Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli

by Marie Corelli

  “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 minut
es 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?”

  CHAPTER III.

  IN the midst of the strange “summer” weather which frequently falls to the lot of England, — weather alternating between hot and cold, wet and dry, sun and cloud with the most distracting rapidity and irregularity, — there came at last one perfect night towards the end of June, — a night which could have met with no rival even in the sunniest climes of the sunniest south. A soft tranquility hovered dove-like in the air, — a sense of perfect peace seemed to permeate all visible and created things. The sky was densely blue and thickly strewn with stars, though these glimmered but faintly, their light being put to shame by the splendid brilliancy of the full moon which swam aloft airily like a 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.’”

  This passage of rhyme sang itself out with a monotonous musical gentleness in his brain, — he closed his eyes restfully, — and then — lying back thus in his chair by the open window, with the moonlight casting a wide halo round him and giving a pale spiritual beauty 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 d
rew 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.