“Ah! here you are!” he said, speaking English with a slight foreign accent, which was more agreeable to the ear than otherwise. “But, my excellent boy, what magnificence! A Medici costume! Never say to me that you are not vain; you are as conscious of your good looks as any pretty woman. Behold me, how simple and unobtrusive I am!”
He laughed, and Murray sprang up from the chair where he had been despondently reclining.
“Oh, come, I like that!” he exclaimed. “Simple and unobtrusive! Why everybody is staring at you now as if you had dropped from the moon! You cannot be Armand Gervase and simple and unobtrusive at the same time!”
“Why not?” demanded Gervase, lightly. “Fame is capricious, and her trumpet is not loud enough to be heard all over the world at once. The venerable proprietor of the dirty bazaar where I managed to purchase these charming articles of Bedouin costume had never heard of me in his life. Miserable man! He does not know what he has missed!”
Here his flashing black eyes lit suddenly on Dr. Dean, who was “studying” him in the same sort of pertinacious way in which that learned little man studied everything.
“A friend of yours, Denzil?” he inquired.
“Yes,” responded Murray readily; “a very great friend — Dr. Maxwell Dean. Dr. Dean, let me introduce to you Armand Gervase; I need not explain him further!”
“You need not, indeed!” said the doctor, with a ceremonious bow. “The name is one of universal celebrity.”
“It is not always an advantage — this universal celebrity,” replied
Gervase. “Nor is it true that any celebrity is actually universal.
Perhaps the only living person that is universally known, by name at
least, is Zola. Mankind are at one in their appreciation of vice.”
“I cannot altogether agree with you there,” said Dr. Dean slowly, keeping his gaze fixed on the artist’s bold, proud features with singular curiosity. “The French Academy, I presume, are individually as appreciative of human weaknesses as most men; but taken collectively, some spirit higher and stronger than their own keeps them unanimous in their rejection of the notorious Realist who sacrifices all the canons of art and beauty to the discussion of topics unmentionable in decent society.”
Gervase laughed idly.
“Oh, he will get in some day, you may be sure,” he answered. “There is no spirit higher and stronger than the spirit of naturalism in man; and in time, when a few prejudices have died away and mawkish sentiment has been worn threadbare, Zola will be enrolled as the first of the French Academicians, with even more honors than if he had succeeded in the beginning. That is the way of all those ‘select’ bodies. As Napoleon said, ‘Le monde vient a celui qui sait attendre.’”
The little Doctor’s countenance now showed the most lively and eager interest.
“You quite believe that, Monsieur Gervase? You are entirely sure of what you said just now?”
“What did I say? I forget!” smiled Gervase, lighting a cigarette and beginning to smoke it leisurely.
“You said, ‘There is no spirit higher or stronger than the spirit of naturalism in man.’ Are you positive on this point?”
“Why, of course! Most entirely positive!” And the great painter looked amused as he gave the reply. “Naturalism is Nature, or the things appertaining to Nature, and there is nothing higher or stronger than Nature everywhere and anywhere.”
“How about God?” inquired Dr. Dean with a curious air, as if he were propounding a remarkable conundrum.
“God!” Gervase laughed loudly. “Pardon! Are you a clergyman?”
“By no means!” and the Doctor gave a little bow and deprecating smile. “I am not in any way connected with the Church. I am a doctor of laws and literature, — a humble student of philosophy and science generally…”
“Philosophy! Science!” interrupted Gervase. “And you ask about God!
Parbleu! Science and philosophy have progressed beyond Him!”
“Exactly!” and Dr. Dean rubbed his hands together pleasantly. “That is your opinion? Yes, I thought so! Science and philosophy, to put it comprehensively, have beaten poor God on His own ground! Ha! ha! ha! Very good — very good! And humorous as well! Ha! ha!”
And a very droll appearance just then had this “humble student of philosophy and science generally,” for he bent himself to and fro with laughter, and his small eyes almost disappeared behind his shelving brows in the excess of his mirth. And two crosslines formed themselves near his thin mouth — such lines as are carven on the ancient Greek masks which indicate satire.
Denzil Murray flushed uncomfortably.
“Gervase doesn’t believe in anything but Art,” he said, as though half apologizing for his friend: “Art is the sole object of his existence; I don’t believe he ever has time to think about anything else.”
“Of what else should I think, mon ami?” exclaimed Gervase mirthfully. “Of life? It is all Art to me; and by Art I mean the idealization and transfiguration of Nature.”
“Oh. if you do that sort of thing you are a romancist,” interposed Dr. Dean emphatically. “Nature neither idealizes nor transfigures itself; it is simply Nature and no more. Matter uncontrolled by Spirit is anything but ideal.”
“Precisely,” answered Gervase quickly and with some warmth; “but my spirit idealizes it, — my imagination sees beyond it, — my soul grasps it.”
“Oh, you have a soul?” exclaimed Dr. Dean, beginning to laugh again.
“Now, how did you find that out?”
Gervase looked at him in a sudden surprise.
“Every man has an inward self, naturally,” he said. “We call it ‘soul’ as a figure of speech; it is really temperament merely.”
“Oh, it is merely temperament? Then you don’t think it is likely to outlive you, this soul — to take new phases upon itself and go on existing, an immortal being, when your body is in a far worse condition (because less carefully preserved) than an Egyptian mummy?”
“Certainly not!” and Gervase flung away the end of his finished cigarette. “The immortality of the soul is quite an exploded theory. It was always a ridiculous one. We have quite enough to vex us in our present life, and why men ever set about inventing another is more than I am able to understand. It was a most foolish and barbaric superstition.”
The gay sound of music now floated towards them from the ball-room, — the strains of a graceful, joyous, half-commanding, half-pleading waltz came rhythmically beating on the air like the measured movement of wings, — and Denzil Murray, beginning to grow restless, walked to and fro, his eyes watching every figure that crossed and re-crossed the hall. But Dr. Dean’s interest in Armand Gervase remained intense and unabated; and approaching him, he laid two lean fingers delicately on the white folds of the Bedouin dress just where the heart of the man was hidden.
“‘A foolish and barbaric superstition!’” he echoed slowly and meditatively. “You do not believe in any possibility of there being a life — or several lives — after this present death through which we must all pass inevitably, sooner or later?”
“Not in the least! I leave such ideas to the ignorant and uneducated. I should be unworthy of the progressive teachings of my time if I believed such arrant nonsense.”
“Death, you consider, finishes all? There is nothing further — no mysteries beyond? …” and Dr. Dean’s eyes glittered as he stretched forth one thin, slight hand and pointed into space with the word “beyond,” an action which gave it a curious emphasis, and for a fleeting second left a weird impression on even the careless mind of Gervase. But he laughed it off lightly.
“Nothing beyond? Of course not! My dear sir, why ask such a question? Nothing can be plainer or more positive than the fact that death, as you say, finishes all.”
A woman’s laugh, low and exquisitely musical, rippled on the air as he spoke — delicious laughter, rarer than song; for women as a rule laugh too loudly, and the sound of their merriment partakes more of
the nature of a goose’s cackle than any other sort of natural melody. But this large, soft and silvery, was like a delicately subdued cadence played on a magic flute in the distance, and suggested nothing but sweetness; and at the sound of it Gervase started violently and turned sharply round upon his friend Murray with a look of wonderment and perplexity.
“Who is that?” he demanded. “I have heard that pretty laugh before; it must be some one I know.”
But Denzil scarcely heard him. Pale, and with eyes full of yearning and passion, he was watching the slow approach of a group of people in fancy dress, who were all eagerly pressing round one central figure — the figure of a woman clad in gleaming golden tissues and veiled in the old Egyptian fashion up to the eyes, with jewels flashing about her waist, bosom and hair, — a woman who moved glidingly as if she floated rather than walked, and whose beauty, half hidden as it was by the exigencies of the costume she had chosen, was so unusual and brilliant that it seemed to create an atmosphere of bewilderment and rapture around her as she came. She was preceded by a small Nubian boy in a costume of vivid scarlet, who, walking backwards humbly, fanned her slowly with a tall fan of peacock’s plumes made after the quaint designs of ancient Egypt. The lustre radiating from the peacock’s feathers, the light of her golden garments, her jewels and the marvellous black splendor of her eyes, all flashed for a moment like sudden lightning on Gervase; something — he knew not what — turned him giddy and blind; hardly knowing what he did, he sprang eagerly forward, when all at once he felt the lean, small hand of Dr. Dean on his arm and stopped short embarrassed.
“Pardon me!” said the little savant, with a delicate, half-supercilious lifting of his eyebrows. “But — do you know the Princess Ziska?”
CHAPTER II.
Gervase stared at him, still dazzled and confused.
“Whom did you say? … the Princess Ziska? … No, I don’t know her … Yet, stay! Yes, I think I have seen her … somewhere, — in Paris, possibly. Will you introduce me?”
“I leave that duty to Mr. Denzil Murray,” said the Doctor, folding his arms neatly behind his back … “He knows her better than I do.”
And smiling his little grim, cynical smile, he settled his academic cap more firmly on his head and strolled off towards the ballroom. Gervase stood irresolute, his eyes fixed on that wondrous golden figure that floated before his eyes like an aerial vision. Denzil Murray had gone forward to meet the Princess and was now talking to her, his handsome face radiating with the admiration he made no attempt to conceal. After a little pause Gervase moved towards him a step or two, and caught part of the conversation.
“You look the very beau-ideal of an Egyptian Princess,” Murray was saying. “Your costume is perfect.”
She laughed. Again that sweet, rare laughter! Gervase thrilled with the pulsation of it, — it beat in his ears and smote his brain with a strange echo of familiarity.
“Is it not?” she responded. “I am ‘historically correct,’ as your friend Dr. Dean would say. My ornaments are genuine, — they all came out of the same tomb.”
“I find one fault with your attire, Princess,” said one of the male admirers who had entered with her; “part of your face is veiled. That is a cruelty to us all!”
She waived the compliment aside with a light gesture.
“It was the fashion in ancient Egypt,” she said. “Love in those old days was not what it is now, — one glance, one smile was sufficient to set the soul on fire and draw another soul towards it to consume together in the suddenly kindled flame! And women veiled their faces in youth, lest they should be deemed too prodigal of their charms; and in age they covered themselves still more closely, in order not to affront the Sun-God’s fairness by their wrinkles.” She smiled, a dazzling smile that drew Gervase yet a few steps closer unconsciously, as though he were being magnetized. “But I am not bound to keep the veil always up,” and as she spoke she loosened it and let it fall, showing an exquisite face, fair as a lily, and of such perfect loveliness that the men who were gathered round her seemed to lose breath and speech at sight of it. “That pleases you better, Mr. Murray?”
Denzil grew very pale. Bending down he murmured something to her in a low tone. She raised her lovely brows with a little touch of surprise that was half disdain, and looked at him straightly.
“You say very pretty things; but they do not always please me,” she observed. “However, that is my fault, no doubt.”
And she began to move onwards, her Nubian page preceding her as before.
Gervase stood in her path and confronted her as she came.
“Introduce me,” he said in a commanding tone to Denzil.
Denzil looked at him, somewhat startled by the suppressed passion in his voice.
“Certainly. Princess, permit me!” She paused, a figure of silent grace and attention. “Allow me to present to you my friend, Armand Gervase, the most famous artist in France — Gervase, the Princess Ziska.”
She raised her deep, dark eyes and fixed them on his face, and as he looked boldly at her in a kind of audacious admiration, he felt again that strange dizzying shock which had before thrilled him through and through. There was something strangely familiar about her; the faint odors that seemed exhaled from her garments, — the gleam of the jewel-winged scarabei on her breast, — the weird light of the emerald-studded serpent in her hair; and more, much more familiar than these trifles, was the sound of her voice — dulcet, penetrating, grave and haunting in its tone.
“At last we meet, Monsieur Armand Gervase!” she said slowly and with a graceful inclination of her head. “But I cannot look upon you as a stranger, for I have known you so long — in spirit!”
She smiled — a strange smile, dazzling yet enigmatical — and something wild and voluptuous seemed to stir in Gervase’s pulses as he touched the small hand, loaded with quaint Egyptian gems, which she graciously extended towards him.
“I think I have known you, too!” he said. “Possibly in a dream, — a dream of beauty never realized till now!”
His voice sank to an amorous whisper; but she said nothing in reply, nor could her looks be construed into any expression of either pleasure or offence. Yet through the heart of young Denzil Murray went a sudden pang of jealousy, and for the first time in his life he became conscious that even among men as well as women there may exist what is called the “petty envy” of a possible rival, and the uneasy desire to outshine such an one in all points of appearance, dress and manner. His gaze rested broodingly on the tall, muscular form of Gervase, and he noted the symmetry and supple grace of the man with an irritation of which he was ashamed. He knew, despite his own undeniably handsome personality, which was set off to such advantage that night by the richness of the Florentine costume he had adopted, that there was a certain fascination about Gervase which was inborn, a trick of manner which made him seem picturesque at all times; and that even when the great French artist had stayed with him in Scotland and got himself up for the occasion in more or less baggy tweeds, people were fond of remarking that the only man who ever succeeded in making tweeds look artistic was Armand Gervase. And in the white Bedouin garb he now wore he was seen at his best; a certain restless passion betrayed in eyes and lips made him look the savage part he had “dressed” for, and as he bent his head over the Princess Ziska’s hand and kissed it with an odd mingling of flippancy and reverence, Denzil suddenly began to think how curiously alike they were, these two! Strong man and fair woman, both had many physical points in common, — the same dark, level brows, — the same half wild, half tender eyes, — the same sinuous grace of form, — the same peculiar lightness of movement, — and yet both were different, while resembling each other. It was not what is called a “family likeness” which existed between them; it was the cast of countenance or “type” that exists between races or tribes, and had young Murray not known his friend Gervase to be a French Provencal and equally understood the Princess Ziska to be of Russian origin, he would have declared
them both, natives of Egypt, of the purest caste and highest breeding. He was so struck by this idea that he might have spoken his thought aloud had he not heard Gervase boldly arranging dance after dance with the Princess, and apparently preparing to write no name but hers down the entire length of his ball programme, — a piece of audacity which had the effect of rousing Denzil to assert his own rights.
“You promised me the first waltz, Princess,” he said, his face flushing as he spoke.
“Quite true! And you shall have it,” she replied, smiling. “Monsieur Gervase will have the second. The music sounds very inviting; shall we not go in?”
“We spoil the effect of your entree crowding about you like this,” said Denzil, glancing somewhat sullenly at Gervase and the other men surrounding her; “and, by the way, you have never told us what character you represent to-night; some great queen of old time, no doubt?”
“No, I lay no claim to sovereignty,” she answered; “I am for to-night the living picture of a once famous and very improper person who bore half my name, a dancer of old time, known as ‘Ziska-Charmazel,’ the favorite of the harem of a great Egyptian warrior, described in forgotten histories as ‘The Mighty Araxes.’”
She paused; her admirers, fascinated by the sound of her voice, were all silent. She fixed her eyes upon Gervase; and addressing him only, continued:
“Yes, I am ‘Charmazel,’” she said. “She was, as I tell you, an ‘improper’ person, or would be so considered by the good English people. Because, you know, she was never married to Araxes!”
This explanation, given with the demurest naivete, caused a laugh among her listeners.
“That wouldn’t make her ‘improper’ in France,” said Gervase gayly. “She would only seem more interesting.”
“Ah! Then modern France is like old Egypt?” she queried, still smiling. “And Frenchmen can be found perhaps who are like Araxes in the number of their loves and infidelities?”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 413