The next day was very wet and stormy. From morning to night the rain fell in torrents, and a cold wind blew. El-Râmi stayed indoors, reading, writing, and answering a few of his more urgent correspondents, a great number of whom were total strangers to him, and who nevertheless wrote to him out of the sheer curiosity excited in them by the perusal of a certain book to which his name was appended as author. This book was a very original literary production,—the critics were angry with it, because it was so unlike anything else that ever was written. According to the theories set forth in its pages, Man, the poor and finite, was proved to be a creature of superhuman and almost god-like attributes,—a “flattering unction” indeed, which when laid to the souls of commonplace egoists had the effect of making them consider El-Râmi Zarânos a very wonderful person, and themselves more wonderful still. Only the truly great mind is humble enough to appreciate greatness, and of great minds there is a great scarcity. Most of El-Râmi’s correspondents were of that lower order of intelligence which blandly accepts every fresh truth discovered as specially intended for themselves, and not at all for the world, as though indeed they were some particular and removed class of superior beings who alone were capable of understanding true wisdom. “Your work has appealed to me”—wrote one, “as it will not appeal to all, because I am able to enter into the divine spirit of things as the vulgar herd cannot do!” This, as if the “vulgar herd” were not also part of the “divine spirit of things”!
“I have delighted in your book”—wrote another, “because I am a poet, and the world, with its low aims and lower desires, I abhor and despise!”
The absurdity of a man presuming to call himself a poet, and in the same breath declaring he “despises” the world,—the world which supports his life and provides him with all his needs,—never seems to occur to the minds of these poor boasters of a petty vanity. El-Râmi looked weary enough as he glanced quickly through a heap of such ill-judged and egotistical epistles, and threw them aside to be for ever left unanswered. To him there was something truly horrible and discouraging in the contemplation of the hopeless, helpless, absolute stupidity of the majority of mankind. The teachings of Mother Nature being always straight and plain, it is remarkable what devious turnings and dark winding ways we prefer to stumble into rather than take the fair and open course. For example Nature says to us—“My children, Truth is simple,—and I am bound by all my forces to assist its manifestation. A Lie is difficult—I can have none of it—it needs other lies to keep it going,—its ways are full of complexity and puzzle,—why then, O foolish ones, will you choose the Lie and avoid the Truth? For, work as you may, the Truth must out, and not all the uproar of opposing multitudes can still its thunderous tongue.” Thus Nature;—but we heed her not,—we go on lying steadfastly, in a strange delusion that thereby we may deceive Eternal Justice. But Eternal Justice never is deceived,—never is obscured even, save for a moment, as a passing cloud obscures the sun.
“How easy after all to avoid mischief of any kind,” mused El-Râmi now, as he put by his papers and drew two or three old reference volumes towards him—“How easy to live happily, free from care, free from sickness, free from every external or internal wretchedness, if we could but practise the one rule—Self-abnegation. It is all there,—and the ethereal Lilith may be right in her assurance as to the non-existence of Evil unless we ourselves create it. At least one half the trouble in the world might be avoided if we chose. Debt, for example,—that carking trouble always arises from living beyond one’s means,—therefore why live beyond one’s means? What for? Show? Vulgar ostentation? Luxury? Idleness? All these are things against which Heaven raises its eternal ban. Then take physical pain and sickness,—here Self is to blame again,—self-indulgence in the pleasures of the table,—sensual craving—the marriage of weakly or ill-conditioned persons,—all simple causes from which spring incalculable evils. Avoid the causes and we escape the evils. The arrangements of Nature are all so clear and explicit, and yet we are for ever going out of our way to find or invent difficulties. The farmer grumbles and writes letters to the newspapers if his turnip-fields are invaded by what he deems a ‘destructive pest’ in the way of moth or caterpillar, and utterly ignores the fact that these insects always appear for some wise reason or other, which he, absorbed in his own immediate petty interests, fails to appreciate. His turnips are eaten,—that is all he thinks or cares about,—but if he knew that those same turnips contain a particular microbe poisonous to human life, a germ of typhoid, cholera, or the like, drawn up from the soil and ready to fructify in the blood of cattle or of men, and that these insects of which he complains are the scavengers sent by Nature to utterly destroy the Plague in embryo, he might pause in his grumbling to wonder at so much precaution taken by the elements for the preservation of his unworthy and ignorant being. Perplexing and at times maddening is this our curse of Ignorance,—but that the ‘sins of the fathers are visited on the children’ is a true saying is evident—for the faults of generations are still bred in our blood and bone.”
He turned over the first volume before him listlessly,—his mind was not set upon study, and his attention wandered. He was thinking of Féraz, with whom he had scarcely exchanged a word all day. He had lacked nothing in the way of service, for swift and courteous obedience to his brother’s wishes had characterised Féraz in every simple action, but there was a constraint between the two that had not previously existed. Féraz bore himself with a stately yet sad hauteur,—he had the air of a proud prince in chains who, being captive, performed his prison work with exactitude and resignation as a matter of discipline and duty. It was curious that El-Râmi, who had steeled himself as he imagined against every tender sentiment, should now feel the want of the impetuous confidence and grace of manner with which his young brother had formerly treated him.
“Everything changes—” he mused gloomily, “Everything must change, of course; and nothing is so fluctuating as the humour of a boy who is not yet a man, but is on the verge of manhood. And with Féraz my power has reached its limit,—I know exactly what I can do, and what I can not do with him,—it is a case of ‘Thus far and no farther.’ Well,—he must choose his own way of life,—only let him not presume to set himself in my way, or interfere in my work! Ye gods!—there is nothing I would not do——”
He paused, ashamed; the blood flushed his face darkly and his hand clenched itself involuntarily. Conscious of the thought that had arisen within him, he felt a moment’s shuddering horror of himself. He knew that in the very depths of his nature there was enough untamed savagery to make him capable of crushing his young brother’s life out of him, should he dare to obstruct his path or oppose him in his labours. Realising this, a cold dew broke out on his forehead and he trembled.
“O Soul of Lilith that cannot understand Evil!” he exclaimed—“Whence came this evil thought in me? Does the evil in myself engender it?—and does the same bitter gall that stirred the blood of Cain lurk in the depths of my being, till Opportunity strikes the wicked hour? Retro me, Sathanas! After all, there was something in the old beliefs—the pious horror of a devil,—for a devil there is that walks the world, and his name is Man!”
He rose and paced the room impatiently,—what a long day it seemed, and with what dreary persistence the rain washed against the windows! He looked out into the street,—there was not a passenger to be seen,—a wet dingy grayness pervaded the atmosphere and made everything ugly and cheerless. He went back to his books, and presently began to turn over the pages of the quaint Arabic volume into which Féraz had unwisely dipped, gathering therefrom a crumb of knowledge, which, like all scrappy information, had only led him to discontent.
“All these old experiments of the Egyptian priests were simple enough—” he murmured as he read,—“They had one substratum of science,—the art of bringing the countless atoms that fill the air into temporary shape. The trick is so easy and natural that I fancy there must have been a certain condition of the atmosphere in earlier ages which of itself shaped the atoms,—hence the ideas of nymphs, dryads, fauns, and water-sprites; these temporary shapes which dazzled for some fleeting moments the astonished human eye and so gave rise to all the legends. To shape the atoms as a sculptor shapes clay, is but a phase of chemistry,—a pretty experiment—yet what a miracle it would always seem to the uninstructed multitude!”