With a soft impressive chord the music ceased, — the story was ended, — and Féraz rose from the piano to be surrounded at once by a crowd of admirers, all vying with each other in flattering expressions of applause and delight; but though he received these compliments with unaffected and courteous grace enough, his eyes perpetually wandered to his brother’s face, — that dark, absorbed beloved face, — yes, beloved! — for, rebel as he might against El-Râmi’s inflexible will and despotic power, Féraz knew he could never wrench from out his heart the deep affection and reverence for him which were the natural result of years of tender and sympathetic intercourse. If his brother had commanded him, he had also loved him, — there could be no doubt of that. Was he displeased or unhappy now, that he looked so sad and absorbed in gloomy and perplexed thought? A strange pained emotion stirred Féraz’s sensitive soul, — some intangible vague sense of separation seemed to have arisen between himself and El-Râmi, and he grew impatient with this brilliant assembly of well-dressed chattering folk, whose presence prevented him from giving vent to the full expression of his feelings. Lady Melthorpe talked to him in dulcet languid tones, fanning herself the while, and telling him sweetly what a “wonderful touch” he had, — what an “exquisite speaking voice” — and so forth, all which elegantly turned phrases he heard as in a dream. As soon as he could escape from her and those of her friends who were immediately round him, he made his way to El-Râmi and touched his arm.
“Let me stay beside you!” he said in a low tone in which there was a slight accent of entreaty.
El-Râmi turned, and looked at him kindly.
“Dear boy, you had better make new friends while you can, lest the old be taken from you.”
“Friends!” echoed Féraz— “Friends — here?” he gave a gesture more eloquent than speech, of doubt and disdain, — then continued, “Might we not go now? Is it not time to return home and sleep?”
El-Râmi smiled.
“Nay, are we not seeing life? Here we are among pretty women, well-bred men — the rooms are elegant, — and the conversation is as delightfully vague and nearly as noisy as the chattering of monkeys — yet with all these advantages, you talk of sleep!”
Féraz laughed a little.
“Yes, I am tired,” he said. “It does not seem to me real, all this — there is something shadowy and unsubstantial about it. I think sleep is better.”
At that moment Irene Vassilius came up to them.
“I am just going,” she said, letting her soft serious eyes dwell on Féraz with interest, “but I feel I must thank you for your story of the ‘Priest Philemon.’ Is it your own idea? — or does such a legend exist?”
“Nothing is really new,” replied Féraz— “but such as it is, it is my own invention.”
“Then you are a poet and musician at one and the same time,” said Irene. “It seems a natural combination of gifts, yet the two do not always go together. I hope” — she now addressed herself to El-Râmi— “I hope very much you will come and see me, though I’m afraid I’m not a very popular person. My friends are few, so I cannot promise you much entertainment. Indeed, as a rule, people do not like me.”
“I like you!” said Féraz, quickly and impulsively.
She smiled.
“Yes? That is good of you. And I believe you, for you are too unworldly to deal in flatteries. But, I assure you, that, generally speaking, literary women are never social favourites.”
“Not even when they are lovely like you?” questioned Féraz, with simple frankness.
She coloured at the evident sincerity of his admiration and the boyish openness with which it was thus expressed. Then she laughed a little.
“Loveliness is not acknowledged as at all existent in literary females,” she replied lightly, yet with a touch of scorn,— “even if they do possess any personal charm, it only serves as a peg for the malicious to hang a slander on. And of the two sexes, men are most cruel to a woman who dares to think for herself.”
“Are you sure of that, Madame?” asked El-Râmi gently. “May not this be an error of your judgment?”
“I would that it were!” she said with intense expression— “Heaven knows how sincerely I should rejoice to be proved wrong! But I am not wrong. Men always judge women as their inferiors, not only physically (which they are) but mentally (which they are not), and always deny them an independent soul and independent emotions, — the majority of men, indeed, treat them pretty much as a sort of superior cattle; — but, nevertheless, there is a something in what the French call ‘L’Eternel Feminin.’ Women are distinctly the greatest sufferers in all suffering creation, — and I have often thought that for so much pain and so much misjudgment, endured often with such heroic silence and uncomplaining fortitude, the compensation will be sweeter and more glorious than we, half drowned in our own tears, can as yet hope for, or imagine!”
She paused — her eyes were dark with thought and full of a dreamy sorrow, — then, smiling gently, she held out her hand.
“I talk too much, you will say — women always do! Come and see me if you feel disposed — not otherwise; I will send you my card through Lady Melthorpe — meantime, good-night!”
El-Râmi took her hand, and as he pressed it in his own, felt again that curious thrill which had before communicated itself to his nerves through the same contact.
“Surely you must be a visionary, Madame!” he said abruptly and with a vague sense of surprise— “and you see things not at all of this world!”
Her faint roseate colour deepened, giving singular beauty to her face.
“What a tell-tale hand mine is!” she replied, withdrawing it slowly from his clasp. “Yes — you are right, — if I could not see things higher than this world, I could not endure my existence for an hour. It is because I feel the Future so close about me that I have courage for, and indifference to, the Present.”
With that, she left them, and both El-Râmi and Féraz followed her graceful movements with interested eyes, as she glided through the rooms in her snowy trailing robes, with the frosty flash of diamonds in her hair, till she had altogether disappeared; then the languid voice of Lady Melthorpe addressed them.
“Isn’t she an odd creature, that Irene Vassilius? So quaint and peculiar in her ideas! People detest her, you know — she is so dreadfully clever!”
“There could not be a better reason for hatred!” said El-Râmi.
“You see, she says such unpleasant things,” went on Lady Melthorpe, complacently fanning herself,— “she has such decided opinions, and will not accommodate herself to people’s ways. I must confess I always find her de trop, myself.”
“She was your guest to-night,” said Féraz suddenly, and with such a sternness in his accent as caused her ladyship to look at him in blank surprise.
“Certainly! One must always ask a celebrity.”
“If one must always ask, then one is bound always to respect,” said Féraz coldly. “In our code d’honneur, we never speak ill of those who have partaken of our hospitality.”
So saying, he turned on his heel and walked away with so much haughtiness of demeanour that Lady Melthorpe stood as though rooted to the spot, staring speechlessly after him. Then rousing herself, she looked at El-Râmi and shrugged her shoulders.
“Really,” she began,— “really, Mr. El-Râmi, your brother’s manner is very strange—”
“It is,” returned El-Râmi quickly— “I admit it. His behaviour is altogether unpolished — and he is quite unaccustomed to society. I told Lord Melthorpe so, — and I was against his being invited here. He says exactly what he thinks, without fear or favour, and in this regard is really a mere barbarian! Allow me to apologize for him!”
Lady Melthorpe bowed stiffly, — she saw, or fancied she saw, a faint ironical smile playing on El-Râmi’s lips beneath his dark moustache. She was much annoyed, — the idea of a “boy” like Féraz, presuming to talk to her, a leader of London fashion, about a code d’honneur! The thin
g was monstrous, — absurd! And as for Irene Vassilius, why should not she be talked about? — she was a public person; a writer of books which Mrs. Grundy in her church-going moods had voted as “dangerous.” Truly Lady Melthorpe considered she had just cause to be ruffled, and she began to regret having invited these “Eastern men,” as she termed them, to her house at all. El-Râmi perceived her irritation, but he made no further remark; and as soon as he could conveniently do so, he took his formal leave of her. Quickly threading his way through the now rapidly thinning throng, he sought out Féraz, whom he found in the hall talking to Roy Ainsworth and making final arrangements for the sitting he was to give the artist next day.
“I should like to make a study of your head too,” said Roy, with a keen glance at El-Râmi as he approached— “but I suppose you have no time.”
“No time — and still less inclination!” responded El-Râmi laughingly; “for I have sworn that no ‘counterfeit presentment’ of my bodily form shall ever exist. It would always be a false picture, — it would never be Me, because it would only represent the Perishable, whilst I am the Imperishable.”
“Singular man!” said Roy Ainsworth. “What do you mean?”
“What should I mean,” replied El-Râmi quickly, “save what all your religions and churches mean, if in truth they have any meaning. Is there not something else besides this fleshly covering? If you can paint the imagined Soul of a man looking out of his eyes, you are a great artist, — but if you could paint the Soul itself, stripped of its mortal disguise, radiant, ethereal, brilliant as lightning, beautiful as dawn, you would be greater still. And the soul is the Me, — these features of mine, this Appearance, is mere covering, — we want a Portrait, not a Costume.”
“Your argument applies to your brother as well as yourself,” said Ainsworth, wondering at the eloquent wildness of this strange El-Râmi’s language, and fascinated by it in spite of himself.
“Just so! Only the Earth-garment of Féraz is charming and becoming — mine is not. It is a case of ‘my hair is white but not with years’ — the “Prisoner of Chillon” sort of thing. Good-night!’
“Good-night!” and the artist shook hands warmly with both brothers, saying to Féraz as he parted from him— “I may expect you then to-morrow? You will not fail?”
“You may rely upon me!” and Féraz nodded lightly in adieu, and followed El-Râmi out of the house into the street, where they began to walk homeward together at a rapid rate. As they went, by some mutual involuntary instinct they lifted their eyes to the dense blue heavens, where multitudes of stars were brilliantly visible. Féraz drew a long deep breath.
“There,” he said, “is the Infinite and Real, — what we have seen of life to-night is finite and unreal.”
El-Râmi made no reply.
“Do you not think so?” persisted Féraz earnestly.
“I cannot say definitely what is Real and what is Unreal,” said El-Râmi slowly— “both are so near akin. Féraz, are you aware you offended Lady Melthorpe tonight?”
“Why should she be offended? I only said just what I thought.”
“Good heavens, my dear boy, if you always go about saying just what you think, you will find the world too hot to hold you. To say the least of it, you will never be fit for society.”
“I don’t want to be fit for it,” said Féraz disdainfully, “if Lady Melthorpe’s ‘at home’ is a picture of it. I want to forget it, — the most of it, I mean. I shall remember Madame Vassilius because she is sympathetic and interesting. But for the rest! — my dearest brother, I am far happier with you.”
El-Râmi took his arm gently.
“Yet you leave me to-morrow to gratify an artist’s whim!” he said. “Have you thought of that?”
“Oh, but that is nothing — only an hour or two’s sitting. He was so very anxious that I could not refuse. Does it displease you?”
“My dear Féraz, I am displeased at nothing. You complained of my authority over you once — and I have determined you shall not complain again. Consider yourself free.”
“I do not want my liberty,” said Féraz, almost petulantly.
“Try it!” responded El-Râmi with a smile and half a sigh. “Liberty is sweet, — but, like other things, it brings its own responsibilities.”
They walked on till they had almost reached their own door.
“Your story of the priest Philemon was very quaint and pretty,” said El-Râmi then abruptly. “You meant it as a sort of allegory for me, did you not?”
Féraz looked wistfully at him, but hesitated to reply.
“It does not quite fit me,” went on El-Râmi gently. “I am not impervious to love — for I love you. Perhaps the angels will take that fact into consideration, when they are settling my thousand or million years’ punishment.”
There was a touch of quiet pathos in his voice which moved Féraz greatly, and he could not trust himself to speak. When they entered their own abode, El-Râmi said the usual “Good-night” in his usual kindly manner, — but Feraz reverently stooped and kissed the hand extended to him, — the potent hand that had enriched his life with poesy and dowered it with dreams.
CHAPTER VII.
ALL the next day El-Râmi was alone. Féraz went out early to fulfil the appointment made with Roy Ainsworth; no visitors called, — and not even old Zaroba came near the study, where, shut up with his books and papers, her master worked assiduously hour after hour, writing as rapidly as hand and pen would allow, and satisfying his appetite solely with a few biscuits dipped in wine. Just as the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, his long solitude was disturbed by the sharp knock of a telegraph-messenger, who handed him a missive which ran briefly thus —
“Your brother stays to dine with me. — AINSWORTH.”
El-Râmi crushed the paper in his hand, then flinging it aside, stood for a moment, lost in meditation, with a sorrowful expression in his dark eyes.
“Ay me! the emptiness of the world!” he murmured at last— “I shall be left alone, I suppose, as my betters are left, according to the rule of this curiously designed and singularly unsatisfactory system of human life. What do the young care for the solitude of their elders who have tended and loved them? New thoughts, new scenes, new aspirations beckon them, and off they go like birds on the wing, — never to return to the old nest or the old ways. I despise the majority of women myself, — and yet I pity from my soul all those who are mothers, — the miserable dignity and pathos of maternity are, in my opinion, grotesquely painful. To think of the anguish the poor delicate wretches endure in bringing children at all into the world, — then, the tenderness and watchful devotion expended on their early years, — and then — why then, these same children grow up for the most part into indifferent (when not entirely callous) men and women, who make their own lives as it seems best to themselves, and almost forget to whom they owe their very existence. It is hard — bitterly hard. There ought to be some reason for such a wild waste of love and affliction. At present, however, I can see none.”
He sighed deeply, and stared moodily into the deepening shadows.
“Loneliness is horrible!” he said aloud, as though addressing some invisible auditor. “It is the chief terror of death, — for one must always die alone. No matter how many friends and relatives stand weeping round the bed, one is absolutely alone at the hour of death, for the stunned soul wanders blindly—”
“out of sight.
Far off in a place where it is not heard.”
That solitary pause and shudder on the brink of the Unseen is fearful, — it unnerves us all to think of it. If Love could help us, — but even Love grows faint and feeble then.”
As he mused thus, a strange vague longing came over him, — an impulse arising out of be knew not what suggestion; and acting on his thought, he went suddenly and swiftly upstairs, and straight into the chamber of Lilith. Zaroba was there, and rose from her accustomed corner silently, and moved with a somewhat feeble step into the ante-room
while El-Râmi bent over the sleeping girl. Lovelier than ever she seemed that evening, — and as he stooped above her, she stretched out her fair white arms and smiled. His heart beat quickly, — he had, for the moment, ceased to analyze his own feelings, — and he permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty and absorb it, without, as usual, taking any thought of the scientific aspect of her condition.
“Tresses twisted by fairy fingers.
In which the light of the morning lingers!”
he murmured, as he touched a rippling strand of the lovely hair that lay spread like a fleece of gold floss silk on the pillow near him,— “Poor Lilith! — Sweet Lilith!”
As if responsive to his words, she turned slightly towards him, and felt the air blindly with one wandering white hand. Gently he caught it and imprisoned it within his own, — then on a strange impulse, kissed it. To his utter amazement she answered that touch as though it had been a call.
“I am here,...my Belovëd!”
He started, and an icy thrill ran through his veins; — that word “Belovëd” was a sort of electric shock to his system, and sent a dizzying rush of blood to his brain. What did she mean, — what could she mean? The last time she had addressed him she had declared that he was not even her friend — now she called him her “beloved” — as much to his amazement as his fear. Presently, however, he considered that here perhaps was some new development of his experiment; — the soul of Lilith might possibly be in closer communion with him than he had yet imagined. But in spite of his attempt to reason away his emotions, he was nervous, and stood by the couch silently, afraid to speak, and equally afraid to move. Lilith was silent too. A long pause ensued, in which the usually subdued tickings of the clock seemed to become painfully audible. El-Râmi’s breath came and went quickly, — he was singularly excited, — some subtle warmth from the little hand he held, permeated his veins, and a sense of such utter powerlessness possessed him as he had never experienced before. What ailed him? He could not tell. Where was the iron force of his despotic will? He seemed unable to exert it, — unable even to think coherently while Lilith’s hand thus rested in his. Had she grown stronger than himself? A tingling tremor ran through him, as the strange words of the monk’s written warning suddenly recurred to his memory.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 263