Chapter XIV: Part 14

And, snatching from his breast a phial of the liquid with which he had so long kept Lilith living in a trance, he swiftly injected it into her veins, and forced some drops between her lips ... in vain ... in vain! No breath came back to stir that silent breast--no sign whatever of returning animation evinced itself, only ... at the expiration of the few moments which generally sufficed the vital fluid for its working, there chanced a strange and terrible thing. Wherever the liquid had made its way, there the skin blistered, and the flesh blackened, as though the whole body were being consumed by some fierce inward fire; and El-Râmi, looking with strained wild eyes at this destructive result of his effort to save, at last realised to the full all the awfulness, all the dire agony of his fate! The Soul of Lilith had departed for ever; ... even as the Cyprian monk had said, it had outgrown its earthly tenement, ... its cord of communication with the body had been mysteriously and finally severed,--and the Body itself was crumbling into ashes before his very sight, helped into swifter dissolution by the electric potency of his own vaunted “life-elixir”! It was horrible ... horrible! ... was there _no_ remedy?

Staring himself almost blind with despair, he dashed the phial on the ground, and stamped it under his heel in an excess of impotent fury, ... the veins in his forehead swelled with a fulness of aching blood almost to bursting, ... he could do nothing, ... nothing! His science was of no avail;--his Will,--his proud inflexible Will was “as a reed shaken in the wind!” ... Ha! ... the old stock phrase! ... it had been said before, in old times and in new, by canting creatures who believed in Prayer. Prayer!--would it bring back beauty and vitality to that blackening corpse before him? ... that disfigured, withering clay he had once called Lilith! ... How ghastly It looked! ... Shuddering violently he turned away,--turned,--to meet the grave sweet eyes of the pictured Christ on the wall, ... to read again the words, “Whom say ye that I am?” The letters danced before him in characters of flame, ... there seemed a great noise everywhere as of clashing steam-hammers and great church-bells,--the world was reeling round him as giddily as a spun wheel.

“Robber of the Soul of Lilith!” he muttered between his set teeth--“Whoever you be, whether God or Devil, I will find you out! I will pursue you to the uttermost ends of vast infinitude! I will contest her with you yet, for surely she is mine! What right have you, O Force Unknown, to steal my love from me? Answer me! prove yourself God, as I prove myself Man! Declare _something_, O mute Inflexible! _Do_ something other than mechanically grind out a reasonless, unexplained Life and Death for ever! O Lilith!--faithless Angel!--did you not say that love was sweet?--and could not love keep you here,--here, with me, your lover, Lilith?”

Involuntarily and with cowering reluctance, his eyes turned again towards the couch,--but now--now ... the horror of that decaying beauty, interiorly burning itself away to nothingness, was more than he could bear ... a mortal sickness seized him,--and he flung up his arms with a desperate gesture as though he sought to drag down some covering wherewith to hide himself and his utter misery.

“Defeated, baffled, befooled!” he exclaimed frantically--“Conquered by the Invisible and Invincible after all! Conquered! I! ... Who would have thought it! Hear me, earth and heaven!--hear me, O rolling world of human Wretchedness, hear me!--for I have proved a Truth! There is a God!--a jealous God--jealous of the Soul of Lilith!--a God tyrannical, absolute, and powerful--a God of infinite and inexorable Justice. O God, I know you!--I own you--I meet you! I am part of you as the worm is!--and you can change me, but you cannot destroy me! You have done your worst,--you have fought against your own Essence in me, till light has turned to darkness and love to bitterness;--you have left me no help, no hope, no comfort; what more remains to do, O terrible God of a million Universes! ... what more? Gone--gone is the Soul of Lilith--but Where? Where in the vast Unknowable shall I find my love again? ... Teach me _that_, O God! ... give me that one small clue through the million million intricate webs of star-systems, and I too will fall blindly down and adore an Imaginary Good in visible and all-paramount Evil! ... I too will sacrifice reason, pride, wisdom and power and become as a fool for Love’s sake! ... I too will grovel before an unproved Symbol of Divinity as a savage grovels before his stone fetish, ... I will be weak, not strong, I will babble prayers with the children, ... only take me where Lilith is, ... bring me to Lilith ... angel Lilith! ... love Lilith! ... my Lilith! ... ah God! God! Have mercy ... mercy! ...”

His voice broke suddenly in a sharp jarring shriek of delirious laughter,--blood sprang to his mouth,--and with a blind movement of his arms, as of one in thick darkness seeking light, he fell heavily face forward, insensible on the couch where the Body he had loved, deprived of its Soul, lay crumbling swiftly away into hideous disfigurement and ashes.

XXXVIII.

“_Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and Life begins._”

The words sounded so distinctly in his ears that the half-roused Féraz turned drowsily on his pillows and opened his eyes, fully expecting to see the speaker of them in his room. But there was no one. It was early morning,--the birds were twittering in the outer yard, and bright sunshine poured through the window. He had had a long and refreshing sleep,--and sitting up in his bed he stretched himself with a sense of refreshment and comfort, the while he tried to think what had so mysteriously and unpleasantly oppressed him with forebodings on the previous night. By and by he remembered the singing voices in the air and smiled.

“All my fancy of course!” he said lightly, springing up and beginning to dash the fresh cold water of his morning bath over his polished bronze-like skin, till all his nerves tingled with the pleasurable sensation--“I am always hearing music of some sort or other. I believe music is pent up in the air, and loosens itself at intervals like the rain. Why not? There must be such a wealth of melody aloft,--all the songs of all the birds,--all the whisperings of all the leaves;--all the dash and rush of the rivers, waterfalls and oceans,--it is all in the air, and I believe it falls in a shower sometimes and penetrates the brains of musicians like Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner.”

Amused with his own fantastic imaginings he hummed a tune _sotto voce_ as he donned his easy and picturesque attire,--then he left his room and went to his brother’s study to set it in order for the day, as was his usual custom.

He opened the door softly and with caution, because El-Râmi often slept there on the hard soldier’s couch that occupied one corner,--but this morning all was exactly as it had been left at night,--the books and papers were undisturbed,--and, curiously enough, the little sanctum presented a vacant and deserted appearance, as though it would dumbly express a fear that its master was gone from it for ever. How such a notion suggested itself to Féraz, he could not tell,--but he was certainly conscious of a strange sinking at the heart, as he paused in the act of throwing open one of the windows, and looked round the quiet room. Had anything been moved or displaced during the night that he should receive such a general impression of utter emptiness? Nothing--so far as he could judge;--there was his brother’s ebony chair wheeled slightly aside from the desk,--there were the great globes, terrestrial and celestial,--there were the various volumes lately used for reference,--and, apart from these, on the table, was the old vellum book in Arabic that Féraz had once before attempted to read. It was open,--a circumstance that struck Féraz with some surprise, for he could not recall having seen it in that position last evening. Perhaps El-Râmi had come down in the night to refer to it and had left it there by accident? Féraz felt he must examine it more nearly, and, approaching, he rested his elbows on the table and fixed his eyes on the Arabic page before him which was headed in scrolled lettering “The Mystery of Death.” As he read the words, a beautiful butterfly flew in through the open window and circled joyously round his head, till, presently espying the bunch of heliotrope in the glass where Féraz had set it the previous day, it fluttered off to that, and settled on the scented purple bloom, its pretty wings quivering with happiness. Mechanically Féraz watched its flight,--then his eyes returned and dwelt once more on the time-stained lettering before him; “The Mystery of Death,”--and following the close lines with his forefinger, he soon made out the ensuing passages. “The Mystery of Death. Whereas, of this there is no mystery at all, as the ignorant suppose, but only a clearing up of many intricate matters. When the body dies,--or to express it with more pertinacious exactitude, when the body resolves itself into the living organisms of which earth is composed, it is because the Soul has outgrown its mortal habitation and can no longer endure the cramping narrowness of the same. We speak unjustly of the aged, because by their taciturnity and inaptitude for worldly business, they seem to us foolish, and of a peevish weakness; it should however be remembered that it is a folly to complain of the breaking of the husk when the corn is ripe. In old age the Soul is weary of and indifferent to earthly things, and makes of its tiresome tenement a querulous reproach,--it has exhausted earth’s pleasures and surpassed earth’s needs, and palpitates for larger movement. When this is gained, the husk falls, the grain sprouts forth--the Soul is freed,--and all Nature teaches this lesson. To call the process ‘death’ and a ‘mystery’ is to repeat the error of barbarian ages,--for once the Soul has no more use for the Body, you cannot detain it,--you cannot compress its wings,--you cannot stifle its nature,--and, being Eternal, it demands Eternity.”

“All that is true enough;”--murmured Féraz--“As true as any truth possible, and yet people will not accept or understand it. All the religions, all the preachers, all the teachers seem to avail them nothing,--and they go on believing in death far more than in life. What a sad and silly world it is!--always planning for itself and never for God, and only turning to God in imminent danger like a coward schoolboy who says he is sorry because he fears a whipping.”

Here he lifted his eyes from the book, feeling that some one was looking at him, and, true enough, there in the doorway stood Zaroba. Her withered face had an anxious expression and she held up a warning finger.

“Hush! ...” she said whisperingly. ... “No noise! ... where is El-Râmi?”

Féraz replied by a gesture, indicating that he was still upstairs at work on his mysterious “experiment.”

Zaroba advanced slowly into the room, and seated herself on the nearest chair.

“My mind misgives me;”--she said in low awe-stricken tones,--“My mind misgives me; I have had dreams--_such_ dreams! All night I have tossed and turned,--my head throbs here,”--and she pressed both hands upon her brow,--“and my heart--my heart aches! I have seen strange creatures clad in white,--ghostly faces of the past have stared at me,--my dead children have caressed me,--my dead husband has kissed me on the lips,--a kiss of ice, freezing me to the marrow. What does it bode? No good--no good!--but ill! Like the sound of the flying feet of the whirlwind that brings death to the sons of the desert, there is a sound in my brain which says--‘Sorrow! Sorrow!’ again and yet again ‘Sorrow!’”

Sighing, she clasped her hands about her knees and rocked herself to and fro, as though she were in pain. Féraz stood gazing at her wistfully and with a somewhat troubled air,--her words impressed him uncomfortably,--her very attitude suggested misery. The sunlight beaming across her bent figure, flashed on the silver bangles that circled her brown arms, and touched her rough gray hair to flecks of brightness,--her black eyes almost hid themselves under their tired drooping lids,--and when she ceased speaking her lips still moved as though she inwardly muttered some weird incantation. Growing impatient with her, he knew not why, the young man paced slowly up and down the room; her deafness precluded him from speaking to her, and he just now had no inclination to communicate with her in the usual way by writing. And while he thus walked about, she continued her rocking movement, and peered at him dubiously from under her bushy gray brows.

“It is ill work meddling with the gods;”--she began again presently--“In old time they were vengeful,--and have they changed because the times are new? Nay, nay! The nature of a man may alter with the course of his passions,--but the nature of a god!--who shall make it otherwise than what it has been from the beginning? Cruel, cruel are the ways of the gods when they are thwarted;--there is no mercy in the blind eyes of Fate! To tempt Destiny is to ask the thunderbolt to fall and smite you,--to oppose the gods is as though a babe’s hand should essay to lift the Universe. Have I not prayed the Master, the wise and the proud El-Râmi Zarânos, to submit and not contend? As God liveth, I say, let us submit while we can like the slaves that we are, for in submission alone is safety!”

Féraz heard her with increasing irritation,--why need she come to him with all this melancholy jabbering, he thought angrily. He leaned far out of the open window and looked at the ugly houses of the little square,--at the sooty trees, the sparrows hopping and quarrelling in the road, the tradesmen’s carts that every now and again dashed to and from their various customers’ doors in the aggravatingly mad fashion they affect, and tried to realise that he was actually in busy practical London, and not, as seemed at the moment more likely, in some cavern of an Eastern desert, listening to an ancient sibyl croaking misfortune. Just then a neighbouring clock struck nine, and he hastily drew in his head from the outer air, and, making language with his eloquent fingers, he mutely asked Zaroba if she were going upstairs now, or whether she meant to wait till El-Râmi himself came down?

She left off rocking to and fro, and half rose from her chair,--then she hesitated.

“I have never waited”--she said--“before,--and why? Because the voice of the Master has roused me from my deepest slumbers,--and, like a finger of fire laid on my brain, his very thought has summoned my attendance. But this morning no such voice has called,--no such burning touch has stirred my senses,--how should I know what I must do? If I go unbidden, will he not be angered?--and his anger works like a poison in my blood! ... yet ... it is late, ... and his silence is strange----”

She paused, passing her hand wearily across her eyes,--then stood up, apparently resolved.

“I will obey the voices that whisper to me,”--she said, with a certain majestic resignation and gravity--“The voices that cry to my heart ‘Sorrow! Sorrow!’ and yet again ‘Sorrow!’ If grief must come, then welcome, grief!--one cannot gainsay the Fates. I will go hence and prove the message of the air,--for the air holds invisible tongues that do not lie.”

With a slow step she moved across the room,--and on a sudden impulse Féraz sprang towards her exclaiming, “Zaroba!--stay!”--then recollecting she could not hear a word, he checked himself and drew aside to let her pass, with an air of indifference which he was far from feeling. He was in truth wretched and ill at ease,--the exhilaration with which he had arisen from sleep had given way to intense depression, and he could not tell what ailed him.

“_Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins._” Those were the strange words he had heard the first thing on awaking that morning,--what could they mean, he wondered rather sadly? If dreams were indeed to end, he would be sorry,--and if life, as mortals generally lived it, were to begin for him, why then, he would be sorrier still. Troubled and perplexed, he began to set the breakfast in order, hoping by occupation to divert his thoughts and combat the miserable feeling of vague dread which oppressed him, and which, though he told himself how foolish and unreasonable it was, remained increasingly persistent. All at once such a cry rang through the house as almost turned his blood to ice,--a cry wild, despairing and full of agony. It was repeated with piercing vehemence,--and Féraz, his heart beating furiously, cleared the space of the room with one breathless bound and rushed upstairs, there to confront Zaroba tossing her arms distractedly and beating her breast like a creature demented.

“Lilith!” she gasped,--“Lilith has gone ... gone! ... and El-Râmi is dead!”

XXXIX.

Pushing the panic-stricken woman aside, Féraz dashed back the velvet curtains, and for the second time in his life penetrated the mysterious chamber. Once in the beautiful room, rich with its purple colour and warmth, he stopped as though he were smitten with sudden paralysis,--every artery in his body pulsated with terror,--it was true! ... true that Lilith was no longer there! This was the first astounding fact that bore itself in with awful conviction on his dazed and bewildered mind;--the next thing he saw was the figure of his brother, kneeling motionless by the vacant couch. Hushing his steps and striving to calm his excitement, Féraz approached more nearly, and throwing his arms round El-Râmi’s shoulders endeavoured to raise him,--but all his efforts made no impression on that bent and rigid form. Turning his eyes once more to the ivory blankness of the satin couch on which the maiden Lilith had so long reclined, he saw with awe and wonder the distinct impression of where her figure had been, marked and hollowed out into deep curves and lines, which in their turn were outlined by a tracing of fine grayish-white dust, like sifted ashes. Following the track of this powdery substance, he still more clearly discerned the impress of her vanished shape; and, shuddering in every limb, he asked himself--Could that--that dust--be all--all that was left of ... of Lilith? ... What dire tragedy had been enacted during the night?--what awful catastrophe had chanced to _her_--to _him_, his beloved brother, whom he strove once more to lift from his kneeling position, but in vain. Zaroba stood beside him, shivering, wailing, staring, and wringing her hands, till Féraz dry-eyed and desperate, finding his own strength not sufficient, bade her, by a passionate gesture, assist him. Trembling violently, she obeyed, and between them both they at last managed to drag El-Râmi up from the ground and get him to a chair, where Féraz chafed his hands, bathed his forehead, and used every possible means to restore animation. Did his heart still beat? Yes, feebly and irregularly;--and presently one or two faint gasping sighs came from the labouring breast.

“Thank God!” muttered Féraz--“Whatever has happened, he lives!--Thank God he lives! When he recovers, he will tell me all;--there can be no secrets now between him and me.”

And he resumed his quick and careful ministrations, while Zaroba still wailed and wrung her hands, and stared miserably at the empty couch, whereon her beautiful charge had lain, slumbering away the hours and days for six long years. She too saw the little heaps and trackings of gray dust on the pillows and coverlid, and her feeble limbs shook with such terror that she could scarcely stand.

“The gods have taken her!” she whispered faintly through her pallid lips--“The gods are avenged! When did they ever have mercy! They have claimed their own with the breath and the fire of lightning, and the dust of a maiden’s beauty is no more than the dust of a flower! The dreadful, terrible gods are avenged--at last ... at last!”

And sinking down upon the floor, she huddled herself together, and drew her yellow draperies over her head, after the Eastern manner of expressing inconsolable grief, and covered her aged features from the very light of day.

Féraz heeded her not at all, his sole attention being occupied in the care of his brother, whose large black eyes now opened suddenly and regarded him with a vacant expression like the eyes of a blind man. A great shudder ran through his frame,--he looked curiously at his own hands as Féraz gently pressed and rubbed them,--and he stared all round the room in vaguely-inquiring wonderment. Presently his wandering glance came back to Féraz, and the vacancy of his expression softened into a certain pleased mildness,--his lips parted in a little smile, but he said nothing.

“You are better, El-Râmi, my brother?” murmured Féraz caressingly, trembling and almost weeping in the excess of his affectionate anxiety, the while he placed his own figure so that it might obstruct a too immediate view of Lilith’s vacant couch, and the covered crouching form of old Zaroba beside it--“You have no pain? ... you do not suffer?”

El-Râmi made no answer for the moment;--he was looking at Féraz with a gentle but puzzled inquisitiveness. Presently his dark brows contracted slightly, as though he were trying to connect some perplexing chain of ideas,--then he gave a slight gesture of fatigue and indifference.

“You will excuse me, I hope,--” he then said with plaintive courtesy--“I have forgotten your name. I believe I met you once, but I cannot remember where.”

The heart of poor Féraz stood still, ... a great sob rose in his throat. But he checked it bravely,--he would not, he could not, he dared not give way to the awful fear that began to creep like a frost through his warm young blood.

“You cannot remember Féraz?” he said gently--“Your own Féraz? ... your little brother, to whom you have been life, hope, joy, work--everything of value in the world!” Here his voice failed him, and he nearly broke down.

El-Râmi looked at him in grave surprise.

“You are very good!” he murmured, with a feebly polite wave of his hand;--“You overrate my poor powers. I am glad to have been useful to you--very glad!”

Here he paused;--his head sank forward on his breast, and his eyes closed.

“El-Râmi!” cried Féraz, the hot tears forcing their way between his eyelids--“Oh, my belovëd brother!--have you no thought for me?”

El-Râmi opened his eyes and stared;--then smiled.

“No thought?” he repeated--“Oh, you mistake!--I have thought very much,--very much indeed, about many things. Not about you perhaps,--but then I do not know you. You say your name is Féraz,--that is very strange; it is not at all a common name. I only knew one Féraz,--he was my brother, or seemed so for a time,--but I found out afterwards, ... hush! ... come closer! ...” and he lowered his voice to a whisper,--“that he was not a mortal, but an angel,--the angel of a Star. The Star knew him better than I did.”

Féraz turned away his head,--the tears were falling down his cheeks--he could not speak. He realised the bitter truth,--the delicate overstrained mechanism of his brother’s mind had given way under excessive pain and pressure,--that brilliant, proud, astute, cold and defiant intellect was all unstrung and out of gear, and rendered useless, perchance for ever.

El-Râmi however seemed to have some glimmering perception of Féraz’s grief, for he put out a trembling hand and turned his brother’s face towards him with gentle concern.

“Tears?” he said in a surprised tone--“Why should you weep? There is nothing to weep for;--God is very good.”

And with an effort, he rose from the chair in which he had sat, and standing upright, looked about him. His eye at once lighted on the vase of roses at the foot of the couch and he began to tremble violently. Féraz caught him by the arm,--and then he seemed startled and afraid.

“She promised, ... she promised!” he began in an incoherent rambling way--“and you must not interfere,--you must let me do her bidding. ‘Look for me where the roses are; there will I stand and wait!’ She said that,--and she will wait, and I will look, for she is sure to keep her word--no angel ever forgets. You must not hinder me;--I have to watch and pray,--you must help me, not hinder me. I shall die if you will not let me do what she asks;--you cannot tell how sweet her voice is;--she talks to me and tells me of such wonderful things,--things too beautiful to be believed, yet they are true. I know so well my work;--work that must be done,--you will not hinder me?”

“No, no!”--said Féraz, in anguish himself, yet willing to say anything to soothe his brother’s trembling excitement--“No, no! You shall not be hindered,--I will help you,--I will watch with you,--I will pray ...” and here again the poor fellow nearly broke down into womanish sobbing.

“Yes!” said El-Râmi, eagerly catching at the word--“Pray! You will pray--and so will I;--that is good,--that is what I need,--prayer, they say, draws all Heaven down to earth. It is strange,--but so it is. You know”--he added, with a faint gleam of intelligence lighting up for a moment his wandering eyes--“Lilith is not here! Not here, nor there, ... she is Everywhere!”

A terrible pallor stole over his face, giving it almost the livid hue of death,--and Féraz, alarmed, threw one arm strongly and resolutely about him. But El-Râmi crouched and shuddered, and hid his eyes as though he strove to shelter himself from the fury of a whirlwind.

“Everywhere!” he moaned--“In the flowers, in the trees, in the winds, in the sound of the sea, in the silence of the night, in the slow breaking of the dawn,--in all these things is the Soul of Lilith! Beautiful, indestructible, terrible Lilith! She permeates the world, she pervades the atmosphere, she shapes and unshapes herself at pleasure,--she floats, or flies, or sleeps at will;--in substance, a cloud;--in radiance, a rainbow! She is the essence of God in the transient shape of an angel--never the same, but for ever immortal. She soars aloft--she melts like mist in the vast Unseen!--and I--I--I shall never find her, never know her, never see her, never, never again!”

The harrowing tone of voice in which he uttered these words pierced Féraz to the heart, but he would not give way to his own emotion.

“Come, El-Râmi!” he said very gently--“Do not stay here,--come with me. You are weak,--rest on my arm; you must try and recover your strength,--remember, you have work to do.”

“True, true!” said El-Râmi, rousing himself--“Yes, you are right,--there is much to be done. Nothing is so difficult as patience. To be left all alone, and to be patient, is very hard,--but I will come,--I will come.”

He suffered himself to be led towards the door,--then, all at once he came to an abrupt standstill, and looking round, gazed full on the empty couch where Lilith had so long been royally enshrined. A sudden passion seemed to seize him--his eyes sparkled luridly,--a sort of inward paroxysm convulsed his features, and he clutched Féraz by the shoulder with a grip as hard as steel.

“Roses and lilies and gold!” he muttered thickly--“They were all there, those delicate treasures, those airy nothings of which God makes woman! Roses for the features, lilies for the bosom, gold for the hair!--roses, lilies, and gold! They were mine,--but I have burned them all!--I have burned the roses and lilies, and melted the gold. Dust!--dust and ashes! But the dust is not Lilith. No!--it is only the dust of the roses, the dust of the lilies, the dust of gold. Roses, lilies, and gold! So sweet they are and fair to the sight, one would almost take them for real substance; but they are Shadows!--shadows that pass as we touch them,--shadows that always go, when most we would have them stay!”

He finished with a deep shuddering sigh, and then, loosening his grasp of Féraz, began to stumble his way hurriedly out of the apartment, with the manner of one who is lost in a dense fog and cannot see whither he is going. Féraz hastened to assist and support him, whereupon he looked up with a pathetic and smiling gratefulness.

“You are very good to me,” he said, with a gentle courtesy, which in his condition was peculiarly touching--“I thought I should never need any support;--but I was wrong--quite wrong,--and it is kind of you to help me. My eyes are rather dim,--there was too much light among the roses, ... and I find this place extremely dark, ... it makes me feel a little confused _here_;”--and he passed his hand across his forehead with a troubled gesture, and looked anxiously at Féraz, as though he would ask him for some explanation of his symptoms.

“Yes, yes!” murmured Féraz soothingly--“You must be tired--you will rest, and presently you will feel strong and well again. Do not hurry,--lean on me,”--and he guided his brother’s trembling limbs carefully down the stairs, a step at a time, thinking within himself in deep sorrow--Could this be the proud El-Râmi, clinging to him thus like a weak old man afraid to move? Oh, what a wreck was here!--what a change had been wrought in the few hours of the past night!--and ever the fateful question returned again and again to trouble him--What had become of Lilith? That she was gone was self-evident,--and he gathered some inkling of the awful truth from his brother’s rambling words. He remembered that El-Râmi had previously declared Lilith to be _dead_, so far as her body was concerned, and only kept _apparently_ alive by artificial means;--he could easily imagine it possible for those artificial means to lose their efficacy in the end, ... and then, ... for the girl’s beautiful body to crumble into that dissolution which would have been its fate long ago, had Nature had her way. All this he could dimly surmise,--but he had been kept so much in the dark as to the real aim and intention of his brother’s “experiment” that it was not likely he would ever understand everything that had occurred;--so that Lilith’s mysterious evanishment seemed to him like a horrible delusion;--it could not be! he kept on repeating over and over again to himself, and yet it was!

Moving with slow and cautious tread, he got El-Râmi at last into his own study, wondering whether the sight of the familiar objects he was daily accustomed to, would bring him back to a reasonable perception of his surroundings. He waited anxiously, while his brother stood still, shivering slightly and looking about the room with listless, unrecognising eyes. Presently, in a voice that was both weary and petulant, El-Râmi spoke.

“You will not leave me alone, I hope?” he said; “I am very old and feeble, and I have done you no wrong,--I do not see why you should leave me to myself. I should be glad if you would stay with me a little while, because everything is at present so strange to me;--I shall no doubt get more accustomed to it in time. You are perhaps not aware that I wished to live through a great many centuries--and my wish was granted;--I have lived longer than any man, especially since She left me,--and now I am growing old, and I am easily tired. I do not know this place at all--is it a World or a Dream?”

At this question, it seemed to Féraz that he heard again, like a silver clarion ringing through silence, the mysterious voice that had roused him that morning saying, “_Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins!_” ... He understood, and he bent his head resignedly,--he knew now what the “life” thus indicated meant;--it meant a sacrificing of all his poetic aspirations, his music, and his fantastic happy visions,--a complete immolation of himself and his own desires, for the sake of his brother. His brother, who had once ruled him absolutely, was now to be ruled _by_ him;--helpless as a child, the once self-sufficient and haughty El-Râmi was to be dependent for everything upon the very creature who had lately been his slave,--and Féraz, humbly reading in these reversed circumstances the Divine Law of Compensation, answered his brother’s plaintive query--“Is it a World or a Dream?” with manful tenderness.

“It is a World,”--he said--“not a Dream, beloved El-Râmi--but a Reality. It is a fair garden belonging to God and the things of God”--he paused, seeing that El-Râmi smiled placidly and nodded his head as though he heard pleasant music,--then he went on steadily--“a garden in which immortal spirits wander for a time self-exiled, till they fully realise the worth and loveliness of the higher lands they have forsaken. Do you understand me, O dear and honoured one?--do you understand? None love their home so dearly as those who have left it for a time--and it is only for a time--a short, short time,”--and Féraz, deeply moved by his mingled sorrow and affection, kissed and clasped his brother’s hands--“and all the beauty we see here in this beautiful small world, is made to remind us of the greater beauty yonder. We look, as it were, into a little mirror, which reflects, in exquisite miniature, the face of Heaven! See!”--and he pointed to the brilliant blaze of sunshine that streamed through the window and illumined the whole room--“There is the tiny copy of the larger Light above,--and in that little light the flowers grow, the harvests ripen, the trees bud, the birds sing, and every living creature rejoices,--but in the other Greater Light, God lives, and angels love and have their being;”--here Féraz broke off abruptly, wondering if he might risk the utterance of the words that next rose involuntarily to his lips, while El-Râmi gazed at him with great wide-open eager eyes like those of a child listening to a fairy story.

“Yes, yes!--what next?” he demanded impatiently--“This is good news you give me;--the angels love, you say, and God lives,--yes!--tell me more, ... more!”

“All angels love and have their being in that Greater Light,”--continued Féraz softly and steadily--“And there too is Lilith--beautiful--deathless,--faithful----”

“True!” cried El-Râmi, with a sort of sobbing cry--“True! ... She is there,--she promised--and I shall know, ... I shall know where to find her after all, for she told me plainly--‘Look for me where the roses are,--there will I stand and wait.’”

He tottered, and seemed about to fall;--but when Féraz would have supported him, he shook his head, and pointing tremblingly to the amber ray of sunshine pouring itself upon the ground:

“Into the light!”--he murmured--“I am all in the dark;--lead me out of the darkness into the light.”

And Féraz led him, where he desired, and seated him in his own chair in the full glory of the morning radiance that rippled about him like molten gold, and shone caressingly on his white hair,--his dark face that in its great pallor looked as though it were carved in bronze,--and his black, piteous, wandering eyes. A butterfly danced towards him in the sparkling shower of sunbeams, the same that had flown in an hour before and alighted on the heliotrope that adorned the centre of the table. El-Râmi’s attention was attracted by it--and he watched its airy flutterings with a pleased, yet vacant smile. Then he stretched out his hands in the golden light, and lifting them upward, clasped them together and closed his eyes.

“Our Father!” ... he murmured; “which art in Heaven! ... Hallowed be Thy Name!”

Féraz, bending heedfully over him, caught the words as they were faintly whispered,--caught the hands as they dropped inert from their supplicating posture and laid them gently back;--then listened again with strained attention, the pitying tears gathering thick upon his lashes.

“Our Father!” ... once more that familiar appeal of kinship to the Divine stole upon the air like a far-off sigh,--then came the sound of regular and quiet breathing;--Nature had shed upon the overtaxed brain her balm of blessed unconsciousness,--and like a tired child, the proud El-Râmi slept.

XL.

Upstairs meanwhile, in the room that had been Lilith’s there reigned the silence of a deep desolation. The woman Zaroba still crouched there, huddled on the floor, a mere heap of amber draperies,--her head covered, her features hidden. Now and then a violent shuddering seized her,--but otherwise she gave no sign of life. Hours passed;--she knew nothing, she thought of nothing; she was stupefied with misery and a great inextinguishable fear. To her bewildered, darkly superstitious, more than pagan mind, it seemed as if some terrible avenging angel had descended in the night and torn away her beautiful charge out of sheer spite and jealousy lest she should awake to the joys of earth’s life and love. It had always been her fixed idea that the chief and most powerful ingredient of the Divine character (and of the human also) was jealousy; and she considered therefore that all women, as soon as they were born, should be solemnly dedicated to the ancient goddess Anaïtis. Anaïtis was a useful and accommodating deity, who in the old days, had unlimited power to make all things pure. A woman might have fifty lovers, and yet none could dare accuse her of vileness if she were a “daughter” or “priestess” of Anaïtis. She might have been guilty of any amount of moral enormity, but she was held to be the chastest of virgins if Anaïtis were her protectress and mistress. And so, in the eyes of Zaroba, Anaïtis was the true patroness of love,--she sanctified the joys of lovers and took away from them all imputation of sin; and many and many a time had the poor, ignorant, heathenish old woman secretly invoked the protection of this almost forgotten pagan goddess for the holy maiden Lilith. And now--now she wondered tremblingly, if in this she had done wrong? ... More than for anything in the world had she longed that El-Râmi, the “wise man” who scoffed at passion with a light contempt, should love with a lover’s wild idolatry the beautiful creature who was so completely in his power;--in her dull, half-savage, stupid way, she had thought that such a result of the long six years’ “experiment” could but bring happiness to both man and maid; and she spared no pains to try and foster the spark of mere interest which El-Râmi had for his “subject” into the flame of a lover’s ardour. For this cause she had brought Féraz to look upon the tranced girl, in order that El-Râmi knowing of it, might feel the subtle prick of that perpetual motor, jealousy,--for this she had said all she dared say, concerning love and its unconquerable nature;--and now, just when her long-cherished wish seemed on the point of being granted, some dreadful Invisible Power had rushed in between the two, and destroyed Lilith with the fire of wrath and revenge;--at any rate that was how she regarded it. The sleeping girl had grown dear to her,--it war impossible not to love such a picture of innocent, entrancing, ideal beauty,--and she felt as though her heart had been torn open and its very core wrenched out by a cruel and hasty hand. She knew nothing as yet of the fate that had overtaken El-Râmi himself,--for as she could not hear a sound of the human voice, she had only dimly seen that he was led from the room by his young brother, and that he looked ill, feeble, and distraught. What she realised most positively and with the greatest bitterness, was the fact of Lilith’s loss,--Lilith’s evident destruction. This was undeniable,--this was irremediable;--and she thought of it till her aged brain burned as with some inward consuming fire, and her thin blood seemed turning to ice.

“Who has done it?” she muttered--“Who has claimed her? It must be the Christ,--the cold, quiet, pallid Christ, with His bleeding hands and beckoning eyes! He is a new god,--He has called, and she, Lilith, has obeyed! Without love, without life, without aught in the world save the lily-garb of untouched holiness,--it is what the pale Christ seeks, and He has found it here,--here, with the child who slept the sleep of innocent ignorance--here where no thought of passion ever entered unless _I_ breathed it,--or perchance he--El-Râmi--thought it--unknowingly. O what a white flower for the Christ in Heaven, is Lilith!--What a branch of bud and blossom! ... Ah, cruel, cold new gods of the Earth!--how long shall their sorrowful reign endure! Who will bring back the wise old gods,--the gods of the ancient days,--the gods who loved and were not ashamed,--the gods of mirth and life and health,--they would have left me Lilith,--they would have said--‘Lo, how this woman is old and poor,--she hath lost all that she ever had,--let us leave her the child she loves, albeit it is not her own but ours;--we are great gods, but we are merciful!’ Oh, Lilith, Lilith! child of the sun and air, and daughter of sleep! would I had perished instead of thee!--Would I had passed away into darkness, and thou been spared to the light!”

Thus she wailed and moaned, her face hidden, her limbs quivering, and she knew not how long she had stayed thus, though all the morning had passed and the afternoon had begun. At last she was roused by the gentle yet firm pressure of a hand on her shoulder, and, slowly uncovering her drawn and anguished features she met the sorrowful eyes of Féraz looking into hers. With a mute earnest gesture he bade her rise. She obeyed, but so feebly and tremblingly, that he assisted her, and led her to a chair, where she sat down, still quaking all over with fear and utter wretchedness. Then he took a pencil and wrote on the slate which his brother had been wont to use,--

“A great trouble has come upon us. God has been pleased to so darken the mind of the beloved El-Râmi, that he knows us no longer, and is ignorant of where he is. The wise man has been rendered simple,--and the world seems to him as it seems to a child who has everything in its life to learn. We must accept this ordinance as the Will of the Supreme, and bring our own will in accordance with it, believing the ultimate intention to be for the Highest Good. But for his former life, El-Râmi exists no more,--the mind that guided his actions then is gone.”

Slowly, and with pained, aching eyes Zaroba read these words,--she grasped their purport and meaning thoroughly, and yet, she said not a word. She was not surprised,--she was scarcely affected;--her feelings seemed blunted or paralysed. El-Râmi was mad? To her, he had always seemed mad,--with a madness born of terrible knowledge and power. To be mad now was nothing; the loss of Lilith was amply sufficient cause for his loss of wit. Nothing could be worse in her mind than to have loved Lilith and lost her,--what was the use of uttering fresh cries and ejaculations of woe! It was all over,--everything was ended,--so far as she, Zaroba, was concerned. So she sat speechless,--her grand old face rigid as bronze, with an expression upon it of stern submission, as of one who waits immovably for more onslaughts from the thunderbolts of destiny.

Féraz looked at her very compassionately, and wrote again--

“Good Zaroba, I know your grief. Rest--try to sleep. Do not see El-Râmi to-day. It is better I should be alone with him. He is quite peaceful and happy,--happier indeed than he has ever been. He has so much to learn, he says, and he is quite satisfied. For to-day we must be alone with our sorrows,--to-morrow we shall be able to see more clearly what we must do.”

Still Zaroba said nothing. Presently however she arose, and walked totteringly to the side of Lilith’s couch, ... there with an eloquently tragic gesture of supremest despair, she pointed to the gray-white ashes that were spread in that dreadfully suggestive outline on the satin coverlet and pillows. Féraz, shuddering, shut his eyes for a moment;--then, as he opened them again, he saw, confronting him, the uncurtained picture of the “Christ and His Disciples.” He remembered it well,--El-Râmi had bought it long ago from among the despoiled treasures of an old dismantled monastery,--and besides being a picture it was also a reliquary. He stepped hastily up to it and felt for the secret spring which used, he knew, to be there. He found and pressed it,--the whole of the picture flew back like a door on a hinge, and showed the interior to be a Gothic-shaped casket, lined with gold, at the back of which was inserted a small piece of wood, supposed to have been a fragment of the “True Cross.” There was nothing else in the casket,--and Féraz leaving it open, turned to Zaroba who had watched him with dull, scarcely comprehending eyes.

“Gather together these sacred ashes,”--he wrote again on the slate,--“and place them in this golden recess,--it is a holy place fit for such holy relics. El-Râmi would wish it, I know, if he could understand or wish for anything,--and wherever we go, the picture will go with us, for one day perhaps he will remember, ... and ask, ...”

He could trust himself to write no more,--and stood sadly enrapt, and struggling with his own emotion.

“The Christ claims all!” muttered Zaroba wearily, resorting to her old theme--“The crucified Christ, ... He must have all; the soul, the body, the life, the love, the very ashes of the dead,--He must have all ... all!”

Féraz heard her,--and taking up his pencil once more, wrote swiftly--

“You are right,--Christ has claimed Lilith. She was His to claim,--for on this earth we are all His,--He gave His very life to make us so. Let us thank God that we _are_ thus claimed,--for with Christ all things are well.”

He turned away then immediately, and left her alone to her task,--a task she performed with groans and trembling, till every vestige of the delicate ashes, as fine as the dust of flowers, was safely and reverently placed in its pure golden receptacle. Strange to say, one very visible relic of the vanished Lilith’s bodily beauty had somehow escaped destruction,--this was a long, bright waving tress of hair which lay trembling on the glistening satin of the pillows like a lost sunbeam. Over this lovely amber curl, old Zaroba stooped yearningly, staring at it till her tears, the slow, bitter scalding tears of age, fell upon it where it lay. She longed to take it for herself,--to wear it against her own heart,--to kiss and cherish it as though it were a living, sentient thing,--but, thinking of El-Râmi, her loyalty prevailed, and she tenderly lifted the clinging, shining, soft silken curl, and laid it by with the ashes in the antique shrine. All was now done,--and she shut to the picture, which, when once closed, showed no sign of any opening.

Lilith was gone indeed;--there was now no perceptible evidence to show that she had ever existed. And, to the grief-stricken Zaroba, the face and figure of the Christ, as painted on the reliquary at which she gazed, seemed to assume a sudden triumph and majesty which appalled while it impressed her. She read the words “Whom Say Ye That I Am?” and shuddered; this “new god” with His tranquil smile and sorrowful dignity had more terrors for her than any of the old pagan deities.

“I cannot! I cannot!” she whispered feebly; “I cannot take you to my heart, cold Christ,--I cannot think it is good to wear the thorns of perpetual sorrow! You offer no joy to the sad and weary world,--one must sacrifice one’s dearest hopes,--one must bear the cross and weep for the sins of all men, to be at all acceptable to You! I am old--but I keep the memories of joy; I would not have all happiness reft out of the poor lives of men. I would have them full of mirth,--I would have them love where they list, drink pure wine, and rejoice in the breath of Nature,--I would have them feast in the sunlight and dance in the moonbeams, and crown themselves with the flowers of the woodland and meadow, and grow ruddy and strong and manful and generous, and free--free as the air! I would have their hearts bound high for the pleasure of life;--not break in a search for things they can never win. Ah no, cold Christ! I cannot love you!--at the touch of your bleeding Hand the world freezes like a starving bird in a storm of snow;--the hearts of men grow weak and weary, and of what avail is it, O Prince of Grief, to live in sadness all one’s days for the hope of a Heaven that comes not? O Lilith!--child of the sun, where art thou?--Where? Never to have known the joys of love,--never to have felt the real pulse of living,--never to have thrilled in a lover’s embrace,--ah, Lilith, Lilith! Will Heaven compensate thee for such loss? ... Never, never, never! No God, were He all the worlds’ gods in One, can give aught but a desolate Eden to the loveless and lonely soul!”

In such wise as this, she muttered and moaned all day long, never stirring from the room that was called Lilith’s. Now and then she moved up and down with slow restlessness,--sometimes fixing eager eyes upon the vacant couch, with the vague idea that perhaps Lilith might come back to it as suddenly as she had fled; and sometimes pausing by the vase of roses, and touching their still fragrant, but fast-fading blossoms. Time went on, and she never thought of breaking her fast, or going to see how her master, El-Râmi, fared. His mind was gone--she understood that well enough,--and in a strange wild way of her own, she connected this sudden darkening of his intellect with the equally sudden disappearance of Lilith; and she dreaded to look upon his face.