By the way, did you arrange about your luggage as I told you?”
Diana nodded a cheerful assent.
“Here’s the number,” she said. “And if you are going to send for it, would you do so quite soon? I want to change my dress for dinner.”
Dimitrius laughed as he took the number from her hand.
“Of course you do!” he said. “Even ‘a woman of mature years’ is never above locking her best! Armed with this precious slip of paper, I will send for your belongings at once — —”
“It’s only a portmanteau,” put in Diana, meekly. “Not a Saratoga trunk.”
He gave her an amused look.
“Didn’t you bring any Paris ‘confections?’”
“I didn’t wait in Paris,” she replied. “I came straight on.”
“A long journey!” said Madame Dimitrius.
“Yes. But I was anxious to get here as soon as I could.”
“In haste to rush upon destiny!” observed Dimitrius, rising from the tea-table. “Well! Perhaps it is better than waiting for destiny to rush upon you! I will send for your luggage — it will be here in half an hour. Meanwhile, when you have quite finished your tea, will you join me in the laboratory?”
He left the room. Madame -Dimitrius laid down her knitting needles and looked wistfully at Diana.
“I hope you will not be afraid of my son,” she said, “or offended at anything he may say. His brain is always working — always seeking to penetrate some new mystery, — and sometimes — from sheer physical fatigue — he may seem brusque, — but his nature is noble—”
She paused, with a slight trembling of the lip and sudden moisture in her kind blue eyes.
Impulsively, Diana took her thin delicate old hand and kissed it.
“Please don’t worry!” she said. “I am not easily offended, and I certainly shall not be afraid! I like your son very much, and I think we shall get on splendidly together — I do, indeed! I’m simply burning with impatience to be at work for him! Be quite satisfied that I shall do my best! I’m off to the laboratory now.”
She went with a swift, eager step, and on reaching the outer hall was unexpectedly confronted by the dumb negro who had at first admitted her to the Château. He made her a sign to follow him, and she obeyed. Down a long winding, rather dark passage they went till their further progress was stopped by a huge door made of some iridescent metal which glowed as with interior fire. It was so enormously thick, and wide and lofty, and clamped with such weighty bars and mysteriously designed fastenings, that it might have been the door imagined by Dante when he wrote: “All hope abandon ye who enter here.” Diana felt her heart beating a little more quickly, but she kept a good grip on her nerves, and looked questioningly at her guide. His dark face gave no sign in response; he merely laid one hand on the centre panel of the door with a light pressure.
“Come in!” said the voice of Dimitrius. “Don’t hesitate!’
At that moment the whole door lifted itself as it were from a deep socket in the ground and swung upwards like the portcullis of an ancient bridge, only without any noise, disclosing a vast circular space covered in by a dome of glass, or some substance clearer than glass, through which the afternoon glory of the September sunshine blazed with an almost blinding intensity. Immediately under the dome, and in the exact centre of the floor, was a wonderful looking piece of mechanism a great wheel which swept round and round incessantly and rapidly, casting from its rim millions and millions of sparks of light or fire.
“Come in!” again called Dimitrius. “Why do you stand waiting there?”
Diana looked back for a second, — the great metal door had closed behind her, — the negro attendant had disappeared, — she was shut within this great weird chamber with Dimitrius and, that whirling Wheel! A sudden giddiness overcame her — she stretched out her hands blindly for support — they were instantly caught in a firm, kind grasp.
“Keep steady! That’s right!” This, as she rallied her forces and tried to look up. “It’s not easy to watch any sort of Spherical Motion without wanting to go with it among ‘the dancing stars!’ There! Better?”
“Indeed, yes! I’m so sorry and ashamed!” she said. “Such a stupid weakness! But I have never seen anything like it—”
“No, I’m sure you have not!” And Dimitrius released her hands and stood beside her. “To give you greater relief, I would stop the Wheel if I could — but I cannot!”
“You cannot?”
“No. Not till the daylight goes. Then it will gradually cease revolving of itself. It is only a very inadequate man-made exposition of one of the Divine mysteries of creation, — the force of Light which generates Motion, and from Motion, Life. Moses touched the central pivot of truth in his Book of Genesis when he wrote t ‘The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.... And God said, Let there be Light. And there was Light.’ From that ‘Light,’ the effulgence of God’s own Actual Presence and Intelligence, came the Movement which dispelled ‘darkness.’ Movement, once begun, shaped all that which before was ‘without form’ and filled all that had been ‘void.’ Light is the positive exhalation and pulsation of the Divine Existence — the Active Personality of an Eternal God Light, which enters the soul and builds the body of every living organism, — therefore Light is Life.”
CHAPTER IX
DIANA listened to the quiet, emphatic tones of his voice in fascinated attention.
“Light is Life,” he repeated, slowly. “Light — and the twin portion of Light, — Fire. The Rosicrucians have come nearer than any other religious sect in the world to the comprehension of things divine. Darkness is Chaos, — not death, for there is no death — but confusion, bewilderment and blindness which gropes for a glory instinctively felt but unseen. In these latter days, science has discovered the beginning of the wonders of Light, — they have always existed, but we have not found them, ‘loving darkness rather than light.’ I say the beginning of wonders,’ for with all our advancement we have only become dimly conscious of the first vibration of the Creator’s living presence. Light! — which is ‘God walking in His garden,’ — which is colour, sound, heat, movement — all the Divine Power in eternal radiation and luminance! — this is Life; — and in this we live, — in this we may live, and renew our lives, — ay, and in this we may retain youth beyond age! If we only have courage! — courage and the will to learn!”
His brilliant dark eyes turned upon her with a searching steadfastness, and her heart beat quickly, for there was something in his look which suggested that it was from her he expected “courage and the will to learn.” But she made no comment. Suddenly, and with an abrupt movement, he pulled with both hands at a lever apparently made of steel, — like one of the handles in a signal-box, — and with his action the level floor beneath the great revolving wheel yawned asunder, showing a round pool of water, black as ink and seemingly very deep. Diana recoiled from it, startled. Dimitrius smiled.
“Suppose I asked you to jump in?” he said.
She thought a moment.
“Well, — I should want to take off my dress first,” she answered. “It’s a new one.”
He laughed.
“And then?”
“Then? — Why, then I shouldn’t mind!” she said. “I can swim.”
“You would not be afraid?”
She met his eyes bravely.
“No — I should not be afraid!”
“Upon my word, I believe you! You’re a plucky woman! But then you’ve nothing to lose by your daring, having lost all — so you told me. What do you mean by having lost all?”
“I mean just what I say,” she replied quietly, “Father, mother, home, lover, youth, beauty and hope! Isn’t that enough to lose?”
And, as she spoke, she gazed almost unseeingly at the wonderful Wheel as it whirled round and round, glittering with a thousand colours which were reflected in the dark mirror of the water below it. The sun was sinking, and the light
through the over-arching glass dome was softer, and with each minute became more subdued, — and she noted with keen interest that the revolution of the wheel was less rapid and dizzying to the eye.
“Enough to lose — yes!” said Dimitrius. “But the loss is quite common. Most of us, as we get on in life, lose father and mother, home, and even lover! — but that we should lose youth, beauty and hope is quite our own affair! We ought to know better!”
She looked at him in surprise. —
“How should we know better?” she asked. “Age must come, — and with age the wrinkling and spoiling of all beautiful faces, to say nothing of the aches and pains and ailments common to a general break-up of the body-cells. We cannot defy the law of Nature.”
“That is precisely what we are always doing!” said Dimitrius.” And that is why we make such trouble for ourselves. We not only defy the law of Nature in a bodily sense by over-eating, over-drinking and over-breeding, but we ignore it altogether in a spiritual sense. We forget, — and wilfully forget, that the body is only the outward manifestation of a Soul-creature, not the Soul-creature itself. So we starve the Light and feed the Shadow, and then foolishly wonder that with the perishing Light, the Shadow is absorbed in darkness.”
He pulled at the steel lever again, and the mysterious pool of water became swiftly and noiselessly covered as part of the apparently solid ground.
“One more thing before we go,” he resumed, and, taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked a tiny door no bigger than the door of a child’s doll’s house. ‘Come and see!”
Diana obeyed, and bending down to peer into the small aperture disclosed, saw therein a tube or pipe no thicker than a straw, from which fell slowly drop by drop a glittering liquid into a hollow globe of crystal. So brilliant and fiery was the colour of this fluid, that it might have been an essence of the very sunlight. She looked at Dimitrius in silent inquiry. He said nothing — and presently she ventured to ask in a half whisper:
“What is it?”
His expression, as he turned and faced her, was so rapt and transfigured as to be quite extraordinary., “It is life, — or it is death!” he answered. “It is my Great Experiment of which you will be the practical test! Ah, now you look amazed indeed! — your eyes are almost young in wonder! — and yet I see no fear! That is well! Now think and understand! All this mechanism, — which is far more complex than you can imagine, — this dome of crystal above us, — this revolving wheel moved by Light alone, — the deep water beneath us through which the condensed and vibrating Light rushes with electric speed, — these million whirling atoms of fire, — all this, I say, is merely — remember! — merely to produce these miniature drops, smaller by many degrees than a drop of dew, and so slowly are they distilled, that it has taken me ten years to draw from these restless and opposing elements a sufficient quantity for my great purpose. Ten years! — and after all, who knows? All my thought and labour may be wasted! — I may have taken the wrong road!
The fiery sword turns every way, and even now I may fail!”
His face darkened, — the hope and radiance died out of it and left it grey and drawn — almost old. Diana laid her hand on his arm with a soft, consoling touch.
“Why should you fail?” she asked, gently. “You yourself know the object of your quest and the problem you seek to solve, — and I am sure you have missed no point that could avail to lead you in the right direction. And if, as I now imagine, you need a human life to risk itself in the ultimate triumph of your work, you have mine entirely at your service. As I have told you several times already, I am not afraid!”
He took the hand that lay upon his arm and kissed it with grave courtesy.
“I thank you!” he said. “I feel that you are perfectly sincere — and honesty always breeds courage. Understand, my mother has never seen this workshop of mine — she would be terrified. The dome was built for me by my French architect, ostensibly for astronomical purposes — the rest of the mechanism, bit by bit, was sent to me from different parts of the world and I put it up myself assisted only by Vasho, my negro servant, who is dumb. So my secret is, as far as possible, well kept.”
“I shall not betray it,” said Diana, simply.
He smiled.
“I know you will not,” he answered.
With almost a miser’s care he locked the tiny door which concealed the mystery of the fiery-golden liquid dropping so slowly, almost reluctantly, into its crystal receptacle. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and shadows began to creep over the clearness of the dome above them, while the great Wheel turned at a slower pace — and ever more slowly as the light grew dim.
“We will go now,” he said. “One or two ordinary people are coming to dine — and your luggage will have arrived. I want you to live happily here, and healthfully — your health is a most important consideration with me.
You look thin and delicate—”
“I am thin — to positive scragginess,” interrupted Diana, “but I am not delicate.”
“Well, that may be; but you must keep strong. You will need all your strength in the days to come.”
They were at the closed door of the laboratory, which by some unseen contrivance, evidently controlled by the pressure of the hand against a particular panel, swung upwards in the same way as it had done before, and when they passed out, slid downwards again behind them. They were in the corridor now, dimly lit by one electric lamp.
“You are not intimidated by anything I have shown you?” said Dimitrius, then. “After all, you are a woman and entitled to ‘nerves!’”
“Quite so, — nerves properly organized and well under control,” answered Diana, quietly. “I am full of wonder at what I have seen, but I am not intimidated.”
“Good!” And a sudden smile lit up his face, giving it a wonderful charm. “Now run away and dress for dinner! And don’t puzzle yourself by thinking about anything for the present. If you must think, wait till you are alone with night and the stars!”
He left her, and she went upstairs at once to her own rooms. Here repose and beauty were expressed in all her surroundings and she looked about her with a sigh of comfort and appreciation. Some careful hand had set vases of exquisitely arranged flowers here and there, — and the scent of roses, carnations and autumn violets made the already sweet air sweeter. She found her modest luggage in her bedroom, and set to work unpacking and arranging her clothes.
“He’s quite right, — I mustn’t think!” she said to herself. “It would never do! That wheel grinding out golden fire! — that mysterious pool of water in which one might easily be drowned and never heard of any more! —— and those precious drops, locked up in a tiny hole! — what can all these things mean? There! — I’m thinking and I mustn’t think! But — is he mad, I wonder? Surely not! No madman ever put up such a piece of mechanism as that wheel! I’m thinking again! — I mustn’t think! — T mustn’t think!”
She soon had all her garments unpacked, shaken out, and arranged in their different places — and, after some cogitation, decided to wear for the evening one of the Parisian “rest” or “tea “gowns her friend Sophy Lansing had chosen for her, — a marvellous admixture of palest rose and lilac hues, with a touch or two of pearl glimmerings among lace like moonlight on foam. She took some pains to dress her pretty hair becomingly, twisting it up high on her small, well-shaped head, and when her attire was complete she surveyed herself in the long mirror with somewhat less dissatisfaction than she was accustomed to do.
“Not so bad!” she inwardly commented, approving the picturesque fall and flow of the rose and lilac silk and chiffon which clung softly round her slim figure. “You are not entirely repulsive yet, Diana! — not yet! But you will be! — never fear! Just wait a little! — wait till your cheeks sink in a couple of bony hollows and your throat looks like the just-wrung neck of a scrawny fowl!” Here she laughed, with a quaint amusement at the unpleasant picture she was making of herself in the future. “Yes, my dear! Not all the
clouds of rosy chiffon in the world will hide your blemishes then! — and your hair! — oh, your hair will be a sort of grizzled ginger and you’ll have to hide it! So you’d better enjoy this little interval — it won’t last long!” Suddenly at this point in her soliloquy some words uttered by Dimitrius rang back on her memory: “That we should lose youth, beauty and hope is quite our own affair. We ought to know better.” She repeated them slowly once or twice. “Strange! — a very strange thing to say!” she mused. “I wonder what he meant by it? I’m sure if it had been my ‘own affair’ to keep youth, beauty and hope, I would never have lost them! Oddly enough I seem to have got back a little scrap of one of the losses — hope! But I’m thinking again — I mustn’t think!”
She curtsied playfully to her own reflection in the mirror, and seeing by the warning “time dial” for meals that it was nearly the dinner hour, she descended to the drawing-room. Three or four people were assembled there, talking to Madame Dimitrius, who introduced Diana as “Miss May, an English friend of ours who is staying with us for the winter” — an announcement which Diana herself tacitly accepted as being no doubt what Dr. Dimitrius wished. The persons to whom she was thus presented were the Baroness Rousillon, a handsome Frenchwoman of possibly fifty-five or sixty, — her husband, the Baron, a stout, cheerful personage with a somewhat aggravating air of perpetual bonhomie, — Professor Chauvet, a very thin little old gentleman with an aquiline nose and drooping eyelids from which small, spariding dark eyes gleamed out occasionally like needle-points, and a certain Marchese Luigi Farnese, a rather sinister-looking dark young man, with a curiously watchful expression, as of one placed on guard over some hidden secret treasure. They were all exceedingly amiable, and asked Diana the usual polite questions, — whether she had had a pleasant journey from England? — was the Channel rough? — was the weather fine? — was she a good sailor? — and so on, all of which she answered pleasantly in that sweet and musical voice which always attracted and charmed her hearers, “And you come from England!” said Professor Chauvet, blinking at her through his eyelids. “Ah! it is a strange place!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 844