“I have kept my religion, if you mean that,” said Irene, impressed by his earnestness; “but it is not the religion of the churches.”
He gave an impatient gesture.
“The religion of the churches is a mere Show-Sunday,” he returned. “We all know that. When I say you have kept your faith, I mean that you can believe in God without positive proofs of Him. That is a grand capability in this age. I wish I had it!”
Irene Vassilius looked at him wonderingly.
“Surely you believe in God?”
“Not till I can prove Him!” and El-Râmi’s eyes flashed defiantly. “Vice triumphant, and Virtue vanquished, do not explain Him to me. Torture and death do not manifest to my spirit His much-talked-of ‘love and goodness.’ I must unriddle His secret; I must pierce into the heart of His plan, before I join the enforced laudations of the multitude; I must know and feel that it is the Truth I am proclaiming, before I stand up in the sight of my fellows and say, ‘O God, Thou art the Fountain of Goodness, and all Thy works are wise and wonderful!’”
He spoke with remarkable power and emphasis; his attitude was full of dignity. Madame Vassilius gazed at him in involuntary admiration.
“It is a bold spirit that undertakes to catechize the Creator and examine into the value of His creation,” she said.
“If there is a Creator,” said El-Râmi, “and if from Him all things do come, then from Him also comes my spirit of inquiry. I have no belief in a devil, but if there were one, the Creator is answerable for him, too. And to revert again to your questions, Madame, shall we not in a way make God somewhat responsible for the universal prostitution of woman? It is a world-wide crime, and only very slight attempts as yet have been made to remedy it, because the making of the laws is in the hands of men — the criminals. The Englishman, the European generally, is as great a destroyer of woman’s life and happiness as any Turk or other barbarian. The life of the average woman is purely animal; in her girlhood she is made to look attractive, and her days pass in the consideration of dress, appearance, manner, and conversation; when she has secured her mate, her next business is to bear him children. The children reared, and sent out into the world, she settles down into old age, wrinkled, fat, toothless, and frequently quarrelsome; the whole of her existence is not a grade higher than that of a leopardess or other forest creature, and sometimes not so exciting. When a woman rises above all this, she is voted by the men ‘unwomanly’; she is no longer the slave or the toy of their passions; and that is why, my dear Madame, they give the music-hall dancer their diamonds, and heap upon you their sneers.”
Irene sat silent for some minutes, and a sigh escaped her.
“Then it is no use trying to be a little different to the rest,” she said wearily; “a little higher, a little less prone to vulgarity? If one must be hated for striving to be worthy of one’s vocation—”
“My dear lady, you do not see that man will never admit that literature is your vocation! No, not even if you wrote as grand a tragedy as ‘Macbeth.’ Your vocation, according to them, is to adore their sex, to look fascinating, to wear pretty clothes, and purr softly like a pleased cat when they make you a compliment; not to write books that set everybody talking. They would rather see you dragged and worn to death under the burden of half a dozen children, than they would see you stepping disdainfully past them, in all the glory of fame. Yet be con — tent, — you have, like Mary in the Gospel, ‘chosen the better part’; of that I feel sure, though I am unable to tell you why or how I feel it.”
“If you feel sure of certain things without being able to explain how or why you feel them,” put in Féraz suddenly, “is it not equally easy to feel sure of God without being able to explain how or why He exists?”
“Admirably suggested, my dear Féraz,” observed El-Râmi, with a slight smile. “But please recollect that though it may be easy to you and a fair romancist like Madame Vassilius to feel sure of God, it is not at all easy to me. I am not sure of Him; I have not seen Him, and I am not conscious of Him. Moreover, if an average majority of people taken at random could be persuaded to speak the truth for once in their lives, they would all say the same thing — that they are not conscious of Him. Because if they were — if the world were — the emotion of Fear would be altogether annihilated; there would never be any ‘panic’ about anything; people would not shriek and wail at the terrors of an earthquake, or be seized with pallor and trembling at the crash and horror of an unexpected storm. Being sure of God would mean being sure of Good; and I’m afraid none of us are convinced in that direction. But I think and believe that if we indeed felt sure of God, Evil would be annihilated as well as fear. And the mystery is, why does He not make us sure of Him? It must be in His power to do so, and would save both Him and us an infinite deal of trouble.”
Féraz grew restless and left his place, laying down the volume he had been pretending to read.
“I wish you would not be so horribly, cruelly definite in your suggestions,” he said rather vexedly. “What is the good of it? It unsettles one’s mind.”
“Surely your mind is not unsettled by a merely reasonable idea reasonably suggested?” returned El-Râmi calmly. “Madame Vassilius here is not ‘unsettled,’ as you call it.”
“No,” said Irene slowly; “but I had thought you more of a spiritual believer—”
“Madame,” said El-Râmi impressively, “I am a spiritual believer, but in this way: I believe that this world and all worlds are composed of Spirit and Matter, and not only do I believe it, but I know it! The atmosphere around us and all planets is composed of Spirit and Matter; and every living creature that breathes is made of the same dual mixture. Of the Spirit that forms part of Matter and dominates it, I, even I have some control; and others who come after me, treading in the same lines of thought, will have more than I. I can influence the spirit of man; I can influence the spirit of the air; I can draw an essence from the earth upwards that shall seem to you like the wraith of someone dead; but if you ask me whether these provable, practicable scientific tests or experiments on the spirit that is part of Nature’s very existence, are manifestations of God or the Divine, I say — No. God would not permit Man to play at will with His eternal Fires; whereas, with the spirit essence that can be chemically drawn from earth and fire and water, I, a mere studious and considering biped, can do whatsoever I choose. I know how the legends of phantoms and fairies arose in the world’s history, because at one time, one particular period of the pre-historic ages, the peculiar, yet natural combination of the elements and the atmosphere, formed ‘fantasma’ which men saw and believed in. The last trace of these now existing is the familiar ‘mirage’ of cities with their domes and steeples seen during certain states of the atmosphere in mid-ocean. Only give me the conditions, and I will summon up a ghostly city too. I can form numberless phantasmal figures now, and more than this, I can evoke for your ears from the very bosom of the air, music such as long ago sounded for the pleasure of men and women dead. For the air is a better phonograph than Edison’s, and has the advantage of being eternal.”
“But such powers are marvellous!” exclaimed Irene. “I cannot understand how you have attained to them.”
“Neither can others less gifted understand how you, Madame, have attained your literary skill,” said El-Râmi. “All art, all science, all discovery, is the result of a concentrated Will, an indomitable Perseverance. My ‘powers,’ as you term them, are really very slight, and, as I said before, those who follow my track will obtain far greater supremacy. The secret of phantasmal splendour or ‘vision,’ as also the clue to what is called ‘unearthly music’ — anything and everything that is or appears to be of a supernatural character in this world — can be traced to natural causes, and the one key to it all is the great Fact that Nothing in the Universe is lost. Bear that statement well in mind. Light preserves all scenes; Air preserves all sounds. Therefore, it follows that if the scenes are there, and the sounds are there, they can be evoked ag
ain, and yet again, by him who has the skill to understand the fluctuations of the atmospheric waves, and the incessantly recurring vibrations of light. Do not imagine that even a Thought, which you very naturally consider your own, actually remains a fixture in your brain from whence it was germinated. It escapes while you are in the very act of thinking it; its subtle essence evaporates into the air you breathe and the light you absorb. If it presents itself to you again, it will probably be in quite a different form, and perhaps you will hardly recognise it. All Thought escapes thus; you cannot keep it to yourself any more than you can have breath without breathing.”
“You mean that a Thought belongs to all, and not to one individual?” said Irene.
“Yes, I mean that,” replied El-Râmi; “and Thought, I may say, is the only reflex I can admit of possible Deity, because Thought is free, absolute, all-embracing, creative, perpetual, and unwearied. Limitless too — great Heaven, how limitless! To what heights does it not soar? In what depths does it not burrow? How daring, how calm, how indifferent to the ocean-swell of approaching and receding ages! Your modern Theosophist, calmly counting his gains from the blind incredulity and stupidity of the unthinking masses, is only copying, in a very Lilliputian manner, the grand sagacity and cunning of the ancient Egyptian ‘magi,’ who, by scientific trickery, ruled the ignorant multitude; it is the same Thought, only dressed in modern aspect. Thought, and the proper condensation, controlling and usage of Thought, is Power, — Divinity, if you will. And it is the only existing Force that can make gods of men.”
Irene Vassilius sat silent, fascinated by his words, and still more fascinated by his manner. After a few minutes she spoke —
“I am glad you admit,” she said gently, “that this all-potent Thought may be a reflex of the Divine, — for we can have no reflections of light without the Light itself. I came to you in a somewhat discontented humour, — I am happier now. I suppose I ought to be satisfied with my lot, — I am certainly more fortunately situated than most women.”
“You are, Madame” — said El-Râmi, smiling pensively and fixing his dark eyes upon her with a kind expression,— “And your native good sense and wit will prevent you, I hope, from marring the good which the gods have provided for you. Do not marry yet, — it would be too great a disillusion for you. The smallest touch of prose is sufficient to destroy the delicacy of love’s finer sentiments; and marriage, as the married will tell you, is all prose, — very prosy prose too. Avoid it! — prosy prose is tiresome reading.”
She laughed, and rose to take her leave.
“I saw your brother with Mr. Ainsworth yesterday,” she observed— “And I could not understand how two such opposite natures could possibly agree.”
“Oh, we did not agree, — we have not agreed,” said Féraz hastily, speaking for himself— “It is not likely we shall see much of each other.”
“I am glad to hear it” — and she extended her hand to him— “You are very young, and Roy Ainsworth is very old, not in years, but in heart. It would be a pity for you to catch the contagion of our modern pessimism.”
“But—” Féraz hesitated and stammered, “it was you, was it not, Madame, who suggested to Mr. Ainsworth that he should take me as the model for one of the figures in his picture?”
“Yes, it was I,” replied Irene with a slight smile— “But I never thought you would consent, — and I felt sure, that even if you did, he would never succeed in render — ing your expression, for he is a mere surface-painter of flesh, not Soul — still, all the same, it amused me to make the suggestion.”
“Yes, — woman-like,” said El-Râmi— “You took pleasure in offering him a task he could not fulfil. There you have another reason why intellectual women are frequently detested — they ask so much and give so little.”
“You wrong us,” answered Irene swiftly. “When we love, we give all!”
“And so you give too much!” said El-Râmi gravely— “It is the common fault of women. You should never give ‘all’ — you should always hold back something. To be fascinating, you should be enigmatical. When once man is allowed to understand your riddle thoroughly, the spell is broken. The placid, changeless, monotonously amiable woman has no power whatever over the masculine temperament. It is Cleopatra that makes a slave of Antony, not blameless and simple Octavia.”
Irene Vassilius smiled.
“According to such a theory, the Angels must be very tame and uninteresting individuals,” she said.
El-Râmi’s eyes grew lustrous with the intensity of his thought.
“Ah, Madame, our conception of Angels is a very poor and false one, founded on the flabby imaginations of ignorant priests. An Angel, according to my idea, should be wild and bright and restless as lightning, speeding from star to star in search of new lives and new loves, with lips full of music and eyes full of fire, with every fibre of its immortal being palpitating with pure yet passionate desires for everything that can perfect and equalize its existence. The pallid, goose-winged object represented to us as inhabiting a country of No-Where without landscape or colour, playing on an unsatisfactory harp and singing ‘Holy, holy’ forever and ever, is no Angel, but rather a libel on the whole systematic creative plan of the Universe. Beauty, brilliancy, activity, glory and infinite variety of thought and disposition — if these be not in the composition of an Angel, then the Creator is but poorly served!”
“You speak as if you had seen one of these immortals?” said Irene, surprised.
A shadow darkened his features.
“Not I, Madame — except once — in a dream! You are going? — then farewell! Be happy, — and encourage the angelic qualities in yourself — for if there be a Paradise anywhere, you are on the path that leads to it.”
“You think so?” and she sighed— “I hope you may be right, — but sometimes I fear, and sometimes I doubt. Thank you for all you have said, — it is the first time I have met with so much gentleness, courtesy and patience from one of your sex. Good-bye!”
She passed out, Féraz escorting her to her carriage, which waited at the door; then he returned to his brother with a slow step and meditative air.
“Do men really wrong women so much as she seems to think?” he asked.
El-Râmi paused a moment, — then answered slowly:
“Yes, Féraz, they do; and as long as this world wags, they will! Let God look to it! — for the law of feminine oppression is His — not ours!”
CHAPTER X.
THAT same week was chronicled one of the worst gales that had ever been known to rage on the English coast. From all parts of the country came accounts of the havoc wrought on the budding fruit-trees by the pitiless wind and rain, — harrowing stories of floods and shipwrecks came with every fresh despatch of news, — great Atlantic steamers were reported “missing,” and many a fishing-smack went down in sight of land, with all the shrieking, struggling souls on board. For four days and four nights the terrific hurricane revelled in destruction, its wrath only giving way to occasional pauses of heavy silence more awful than its uproar; and by the rocky shores of Ilfracombe, the scene of nature’s riot, confusion and terror attained to a height of indescribable grandeur. The sea rose in precipitous mountain-masses, and anon wallowed in black abysmal chasms, — the clouds flew in a fierce rack overhead like the forms of huge witches astride on eagle-shaped monsters, — and with it all there was a close heat in the air, notwithstanding the tearing wind, — a heat and a sulphureous smell, suggestive of some pent-up hellish fire that but waited its opportunity to break forth and consume the land. On the third day of the gale particularly, this curious sense of suffocation was almost unbearable, and Dr. Kremlin, looking out of his high tower window in the morning at the unquiet sky and savage sea, wondered, as the wind scudded past, why it brought no freshness with it, but only an increased heat, like the “simoom” of the desert.
“It is one of those days on which it would seem that God is really angry,” mused Kremlin— “angry with Himself,
and still more angry with His creature.”
The wind whistled and shrieked in his ears as though it strove to utter some wild response to his thought, — the sullen roaring and battling of the waves on the beach below sounded like the clashing armour of contesting foes, — and the great Disc in the tower revolved, or appeared to revolve, more rapidly than its wont, its incessant whirr-whirring being always distinctly heard above the fury of the storm. To this, his great work, the chief labour of his life, Dr. Kremlin’s eyes turned wistfully, as, after a brief observation of the turbulent weather, he shut his window fast against the sheeting rain. Its shining surface, polished as steel, reflected the lights and shadows of the flying storm-clouds, in strange and beautiful groups like moving landscapes — now and then it flashed with a curious lightning glare of brilliancy as it swung round to its appointed measure, even as a planet swings in its orbit. A new feature had been added to the generally weird effect of Kremlin’s strange studio or workshop, — this was a heavy black curtain made of three thicknesses of cloth sewn closely together, and weighted at the end with bullet-shaped balls of lead. It was hung on a thick iron pole, and ran easily on indiarubber rings, — when drawn forward it covered the Disc completely from the light without interfering with any portion of its mechanism. Three days since, Kremlin had received El-Râmi’s letter telling him what the monk from Cyprus had said concerning the “Third Ray” or the messages from Mars, and eagerly grasping at the smallest chance of any clue to the labyrinth of the Light-vibrations, he had lost no time in making all the preparations necessary for this grand effort, this attempt to follow the track of the flashing signal whose meaning, though apparently unintelligible, might yet with patience be discovered. So, following the suggestions received, he had arranged the sable drapery, in such a manner that it could be drawn close across the Disc, or, in a second, be flung back to expose the whole surface of the crystal to the light, — all was ready for the trial, when the great storm came and interfered. Dense clouds covered the firmament, — and not for one single moment since he received the monk’s message had Kremlin seen the stars. However, he was neither discouraged nor impatient, — he had not worked amid perplexities so long to be disheartened now by a mere tempest, which in the ordinary course of nature, would wear itself out, and leave the heavens all the clearer both for reflection and observation. Yet he, as a meteorologist, was bound to confess that the fury of the gale was of an exceptional character, and that the height to which the sea lifted itself before stooping savagely towards the land and breaking itself in hissing spouts of spray, was stupendous, and in a manner appalling. Karl, his servant, was entirely horrified at the scene, — he hated the noise of the wind and waves, and more than all he hated the incessant melancholy scream of the seabirds that wheeled in flocks round and round the tower.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 267