Chapter VIII: Part 8

“Madame, the message of your inner spirit, as conveyed first through the electric medium of your brain, and then through the magnetism of your touch, told me of an ‘elsewhere.’ I may not personally or positively know of any ‘elsewhere,’ than this present state of being,--but your interior Self expects an ‘elsewhere,’--apparently knows of it better than I do, and conveys that impression and knowledge to me, apart from any consideration as to whether I may be fitted to understand or receive it.”

These words were heard with evident astonishment by the little group of people who stood by, listening.

“Dear me! How _ve--ry_ curious!” murmured Lady Melthorpe.--“And we have always looked upon dear Madame Vassilius as quite a free-thinker,”--here she smiled apologetically, as Irene lifted her serious eyes and looked at her steadily--“I mean, as regards the next world and all those interesting subjects. In some of her books, for instance, she is terribly severe on the clergy.”

“Not more so than many of them deserve, I am sure,” said El-Râmi with sudden heat and asperity.--“It was not Christ’s intention, I believe, that the preachers of His Gospel should drink and hunt, and make love to their neighbours’ wives _ad libitum_, which is what a great many of them do. The lives of the clergy nowadays offer very few worthy examples to the laity.”

Lady Melthorpe coughed delicately and warningly. She did not like plain speaking,--she had a “pet clergyman” of her own,--moreover, she had been bred up in the provinces among “county” folk, some of whom still believe that at one period of the world’s history “God” was always wanting the blood of bulls and goats to smell “as a sweet savour in His nostrils.” She herself preferred to believe in the possibility of the Deity’s having “nostrils,” rather than take the trouble to consider the effect of His majestic Thought as evinced in the supremely perfect order of the planets and solar systems.

El-Râmi, however, went on regardlessly.

“Free-thinkers,” he said, “are for the most part truth-seekers. If everybody gave way to the foolish credulity attained to by the believers in the ‘Mahatmas’ for instance, what an idiotic condition the world would be in! We want free-thinkers,--as many as we can get,--to help us to distinguish between the false and the true. We want to separate the Actual from the Seeming in our lives,--and there is so much Seeming and so little Actual that the process is difficult.”

“Why, dat is nonsense!” said the Baroness von Denkwald. “Mit a Fact, zere is no mistake--you prove him. See!” and she took up a silver penholder from the table near her.--“Here is a pen,--mit ink it is used to write--zere is what you call ze Actual.”

El-Râmi smiled.

“Believe me, my dear Madame, it is only a pen so long as you elect to view it in that light. Allow me!”--and he took it from her hand, fixing his eyes upon her the while. “Will you place the tips of your fingers--the fingers of the left hand--yes--so! on my wrist? Thank you!”--this, as she obeyed with a rather vague smile on her big fat face.--“Now you will let me have the satisfaction of offering you this spray of lilies--the first of the season,” and he gravely extended the silver penholder.--“Is not the odour delicious?”

“Ach! it is heavenly!” and the Baroness smelt at the penholder with an inimitable expression of delight. Everybody began to laugh--El-Râmi silenced them by a look.

“Madame you are under some delusion,” he said quietly.--“You have no lilies in your hand, only a penholder.”

She laughed.

“You are very funny!” she said--“but I shall not be deceived. I shall wear my lilies.”

And she endeavoured to fasten the penholder in the front of her bodice,--when suddenly El-Râmi drew his hand away from hers. A startled expression passed over her face, but in a minute or two she recovered her equanimity and twirled the penholder placidly between her fingers.

“Zere is what you call ze Actual,” she said, taking up the conversation where it had previously been interrupted.--“A penholder is always a penholder--you can make nothing more of it.”

But here she was surrounded by the excited onlookers--a flood of explanations poured upon her, as to how she had taken that same penholder for a spray of lilies, and so forth, till the old lady grew quite hot and angry.

“I shall not pelieve you!” she said indignantly.--“It is impossible. You haf a joke--but I do not see it. Irene”--and she looked appealingly to Madame Vassilius, who had witnessed the whole scene--“it is not true, is it?”

“Yes, dear Baroness, it is true,” said Irene soothingly.--“But it is a nothing after all. Your eyes were deceived for the moment--and Mr. El-Râmi has shown us very cleverly, by scientific exposition, how the human sight can be deluded--he conveyed an impression of lilies to your brain, and you saw lilies accordingly. I quite understand,--it is only through the brain that we receive any sense of sight. The thing is easy of comprehension, though it seems wonderful.”

“It is devilry!” said the Baroness solemnly, getting up and shaking out her voluminous pink train with a wrathful gesture.

“No, Madame,” said El-Râmi earnestly, with a glance at her which somehow had the effect of quieting her ruffled feelings. “It is merely science. Science was looked upon as ‘devilry’ in ancient times,--but we in our generation are more liberal-minded.”

“But what shall it lead to, all zis science?” demanded the Baroness, still with some irritation.--“I see not any use in it. If one deceive ze eye so quickly, it is only to make peoples angry to find demselves such fools!”

“Ah, my dear lady, if we could all know to what extent exactly we could be fooled,--not only as regards our sight, but our other senses and passions, we should be wiser and more capable of self-government than we are. Every step that helps us to the attainment of such knowledge is worth the taking.”

“And you have taken so many of those steps,” said Irene Vassilius, “that I suppose it would be difficult to deceive _you_?”

“I am only human, Madame,” returned El-Râmi, with a faint touch of bitterness in his tone, “and therefore I am capable of being led astray by my own emotions as others are.”

“Are we not getting too analytical?” asked Lord Melthorpe cheerily. “Here is Miss Chester wanting to know where your brother Féraz is. She only caught a glimpse of him in the distance,--and she would like to make his closer acquaintance.”

“He went with Mr. Ainsworth,” began El-Râmi.

“Yes--I saw them together in the conservatory,” said Lady Melthorpe. “They were deep in conversation--but it is time they gave us a little of their company--I’ll go and fetch them here.”

She went, but almost immediately returned, followed by the two individuals in question. Féraz looked a little flushed and excited,--Roy Ainsworth calm and nonchalant as usual.

“I’ve asked your brother to come and sit to me to-morrow,” the latter said, addressing himself at once to El-Râmi. “He is quite willing to oblige me,--and I presume you have no objection?”

“Not the least in the world!” responded El-Râmi with apparent readiness, though the keen observer might have detected a slight ring of satirical coldness in his tone.

“He is a curious fellow,” continued Roy, looking at Féraz where he stood, going through the formality of an introduction to Miss Chester, whose bold bright eyes rested upon him in frank and undisguised admiration. “He seems to know nothing of life.”

“What do you call ‘life’?” demanded El-Râmi, with harsh abruptness.

“Why, life as we men live it, of course,” answered Roy, complacently.

“‘Life, as we men live it!’” echoed El-Râmi. “By Heaven, there is nothing viler under the sun than life lived so! The very beasts have a more decent and self-respecting mode of behaviour,--and the everyday existence of an ordinary ‘man about town’ is low and contemptible as compared with that of an honest-hearted dog!”

Ainsworth lifted his languid eyes with a stare of amazement;--Irene Vassilius smiled.

“I agree with you!” she said softly.

“Oh, of course!” murmured Roy sarcastically--“Madame Vassilius agrees with everything that points to, or suggests, the utter worthlessness of Man!”

Her eyes flashed.

“Believe me,” she said, with some passion, “I would give worlds to be able to honour and revere men,--and there are some whom I sincerely respect and admire,--but I frankly admit that the majority of them awaken nothing in me but the sentiment of contempt. I regret it, but I cannot help it.”

“You want men to be gods,” said Ainsworth, regarding her with an indulgent smile; “and when they can’t succeed, poor wretches, you are hard on them. You are a born goddess, and to you it comes quite naturally to occupy a throne on Mount Olympus, and gaze with placid indifference on all below,--but to others the process is difficult. For example, I am a groveller. I grovel round the base of the mountain and rather like it. A valley is warmer than a summit, always.”

A faint sea-shell pink flush crept over Irene’s cheeks, but she made no reply. She was watching Féraz, round whom a bevy of pretty women were congregated, like nineteenth-century nymphs round a new Eastern Apollo. He looked a little embarrassed, yet his very diffidence had an indefinable grace and attraction about it which was quite novel and charming to the jaded fashionable fair ones who for the moment made him their chief object of attention. They were pressing him to give them some music, and he hesitated, not out of any shyness to perform, but simply from a sense of wonder as to how such a spiritual, impersonal, and divine thing as Music could be made to assert itself in the midst of so much evident frivolity. He looked appealingly at his brother,--but El-Râmi regarded him not. He understood this mute avoidance of his eyes,--he was thrown upon himself to do exactly as he chose,--and his sense of pride stimulated him to action. Breaking from the ring of his fair admirers, he advanced towards the piano.

“I will play a simple prelude,” he said, “and, if you like it, you shall hear more.”

There was an immediate silence. Irene Vassilius moved a little apart and sat on a low divan, her hands clasped idly in her lap;--near her stood Lord Melthorpe, Roy Ainsworth, and El-Râmi;--Sir Frederick Vaughan and his _fiancée_, Idina Chester, occupied what is known as a “flirtation chair” together; several guests flocked in from the drawing-rooms, so that the _salon_ was comparatively well filled. Féraz poised his delicate and supple hands on the keyboard,--and then--why, what then? Nothing!--only music!--music divinely pure and sweet as a lark’s song,--music that spoke of things as yet undeclared in mortal language,--of the mystery of an angel’s tears--of the joy of a rose in bloom,--of the midsummer dreams of a lily enfolded within its green leaf-pavilion,--of the love-messages carried by silver beams from bridegroom-stars to bride-satellites,--of a hundred delicate and wordless marvels the music talked eloquently in rounded and mystic tone. And gradually, but invincibly, upon all those who listened, there fell the dreamy nameless spell of perfect harmony,--they did not understand, they could not grasp the far-off heavenly meanings which the sounds conveyed, but they knew and felt such music was not earthly. The quest of gold, or thirst of fame, had nothing to do with such composition--it was above and beyond all that. When the delicious melody ceased, it seemed to leave an emptiness in the air,--an aching regret in the minds of the audience; it had fallen like dew on arid soil, and there were tears in many eyes, and passionate emotions stirring many hearts, as Féraz pressed his finger-tips with a velvet-like softness on the closing chord. Then came a burst of excited applause which rather startled him from his dreams. He looked round with a faint smile of wonderment, and this time chanced to meet his brother’s gaze earnestly fixed upon him. Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and, playing a few soft notes by way of introduction, he said aloud, almost as though he were talking to himself--

“There are in the world’s history a few old legends and stories, which, whether they are related in prose or rhyme, seem to set themselves involuntarily to music. I will tell you one now, if you care to hear it,--the Story of the Priest Philemon.”

There was a murmur of delight and expectation, followed by profound silence as before.

Féraz lifted his eyes,--bright stag-like eyes, now flashing with warmth and inspiration,--and, pressing the piano pedals, he played a few slow solemn chords like the opening bars of a church chant; then, in a soft, rich, perfectly modulated voice, he began.

XXV.

“Long, long ago, in a far-away province of the Eastern world, there was once a priest named Philemon. Early and late he toiled to acquire wisdom--early and late he prayed and meditated on things divine and unattainable. To the Great Unknown his aspirations turned; with all the ardour of his soul he sought to penetrate behind the mystic veil of the supreme centre of creation; and the joys and sorrows, hopes and labours of mortal existence seemed to him but worthless and contemptible trifles when compared with the eternal marvels of the incomprehensible Hereafter, on which, in solitude, he loved to dream and ponder.”

Here Féraz paused,--and, touching the keys of the piano with a caressing lightness, played a soft minor melody, which, like a silver thread of sound, accompanied his next words.

“And so, by gradual and almost imperceptible degrees, the wise priest Philemon forgot the world;--forgot men, and women, and little children,--forgot the blueness of the skies, the verdure of the fields,--forgot the grace of daisies growing in the grass,--forgot the music of sweet birds singing in the boughs,--forgot indeed everything, except--himself!--and his prayers, and his wisdom, and his burning desire to approach more closely every hour to that wondrous goal of the Divine from whence all life doth come, and to which all life must, in due time, return.”

Here the musical accompaniment changed to a plaintive tenderness.

“But, by and by, news of the wise priest Philemon began to spread in the town near where he had his habitation,--and people spoke of his fastings and his watchings with awe and wonder, with hope and fear,--until at last there came a day when a great crowd of the sick and sorrowful and oppressed surrounded his abode, and called upon him to pray for them, and give them comfort.

“‘Bestow upon _us_ some of the Divine consolation!’ they cried, kneeling in the dust and weeping as they spoke--‘for we are weary and worn with labour,--we suffer with harsh wounds of the heart and spirit,--many of us have lost all that makes life dear. Pity us, O thou wise servant of the Supreme--and tell us out of thy stores of heavenly wisdom whether we shall ever regain the loves that we have lost!’

“Then the priest Philemon rose up in haste and wrath, and going out before them said--

“‘Depart from me, ye accursed crew of wicked worldlings! Why have ye sought me out, and what have I to do with your petty miseries? Lo, ye have brought the evils of which ye complain upon yourselves, and justice demands that ye should suffer. Ask not from me one word of pity--seek not from me any sympathy for sin. I have severed myself from ye all, to escape pollution,--my life belongs to God, not to Humanity!’

“And the people hearing him were wroth, and went their way homewards, sore at heart, and all uncomforted. And Philemon the priest, fearing lest they might seek him out again, departed from that place for ever, and made for himself a hut in the deep thickness of the forest where never a human foot was found to wander save his own. Here in the silence and deep solitude he resolved to work and pray, keeping his heart and spirit sanctified from every soiling touch of nature that could separate his thoughts from the Divine.”

Again the music changed, this time to a dulcet rippling passage of notes like the flowing of a mountain stream,--and Féraz continued,--

“One morning, as, lost in a rapture of holy meditation, he prayed his daily prayer, a small bird perched upon his window-sill, and began to sing. Not a loud song, but a sweet song--full of the utmost tenderness and playful warbling,--a song born out of the leaves and grasses and gentle winds of heaven,--as delicate a tune as ever small bird sang. The priest Philemon listened, and his mind wandered. The bird’s singing was sweet; oh, so sweet, that it recalled to him many things he had imagined long ago forgotten,--almost he heard his mother’s voice again,--and the blithe and gracious days of his early youth suggested themselves to his memory like the lovely fragments of a poem once familiar, but now scarce remembered. Presently the bird flew away, and the priest Philemon awoke as from a dream,--his prayer had been interrupted; his thoughts had been drawn down to earth from heaven, all through the twittering of a foolish feathered thing not worth a farthing! Angry with himself, he spent the day in penitence,--and on the following morning betook himself to his devotions with more than his usual ardour. Stretched on his prayer-mat he lay entranced; when suddenly a low sweet trill of sound broke gently through the silence,--the innocent twittering voice of the little bird once more aroused him,--first to a sense of wonder, then of wrath. Starting up impatiently he looked about him, and saw the bird quite close, within his reach,--it had flown inside his hut, and now hopped lightly over the floor towards him, its bright eyes full of fearless confidence, its pretty wings still quivering with the fervour of its song. Then the priest Philemon seized a heavy oaken staff, and slew it where it stood with one remorseless blow, and flung the little heap of ruffled feathers out into the woodland, saying fiercely--

“‘Thou, at least, shalt never more disturb my prayers!’

“And, even as he thus spoke, a great light shone forth suddenly, more dazzling than the brightness of the day, and lo! an Angel stood within the hut, just where the dead bird’s blood had stained the floor. And the priest Philemon fell upon his face and trembled greatly, for the Vision was more glorious than the grandest of his dreams. And a Voice called aloud, saying--

“‘Philemon, why hast thou slain My messenger?’

“And Philemon looked up in fear and wonderment, answering--

“‘Dread Lord, what messenger? I have slain nothing but a bird.’

“And the voice spake again, saying--

“‘O thou remorseless priest!--Knowest thou not that every bird in the forest is Mine,--every leaf on the trees is Mine,--every blade of grass and every flower is Mine, and is a part of Me! The song of that slain bird was sweeter than thy many prayers;--and when thou didst listen to its voice thou wert nearer Heaven than thou hast ever been! Thou hast rebelled against My law;--in rejecting Love, thou hast rejected Me,--and when thou didst turn the poor and needy from thy doors, refusing them all comfort, even so did I turn My Face from thee and refuse thy petitions. Wherefore hear now thy punishment. For the space of a thousand years thou shalt live within this forest;--no human eye shall ever find thee,--no human foot shall ever track thee--no human voice shall ever sound upon thy ears. No companions shalt thou have but birds and beasts and flowers,--from these shalt thou learn wisdom, and through thy love of these alone shalt thou make thy peace with Heaven! Pray no more,--fast no more,--for such things count but little in the eternal reckonings,--but _love_!--and learn to make thyself beloved, even by the least and lowest, and by this shalt thou penetrate at last the mystery of the Divine!’

“The voice ceased--the glory vanished, and when the priest Philemon raised his eyes he was alone.”

Here, altering by a few delicate modulations the dreamy character of the music he had been improvising, Féraz reverted again to the quaint, simple, and solemn chords with which he had opened the recitation.

“Humbled in spirit, stricken at heart, conscious of the justice of his doom, yet working as one not without hope, Philemon began his heaven-appointed task. And to this day travellers’ legends tell of a vast impenetrable solitude, a forest of giant trees, where never a human step has trod, but where, it is said, strange colonies of birds and beasts do congregate,--where rare and marvellous plants and flowers flourish in their fairest hues,--where golden bees and dazzling butterflies gather by thousands,--where all the songsters of the air make the woods musical,--where birds of passage, outward or homeward bound, rest on their way, sure of a pleasant haven,--and where all the beautiful, wild, and timid inhabitants of field, forest, and mountain are at peace together, mutually content in an Eden of their own. There is a guardian of the place,--so say the country people,--a Spirit, thin and white, and silver-haired, who understands the language of the birds, and knows the secrets of the flowers, and in whom all the creatures of the woods confide--a mystic being whose strange life has lasted nearly a thousand years. Generations have passed--cities and empires have crumbled to decay,--and none remember him who was once called Philemon,--the ‘wise’ priest, grown wise indeed at last, with the only wisdom God ever sanctifies--the Wisdom of Love.”

With a soft impressive chord the music ceased,--the story was ended,--and Féraz rose from the piano to be surrounded at once by a crowd of admirers, all vying with each other in flattering expressions of applause and delight; but, though he received these compliments with unaffected and courteous grace enough, his eyes perpetually wandered to his brother’s face,--that dark, absorbed beloved face,--yes, beloved!--for, rebel as he might against El-Râmi’s inflexible will and despotic power, Féraz knew he could never wrench from out his heart the deep affection and reverence for him which were the natural result of years of tender and sympathetic intercourse. If his brother had commanded him, he had also loved him,--there could be no doubt of that. Was he displeased or unhappy now, that he looked so sad and absorbed in gloomy and perplexed thought? A strange pained emotion stirred Féraz’s sensitive soul,--some intangible vague sense of separation seemed to have arisen between himself and El-Râmi, and he grew impatient with this brilliant assembly of well-dressed chattering folk, whose presence prevented him from giving vent to the full expression of his feelings. Lady Melthorpe talked to him in dulcet languid tones, fanning herself the while, and telling him sweetly what a “wonderful touch” he had,--what an “exquisite speaking voice”--and so forth, all which elegantly turned phrases he heard as in a dream. As soon as he could escape from her and those of her friends who were immediately round him, he made his way to El-Râmi and touched his arm.

“Let me stay beside you!” he said in a low tone in which there was a slight accent of entreaty.

El-Râmi turned, and looked at him kindly.

“Dear boy, you had better make new friends while you can, lest the old be taken from you.”

“Friends!” echoed Féraz--“Friends--_here_?” He gave a gesture more eloquent than speech, of doubt and disdain,--then continued, “Might we not go now? Is it not time to return home and sleep?”

El-Râmi smiled.

“Nay, are we not seeing life? Here we are among pretty women, well-bred men--the rooms are elegant,--and the conversation is as delightfully vague and nearly as noisy as the chattering of monkeys--yet, with all these advantages, you talk of sleep!”

Féraz laughed a little.

“Yes, I am tired,” he said. “It does not seem to me real, all this--there is something shadowy and unsubstantial about it. I think sleep is better.”

At that moment Irene Vassilius came up to them.

“I am just going,” she said, letting her soft serious eyes dwell on Féraz with interest, “but I feel I must thank you for your story of the ‘Priest Philemon.’ Is it your own idea?--or does such a legend exist?”

“Nothing is really new,” replied Féraz--“but, such as it is, it is my own invention.”

“Then you are a poet and musician at one and the same time,” said Irene. “It seems a natural combination of gifts, yet the two do not always go together. I hope”--she now addressed herself to El-Râmi--“I hope very much you will come and see me, though I’m afraid I’m not a very popular person. My friends are few, so I cannot promise you much entertainment. Indeed, as a rule, people do not like me.”

“_I_ like you!” said Féraz, quickly and impulsively.

She smiled.

“Yes? That is good of you. And I believe you, for you are too unworldly to deal in flatteries. But I assure you that, generally speaking, literary women are never social favourites.”

“Not even when they are lovely like you?” questioned Féraz, with simple frankness.

She coloured at the evident sincerity of his admiration and the boyish openness with which it was thus expressed. Then she laughed a little.

“Loveliness is not acknowledged as at all existent in literary females,” she replied lightly, yet with a touch of scorn,--“even if they do possess any personal charm, it only serves as a peg for the malicious to hang a slander on. And, of the two sexes, men are most cruel to a woman who dares to think for herself.”

“Are you sure of that, Madame?” asked El-Râmi gently. “May not this be an error of your judgment?”

“I would that it were!” she said with intense expression--“Heaven knows how sincerely I should rejoice to be proved wrong! But I am not wrong. Men always judge women as their inferiors, not only physically (which they are) but mentally (which they are not), and always deny them an independent soul and independent emotions,--the majority of men, indeed, treat them pretty much as a sort of superior cattle;--but, nevertheless, there is a something in what the French call ‘L’Éternel Féminin.’ Women are distinctly the greatest sufferers in all suffering creation,--and I have often thought that for so much pain and so much misjudgment, endured often with such heroic silence and uncomplaining fortitude, the compensation will be sweeter and more glorious than we, half drowned in our own tears, can as yet hope for, or imagine!”

She paused--her eyes were dark with thought and full of a dreamy sorrow,--then, smiling gently, she held out her hand.

“I talk too much, you will say--women always do! Come and see me if you feel disposed--not otherwise; I will send you my card through Lady Melthorpe--meantime, good-night!”

El-Râmi took her hand, and, as he pressed it in his own, felt again that curious thrill which had before communicated itself to his nerves through the same contact.

“Surely you must be a visionary, Madame!” he said, abruptly and with a vague sense of surprise--“and you see things not at all of this world!”

Her faint roseate colour deepened, giving singular beauty to her face.

“What a tell-tale hand mine is!” she replied, withdrawing it slowly from his clasp. “Yes--you are right,--if I could not see things higher than this world, I could not endure my existence for an hour. It is because I feel the future so close about me that I have courage for, and indifference to, the present.”

With that, she left them, and both El-Râmi and Féraz followed her graceful movements with interested eyes, as she glided through the rooms in her snowy trailing robes, with the frosty flash of diamonds in her hair, till she had altogether disappeared; then the languid voice of Lady Melthorpe addressed them.

“Isn’t she an odd creature, that Irene Vassilius? So quaint and peculiar in her ideas! People detest her, you know--she is so dreadfully clever!”

“There could not be a better reason for hatred!” said El-Râmi.

“You see, she says such unpleasant things,” went on Lady Melthorpe, complacently fanning herself,--“she has such decided opinions, and will not accommodate herself to people’s ways. I must confess I always find her _de trop_ myself.”

“She was your guest to-night,” said Féraz suddenly, and with such a sternness in his accent as caused her ladyship to look at him in blank surprise.

“Certainly! One must always ask a celebrity.”

“If one must always ask, then one is bound always to respect,” said Féraz coldly. “In our _code d’honneur_, we never speak ill of those who have partaken of our hospitality.”

So saying, he turned on his heel and walked away with so much haughtiness of demeanour that Lady Melthorpe stood as though rooted to the spot, staring speechlessly after him. Then rousing herself, she looked at El-Râmi and shrugged her shoulders.

“Really,” she began,--“really, Mr. El-Râmi, your brother’s manner is very strange----”

“It is,” returned El-Râmi quickly--“I admit it. His behaviour is altogether unpolished--and he is quite unaccustomed to society. I told Lord Melthorpe so,--and I was against his being invited here. He says exactly what he thinks, without fear or favour, and in this regard is really a mere barbarian. Allow me to apologise for him!”

Lady Melthorpe bowed stiffly,--she saw, or fancied she saw, a faint ironical smile playing on El-Râmi’s lips beneath his dark moustache. She was much annoyed,--the idea of a “boy,” like Féraz, presuming to talk to her, a leader of London fashion, about a _code d’honneur_! The thing was monstrous,--absurd! And as for Irene Vassilius, why should not she be talked about?--she was a public person; a writer of books which Mrs. Grundy in her church-going moods had voted as “dangerous.” Truly Lady Melthorpe considered she had just cause to be ruffled, and she began to regret having invited these “Eastern men,” as she termed them, to her house at all. El-Râmi perceived her irritation, but he made no further remark; and, as soon as he could conveniently do so, he took his formal leave of her. Quickly threading his way through the now rapidly thinning throng, he sought out Féraz, whom he found in the hall talking to Roy Ainsworth and making final arrangements for the sitting he was to give the artist next day.

“I should like to make a study of your head too,” said Roy, with a keen glance at El-Râmi as he approached--“but I suppose you have no time.”

“No time--and still less inclination!” responded El-Râmi laughingly; “for I have sworn that no ‘counterfeit presentment’ of my bodily form shall ever exist. It would always be a false picture--it would never be me, because it would only represent the perishable, whilst I am the imperishable.”

“Singular man!” said Roy Ainsworth. “What do you mean?”

“What should I mean,” replied El-Râmi quickly, “save what all your religions and churches mean, if in truth they have any meaning. Is there not something else besides this fleshly covering? If you can paint the imagined Soul of a man looking out of his eyes, you are a great artist,--but if you could paint the Soul itself, stripped of its mortal disguise, radiant, ethereal, brilliant as lightning, beautiful as dawn, you would be greater still. And the soul is the Me,--these features of mine, this Appearance, is mere covering,--we want a Portrait, not a Costume.”

“Your argument applies to your brother as well as yourself,” said Ainsworth, wondering at the eloquent wildness of this strange El-Râmi’s language, and fascinated by it in spite of himself.

“Just so! Only the earth-garment of Féraz is charming and becoming--mine is not. It is a case of ‘my hair is white but not with years’--the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ sort of thing. Good-night!”

“Good-night!” and the artist shook hands warmly with both brothers, saying to Féraz as he parted from him--“I may expect you then to-morrow? You will not fail?”

“You may rely upon me!” and Féraz nodded lightly in adieu, and followed El-Râmi out of the house into the street, where they began to walk homeward together at a rapid rate. As they went, by some mutual involuntary instinct they lifted their eyes to the dense blue heavens, where multitudes of stars were brilliantly visible. Féraz drew a long deep breath.

“There,” he said, “is the Infinite and Real,--what we have seen of life to-night is finite and unreal.”

El-Râmi made no reply.

“Do you not think so?” persisted Féraz earnestly.

“I cannot say definitely what is Real and what is Unreal,” said El-Râmi slowly--“both are so near akin. Féraz, are you aware you offended Lady Melthorpe to-night?”

“Why should she be offended? I only said just what I thought.”

“Good heavens, my dear boy, if you always go about saying just what you think, you will find the world too hot to hold you. To say the least of it, you will never be fit for society.”

“I don’t want to be fit for it,” said Féraz disdainfully, “if Lady Melthorpe’s ‘at home’ is a picture of it. I want to forget it,--the most of it, I mean. I shall remember Madame Vassilius because she is sympathetic and interesting. But for the rest!--my dearest brother, I am far happier with you.”

El-Râmi took his arm gently.

“Yet you leave me to-morrow to gratify an artist’s whim!” he said. “Have you thought of that?”

“Oh, but that is nothing--only an hour or two’s sitting. He was so very anxious that I could not refuse. Does it displease you?”

“My dear Féraz, I am displeased at nothing. You complained of my authority over you once--and I have determined you shall not complain again. Consider yourself free.”

“I do not want my liberty,” said Féraz almost petulantly.

“Try it!” responded El-Râmi with a smile and half a sigh. “Liberty is sweet,--but, like other things, it brings its own responsibilities.”

They walked on till they had almost reached their own door.

“Your story of the priest Philemon was very quaint and pretty,” said El-Râmi then abruptly. “You meant it as a sort of allegory for me, did you not?”

Féraz looked wistfully at him, but hesitated to reply.

“It does not quite fit me,” went on El-Râmi gently. “I am not impervious to love--for I love _you_. Perhaps the angels will take that fact into consideration when they are settling my thousand or million years’ punishment.”

There was a touch of quiet pathos in his voice which moved Féraz greatly, and he could not trust himself to speak. When they entered their own abode, El-Râmi said the usual “Good-night” in his usual kindly manner,--but Féraz reverently stooped and kissed the hand extended to him,--the potent hand that had enriched his life with poesy and dowered it with dreams.

XXVI.

All the next day El-Râmi was alone. Féraz went out early to fulfil the appointment made with Roy Ainsworth; no visitors called,--and not even old Zaroba came near the study, where, shut up with his books and papers, her master worked assiduously hour after hour, writing as rapidly as hand and pen would allow, and satisfying his appetite solely with a few biscuits dipped in wine. Just as the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, his long solitude was disturbed by the sharp knock of a telegraph-messenger, who handed him a missive which ran briefly thus--

“Your brother stays to dine with me.--Ainsworth.”

El-Râmi crushed the paper in his hand, then, flinging it aside, stood for a moment, lost in meditation, with a sorrowful expression in his dark eyes.

“Ay me! the emptiness of the world!” he murmured at last--“I shall be left alone, I suppose, as my betters are left, according to the rule of this curiously designed and singularly unsatisfactory system of human life. What do the young care for the solitude of their elders who have tended and loved them? New thoughts, new scenes, new aspirations beckon them, and off they go like birds on the wing,--never to return to the old nest or the old ways. I despise the majority of women myself,--and yet I pity from my soul all those who are mothers,--the miserable dignity and pathos of maternity are, in my opinion, grotesquely painful. To think of the anguish the poor delicate wretches endure in bringing children at all into the world,--then, the tenderness and watchful devotion expended on their early years,--and then--why then, these same children grow up for the most part into indifferent (when not entirely callous) men and women, who make their own lives as it seems best to themselves, and almost forget to whom they owe their very existence. It is hard--bitterly hard. There ought to be some reason for such a wild waste of love and affliction. At present, however, I can see none.”

He sighed deeply, and stared moodily into the deepening shadows.

“Loneliness is horrible!” he said aloud, as though addressing some invisible auditor. “It is the chief terror of death,--for one must always die alone. No matter how many friends and relatives stand weeping round the bed, one is absolutely _alone_ at the hour of death, for the stunned soul wanders blindly

“_out of sight,_
_Far off in a place where it is not heard._”

That solitary pause and shudder on the brink of the Unseen is fearful,--it unnerves us all to think of it. If Love could help us,--but even Love grows faint and feeble then.”

As he mused thus, a strange vague longing came over him,--an impulse arising out of he knew not what suggestion; and, acting on his thought, he went suddenly and swiftly upstairs, and straight into the chamber of Lilith. Zaroba was there, and rose from her accustomed corner silently, and moved with a somewhat feeble step into the ante-room while El-Râmi bent over the sleeping girl. Lovelier than ever she seemed that evening,--and, as he stooped above her, she stretched out her fair white arms and smiled. His heart beat quickly,--he had, for the moment, ceased to analyse his own feelings,--and he permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty and absorb it, without, as usual, taking any thought of the scientific aspect of her condition.

“Tresses twisted by fairy fingers, In which the light of the morning lingers!”

he murmured, as he touched a rippling strand of the lovely hair that lay spread like a fleece of gold floss silk on the pillow near him,--“Poor Lilith!--Sweet Lilith!”

As if responsive to his words, she turned slightly towards him, and felt the air blindly with one wandering white hand. Gently he caught it and imprisoned it within his own,--then, on a strange impulse, kissed it. To his utter amazement she answered that touch as though it had been a call.

“I am here, ... my Belovëd!”

He started, and an icy thrill ran through his veins;--that word “Belovëd” was a sort of electric shock to his system, and sent a dizzying rush of blood to his brain. What did she mean,--what could she mean? The last time she had addressed him she had declared that he was not even her friend--now she called him her “beloved”--as much to his amazement as his fear. Presently, however, he considered that here perhaps was some new development of his experiment;--the soul of Lilith might possibly be in closer communion with him than he had yet imagined. But, in spite of his attempt to reason away his emotions, he was nervous, and stood by the couch silently, afraid to speak, and equally afraid to move. Lilith was silent too. A long pause ensued, in which the usually subdued tickings of the clock seemed to become painfully audible. El-Râmi’s breath came and went quickly,--he was singularly excited,--some subtle warmth from the little hand he held permeated his veins, and a sense of such utter powerlessness possessed him as he had never experienced before. What ailed him? He could not tell. Where was the iron force of his despotic will? He seemed unable to exert it,--unable even to _think_ coherently while Lilith’s hand thus rested in his. Had she grown stronger than himself? A tingling tremor ran through him, as the strange words of the monk’s written warning suddenly recurred to his memory.

“Beware the end! With Lilith’s love comes Lilith’s freedom.”

But Lilith smiled with placid sweetness, and still left her hand confidingly in his; he held that hand, so warm and soft and white, and was loath to let it go,--he studied the rapt expression of the beautiful face, the lovely curve of the sweet shut lips, the delicately-veined lids of the closed eyes,--and was dimly conscious of a sense of vague happiness curiously intermingled with terror. By and by he began to collect his ideas which had been so suddenly scattered by the one word “Belovëd,”--and he resolved to break the mystic silence that oppressed and daunted him.

“Dreaming or waking, is she?” he queried aloud, a little tremulously, and as though he were talking to himself. “She must be dreaming!”

“Dreaming of joy!” said Lilith softly, and with quick responsiveness--“only that Joy is no dream! I hear your voice,--I am conscious of your touch,--almost I see you! The cloud hangs there between us still--but God is good,--He will remove that cloud.”

El-Râmi listened, perplexed and wondering.

“Lilith,” he said in a voice that strove in vain to assume its wonted firmness and authority--“What say you of clouds,--you who are in the full radiance of a light that is quenchless? Have you not told me of a glory that out-dazzles the sun, in which you move and have your being,--then what do you know of Shadow?”

“Yours is the Shadow,” replied Lilith--“not mine! I would that I could lift it from your eyes, that you might see the wonder and the beauty. Oh, cruel Shadow, that lies between my love and me!”

“Lilith! Lilith!” exclaimed El-Râmi in strange agitation, “Why will you talk of love!”

“Do you not think of love?” said Lilith--“and must I not respond to your innermost thought?”

“Not always do you so respond, Lilith!” said El-Râmi quickly, recovering himself a little, and glad of an opportunity to bring back his mind to a more scientific level. “Often you speak of things I know not,--things that perhaps I shall never know----”

“Nay, you _must_ know,” said Lilith, with soft persistence. “Every unit of life in every planet is bound to know its Cause and Final Intention. All is clear to me, and will be so to you, hereafter. You ask me of these things--I tell you,--but you do not believe me;--you will never believe me till--the end.”

“Beware the end!” The words echoed themselves so distinctly in El-Râmi’s mind that he could almost have fancied they were spoken aloud in the room. “What end?” he asked eagerly.

But to this Lilith answered nothing.

He looked at the small sensitive hand he held, and, stroking it gently, was about to lay it back on her bosom, when all at once she pressed her fingers closely over his palm, and sat upright, her delicate face expressive of the most intense emotion, notwithstanding her closed eyes.

“Write!” she said in a clear penetrating voice that sent silvery echoes through the room--“write these truths to the world you live in. Tell the people they all work for Evil, and therefore Evil shall be upon them. What they sow, even that shall they reap,--with the measure they have used, it shall be measured to them again. O wild world!--sad world!--world wherein the pride of wealth, the joy of sin, the cruelty of avarice, the curse of selfishness, outweigh all pity, all sympathy, all love! For this God’s law of Compensation makes but one return--Destruction. Wars shall prevail; plague and famine shall ravage the nations;--young children shall murder the parents who bore them; theft and rapine shall devastate the land. For your world is striving to live without God,--and a world without God is a disease that must die. Like a burnt-out star this Earth shall fall from its sphere and vanish utterly--and its sister-planets shall know it no more. For when it is born again, it will be new.”

The words came from her lips with a sort of fervid eloquence which seemed to exhaust her, for she grew paler and paler, and her head began to sink backward on the pillow. El-Râmi gently put his arm round her to support her, and, as he did so, a kind of supernatural light irradiated her features.

“Believe me, O my belovëd, believe the words of Lilith!” she murmured. “There is but one law leading to all Wisdom. Evil generates Evil, and contains within itself its own retribution. Good generates Good, and holds within itself the germ of eternal reproduction. Love begets Love, and from Love is born Immortality!”

Her voice grew fainter,--she sank entirely back on her pillow; yet once again her lips moved and the word “Immortality!” floated whisperingly like a sigh. El-Râmi drew his arm away from her, and at the same instant disengaged his hand from her clasp. She seemed bewildered at this, and for a minute or two felt in the air as though searching for some missing treasure,--then her arms fell passively on each side of her, seemingly inert and lifeless. El-Râmi bent over her half curiously, half anxiously,--his eyes dwelt on the ruby-like jewel that heaved gently up and down on her softly rounded bosom,--he watched the red play of light around it, and on the white satiny skin beneath,--and then,--all at once his sight grew dazzled and his brain began to swim. How lovely she was!--how much more than lovely! And how utterly she was his!--his, body and soul, and in his power! He was startled at the tenor of his own unbidden thoughts,--whence, in God’s name, came these new impulses, these wild desires that fired his blood? ... Furious with himself for what he deemed the weakness of his own emotions, he strove to regain the mastery over his nerves,--to settle his mind once more in its usual attitude of cold inflexibility and indifferent composure,--but all in vain. Some subtle chord in his mental composition had been touched mysteriously, he knew not how, and had set all the other chords a-quivering,--and he felt himself all suddenly to be as subdued and powerless as when his mysterious visitor, the monk from Cyprus, had summoned up (to daunt him, as he thought) the strange vision of an Angel in his room.

Again he looked at Lilith;--again he resisted the temptation that assailed him to clasp her in his arms, to shower a lover’s kisses on her lips, and thus waken her to the full bitter-sweet consciousness of earthly life,--till in the sharp extremity of his struggle, and loathing himself for his own folly, he suddenly dropped on his knees by the side of the couch and gazed with a vague wild entreaty at the tranquil loveliness that lay there so royally enshrined.

“Have mercy, Lilith!” he prayed half aloud, and scarcely conscious of his words. “If you are stronger in your weakness than I in my strength, have mercy! Repel me,--distrust me, disobey me--but do not love me! Make me not as one of the foolish for whom a woman’s smile, a woman’s touch, are more than life, and more than wisdom. O let me not waste the labour of my days on a freak of passion!--let me not lose everything I have gained by long study and research, for the mere wild joy of an hour! Lilith, Lilith! Child, woman, angel!--whatever you are, have pity upon me! I dare not love you! ... I dare not!”

So murmuring incoherently, he rose, and, walking dizzily like a man abruptly startled from deep sleep, he went straight out of the room, never looking back once, else he might have seen how divinely, how victoriously Lilith smiled!

XXVII.

Reaching his study, he shut himself in and locked the door,--and, then sitting down, buried his head in his hands and fell to thinking. Such odd thoughts too!--they came unbidden, and chased one another in and out of his brain like will-o’-the-wisps in a wilderness. It was growing late, and Féraz had not yet returned,--but he heeded not the hour, or his brother’s continued absence,--he was occupied in such a mental battle with his own inward forces as made him utterly indifferent to external things. The question he chiefly asked himself was this:--Of what use was all the science he had discovered and mastered, if he was not exempt,--utterly exempt from the emotions common to the most ignorant of men? His pride had been that he was “above” human nature,--that he was able to look down upon its trivial joys and sorrows with a supreme and satiric scorn,--that he knew its ways so well as to be able to calculate its various hesitating moves in all directions, social and political, with very nearly exact accuracy. Why then was he shaken to the very centre of his being to-night, by the haunting vision of an angelic face and the echo of a sweet faint voice softly breathing the words--“My belovëd!” He could dominate others; why could he not dominate himself?

“This will never do!” he said aloud at last, starting up from his brooding attitude--“I must read--I must work,--I must, at all costs, get out of this absurd frame of mind into which I have unwittingly fallen. Besides, how often have I not assured myself that for all practical earthly considerations Lilith is dead--positively dead!”

And to reinstate himself in this idea he unlocked his desk and took from it a small parchment volume in which he had carefully chronicled the whole account of his experiment on Lilith from the beginning. One page was written in the form of a journal--the opposite leaf being reserved for “queries,” and the book bore the curious superscription “In Search of the Soul of Lilith” on its cover. The statement began at once without preamble, thus:

“_August_ 8, 18--. 9 P.M.--Lilith, an Arab girl, aged twelve, dies in my arms. Cause of death, fever and inanition. Heart ceased to beat at ten minutes past eight this evening. While the blood is still warm in the corpse I inject the ‘Electro-flamma’ under the veins, close beneath the heart. No immediate effect visible.

“11 P.M.--Arab women lay out Lilith’s corpse for burial. Questioned the people as to her origin. An orphan child, of poor parentage, no education, and unquiet disposition. Not instructed in religious matters, but following the religious customs of others by instinct and imitation. Distinctive features of the girl when in health--restlessness, temper, animalism, and dislike of restraint. Troublesome to manage, and not a thinking child by any means.

“_August_ 9. 5 A.M.--The caravan has just started on its way, leaving the corpse of Lilith with me. The woman Zaroba remains behind. Féraz I sent away last night in haste. I tell Zaroba part of my intention; she is superstitious and afraid of me, but willing to serve me. Lilith remains inanimate. I again use the ‘Electro-flamma,’ this time close to all the chief arteries. No sign of life.

“_August_ 10. Noon.--I begin rather to despair. As a last resource I have injected carefully a few drops of ‘Flamma’ close to the brain; it is the mainspring of the whole machine, and if it can be set in motion----

“Midnight.--Victory! The brain has commenced to pulsate feebly, and the heart with it. Breathing has begun, but slowly and with difficulty. A faint colour has come into the hitherto waxen face. Success is possible now.

“_August_ 15.--During these last five days Lilith has breathed, and, to a certain extent, lived. She does not open her eyes, nor move a muscle of her body, and at times still appears dead. She is kept alive (if it _is_ life) by the vital fluid, and by that only. I must give her more time.

“_August_ 20.--I have called her by name, and she has answered--but how strangely! Where does she learn the things she speaks of? She sees the Earth, she tells me, like a round ball circling redly in a cloud of vapours, and she hears music everywhere, and perceives a ‘light beyond.’ _Where and how does she perceive anything?_”

Here on the opposite side of the page was written the “query,” which in this case was headed

“Problem.”

“Given, a child’s brain, not wholly developed in its intellectual capacity, with no impressions save those which are purely material, and place that brain in a state of perpetual trance, _how does it come to imagine or comprehend things which science cannot prove?_ Is it the Soul which conveys these impressions, and, if so, _what_ is the Soul, and _where_ is it?”

El-Râmi read the passage over and over again, then, sighing impatiently, closed the book and put it by.