CHAPTER XXIX
“And the sun became as sackcloth of hair and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a figtree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind; and the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled away; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.”
Long ago, when first she had become an object of diabolic clemency, Dolores had supposed that, come a day, she was to pay a price. When, after all the public pomp and private pose of her regal rites, her new lord escorted her into the throne-room—— Not until he stretched his arm in prideful gesture toward the escutcheon over the dais—— Soul-sick, she realized then the sum and coinage of that price.
To her chamber through the late afternoon Adeline had brought reports of His Highness’ proclamation of the royal alliance. Although he could not quiet the unprecedented storm which had raged since high-noon and his electricians had failed utterly to swing the imitation sun low enough to send a single gleam through the clouds on this his wedding day, preparations had been rushed. To the farthest reaches of the kingdom great annunciators had blared through the shriek of winds the bans. Not a rookie of the Hadean hordes, not a wench of the Wanton’s Well, not the most venomous whisperer of the Cage of In-Laws but knew that the Belial Bachelor was to change his state.
And the news was made gladsome by a decree for cessation of all punishment. For that eve the thought of despair was taboo. The most fearing of shades was to be allowed a breath of hope. Even in this clemency, however, the Rule of Reversals would hold, according to the noble maid, since at daybreak of the morrow all torments were to be resumed in double force.
That Greater Gehenna should celebrate was not enough, however, to satisfy His Majesty’s festive mood. Earth must join in the rejoicing over his signal success in the most intricate of games, even though the mortal participants might not be told the cause back of their debauch. Through free distribution of Devil’s Dew, a negotiable, bottled quintessence of his own most iniquitous spirits, which had become a recent output of distilleries under his direct control, there was to be started that night a series of riots destined to belt the globe, a spree of all nations that must have mortified the ancient Bacchanalians, did wireless reports penetrate to their section of the Realm.
The ceremony had been brief and the guests few. Original Sin, looking particularly hypocritical in his crackling high-church robes, officiated. Although none there was to give away the spirit bride, the lack was dismissed with the groom’s remark that, thanks to his inside knowledge of how to force the affections female, she was her own free gift.
Perhaps never in all marriages of convenience on Earth had sounded so sacrilegious the transposed lines of the service.
Would Dolores take Satan to love, honor and obey, from everlasting to everlasting, until he himself did them part?
She would.
And would Satan do his damnedest to love and cherish Dolores?
Hell helping him, he would.
Almost before her change of estate could be realized, she who had been despised of men stood before the Lower World with a crown upon her head and a scepter in her hand.
Her lord’s first marital word had been a complaint. Why hadn’t she worn the glittering amethystine costume which he had ordered as her bridal robe? Did she think herself still the shopgirl who had walked, once upon a time, into Vincent Seff’s “slaughter of the innocents” that she should come to her nuptials unadorned by any of the stage jewelry which he had heaped upon her? Or had her late-learned humor dictated her dress of virgin white?
She suspected indulgence, if not actual approval, behind his show of displeasure. Himself he had arrayed faultlessly in cutaway effect. His two departures from Earth’s accepted mode lay in a scarlet cravat and his boutonnière. In lieu of the conventional orange-blossom bud, he wore a tiny illuminated nectarine.
As to so many women-souls before her sacrificed upon the matrimonial altar, the subsequent feast was to Dolores a tedious affair. Toasted in varied high-volt mixtures, praised for her vices in the retroactive terms of the damned, applauded uproariously for her inability to make brazen reply as the arch-mistress of deceit, she had striven through course after course to keep up appearances. What though in the illusion of passion flowers that banked the board as a centerpiece she saw only the reproach in the dark eyes of John Cabot? What though her only taste from the adroit food-phantasies was the unsatisfying reminder that she must not regret her deception—must not allow herself to long for him, lest her thought-clutch deter him from the brave deeds that he must do? What though the only spirituous effect of the wine she quaffed was the realization that, with every half-hour now, the little party saved by her surrender must be nearer that boundary over which not even the Prince of the Power of the Air might recall them? With her black demi-watt she sipped the conviction that, in the emergency, she had done the best she could; with her electro-cordial frappé, the hope that already John might understand—that all might yet be well.
Now, with her gaze up-hung on the royal coat-of-arms, that conviction became as “sackcloth of hair” and the moon of her desire “as blood.” The stars of her hope-heaven fell unto the Earth, “even as a figtree casteth her untimely figs when shaken by a mighty wind.” All be well? “As a scroll ... when rolled away” was that sanguine possibility. Out of their places were moved her every mountain of resolve and island of faith.
She had declared herself ready to pay. Above was writ the price.
From out the design, as of ebony and amethyst, still shone the giant’s crown in bas-relief. The names of Japheth, Shem and Ham continued to drip in ruby lights from the horns of their respective lines. The caption beneath blazed brilliantly through its sardonyx-thin lettering. Except for the omission of two words the text read as before, “SATAN THE FIRST AND LAST” had been cut to “SATAN THE FIRST.”
That so bold an announcement could be made by elision! No longer did Satan the First boast himself the Last. Through what roiled channels did his reasoning run?
“But—but——” Words at last came of her consternation. “I thought there could be no birth after the first death?”
He answered with guarded elation. “Someone you used to believe in proved to you to-day that laws were made to be broken. Surely I am the last whom that law of the first death could coerce—I who never have died.”
“Nor were you born, Your Lowness. You say you had no mother. Never have you been of the flesh, so how can you expect——”
“I am not to be classed with the flesh. I am a god,” he interrupted. “Haven’t there been children of other gods? Why, even the Great-I-Am had a morganatic son!”
Through a corridor of the palace he led her and into the private wing of whose magnificence she often had heard. Upon a divan sheened over as with an embroidered altar-cloth he placed her; with one elbow crooked around the hump of her knee, lolled at her feet; with a new possessorship stroked her bare ankles and, at times, her throat and cheeks. The while, he descanted in detail upon what he now revealed as his “experiment.”
Only since meeting her had he foreseen a day when he should find irksome his seat on the throne, when affairs of state would bring him greater ennui than official sins divertissement. After The Day, when he had been acknowledged over all and the Universe had been let loose in an unending administration of outlawry, would not he, as well as his aides, be entitled to some reward of vice? And why continue in a career of perpetual exertion after his utmost had been done? As though human nature could not be trusted to increase in evil of its own impetus, once punitive bars were laid! Should not he be freed to tread the path of dalliance—to realize some such gentle vices as he had seen to satisfy the doughtiest devils of Earth?
Desire for an heir-apparent to his throne of late had grown in him. Could she not imagine the outcome of his ambition—a youthful demon born to dominance, bred to brutality, schooled to undreamt possibilities of fiendishness? Strong as steel in mental culpability, he should have the “chance” denied his self-made sire. Never should he know, hence should not fear defeat. With a super-divine intolerance, he would accept and hold his sovereignty. Although of the spirit, he should inherit a talent for strong visibility, taking his form from his father and from his mother a subtlety of appeal such as god nor man yet had possessed. A beauty of countenance irresistible should be his—features of marble pale as the ghosts of Dolores’ victims—lips that quivered from the very delicacy of the lies they lied, eyes that veiled in mists of mercy the utmost truculence.
Could she not see the child of his imagination? Let her open wide those crime-dark eyes of hers; to-night let his moth-like fancies bask in their purple flame.
When he, leaning against her, lifted himself to try his thought, the bride-soul clutched her forehead and shuddered back among the pillows as if to shield brain, as well as eyes. Yet even to her own ears her protest sounded both sincere and false.
“You must be mad—mad—to dream of such a thing.”
Was not the inspiration of all dreams mere madness? he asked her. And was not that love which he aspired to feel the first symptom of mental derangement? As for love’s climax—as for passion——
Always had he envied mortal men their carnal appetites. There was nothing to being the King of Evil if he couldn’t have all the vices. For æons had he hankered to glut himself with food, and drink distorted images into his mind. Now he hankered—— Oh, by no means to weaken himself with this love over which she oh’d and ah’d! Really, though, didn’t it seem too bad that he who had invented loveless lust and incited it daily in a million earthlings, should enjoy it only vicariously? Even before she had come to Shadow Land, he confessed, he had felt the need of a second-worst emotion. That night of the tale of her surrender to John Cabot he’d decided on its nature. To think of the thousands of years he’d wasted! To have been the two ultimates, archangel and arch-fiend, without having been intermediate man!
As the lasciviousness of his look intensified, Dolores realized in herself a certain sympathy. Appalled by its drawing power, she reminded herself that only chaste aspirations might conquer the crave for evil to which all mankind is heir. Her lips formed to the names of her quondam guardian companions.
“Innocentia, I do not wish to know these dreadful things. Save me from the knowledge, dear, dear Amor.”
His Majesty’s chuckle sounded. They were gone forever, the pet pests, he exulted. Ignorance should no longer be her bliss. ’T were folly for her not to be wise. Why shirk responsibility for the idea born of their acquaintance—one wickeder, therefore more seducing, than any he alone had conceived?
His further explication scorched her mind more hotly than did his breath her cheek. Physical desire he might not have. Yet was not its source, more than in the case of other passions, a state of mind? Irrefutable proof lay in the fact that desire wakened or slept as mortals fell in or out of love. Did not the city rake, accustomed to think of satisfaction as a necessity of his being, indulge it without love? And the libertine husband—why did he seek it from fresh subjects if not that his mind, wearied of his wife, must be freshly inspired?
With every tale told him by Dolores these past nights and nights, Satan had measured his mentality by that of each of her earthly Don Juans. Averse at first to the weakness of love, he had come to recognize it as the match which would fire his affections and, thence, his desire. When he considered the state of mind into which he could get through hate——
He had come to the acknowledgment that, without love, he had missed mightily. Now, he longed to strike the ineffectual looking lucifer. Since, however, any satisfaction or outcome of their alliance must result, more than in mortal alliances, from a state of mind, he wished Dolores also to long for love. That was why he plead when he might compel. He could not risk an heir warped in his evil nature as had been the Cabots’ in body. No toy pace-setter for the sins of Satan the Second!
She was the match to fire his imagination, he told her. She was the seemingly insipid drink which——
He interrupted himself to lick his lips. That fellow Seff was right. One needed a nectarine. She was his nectarine. She was very visible, as yet the most material of shades. The ways of the world still controlled her. Once his wishes were her own, she would of her own accord lift the stronger cup to his lips; would press the cheek of ripe fruit against his teeth. Already she had felt an impulse toward him. No use for her to deny that in the throne-room that afternoon, just before they had been interrupted——
“No. No.” The very necessity of Dolores’ denial, however italicized in her consciousness the knowledge that she lied.
As Satan passed his hand under her arm and pressed her bust, she shrank from him with moaned aversion for the thought back of the caress. He was like Vincent Seff. The offense had been the shopman’s on that first day so very long ago, when she had begun to learn of men. Then, as now, she had been speechless from apprehension. Had that apprehension come from subconscious knowledge of herself more than of the man?
On Earth she had lived down certain inherent tendencies because she had not understood. From His Highness’ first touch she had trembled, even as on that day in Dr. Willard’s study when she had implored the hunting parson of All Mankind to teach her the religion said to cover game like her from just such hunters as he. The carnality of mortals she had come to excuse because component of the flesh. Since, instead, it was shown her to be component of the mind—since she was protected no longer by her innocence—since here in the inter-world she was hunted by the most expert of mental sportsmen——
Dolores strove for perspective. How ghoulish an ambition, this desire of Satan for desire! What could be more inhuman than a passion of the imagination without hope? And yet he hoped. What was his hope?
An odious thrill answered the question—a thrill which she knew to be the first farthing of the price she was to pay. The sum total, then, would be the development of her evil possibilities to the utter obliteration of the good. All that she had saved of her better self from her late estate was to be burned to dross by that recognized flicker of passion which had lit this conflagration. The King, by the heat of his diabolical imaginings, would kindle, then fan her with the winds of his swift thought. Her spiritual inflammability was her real value to him, as had been that of her body to men. He had praised, as had they, her beauty, her naïveté, her teasing silences, but had passed without a glance others as exceptional as she. That worst of her which, in the physical, had wrecked her chances on Earth, would wreck those mental which she still had hoped to realize in Shadow Land. Even though she saved The Day to the Great-I-Am, she would not by then be a fit subject for reward. Spiritually ruined, she would be no mate for John Cabot. Well it was that she had not known in time the fullness of the price, else might she have been too niggard-souled to contract to pay.
Forewarned in these premonitions of her fate, the spirit-girl felt, as never in the past, her own impotency. Innocentia gone, the love-lad Amor gone, her babe, gallant Old Sam, and now John—all who might have helped her she had sent beyond recall. Evil expectation was a compelling force; that she had learned from Clarke Shayle. Even now, the Master Mind was compelling her—vehemently, evilly expecting of her. Would she give?
“I am a perfectly free immoral agent,” His Majesty boasted. “You believe that, don’t you, my poor child? I can seize your mind and hold it to the last split-second of Eternity, whether you will or no. You liked that molecule of suppressed power in your love-hound. Aren’t you appealed to by the fact that I am at this moment suppressing all the molecules of power that have run the world?”
Dolores felt shocked by several perceptions. He had licked his lips; had called her “my child”; had concentrated his magnetism upon her; with deliberate intent, was attracting her through the same means used unintentionally by John Cabot. As he argued, he bent upon her a smile no more youthful or friendly than that of the lawyer who had won her confidence only to spoil John’s life and her own. And he wore a scarlet tie.
He was, in his conversion of her to his will, like each one of those mortal men who had converted her. In one consummate personality he combined their characteristics. Everyman was a part of him. He was all men.
Since detached integrals of himself had brought her irrevocably to grief on Earth, what chance had she to resist him as a whole? Despite her guard, the despondent thought must have shown in her face.
“You do not need to answer in words.” His Highness pressed the point. “The idea of rectitude, grafted onto women by convention, embarrasses you. Don’t think of yielding to me. Think, rather, of yielding to your worse and greater self. You, so lately and so rarely physical, must share my mental hunger for the appetites. You will feed me with thoughts of fulfillment? This passion that you have aroused in mortal males, since born of the mind, on the mind must have violent recoil. You will tell me—will teach me? I shall not bore you. If the response of men diverted you, how much greater the diversion of a god’s response! Is it not an ambition worthy even of you—to inspire the passion of an immortal whose fervor has not been spent in birth or life or death? Think of my tireless excesses, of my ingenuity, of my eternal crave for you! Think of the procreative possibilities of a superman!”
“You explained to me yourself,” the girl-soul sobbed, “that nothing could be created in Gehenna—that down here it is always too late.”
“It is never too late for me to do worse.”
“But this heir you speak of—must he not come of a mother as well as a father? I, at least, am subject to the rules that govern earthlings. I have been born of the flesh and I have died.”
“You quibble.” His frown showed irritation. “Aren’t you lifted to my estate by our alliance? What you were doesn’t matter, except that your late mortality brings new vigor to our line. What you are becomes merged in me. What you shall be——”
The hand that pressed up her arm and gripped her neck pricked as with many needles from his impatience. Her head he drew backward, as he lifted to his knees on the couch and leaned over her. Her eyes dilated under the close gaze of his. Her lips moved to the syllables of his slow, low declaration.
“When the thought-lust in you has conquered your affectations—from the moment of the consummation of the union of our minds—you shall be a goddess—my goddess—for aye.”
Strangely enough, his egotism did not offend her. An expression of power, it bade fair to convince her. Warning herself that she must not be convinced, she tried to get from his grasp.
But he held her. “I’d love to love you, sweet Grief,” he murmured close to her lips. “Ask me to kiss you, Dolores, as once you asked a man of Earth. Beg me to take you, you devil’s desire. Let our moment of forever start now.”
His reminder helped her to tear her will from his and throw it, like a tangible thing, to the thought of John. Pushing him away, she found voice to defy him.
“I’ll never ask you. That moment never can start.”
“Fair fiend, don’t try me too far. I want to want you. I desire desire.”
As his fingers closed around Dolores’ throat, she was weakened by the thought of strangling. She could not speak, either to deny or implore.
“And you,” he rasped, “shall want me to want you until you’ll pray that your mind may burn to ash from its own ardor. Or will you teach me willingly—inspire me as you best know how? I prefer to be your lover—to miss not a nibble of that smooth cheek, my luscious nectarine. But I am also your legal lord. And I have tutored too many legal lords of Earth in their brutalities to miss my divine right now. I am your master. Ask me to kiss you, slave.”
Dolores strove for the sort of courage that had enabled her before to repel him. Just one strong, good thought might release her. From the least likely source—his clutch of her—it came. Baby fingers had clung tight about her throat a few hours since. She was a mother, and a mother was enslaved only by her motherhood. She freed herself of his grip; struggled to her feet; started across the room.
“My wager did not include wants of my own,” she defied him. “You ask more than I can pay.”
“More? I haven’t begun to ask!”
From the closeness of his voice she realized without glancing back that he was following. The strength of her good thought was scattered by panic. All she could do was to flee.
She hurried to the windows, but found them shuttered against the storm. Behind object after object of the room she took a stand, only to desert it on his near approach.
He, like a fate evil, leisurely, sure to overtake, pursued. He laughed from excess of exhilaration when the inevitable occurred. Her long tulle-like veil caught about the winged foot of an illusion of Mercury. As though by jealousy of the speed god she was tripped; was about to fall. He caught her.
“Why did you have to stop? This has been wonderful—never could be so wonderful again! Whatever inspired you with the knowledge that the way to ask is to deny?”
Freeing the veil, he wrapped it around and around her, binding her hands to her sides.
“Your intuition is keener than all my keenness,” he panted. “Of course the fleeing woman is the woman one must overtake. To ask me you have aroused me to ask you. Your lips, Dolores—I ask your lips.”
He flung her down; knotted the ends of the scarf about her sandals; crowded over her. The lecherous look of him silenced any protest. His eyes were aflame and from his whole person fumed that ruddy effluvium which came of his concentration.
As measured by the slow approach of his face to hers, a death-time of dreading thoughts preoccupied Dolores. Fragile as were her bonds, she could not throw them off. Her resistance, she knew, was weakening. Suppose her mind consented; what then?
Repeatedly had he forced her to his evil will; at times had justified his boast of making her like—almost love him. Now he was overcoming her as by a drug, none the easier to resist because she knew it to be the soporific of sin. Did soul-lust, then, beget soul-lust? Could he make her crave him to some mental excess? Could spirit be welded with spirit in such infernal way that the conscience would be raped as bodies were raped on Earth—ruined for progress and admittance among unsullied consciences after That Day?
And the outcome of such a ghoulish union? What manner of offspring would be theirs—if offspring indeed there might be—child-fiend incarnate—spirit-spawn of the passion of an unbodied god?
For her to have begotten the heir-apparent of Gehenna—that would prove righteous the Judgments of Men, even should the Greater Judge consider revoking her decree. Never again could she hope to see John Cabot and her babe.
And yet—and yet——
She had fought her fight with such strength as she could command. What though she lost her own immortal soul through weakness—had not weakness as well as strength been given unto her? She had not been wasted. She had saved those two best-beloved. And, in saving them, had she not saved the greater part of herself? All her loyalty had gone with John. Their babe was the bloom of her heart, that “one, half-blown rose” of the doomed gardener’s plea. The safety of them who were all the good in her she had bought. Surely the rest of her did not matter much. Why now haggle over the price?
The query dismissed her resistance. Her mind opened to her master’s mind, her eyes to his eyes, her lips to his lips. A hideous impulse moved her, like the mania to leap from some incalculable height. Thought-pulse for thought-pulse, her sensation roused to his. A moan of torturing expectance escaped her.... She closed her eyes....
She wanted to want him.
In the blackness, Dolores saw the blacker truth. Her swooning sense of obligation to self was shocked into revival. Not him so much as something in herself must she resist—that desire put in woman to be mothers of men. Response meant utter degradation. More culpable than he who had not known the uplift of true love, she would sink lower far in hate’s degeneration. Down and down ... always down ... forever and forever down....
“I am a woman soul—I must have love to live, not lust!”
With the cry, she tore herself out of his grasp. And as she regained her feet, the bonds that had seemed so strong, broke apart, like dampened tissue.
“Vampire.”
His Highness’ hands clutched for her loosened hair. As again she fled him, he leaped in pursuit; abetted his steps with his hands; pulled himself forward with grasps of this and that. When he saw that she was trying the entrance door, he stopped in derisive anticipation of her return. A gleaming object from his pocket he waved at her, as illustration of the mental ban:
“The key, my queen—come get the key.”
His chortles loudened at her desperate exclamation:
“If only I could pray!”
Abruptly, however, he ceased to laugh. He stood alone in the chamber. The locked door had opened to his captive bride. She had passed into the hall.
He followed. Nearer animal instincts than ever in his past, his tall form bent until he ran on toes and finger-tips. Through the private hallway he raced after her—along the central corridor of the palace into the throne-room.
The great auditorium was dark, except for the jewel-voltage of the altered Mephistophelian coat-of-arms. With intent to point its full significance, the All-Man headed off his quarry from doors and windows and drove her toward the dais. There he seized the back-waving banner of her hair and dragged her up the steps. With his free hand he gestured upward.
“Your artistry is unexcelled, Queen Dolores—your sense of fitness finer than mine own. That you should lead me here is a right royal inspiration.”
Further excited by her struggles, he laughed the louder. Sinking on one knee, he again crowded over her.
“You have taught me and I have learned. No longer do I ask. I take. Lo, at this touch of you, resistant, I feel—I feel! Your life—at this taste of them—a-ah, almost do I taste! At last, fiend-houri—at last—at last—our eternal moment has begun.”
As he held her head to the step, Dolores saw that the horns which a few minutes before had been neatly trimmed, were showing through his hair. Not daring to face the compelling power which had made possible this phenomenon, she shifted her gaze, first to the escutcheon, then quickly to the dome.
“If only I knew you, God!”
“That name in my presence again?” Irony followed the Belialic snarl. “Why hang back for an introduction if you believe the Great-I-Am stronger than I? It wouldn’t be the first time total stranger had rescued damsel in distress. Why not ask Him, little heathen? It will do no harm to ask.”
Unloosening his hand from her hair, he jerked her to her feet. Dolores, not knowing what next he might will, backed to the wall. There, with eyes and arms uplifted, she acted in earnest upon his mocking advice.
“God save me,” she voiced her first prayer. “I am sinking. I shall be lost. Are you there, O God? Only you can save my soul.”
Higher than the arch-blasphemer’s shrieks of derision, fugued the storm winds without. At their demand, the entrance doors swung wide; admitted them. Across the great room they swept, gentling only at the flutter of veilings about the girl-soul at bay against the wall.
Close after them lightnings slashed the darkness. Behind her head, from tip to tip of her upraised hands, thence to her sandled feet, they concentrated in rays of blinding light.
Crouched to spring, Satan fell back as if struck. In the down-shed blaze his face worked with superstition. His whine of a maddened dog slashed across the eyes with a whip, ended in two gasped words.
“The Cross!”
Into power unmeasured by watts or kilowatts increased the rays. They irradiated the face of her whose shape they framed with a beauty never before seen in Gehenna—the beauty of realized hope.
The uproar of the storm concentrated in one stupendous crash. From out the contrasting stillnesses, there then spoke a voice calmer and deeper than the deepest tone of the sea—“a voice ... as the voice of many waters and ... of a great thunder and ... of harpers harping with their harps”:
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Prone fell the Destroyer, lest he be destroyed. Face downward before that sign, which was the sign of his one fear, he writhed upon the floor. From his forked tongue of a snake hissed threats and pleas:
“Go away! How dare you trespass into the kingdom I have made for myself? Don’t blast me. You promised time until Judgment. I’ll give up the girl-shade. I’ll do anything you say. Don’t blast me now. I might, you know, repent.”
Without daring to look up, he tugged at the hem of Dolores’ robe.
“You’re to go—to leave Gehenna,” he upflung in his immortal fright. “Don’t wait to prepare. Take this signet ring. It will pass you through the gates. Hurry, lest you ruin me with the rest of those that craved you. Go, Dolores. As you love me—as you hate—for Hell’s sake, go!”
For long after she had gone he lay. Only his lips moved, muttering.
“He could have finished me that time. He must have certain powers of His own, like—like her. Since He can come and go at will, I wonder why He waits. To-night—I feel afraid—that my Great Intention——”
The winds sounded to be subsiding. Evidently they had roused in his spirit-bride’s defense. In time he risked a glance toward the Sign. Entirely it had faded. Not a glimmer of it remained to place that picture of wondrous loveliness which lately it had lit.
A sob racked His Lowness. His hands searched about, as though for some treasure he had lost.
“Dolores, Dolores, Grief to Men and me. What a fate, to learn love from the loss of it!”
His fingers found something to clutch. Sitting up, he examined what they contained—fragments of the illusion of her veil. He bathed his face in them; swayed sensuously to the feel of them.
“Even the mist of your memory weakens me. Wasted—you—when I may never be so bad again?”
He became interested in a stinging sensation in one eye never felt before. With a forefinger he touched the lid. Its tip was not moist. Yet the pressure within increased. Excitement caught him as he realized what must be about to occur. He lifted his voice in a shouted command.
“Holder of the Tear Bowl! Quick—to hand—the Bowl!”
When only the reverberations of his voice made response, he bemoaned the lost opportunity.
“Through the sorrows of all ages to expect it, only that, when it comes, none should be here to catch it!”
It fell. A great, gleaming, heavy drop, it slipped from beneath its lid. Salt as brine, it smarted as it rolled down his cheek. Yet no watery, crocodile effluence was this. It did not spatter on the floor. Lasting as a diamond it looked.
Carefully he picked it up. Solemnly he examined it. This tear that he had shed—his first—was of that sincerest sort, a tear of pity for himself.
The while, straight and swift as the spirit’s cry, Dolores had fled the palace. Out of the portal and through the gate she ran, past darting demons abroad to enjoy the fury of the storm. A slim creature in white gleaming through the blackness, she fluttered the imagination of a group of celebrants staggering from an overplus of draughts inhaled to the consort of the King. With raucous cries and out-clutching hands, several pursued her. But too slow were they, or too fleet she.
At the Gehennan gates, the guard fell back, advised by the evil eye of the royal signet ring. Once safely outside, she turned and flung the blazing trophy back to them.
Seemingly alone, she felt the presence of guards stronger than they and more spiritual than herself. These she did not fear to trust, so tenderly did shadowy wings seem to surround her, so firmly was she steadied from stumbling, so wise was the counsel she heard. Although the storm still raged, lightnings concentrated before her and illumined her way, as up and up she sped.
And with her sped happy thoughts. John she soon should find. That she knew. Her feet were swift from lightsomeness and he could not have progressed far, all weighted as he was by the burden of his disappointment. Amor and Innocentia—even now her sweet comrades must be seeking her. All things of her they knew and never for long had they deserted her. Since they were not born of Earth, they must be well acquainted with the by-paths of this strange Beyond. Should the way to John prove difficult, the love-lad would lead her aright. And if reproach still looked from out the soul of him she had forsworn, Innocentia would appeal. John and their babe she soon should find and all be well.
Broader and brighter before her shafted that penetrating Light whose rays she had seen to reach the soddenest scenes of Earth and the dankest depths of the Lower Land. Now it dispersed the shadows from her dreading heart and darkened mind.
Her former nescience, then, had not mattered to the Great-I-Am! He had known her all along; had deplored her plight; had awaited her wish for an introduction. That restraint which so had fascinated her in one of Earth was but an impulse from infinite restraint. No longer need she fear for the fate of the Universe. The All-Power which had restrained itself toward her that she might work out her own development, would strike when the souls of men cried out, even as she had cried, their dependence. Come The Day, His Majesty would fail of his own impotency. Faith, then, was not the fear of fools. Faith was the courage of gods and men, a heritage divine.
No voice of sad women or of sobbing winds was Dolores’ as, peering and hurrying, her joy lifted in fragments of lines learned from a singer on Earth.
“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom....”
Now a flash of white through whiteness, she sped and sang:
“The night is dark and I am far from home....”
Into the land of hope—into air so vital that realization seemed already reached—into a life of no more sorrows, no more tears——
“Lead Thou me on.”
From neither sun nor moon came the glory that lit the girl-soul’s way. She knew and knew. “Home” the Light was leading her. From it she had come. To it she now was returned.
The strength of that Hell she had fled was only hate.
The Light—the Light was Love.
THE END