought of the after-results of Lilith's awakening,--he, who was generally so careful to calculate consequences, instinct-
ively avoided the consideration of them in the present instance.
The little silver timepiece ticked with an aggressive loudness as he sat
now at his usual post, his black eyes fixed half-tenderly, half-fiercely on
Lilith's white beauty,--beauty which was, as he told himself, all
his own. Her arms were folded across her breast,--her features were
pallid as marble, and her breathing was very light and low. The golden lamp
burned dimly as it swung from the purple-pavilioned ceiling--the scent
of the roses that were always set fresh in their vase every day, filled the
room, and though the windows were closed against the night, a dainty
moonbeam strayed in through a chink where the draperies were not quite
drawn, and mingled its emerald glitter with the yellow lustre shed by the
lamp on the darkly-carpeted floor.
"I will risk it,"--said El-Râmi in a
whisper,--a whisper that sounded loud in the deep
stillness--"I will risk it--why not? I have proved myself
capable of arresting life, or the soul--for life is the
soul--in its
flight from hence into the Nowhere,--I must needs also have the power to keep it indefinitely here for myself in whatever form I please. These are the rewards of science,--rewards which I am free to claim,--and what I have done, that I have a right to do again. Now let me ask myself the question plainly;--Do I believe in the supernatural?"
He paused, thinking earnestly,--his eyes still fixed on Lilith.
"No, I do not,"--he answered himself at
last--"Frankly and honestly, I do not. I have no proofs. I am,
it is true, puzzled by Lilith's language,--but when I know her as
she is, a woman, sentient and conscious of my presence, I may find out the
seeming mystery. The dreams of Féraz are only dreams,--the
vision I saw on that one occasion"--and a faint tremor came over
him as he remembered the sweet yet solemn look of the shining One he had
seen standing between him and his visitor the monk--"the vision
was of course his work--the work of that mystic master of
a no less mystic brotherhood. No--I have no proofs of the
supernatural, and I must not deceive myself. Even the promise of Lilith fails. Poor child!--she sleeps like the daughter of Jairus, but when I, in my turn, pronounce the words 'Maiden I say unto thee, arise'--she will obey;--she will awake and live indeed."
"She will awake and live indeed!"
The words were repeated after him distinctly--but by whom? He
started up,--looked round--there was no one in the
room,--and Lilith was immovable as the dead. He began to find
something chill and sad in the intense silence that
followed,--everything about him was a harmony of glowing light and
purple colour,--yet all seemed suddenly very dull and dim and cold. He
shivered where he stood, and pressed his hands to his eyes,--his
temples throbbed and ached, and he felt curiously bewildered. Presently,
looking round the room again, he saw that the picture of "Christ and
His Disciples" was unveiled;--he had not noticed the
circumstance before. Had Zaroba inadvertently drawn aside the curtain which
ordinarily hid it from view? Slowly his eyes travelled to it and dwelt upon it--slowly they followed the letters of the inscription beneath.
"WHOM SAY YE THAT I AM?"
"A good Man,"--he said aloud, staring fixedly at the
divine Face and Figure, with its eloquent expression of exalted patience,
grandeur and sweetness. "A good Man, misled by noble enthusiasm and
unselfish desire to benefit the poor. A man with a wise knowledge of human
magnetism and the methods of healing in which it can be employed,--a
man too, somewhat skilled in the art of optical illusion. Yet when all is
said and done, a good Man--too good and wise and pure for
the peace of the rulers of the world,--too honest and clear-sighted to
deserve any other reward but death. Divine?--No!--save in so far
as in our highest
moments we are all divine. Existing now?--a Prince of Heaven, a Pleader against Punishment? Nay, nay!--no more existing than the Soul of Lilith,--that soul for which I search, but which I feel I shall never find!"
And he drew nearer to the ivory-satin couch on which lay the lovely
sleeping wonder and puzzle of his ambitious dreams. Leaning towards her he
touched her hands,--they were cold, but as he laid his own upon them
they grew warm and trembled. Closer still he leaned, his eyes drinking in
every detail of her beauty with eager, proud and masterful eyes.
"Lilith!--my Lilith!" he
murmured--"After all, why should we put off happiness for the
sake of everlastingness, when happiness can be had, at any rate for a few
years. One can but live and die and there an end. And Love comes but once,
... Love!--how I have scoffed at it and made a jest of it as if it
were a plaything. And even now while my whole heart craves for it, I
question whether it is worth having! Poor
Lilith!--only a woman after all,--a woman whose beauty will soon pass--whose days will soon be done,--only a woman--not an immortal Soul,--there is, there can be, no such thing as an immortal Soul."
Bending down over her, he resolutely unclasped the fair crossed arms,
and seized the delicate small hands in a close grip.
"Lilith! Lilith!" he called imperiously.
A long and heavy pause ensued,--then the girl's limbs quivered
violently as though moved by a sudden convulsion, and her lips parted in
the utterance of the usual formula--
"I am here."
"Here at last, but you have been absent long"--said
El-Râmi with some reproach, "Too long. And you have forgotten
your promise."
"Forgotten!" she echoed--"O doubting spirit! Do
such as I am, ever forget?"
Her thrilling accents awed him a little, but he pursued his own way with
her, undauntedly.
"Then why have you not fulfilled it?" he
demanded--"The strongest patience may tire.
I have waited and watched, as you bade me--but now--now I am weary of waiting."
Oh, what a sigh broke from her lips!
"I am weary too"--she said--"The angels are
weary. God is weary. All Creation is weary--of Doubt."
For a moment he was abashed,--but only for a moment; in himself he
considered Doubt to be the strongest part of his nature,--a positive
shield and buckler against possible error.
"You cannot wait,"--went on Lilith, speaking slowly and
with evident sadness--"Neither can we. We have hoped,--in
vain! We have watched--in vain! The strong man's pride will not
bend, nor the stubborn spirit turn in prayer to its Creator. Therefore what
is not bent must be broken,--and what voluntarily refuses Light must
accept Darkness. I am bidden to come to you, my beloved,--to come to
you as I am, and as I ever shall be,--I will come--but how will
you receive me?"
"With ecstasy, with love, with welcome beyond all words or
thoughts!" cried El-
Râmi in passionate excitement. "O Lilith, Lilith! you who read the stars, cannot you read my heart? Do you not see that I--I who have recoiled from the very thought of loving,--I, who have striven to make of myself a man of stone and iron rather than flesh and blood, am conquered by your spells, victorious Lilith!--conquered in every fibre of my being by some subtle witchcraft known to yourself alone. Am I weak?--am I false to my own beliefs? I know not,--I am only conscious of the sovereignty of beauty which has mastered many a stronger man than I. What is the fiercest fire compared to this fever in my veins? I worship you, Lilith! I love you!--more than the world, life, time and hope of heaven, I love you!"
Flushed with eagerness and trembling with his own emotion, he rained
kisses on the hands he held, but Lilith strove to withdraw them from his
clasp. Pale as alabaster she lay as usual with fast-closed eyes, and again
a deep sigh heaved her breast.
"You love my Shadow,"--she said
mournfully--"not Myself."
But El-Râmi's rapture was not to be chilled by these words.
He gathered up a glittering mass of the rich hair that lay scattered on the
pillow and pressed it to his lips.
"O Lilith mine, is this 'Shadow'?" he
asked--"All this gold in which I net my heart like a willingly
caught bird, and make an end of my boasted wisdom? Are these sweet lips,
these fair features, this exquisite body, all 'shadow'? Then
blessed must be the light that casts so gracious a reflection! Judge me not
harshly, my Sweet,--for if indeed you are Divine, and this Beauty I
behold is the mere reflex of Divinity, let me see the Divine Form of you
for once, and have a guarantee for faith through love! If there is another
and a fairer Lilith than the one whom I now behold, deny me not the grace
of so marvellous a vision! I am ready!--I fear nothing--to-night
I could face God Himself undismayed!"
He paused abruptly--he knew not why. Something in the chill and
solemn look of Lilith's face checked his speech.
"Lilith--Lilith!" he began again
whisper-
ingly--"Do I ask too much? Surely not--not if you love me! And you do love me--I feel, I know you do!"
There was a long pause,--Lilith might have been made of marble for
all the movement she gave. Her breathing was so light as to be scarcely
perceptible, and when she answered him at last, her voice sounded strangely
faint and far-removed. "Yes, I love you"--she
said--"I love you as I have loved you for a thousand ages, and
as you have never loved me. To win your love has been my
task--to repel my love has been yours.
He listened, smitten by a vague sense of compunction and regret.
"But you have conquered, Lilith"--he
answered--"yours is the victory. And have I not surrendered,
willingly, joyfully? O my beautiful Dreamer, what would you have me
do?"
"Pray!" said Lilith, with a sudden passionate thrill in her
voice--"Pray! Repent!"
El-Râmi drew himself backward from her couch, impatient and
angered.
"Repent!" he cried aloud--"And why should I
repent? What have I done that calls for repentance? For what sin am I to
blame? For doubting a God who, deaf to centuries upon centuries of human
prayer and worship, will not declare Himself? and for striving to perceive
Him through the cruel darkness by which we are surrounded? What crime can
be discovered there? The world is most infinitely sad,--and life is
most infinitely dreary,--and may I not strive to comfort those amid
the struggle who fain would 'prove' and hold fast to the things
beyond? Nay!--let the heavens open and cast forth upon me their fiery
thunderbolts I will not repent! For, vast as my Doubt is, so
vast would be my Faith, if God would speak and say to His creatures but
once--'Lo! I am here!' Tortures of hell-pain would not
terrify me, if in the end His Being were made clearly manifest--a
cross of endless woe would I endure, to feel and see Him near me at the
last, and more than all, to make the world feel and see Him,--to prove
to wondering, trembling, terror-stricken,
famished, heart-broken human beings that He exists,--that He is aware of their misery,--that He cares for them, that it is all well for them,--that there is Eternal Joy hiding itself somewhere amid the great star-thickets of this monstrous universe--that we are not desolate atoms whirled by a blind fierce Force into life against our will, and out of it again without a shadow of reason or a glimmer of hope. Repent for such thoughts as these? I will not! Pray to a God of such inexorable silence? I will not! No, Lilith--my Lilith whom I snatched from greedy death--even you may fail me at the last,--you may break your promise,--the promise that I should see with mortal eyes your own Immortal Self--who can blame you for the promise of a dream, poor child! You may prove yourself nothing but woman; woman, poor, frail, weak, helpless woman, to be loved and cherished and pitied and caressed in all the delicate limbs, and kissed in all the dainty golden threads of hair, and then--then--to be laid down like a broken flower in the tomb that has grudged me your beauty all this while,--
all this may be, Lilith, and yet I will not pray to an unproved God, nor repent of an unproved sin!"
He uttered his words with extraordinary force and eloquence--one
would have thought he was addressing a multitude of hearers instead of that
one tranced girl, who, though beautiful as a sculptured saint on a
sarcophagus, appeared almost as inanimate, save for the slow parting of her
lips when she spoke.
"O superb Angel of the Kingdom!" she
murmured--"It is no marvel that you fell!"
He heard her, dimly perplexed; but strengthened in his own convictions
by what he had said, he was conscious of power,--power to defy, power
to endure, power to command. Such a sense of exhilaration and high
confidence had not possessed him for many a long day, and he was about to
speak again, when Lilith's voice once more stole musically on the
silence.
"You would reproach God for the world's misery. Your
complaint is unjust. There
is a Law,--a Law for the earth as for all worlds; and God cannot alter one iota of that Law without destroying Himself and His Universe. Shall all Beauty, all Order, all Creation come to an end because wilful Man is wilfully miserable? Your world trespasses against the Law in almost everything it does--hence its suffering. Other worlds accept the Law and fulfil it,--and with them, all is well."
"Who is to know this Law?" demanded El-Râmi
impatiently. "And how can the world trespass against what is not
explained?"
"It is explained;"--said Lilith--"The
explanation is in every soul's inmost consciousness. You all know the
Law and feel it--but knowing, you ignore it. Men were intended by
Law--God's Law--to live in brotherhood; but your world is
divided into nations all opposed to each other,--the result is Evil.
There is a Law of Health, which men can scarcely be forced to
follow--the majority disobey it; again, the result is Evil. There is a
Law of 'Enough'--men grasp
more than enough, and leave their brother with less than enough,--the result is Evil. There is a Law of Love--men make it a Law of Lust,--the result is Evil. All Sin, all Pain, all Misery, are results of the Law's transgression,--and God cannot alter the Law, He Himself being part of it and its fulfilment."
"And is Death also the Law?" asked
El-Râmi--"Wise Lilith!--Death, which concludes all
things, both in Law and Order?"
"There is no death."--responded Lilith--"I
have told you so. What you call by that name is Life."
"Prove it!" exclaimed El-Râmi excitedly, "Prove
it, Lilith! Show me Yourself! If there is another You than this beloved
beauty of your visible form, let me behold it, and then--then will I
repent of doubt,--then will I pray for pardon!"
"You will repent indeed,"--said Lilith
sorrowfully--"And you will pray as children pray when first they
learn 'Our Father.' Yes, I will come to you;--watch for
me, O
my erring Belovëd!--watch!--for neither my love nor my promise can fail. But O remember that you are not ready--that your will, your passion, your love, forces me hither ere the time,--that if I come, it is but to depart again--forever!"
"No, no!" cried El-Râmi desperately--"Not
to depart, but to remain!--to stay with me, my Lilith, my
own--body and soul,--forever!"
The last words sounded like a defiance flung at some invisible opponent.
He stopped, trembling--for a sudden and mysterious wave of sound
filled the room, like a great wind among the trees, or the last grand chord
of an organ-symphony. A chill fear assailed him,--he kept his eyes
fixed on the beautiful form of Lilith with a strained eagerness of
attention that made his temples ache. She grew paler and paler,--and
yet, ... absorbed in his intent scrutiny he could not move or speak. His
tongue seemed tied to the roof of his mouth,--he felt as though be
could scarcely breathe. All life appeared to hang on one supreme moment of
time, which
like a point of light wavered between earth and heaven, mortality and infinity. He,--one poor atom in the vast Universe,--stood, audaciously waiting for the declaration of God's chiefest Secret! Would it be revealed at last?--or still withheld?
"In the great Name of God and by the Passion of
Christ,"--said Lilith solemnly, in tones that sounded far-off
and faint and hollow--"do not look at this Shadow of Me! Turn,
turn away from this dust of Earth
which belongs to the Earth alone,--and watch for the light of Heaven which comes from Heaven alone! O my love, my belovëd!--if you are wise, if you are brave, if you are strong, turn away from beholding this Image of Me, which is not Myself,--and look for me where the roses are--there will I stand and wait!"
As the last word left her lips she sank back on her pillows, inert, and
deathly pale; but El-Râmi, dazed and bewildered though he was,
retained sufficient consciousness to understand vaguely what she
meant,--he was not to look at her as she lay there,--he was to
forget that such a Lilith as he knew existed,--he was to look for
another Lilith there--"where the roses are." Mechanically,
and almost as if some invisible power commanded and controlled his
volition, he turned sideways round from the couch, and fixed his gaze on
the branching flowers, which from the crystal vase that held them, lifted
their pale-pink heads daintily aloft as though they took the lamp that
swung from the ceiling for some little new sun, specially
invented for their pleasure. Why,--there was nothing there; ... "Nothing there!" he half-muttered with a beating heart, rubbing his eyes and staring hard before him, ... nothing--nothing at all, but the roses themselves, and ... and ... yes!--a Light behind them!--a light that wavered round them and began to stretch upward in wide circling rings!
El-Râmi gazed and gazed, ... saying over and over again to himself
that it was the reflection of the lamp, ... the glitter of that stray
moonbeam there, ... or something wrong with his own faculty of vision, ...
and yet he gazed on, as though for the moment, all his being were made of
eyes. The roses trembled and swayed to and fro delicately as the strange
Light widened and brightened behind their blossoming clusters,--a
light that seemed to palpitate with all the wondrous living tints of the
rising sun when it shoots forth its first golden rays from the foaming
green hollows of the sea. Upward, upward and ever upward the deepening
glory extended, till the
lamp paled and grew dimmer than the spark of a feeble match struck as a rival to a flash of lightning,--and El-Râmi's breath came and went in hard panting gasps as he stood watching it in speechless immobility.
Suddenly, two broad shafts of rainbow luminance sprang, as it seemed
from the ground, and blazed against the purple hangings of the room with
such a burning dazzle of prismatic colouring in every glittering line, that
it was well-nigh impossible for human sight to bear it, and yet
El-Râmi would rather have been stricken stone-blind than move. Had he
been capable of thought, he might have remembered the beautiful old Greek
myths which so truthfully and frequently taught the lesson that to look
upon the purely divine, meant death to the purely human; but he could not
think,--all his own mental faculties were for the time rendered numb
and useless. His eyes ached and smarted as though red-hot needles were
being plunged into them, but though he was conscious of, he was indifferent
to the pain. His whole mind was concentrated on watching the mysterious
radiance of those wing-shaped rays in the room,--and now ... now while he gazed, he began to perceive an Outline between the rays, ... a Shape, becoming every second more and more distinct,