Chapter X: Part 10

“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 some one 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 prehistoric 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 pretends 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 again, 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 Liliputian 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 rendering 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 equalise 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’ for ever 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!”

XXIX.

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 sea-birds that wheeled in flocks round and round the tower.

“It is for all the world like the shrieks of drowning men”--he said, and shivered, thinking of the pleasantly devious ways of the Rhine and its placid flowing,--placid even in flood, as compared with the howling ocean, all madness and movement and terror. Twice during that turbulent day Karl had asked his master whether the tower “shook.”

“Of course!” answered Dr. Kremlin with a smile in his mild eyes--“Of course it shakes,--it can hardly do otherwise in such a gale. Even a cottage shakes in a fierce wind.”

“Oh yes, a cottage shakes,” said Karl meditatively--“but then if a cottage blows away altogether it doesn’t so much matter. Cottages are frequently blown away in America, so they say, with all the family sitting inside. That’s not a bad way of travelling. But when a tower flies through the air it seldom carries the family with it except in bits.”

Kremlin laughed, but did not pursue the conversation, and Karl went about his duties in a gloomy humour, not common to his cheerful temperament. He really had enough to put him out, all things considered. Soot fell down the kitchen chimney--a huge brick also landed itself with a crash in the fender,--there were crevices in the doors and windows through which the wind played wailing sounds like a “coronach” on the bagpipes;--and then, when he went out into the courtyard to empty the pail of soot he had taken from the grate, he came suddenly face to face with an ugly bird, whose repulsive aspect quite transfixed him for the moment and held him motionless, staring at it. It was a cormorant, and it stood huddled on the pavement, blinking its disagreeable eyes at Karl,--its floppy wings were drenched with the rain, and all over the yard was the wet trail of its feathers and feet.

“Shoo!” cried Karl, waving his arms and the pail of soot all together--“Shoo! Beast!”

But the cormorant appeared not to mind--it merely set about preening its dirty wing.

Karl grew savage, and, running back to the kitchen, brought shovel, tongs and a broom, all of which implements he flung in turn at the horrid-looking creature, which, finally startled, rose in air uttering dismal cries as it circled higher and higher, the while Karl watched its flight,--higher and higher it soared, till at last he ran out of the courtyard to see where it went. Round and round the house it flew, seeming to be literally tossed to and fro by the wind, its unpleasant shriek still echoing distinctly above the deep boom of the sea, till suddenly it made a short sweep downwards, and sat on the top of the tower like a squat black phantom of the storm.

“Nasty brute!” said Karl, shaking his clenched fist at it--“If the Herr Doctor were like any other man, which he is not, he would have a gun in the house, and I’d shoot that vile screamer. Now it will sit cackling and yelling there all day and all night perhaps. Pleasant, certainly!”

And he went indoors, grumbling more than ever. Everything seemed to go wrong that day,--the fire wouldn’t burn,--the kettle wouldn’t boil,--and he felt inwardly vexed that his master was not as morose and irritable as himself. But, as it happened, Dr. Kremlin was in a singularly sweet and placid frame of mind,--the noise of the gale seemed to soothe rather than agitate his nerves. For one thing, he was much better in health, and looked years younger than when El-Râmi visited him, bringing the golden flask whose contents were guaranteed to give him a new lease of life. So far indeed the elixir had done its work,--and to all appearances he might have been a well-preserved man of about fifty, rather than what he actually was, close upon his seventy-fourth year. As he could take no particularly interesting or useful observations from his Disc during the progress of the tempest, he amused himself with the task of perfecting one or two of his “Light-Maps” as he called them, and he kept at this work with the greatest assiduity and devotion all the morning. These maps were wonderfully interesting, if only for the extreme beauty, intricacy and regularity of the patterns,--one set of “vibrations” as copied from the reflections on the Disc formed the exact shape of a branch of coral,--another gave the delicate outline of a frond of fern. All the lines ran in waves,--none of them were straight. Most of them were in small ripples,--others were larger--some again curved broadly, and turned round in a double twist, forming the figure 8 at long intervals of distance, but all resolved themselves into a definite pattern of some sort.

“Pictures in the sky!” he mused, as he patiently measured and re-touched the lines. “And all different!--not two of them alike! What do they all mean?--for they must mean something. Nothing--not the lowest atom that exists is without a meaning and a purpose. Shall I ever discover the solution to the Light-mystery, or is it so much God’s secret that it will never become Man’s?”

So he wondered, puzzling himself, with a good deal of pleasure in the puzzle. He was happy in his work, despite its strange and difficult character,--El-Râmi’s elixir had so calmed and equalised his physical temperament that he was no longer conscious of worry or perplexity. Satisfied that he had years of life before him in which to work, he was content to let things take their course, and he laboured on in the spirit that all labour claims, “without haste, without rest.” Feverish hurry in work,--eagerness to get the rewards of it before conscientiously deserving them,--this disposition is a curse of the age we live in and the ruin of true art,--and it was this delirium of haste that had seized Kremlin when he had summoned El-Râmi to his aid. Now, haste seemed unnecessary;--there was plenty of time, and--possessed of the slight clue to the “Third Ray,”--plenty of hope as well, or so he thought.

In the afternoon the gale gradually abated, and sank to a curiously sudden dead calm. The sea still lifted toppling foam-crowned peaks to the sky, and still uttered shattering roars of indignation,--but there was a break in the clouds and a pale suggestion of sunshine. As the evening closed in, the strange dull quietness of the air deepened,--the black mists on the horizon flashed into stormy red for an instant when the sun set,--and then darkened again into an ominous greenish-gray. Karl, who was busy cooking his master’s dinner, stopped stirring some sauce he was making, to listen, as it were, to the silence,--the only sound to be heard was the long roll and swish of the sea on the beach,--and even the scream of the gulls was stilled. Spoon in hand he went out in the yard to observe the weather; all movement in the heavens seemed to have been suddenly checked, and masses of black cloud rested where they were, apparently motionless. And while he looked up at the sky he could hardly avoid taking the top of the tower also into his view;--there, to his intense disgust, still sate his enemy of the morning, the cormorant. Something that was not quite choice in the way of language escaped his lips as he saw the hateful thing;--its presence was detestable to him and filled his mind with morbid imaginations which no amount of reasoning could chase away.

“And yet what is it but a bird!” he argued with himself angrily, as he went indoors and resumed his cooking operations--“A bird of prey, fond of carrion--nothing more. Why should I bother myself about it? If I told the Herr Doctor that it was there, squatting at ease on his tower, he would very likely open the window, invite the brute in, and offer it food and shelter for the night. For he is one of those kind-hearted people who think that all the animal creation are worthy of consideration and tenderness. Well,--it may be very good and broad philosophy,--all the same, if I caught a rat sitting in my bed, I shouldn’t like it,--nor would I care to share my meals with a lively party of cockroaches. There are limits to Christian feelings. And, as for that beast of a bird outside, why, it’s better outside than in, so I’ll say nothing about it.”

And he devoted himself more intently than ever to the preparation of the dinner,--for his master had now an excellent appetite, and ate good things with appreciation and relish, a circumstance which greatly consoled Karl for many other drawbacks in the service he had undertaken. For he was a perfect cook, and proud of his art, and that night he was particularly conscious of the excellence of the little tasty dishes he had, to use an art-term, “created,” and he watched his master enjoy their flavour, with a proud, keen sense of his own consummate skill.

“When a man relishes his food it is all right with him,” he thought.--“Starving for the sake of science may be all very well, but if it kills the scientist what becomes of the science?”

And he grew quite cheerful in the contemplation of the “Herr Doctor’s” improved appetite, and by degrees almost forgot the uncanny bird that was still sitting on the topmost ledge of the tower.

Among other studious habits engendered by long solitude into which Kremlin had fallen, was the somewhat unhygienic one of reading at meals. Most frequently it was a volume of poems with which he beguiled the loneliness of his dinner, for he was one of those rare few who accept and believe in what may be called the “Prophecies” of Poesy. These are in very truth often miraculous, and it can be safely asserted that if the writers of the Bible had not been poets they would never have been prophets. A poet,--if he indeed _be_ a poet, and not a mere manufacturer of elegant verse,--always raves--raves madly, blindly, incoherently of things he does not really understand. Moreover, it is not himself that raves--but a Something within him,--some demoniac or angelic spirit that clamours its wants in wild music, which by throbbing measure and degree resolves itself, after some throes of pain on the poet’s part, into a peculiar and occasionally vague language. The poet, as man, is no more than man; but that palpitating voice in his mind gives him no rest, tears his thoughts piecemeal, rends his soul, and consumes him with feverish trouble and anxiety not his own, till he has given it some sort of speech, however mystic and strange. If it resolves itself into a statement which appals or amazes, he, the poet, cannot help it; if it enunciates a prophecy he is equally incapable of altering or refuting it. When Shakespeare wrote the three words, “Sermons in stones,” he had no idea that he was briefly expounding with perfect completeness the then to him unknown science of geology. The poet is not born of flesh alone, but of spirit--a spirit which dominates him whether he will or no, from the very first hour in which his childish eyes look inquiringly on leaves and flowers and stars--a spirit which catches him by the hands, kisses him on the lips, whispers mad nothings in his startled ears, flies restlessly round and about him, brushing his every sense with downy, warm, hurrying wings,--snatches him up altogether at times and bids him sing, write, cry out strange oracles, weep forth wild lamentations, and all this without ever condescending to explain to him the reason why. It is left to the world to discover this “Why,” and the discovery is often not made till ages after the poet’s mortal dust has been transformed to flowers in the grass which little children gather and wear unknowingly. The poet whose collected utterances Dr. Kremlin was now reading, as he sipped the one glass of light burgundy which concluded his meal, was Byron; the fiery singer whose exquisite music is pooh-poohed by the insipid critics of the immediate day, who, jealous of his easily-won and world-wide fame, grudge him the laurel, even though it spring from the grave of a hero as well as bard. The book was open at “Manfred,” and the lines on which old Kremlin’s eyes rested were these:

“How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself! But we who name ourselves its sovereigns, we Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar, with our mix’d essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride, Contending with low wants and lofty will. Till our mortality predominates, And men are,--what they name not to themselves, And trust not to each other.”

“Now that passage is every whit as fine as anything in Shakespeare,” thought Kremlin--“and the whole secret of human trouble is in it;--it is not the world that is wrong, but we--we ‘who make a conflict of its elements.’ The question is, if we are really ‘unfit to sink or soar’ is it our fault?--and may we not ask without irreverence why we were made so incomplete? Ah, my clever friend El-Râmi Zarânos has set himself a superhuman task on the subject of this ‘Why,’ and I fancy I shall find out the riddle of Mars, and many another planet besides, before he ‘proves,’ as he is trying to do, the conscious and individual existence of the soul.”

He turned over the pages of “Manfred” thoughtfully, and then stopped, his gaze riveted on the splendid lines in which the unhappy hero of the tragedy flings his last defiance to the accusing demons--

“The mind which is immortal makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts-- Is its own origin of ill and end-- And its own place and time--its innate sense, When stripped of this mortality, derives No colour from the fleeting things without, But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy, Born from the knowledge of its own desert. Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt; I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey-- But was my own destroyer, and will be My own hereafter.--Back, ye baffled fiends! The hand of death is on me,--but not yours!”

“And yet people will say that Byron was an immoral writer!” murmured Kremlin--“In spite of the tremendous lesson conveyed in those lines! There is something positively terrifying in that expression--

‘But was my own destroyer, and will be My own hereafter.’

What a black vista of possibilities----”

Here he broke off, suddenly startled by a snaky blue glare that flashed into the room like the swift sweep of a sword-blade. Springing up from the table he rubbed his dazzled eyes.

“Why--what was that?” he exclaimed.

“Lightning!” replied Karl, just entering at the moment--“and a very nasty specimen of it. ... I’d better put all the knives and steel things by.”

And he proceeded to do this, while Kremlin still stood in the centre of the room, his sight yet a little confused by the rapidity and brilliancy of that unexpected storm-flash. A long low ominous muttering of thunder, beginning far off and rolling up nearer and nearer till it boomed like a volley of cannon in unison with the roar of the sea, followed,--then came silence. No rain fell, and the wind only blew moderately enough to sway the shrubs in front of the house lightly to and fro.

“It will be a stormy night,” said Dr. Kremlin then, recovering himself and taking up his Byron--“I am sorry for the sailors! You had better see well to all the fastenings of the doors and windows.”

“Trust me!” replied Karl sententiously--“You shall not be carried out to sea against your will if I can help it--nor have I any desire to make such a voyage myself. I hope, Herr Doctor”--he added with a touch of anxiety--“you are not going to spend this evening in the tower?”

“I certainly am!” answered Kremlin, smiling--“I have work up there, and I cannot afford to be idle on account of a thunderstorm. Why do you look so scared? There is no danger.”

“I didn’t say there was”--and Karl fidgeted uneasily--“but--though I’ve never been inside it, I should think the tower was lonesome, and I should fancy there might be too close a view of the lightning to be quite pleasant.”

Kremlin looked amused, and, walking to the window, pushed back one of the curtains.

“I believe it was a false alarm,” he said, gazing at the sea--“That flash and thunder-peal were the parting notes of a storm that has taken place somewhere else. See!--the clouds are clearing.”

So in truth they were; the evening, though very dark, seemed to give promise of a calm. One or two stars twinkled faintly in a blackish-blue breadth of sky, and, perceiving these shining monitors and problems of his life’s labour, Kremlin wasted no more time in words, but abruptly left the room and ascended to his solitary studio. Karl, listening, heard the closing of the heavy door aloft and the grating of the key as it turned in the lock,--and he also heard that strange perpetual whirring noise above, which, though he had in a manner grown accustomed to it, always remained for him a perplexing mystery. Shaking his head dolefully, and with a somewhat troubled countenance, he cleared the dining-table, set the room in order, went down to his kitchen, cleaned, rubbed, and polished everything till his surroundings were as bright as it was possible for them to be, and then, pleasantly fatigued, sat down to indite a letter to his mother in the most elaborate German phraseology he could devise. He was rather proud of his “learning,” and he knew his letters home were read by nearly all the people in his native village as well as by his maternal parent, so that he was particularly careful in his efforts to impress everybody by the exceeding choiceness of his epistolary “style.” Absorbed in his task, he at first scarcely noticed the gradual rising of the wind, which, having rested for a few hours, now seemed to have awakened in redoubled strength and fury. Whistling under the kitchen door it came, with a cold and creepy chill,--it shook the windows angrily, and then, finding the door of the outside pantry open, shut it to with a tremendous bang, like an irate person worsted in an argument. Karl paused, pen in hand; and, as he did so, a dismal cry echoed round the house, the sound seeming to fall from a height and then sweep over the earth with the wind, towards the sea.

“It’s that brute of a bird!” said Karl half aloud--“Nice cheerful voice he has, to be sure!”

At that moment the kitchen was illuminated from end to end by a wide blue glare of lightning, followed, after a heavy pause, by a short loud clap of thunder. The hovering storm had at last gathered together its scattered forces, and, concentrating itself blackly above the clamorous sea, now broke forth in deadly earnest.

XXX.

Kremlin meanwhile had reached his tower in time to secure a glimpse of the clearer portion of the sky before it clouded over again. Opening the great window, he leaned out and anxiously surveyed the heavens. There was a little glitter of star-groups above his head, and immediately opposite an almost stirless heavy fleece of blackness, which he knew by its position hid from his sight the planet Mars, the brilliant world he now sought to make the chief centre of his observations. He saw that heavy clouds were slowly rolling up from the south, and he was quite prepared for a fresh outbreak of storm and rain, but he was determined to take advantage, if possible, of even a few moments of temporary calm. And with this intention he fixed his gaze watchfully on the woolly-looking dark mass of vapour that concealed the desired star from his view, having first carefully covered the steadily revolving Disc with its thick sable curtain. Never surely was there a more weird and solemn-looking place than the tower-room as it now appeared; no light in it at all save a fitful side-gleam from the whirling edge of the Disc,--all darkness and monotonous deep sound, with that patient solitary figure leaning at the sill of the wide-open window, gazing far upward at the pallid gleam of those few distant stars that truly did no more than make “darkness visible.” The aged scientist’s heart beat quickly; the weight of long years of labour and anxiety seemed to be lifted from his spirit, and it was with almost all the ardour of his young student days that he noted the gradual slow untwisting and dividing of those threads of storm-mist, that like a dark web, woven by the Fates, veiled the “red planet” whose flashing signal might prove to be the key to a thousand hitherto unexplored mysteries. It was strange that just at this particular moment of vague suspense his thoughts should go wandering in a desultory wilful fashion back to his past,--and that the history of his bygone life seemed to arrange itself, as it were, in a pattern as definite as the wavy lines on his “Light-Maps” and with just as _in_definite a meaning. He, who had lived that life, was as perplexed concerning its ultimate intention as he was concerning the ultimate meanings conveyed by the light-vibrations through air. He tried to keep his ideas centred on the scientific puzzle he was attempting to unravel,--he strove to think of every small fact that bore more or less on that one central object,--he repeated to himself the A B C of his art, concerning the vibrations of light on that first natural reflector, the human eye,--how, in receiving the impression of the colour red, for instance, the nerves of the eye are set quivering _four hundred and eighty-two millions of millions of times_; or, of the colour violet, seven hundred and seven millions of millions of times _per second_. How could he hope to catch the rapid flash of the “Third Ray” under these tremendous conditions? Would it not vanish from the very face of the Disc before he had time to track its circuit? But, though he strove to busy his brain with conjectures and calculations, he was forced, in spite of himself, to go on groping into the Past; that wonderful Past when he had been really young--young with a youth not born of El-Râmi’s secret concoctions,--but youth as it is received fresh and perfect from the hand of Divinity--the talisman which makes all the world an Eden of roses without thorns. He saw himself as he used to be, a slim student, fair-haired and blue-eyed, absorbed in science, trying strange experiments, testing new chemical combinations, ferreting out the curious mysteries of atmospheric phenomena, and then being gradually led to consider the vast amount of _apparently unnecessary_ Light _per second_, that pours upon us from every radiating object in the firmament, bearing in mind the fact that our Earth itself radiates through Space, even though its glimmer be no more than that of a spark amid many huge fires. He remembered how he had pored over the strange but incontestable fact that two rays of light starting from the same point and travelling in the same direction frequently combine to produce darkness, by that principle which is known in the science of optics as the _interference_ of the rays of light,--and how, in the midst of all this, his work had been suddenly interrupted and put a stop to by a power the stars in their courses cannot gainsay--Love. Yes--he had loved and been beloved,--this poor, gentle, dreamy man;--one winter in Russia--one winter when the snows lay deep on the wild steppes and the wolves were howling for hunger in the gloom of the forests,--he had dreamed his dream, and wakened from it--broken-hearted. She whom he loved, a beautiful girl connected with the Russian nobility, was associated, though he knew it not, with a secret society of Nihilists, and was all at once arrested with several others and accused of being party to a plot for the assassination of the Tsar. Found guilty, she was sentenced to exile in Siberia, but before the mandate could be carried out she died by her own hand, poisoned in her prison cell. Kremlin, though not “suspect,” went almost mad with grief, and fled from Russia never to set his foot on its accursëd soil again. People said that the excess of his sorrow, rage and despair had affected his brain, which was possible, as his manner and mode of living, and the peculiar grooves of study into which he fell, were undoubtedly strange and eccentric--and yet--tenderness for his dead love, self-murdered in her youth and beauty, kept him sensitively alive to human needs and human suffering,--there was no scorn or bitterness in his nature, and his faith in the unseen God was as great as El-Râmi’s doubt. But, left as he was all alone in the world, he plunged into the obscure depths of science with greater zest than ever, striving to forget the dire agony of that brief love-drama, the fatal end of which had nearly closed his own career in madness and death. And so the years drifted on and on in work that every day grew more abstruse and perplexing, till he had suddenly, as it were, found himself old,--too old, as he told himself with nervous trembling, ever to complete what he had begun. Then he had sent for El-Râmi; El-Râmi whom he had met and wondered at, during his travels in the East years ago ... and El-Râmi, at his desire, by strange yet potent skill, had actually turned back time in its too rapid flight--and a new lease of life was vouchsafed to him;--he had leisure,--long, peaceful leisure in which to carry out his problems to perfection, if to carry them out were at all possible. For had not El-Râmi said--“You cannot die, except by violence”?

And thus, like the “star-patterns,” all the fragments of his personal history came into his mind to-night as he waited at his tower-window, watching the black pavilion under which the world of Mars swung round in its fiery orbit.

“Why do I think of all these bygone things just now?” he asked himself wonderingly--“I who so seldom waste my time in looking back, my work being all for the Future?”

As he murmured the words half aloud, a rift showed itself in the cloud he was observing,--a rift which widened gradually and broke up the dark mass by swift and ever swifter degrees. Fold after fold of mist dissolved and dispersed itself along the sky, swept by the wings of the newly-arisen wind, and Mars, angrily crimson and stormily brilliant, flashed forth a lurid fire ... In less time than imagination can depict, Kremlin had noiselessly flung the black curtain back from his disc, ... and with his eyes riveted upon its gleaming pearly surface he waited ... scarcely breathing, ... every nerve in his body seeming to contract and grow rigid with expectation and something like dread. A pale light glistened on the huge disc ... it was gone! ... another flash, ... and this remained trembling in wavy lines and small revolving specks--now ... now ... the Third!--and Kremlin craned his head forward eagerly ... it came!--like a drop of human blood it fell, and raced more rapidly than quicksilver round and round the polished surface of the disc, paling in tint among the other innumerable silvery lines ... flashed again redly ... and ... disappeared! A cry of irrepressible disappointment broke from Kremlin’s lips.

“Impossible! ... my God! ... impossible!”

Ay!--impossible surely to track such velocity of motion--impossible to fix the spot where first its dazzling blood-like hue fell, and where it at last vanished. And yet Kremlin waited on in feverish expectancy,--his lips apart, his breath coming and going in quick uneasy gasps, his straining eyes fixed on that terrible, inscrutable creation of his own skill, that fearful Mirror of the heavens which reflected so much and betrayed so little! ... Heedless of the muttering roar of the wind which now suddenly assailed the tower, he stood, fascinated by the dazzling play of light that illumined the disc more brilliantly than usual. A dismal scream,--the cry of the cormorant perched on the roof above him, echoed faintly in his ears, but he scarcely heard it, so absorbed was he in his monstrous Enigma; till--all at once, a blue shaft of lightning glared in at the window, its brief reflection transforming the disc for a second to an almost overwhelming splendour of glittering colour. The strong blaze dazzled Kremlin’s eyes,--and as the answering thunder rattled through the sky he reluctantly moved from his position and went towards the window to shut it against the threatening storm. But when he reached it he saw that the planet Mars was yet distinctly visible; the lightning and thunder came from that huge bank of clouds in the south he had before noticed,--clouds which were flying rapidly up, but had not yet entirely obscured the heavens. In eager and trembling haste he hurried back to the disc,--it seemed alive with light, and glistened from point to point like a huge jewel as it whirled and hummed its strange monotonous music,--and, shading his eyes, he remained close beside it, determined to watch it still, hoping against hope that another red flash like the one he had lately seen might crimson the quivering mass of silvery intersecting lines which he knew were not so much the light-vibrations of stars now as reflexes of the electricity pent up in the tempestuous atmosphere.

“Patience ... patience!” he murmured aloud--“A moment more, and perhaps I shall see, ... I shall know ... I shall find what I have sought. ...”

The last words were yet trembling on his lips when a fearful forkëd tongue of red flame leaped from the clouds, descending obliquely like a colossal sword, ... it smote the tower, splitting its arched roof and rending its walls asunder,--and with the frightful boom and bellow of thunder that followed, echoing over land and sea for miles and miles there came another sound, ... a clanging jangle of chains and wires and ponderous metals, ... the mighty mass of the glittering Star-Dial swirled round unsteadily once ... twice ... quivered ... stopped ... and then ... slipping from its wondrous pendulum, hurled itself forward like a monster shield and fell! ... fell with an appalling crash and thud, bringing the roof down upon itself in a blinding shower of stones and dust and mortar. ... And then ... why, then nothing! Nothing but dense blackness, muttering thunder, and the roaring of the wind.

Outside, frantic with fear, Karl shook and battered at the firmly-locked and bolted door of the tower. When that forked flash of lightning had struck the house, it had stretched him senseless in his kitchen,--he had, however, recovered after a few minutes’ unconsciousness, dazed and stunned, but otherwise unhurt, and, becoming gradually alive to the immediate dangers of the situation, he had, notwithstanding the fury of the gale and the deafening peals of thunder, rushed out of doors instinctively to look at the tower. One glance showed him what had happened,--it was split asunder, and showed dimly against the stormy night like a yawning ruin round which in time the ivy might twist and cling. Breathless and mad with terror, he had rushed back to the house and up the stairs, and now stood impatiently clamouring outside the impenetrable portal whose firm interior fastenings resisted all his efforts. He called, he knocked, he kicked,--and then, exhausted with the vain attempt, stopped to listen. ... Nothing! ... not a sound! He made a hollow of his hands and put his mouth to the keyhole.

“Herr Doctor! ... Herr Doctor!”

No answer,--except the stormy whistle of the blast.

“No help for it!” he thought desperately, tears of excitement and alarm gathering in his eyes--“I must call for assistance,--rouse the neighbours and break open the door by force.”

He ran downstairs and out of the house bareheaded, to be met by a sudden sweep of rain which fell in a straight unpremeditated way from the clouds in stinging torrents. Heedless of wind and wet he sped along, making direct for some fishermen’s cottages whose inhabitants he knew and whom in a manner he was friendly with, and, having roused them up by shouts and cries, explained to them as briefly as possible what had happened. As soon as they understood the situation four stout fellows got ready to accompany him, and taking pickaxes, crowbars, boathooks, and any other such implements as were handy, they ran almost as quickly as Karl himself to the scene of the catastrophe. Their excitement was to the full as great as his, till they reached the top of the staircase and stood outside the mysterious door--there they hung back a moment hesitatingly.

“Call him again”--one whispered to Karl. “Mebbe he’s in there safe and sound and did not hear ye at fust.”

To satisfy the man’s scruples Karl obeyed, and called and called, and knocked and knocked again and yet again,--with the same result,--no answer, save the derisive yell of the gale.

“He be dead an’ gone for sure”--said a second man, with a slight pallor coming over his sea-tanned face--“Well ... well! ... if so be as we _must_ break down th’ door----”

“Here, give me one of those things”--cried Karl impatiently, and snatching a crowbar he began dealing heavy blows at the massive nail-studded oaken barrier. Seeing him so much in earnest, his companions lost the touch of superstitious dread that had made them hesitate, and also set themselves to work with a will, and in a few minutes--minutes which to the anxious Karl seemed ages,--the door was battered in, ... and they all rushed forward, ... but the fierce wind, tearing wildly around them, caught the flame of the lamp they carried and extinguished it, so that they were left in total darkness. But over their heads the split roof yawned, showing the black sky, and about their feet was a mass of fallen stones and dust and indistinguishable ruin. As quickly as possible they re-lit the lamp and, holding it aloft, looked tremblingly, and without speaking a word, at the havoc and confusion around them. At first little could be seen but heaped-up stones and bricks and mortar, but Karl’s quick eyes roving eagerly about caught sight suddenly of something black under a heap of débris,--and quickly bending down over it he began with his hands to clear away the rubbish,--the other men, seeing what he was trying to do, aided him in his task, and in about twenty minutes’ time they succeeded in uncovering a black mass, huge and inanimate.

“What is it?” whispered one of the men--“It’s ... it’s not him?”

Karl said nothing--he felt himself turning sick with dread, ... he touched that doubtful blackness--it was a thick cloth like a great pall--it concealed ... what? Recklessly he pulled and tugged at it, getting his hands lacerated by a tangled mesh of wires and metals,--till, yielding at last to a strong jerk, it came away in weighty clinging folds, disclosing what to him seemed an enormous round stone, which, as the lamp-light flashed upon it, glistened mysteriously with a thousand curious hues. Karl grasped its edge in an effort to lift it--his fingers came in contact with something moist and warm, and, snatching them away in a sort of vague horror, he saw that they were stained with blood.

“Oh my God! my God!” he cried--“He is down there,--underneath this thing! ... help me to lift it, men!--lift it for Heaven’s sake!--lift it, quick--quick!”

But, though they all dragged at it with a will, the work was not so easy--the great Disc had fallen flat, and lay solemnly inert--and that oozing blood,--the blood of the too daring student of the stars who had designed its mystic proportions,--trickled from under it with sickening rapidity. At last, breathless and weary, they were about to give up the task in despair, when Karl snatched from out the ruins the iron needle or pendulum on which the Disc had originally swung, and, all unknowing what it was, thrust it cautiously under the body of the great stone to aid in getting a firmer hold of it, ... to his amazement and terror the huge round mass caught and clung to it, like warm sealing-wax to a piece of paper, and in an instant seemed to have magically dispensed with all its weight, for as, with his unassisted strength, he lifted the pendulum, the Disc lifted itself lightly and easily with it! A cry of fear and wonder broke from all the men,--Karl himself trembled in every limb, and big drops of cold sweat broke out on his forehead at what he deemed the devilish horror of this miracle. But as he, with no more difficulty than he would have experienced in heaving up a moderate-sized log of wood, raised the Disc and flung it back and away from him shudderingly, pendulum and all, his eyes fell on _what_ had lain beneath it, ... a crushed pulp of human flesh and streaming blood--and reverend silver hairs ... and with a groan that seemed to rend his very heart Karl gave one upward sick stare at the reeling sky, and fainted, ... as unconscious for the time being as that indistinguishable mangled mass of perished mortality that once had been his master.

Gently and with compassionate kindness, the rough fishers who stood by lifted him up and bore him out of the tower and down the stairs,--and, after a whispered consultation, carried him away from the house altogether to one of their own cottages, where they put him under the care of one of their own women. None of them could sleep any more that night; they stood in a group close by their humble habitations, watching the progress of the storm, and ever and anon casting awe-stricken glances at the shattered tower.

“The devil was in it”--said one of the men at last, as he lit his pipe and endeavoured to soothe his nerves by several puffs at that smoky consoler--“or else how would it rise up like that as light as a feather at the touch of an iron pole?”

“It must ’a weighed twenty stun at least”--murmured another man meditatively.

“What _was_ it?” demanded a third--“I should ’a took it for a big grindstone if it hadn’t sparkled up so when the light fell on it.”

“Well, it may stay where it is for all I care,” said the first speaker--“I wouldn’t touch it again for a hundred pound!”

“Nor I.” “Nor I.”

They were all agreed on that point.

“Wotever he were a-doin’ on,”--said the fourth man gravely--“whether it were God’s work or the devil’s, it’s all over now. He’s done for, poor old chap! It’s an awful end--God rest his soul!”

The others lifted their caps and murmured “Amen” with simple reverence. Then they looked out at the dark wallowing trough of the sea.

“How the wind roars!” said the last speaker.