“Come, El-Râmi!” he said very gently— “Do not stay here, — come with me. You are weak, — rest on my arm; you must try and recover your strength, — remember, you have work to do.”
“True, true!” said El-Râmi, rousing himself— “Yes, you are right, — there is much to be done. Nothing is so difficult as patience. To be left all alone, and to be patient, is very hard, — but I will come, — I will come.”
He suffered himself to be led towards the door, — then, all at once he came to an abrupt stand-still, and looking round, gazed full on the empty couch where Lilith had so long been royally enshrined. A sudden passion seemed to seize him — his eyes sparkled luridly, — a sort of inward paroxysm convulsed his features, and he clutched Féraz by the shoulder with a grip as hard as steel.
“Roses and lilies and gold!” he muttered thickly— “They were all there, — those delicate treasures, those airy nothings of which God makes woman! Roses for the features, lilies for the bosom, gold for the hair! — roses, lilies and gold! They were mine, — but I have burned them all! — I have burned the roses and lilies, and melted the gold. Dust! — dust and ashes! But the dust is not Lilith. No! — it is only the dust of the roses, the dust of lilies, the dust of gold. Roses, lilies and gold! So sweet they are and fair to the sight, one would almost take them for real substance; but they are Shadows! — shadows that pass as we touch them, — shadows that always go, when most we would have them stay!”
He finished with a deep shuddering sigh, and then, loosening his grasp of Féraz, began to stumble his way hurriedly out of the apartment, with the manner of one who is lost in a dense fog and cannot see whither he is going. Féraz hastened to assist and support him, whereupon he looked up with a pathetic and smiling gratefulness.
“You are very good to me,” — he said, with a gentle courtesy, which in his condition was peculiarly touching— “I thought I should never need any support; — but I was wrong — quite wrong, — and it is kind of you to help me. My eyes are rather dim, — there was too much light among the roses,...and I find this place extremely dark,...it makes me feel a little confused here;” — and he passed his hand across his forehead with a troubled gesture, and looked anxiously at Féraz, as though he would ask him for some explanation of his symptoms.
“Yes, yes!” murmured Féraz soothingly— “You must be tired — you will rest, and presently you will feel strong and well again. Do not hurry, — lean on me,” — and he guided his brother’s trembling limbs carefully down the stairs, a step at a time, thinking within himself in deep sorrow — Could this be the proud El-Râmi, clinging to him thus like a weak old man afraid to move? Oh, what a wreck was here! — what a change had been wrought in the few hours of the past night! — and ever the fateful question returned again and again to trouble him — What had become of Lilith? That she was gone was self-evident, — and he gathered some inkling of the awful truth from his brother’s rambling words. He remembered that El-Râmi had previously declared Lilith to be dead, so far as her body was concerned, and only kept apparently alive by artificial means; — he could easily imagine it possible for those artificial means to lose their efficacy in the end,...and then,...for the girl’s beautiful body to crumble into that dissolution which would have been its fate long ago, had Nature had her way. All this he could dimly surmise, — but he had been kept so much in the dark as to the real aim and intention of his brother’s “experiment” that it was not likely he would ever understand everything that had occurred; — so that Lilith’s mysterious evanishment seemed to him like a horrible delusion; — it could not be! he kept on repeating over and over again to himself, and yet it was!
Moving with slow and cautious tread, he got El-Râmi at last into his own study, wondering whether the sight of the familiar objects he was daily accustomed to, would bring him back to a reasonable perception of his surroundings. He waited anxiously, while his brother stood still, shivering slightly and looking about the room with listless, unrecognising eyes. Presently, in a voice that was both weary and petulant, El-Râmi spoke.
“You will not leave me alone I hope?” he said— “I am very old and feeble, and I have done you no wrong, — I do not see why you should leave me to myself. I should be glad if you would stay with me a little while, because everything is at present so strange to me; — I shall no doubt get more accustomed to it in time. You are perhaps not aware that I wished to live through a great many centuries — and my wish was granted; — I have lived longer than any man, especially since She left me, — and now I am growing old, and I am easily tired. I do not know this place at all — is it a World or a Dream?”
At this question, it seemed to Féraz that he heard again, like a silver clarion ringing through silence, the mysterious voice that had roused him that morning saying, “Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins!”...He understood, and he bent his head resignedly, — he knew now what the “life” thus indicated meant; — it meant a sacrificing of all his poetic aspirations, his music, and his fantastic happy visions, — a complete immolation of himself and his own desires, for the sake of his brother. His brother, who had once ruled him absolutely, was now to be ruled by him; — helpless as a child, the once self-sufficient and haughty El-Râmi was to be dependent for everything upon the very creature who had lately been his slave, — and Féraz, humbly reading in these reversed circumstances, the Divine Law of Compensation, answered his brother’s plaintive query— “Is it a World or a Dream?” with manful tenderness.
“It is a World,” — he said— “not a Dream, beloved El-Râmi — but a Reality. It is a fair garden, belonging to God and the things of God” — he paused, seeing that El-Râmi smiled placidly and nodded his head as though he heard pleasant music, — then he went on steadily— “a garden in which immortal spirits wander for a time self-exiled, till they fully realize the worth and loveliness of the Higher Lands they have forsaken. Do you understand me, O dear and honoured one? — do you understand? None love their home so dearly as those who have left it for a time — and it is only for a time — a short, short time,” — and Féraz, deeply moved by his mingled sorrow and affection, kissed and clasped his brother’s hands— “and all the beauty we see here in this beautiful small world, is made to remind us of the greater beauty yonder. We look, as it were, into a little mirror, which reflects in exquisite miniature, the face of Heaven! See!” and he pointed to the brilliant blaze of sunshine that streamed through the window and illumined the whole room— “There is the tiny copy of the larger Light above, — and in that little light the flowers grow, the harvests ripen, the trees bud, the birds sing and every living creature rejoices, — but in the other Greater Light, God lives, and angels love and have their being;” — here Féraz broke off abruptly, wondering if he might risk the utterance of the words that next rose involuntarily to his lips, while El-Râmi gazed at him with great wide-open eager eyes like those of a child listening to a fairy story.
“Yes, yes! — what next?” he demanded impatiently— “This is good news you give me; — the angels love, you say, and God lives, — yes! — tell me more,...more!”
“All angels love and have their being in that Greater Light,” — continued Féraz softly and steadily— “And there too is Lilith — beautiful — deathless, — faithful—”
“True!” cried El-Râmi, with a sort of sobbing cry— “True!...She is there, — she promised — and I shall know,...I shall know where to find her after all, for she told me plainly— ‘Look for me where the roses are, — there will I stand and wait.’”
He tottered, and seemed about to fall; — but when Féraz would have supported him, he shook his head, and pointed tremblingly to the amber ray of sunshine pouring itself upon the ground:
“Into the light!” — he murmured— “I am all in the dark; — lead me out of the darkness into the light.”
And Féraz led him where he desired, and seated him in his own chair in the full glory of the morning radiance that rippled about h
im like molten gold, and shone caressingly on his white hair, — his dark face that in its great pallor looked as though it were carved in bronze, — and his black, piteous, wandering eyes. A butterfly danced towards him in the sparkling shower of sunbeams, the same that had flown in an hour before and alighted on the heliotrope that adorned the centre of the table. El-Râmi’s attention was attracted by it — and he watched its airy flutterings with a pleased, yet vacant smile. Then he stretched out his hands in the golden light, and lifting them upward, clasped them together and closed his eyes.
“Our Father”...he murmured; “which art in Heaven!...Hallowed be Thy Name!”
Féraz, bending heedfully over him, caught the words as they were faintly whispered, — caught the hands as they dropped inert from their supplicating posture and laid them gently back; — then listened again with strained attention, the pitying tears gathering thick upon his lashes.
“Our Father!”...once more that familiar appeal of kinship to the Divine, stole upon the air like a far-off sigh, — then came the sound of regular and quiet breathing; — Nature had shed upon the over-taxed brain her balm of blessed unconsciousness, — and like a tired child, the proud El-Râmi slept.
CHAPTER VIII.
UPSTAIRS meanwhile, in the room that had been Lilith’s, there reigned the silence of a deep desolation. The woman Zaroba still crouched there, huddled on the floor, a mere heap of amber draperies, — her head covered, her features hidden. Now and then a violent shuddering seized her, — but otherwise she gave no sign of life. Hours passed; — she knew nothing, she thought of nothing; she was stupefied with misery and a great inextinguishable fear. To her bewildered, darkly superstitious, more than pagan mind, it seemed as if some terrible avenging angel had descended in the night and torn away her beautiful charge out of sheer spite and jealousy lest she should awake to the joys of earth’s life and love. It had always been her fixed idea that the chief and most powerful ingredient of the Divine character (and of the human also) was jealousy; and she considered therefore that all women, as soon as they were born, should be solemnly dedicated to the ancient goddess Ananitis. Ananitis was a useful and accommodating deity, who in the old days, had unlimited power to make all things pure. A woman might have fifty lovers, and yet none could dare accuse her of vileness if she were a “daughter” or “priestess” of Ananitis. She might have been guilty of any amount of moral enormity, but she was held to be the chastest of virgins if Ananitis were her protectress and mistress. And so, in the eyes of Zaroba, Ananitis was the true patroness of love, — she sanctified the joys of lovers and took away from them all imputation of sin; — and many and many a time had the poor, ignorant, heathenish old woman secretly invoked the protection of this almost forgotten pagan goddess for the holy maiden Lilith. And now — now she wondered tremblingly, if in this she had done wrong?...More than for anything in the world had she longed that El-Râmi, the “wise man” who scoffed at passion with a light contempt, should love with a lover’s wild idolatry the beautiful creature who was so completely in his power; — in her dull, half-savage, stupid way, she had thought that such a result of the long six years “experiment” could but bring happiness to both man and maid; and she spared no pains to try and foster the spark of mere interest which El-Râmi had for his “subject” into the flame of a lover’s ardour. For this cause she had brought Féraz to look upon the tranced girl, in order that El-Râmi knowing of it, might feel the subtle prick of that perpetual motor, jealousy, — for this she had said all she dared say, concerning love and its unconquerable nature; — and now, just when her long-cherished wish seemed on the point of being granted, some dreadful Invisible Power had rushed in between the two, and destroyed Lilith with the fire of wrath and revenge; — at any rate that was how she regarded it. The sleeping girl had grown dear to her, — it was impossible not to love such a picture of innocent, entrancing, ideal beauty, — and she felt as though her heart had been torn open and its very core wrenched out by a cruel and hasty hand. She knew nothing as yet of the fate that had overtaken El-Râmi himself, — for as she could not hear a sound of the human voice, she had only dimly seen that he was led from the room by his young brother, and that he looked ill, feeble and distraught. What she realized most positively and with the greatest bitterness, was the fact of Lilith’s loss, — Lilith’s evident destruction. This was undeniable, — this was irremediable, — and she thought of it till her aged brain burned as with some inward consuming fire, and her thin blood seemed turning to ice.
“Who has done it?” she muttered— “Who has claimed her? It must be the Christ, — the cold, quiet, pallid Christ, with His bleeding Hands and beckoning Eyes! He is a new god, — He has called, and she, Lilith has obeyed! Without love, without life, without aught in the world save the lily-garb of un — touched holiness, — it is what the pale Christ seeks, and He has found it here, — here, with the child who slept the sleep of innocent ignorance, — here where no thought of passion ever entered unless I breathed it, — or perchance he — El-Râmi — thought it, unknowingly. O what a white flower for the Christ in Heaven, is Lilith! — What a branch of bud and blossom!...Ah, cruel, cold new gods of the Earth! — how long shall their sorrowful reign endure! Who will bring back the wise old gods, — the gods of the ancient days, — the gods who loved and were not ashamed, — the gods of mirth and life and health, — they would have left me Lilith, — they would have said— ‘Lo, now this woman is old and poor, — she hath lost all that she ever had, — let us leave her the child she loves, albeit it is not her own but ours; — we are great gods, but we are merciful!’ Oh, Lilith, Lilith! child of the sun and air, and daughter of sleep! would I had perished instead of thee! — Would I had passed away into darkness, and thou been spared to the light!”
Thus she wailed and moaned, her face hidden, her limbs quivering, and she knew not how long she had stayed thus, though all the morning had passed and the afternoon had begun. At last she was roused by the gentle yet firm pressure of a hand on her shoulder, and, slowly uncovering her drawn and anguished features she met the sorrowful eyes of Féraz looking into hers. With a mute earnest gesture he bade her rise. She obeyed, but so feebly and tremblingly, that he assisted her, and led her to a chair, where she sat down, still quaking all over with fear and utter wretchedness. Then he took a pencil and wrote on the slate which his brother had been wont to use, —
“A great trouble has come upon us. God has been pleased to so darken the mind of the beloved El-Râmi, that he knows us no longer, and is ignorant of where he is. The wise man has been rendered simple, — and the world seems to him as it seems to a child who has everything in its life to learn. We must accept this ordinance as the Will of the Supreme, and bring our own will in accordance with it, believing the ultimate intention to be for the Highest Good. But for his former life, El-Râmi exists no more, — the mind that guided his actions then, is gone.”
Slowly, and with pained, aching eyes Zaroba read these words, — she grasped their purport and meaning thoroughly, and yet, she said not a word. She was not surprised, — she was scarcely affected; — her feelings seemed blunted or paralysed. El-Râmi was mad? To her, he had always seemed mad, — with a madness born of terrible knowledge and power. To be mad now was nothing; the loss of Lilith was amply sufficient cause for his loss of wit. Nothing could be worse in her mind than to have loved Lilith and lost her, — what was the use of uttering fresh cries and ejaculations of woe! It was all over, — everything was ended, — so far as she, Zaroba, was concerned. So she sate speechless, — her grand old face rigid as bronze, with an expression upon it of stern submission, as of one who waits immovably for more onslaughts from the thunderbolts of destiny.
Féraz looked at her very compassionately, and wrote again —
“Good Zaroba, I know your grief. Rest — try to sleep. Do not see El-Râmi to-day. It is better I should be alone with him. He is quite peaceful and happy, — happier indeed than he has ever been. He has so much to learn, he say
s, and he is quite satisfied. For to-day we must be alone with our sorrows, — to-morrow we shall be able to see more clearly what we must do.”
Still Zaroba said nothing. Presently however, she arose, and walked totteringly to the side of Lilith’s couch,..there, with an eloquently tragic gesture of supremest despair, she pointed to the gray-white ashes that were spread in that dreadfully suggestive outline on the satin coverlet and pillows. Féraz, shuddering, shut his eyes for a moment; — then, as he opened them again, he saw, confronting him, the uncurtained picture of the “Christ and His Disciples.” He remembered it well, — El-Râmi had bought it long ago from among the despoiled treasures of an old dismantled monastery, — and besides being a picture it was also a reliquary. He stepped hastily up to it and felt for the secret spring which used, he knew, to be there. He found and pressed it, — the whole of the picture flew back like a door on a hinge, and showed the interior to be a Gothic-shaped casket, lined with gold, at the back of which was inserted a small piece of wood, supposed to have been a fragment of the “True Cross.” There was nothing else in the casket, — and Féraz, leaving it open, turned to Zaroba who had watched him with dull, scarcely comprehending eyes.
“Gather together these sacred ashes,” — he wrote again on the slate,— “and place them in this golden recess, — it is a holy place fit for such holy relics. El-Râmi would wish it, I know, if he could understand or wish for anything, — and wherever we go, the picture will go with us, for one day perhaps he will remember,...and ask, ...”
He could trust himself to write no more, — and stood sadly enrapt, and struggling with his own emotion.
“The Christ claims all!” muttered Zaroba wearily, resorting to her old theme— “The crucified Christ,...He must have all; — the soul, the body, the life, the love, the very ashes of the dead, — He must have all,...all!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 280