“Thank you, sir!” he said fervently—“You’ve no idea what a deal of good it will do me to take in the tea to a sweet-looking lady—a properly-served tea, you know, all silver and good china. It will be a sort of tonic to me,—it will indeed, after that terrible place at Ilfracombe. You can tell her I’m a very handy man,—I can do almost anything, from cooking a chop, up to stretching my legs all day in a porter’s chair in the hall and reading the latest ‘special.’ Anything she wishes, whether for show or economy, she couldn’t have a better hand at it than me;—will you tell her so, sir?”
“Certainly!” replied El-Râmi with a smile. “I’ll tell her you are a domestic Von Moltke, and that under your management her household will be as well ordered as the German army under the great Field-Marshal.”
After a little more desultory conversation, Karl took his departure, and returned by the afternoon train to Ilfracombe. He was living with one of his fisher-friends, and as it was late when he arrived he made no attempt to go to the deserted house of his deceased master that night. But early the next morning he hurried there before breakfast, and ascended to the shattered tower,—that awful scene of desolation from whence poor Kremlin’s mangled remains had been taken, and where only a dark stain of blood on the floor silently testified of the horror that had there been enacted. The Disc, lying prone, glittered as he approached it, with, as he thought, a fiendish and supernatural light—the early sunlight fell upon its surface, and a thousand prismatic tints and sparkles dazzled his eyes as he drew near and gazed dubiously at it where it still clung to the iron pendulum. What could his master have used such a strange object for?—what did it mean? And that solemn humming noise which he had used to hear when the nights were still,—had that glistening thing been the cause?—had it any sound? ... Struck by this idea, and filled with a sudden courage, he seized a piece of thick wire, part of the many tangled coils that lay among the ruins of roof and wall, and with it gave the Disc a smart blow on its edge ... hush! ... hush! ... The wire dropped from his hand, and he stood, almost paralysed with fear. A deep, solemn, booming sound, like a great cathedral bell, rang through the air,—grand, and pure and musical, and ... unearthly!—as might be the clarion stroke of a clock beating out, not the short pulsations of Time, but the vast throbs of Eternity. Round and round, in eddying echoes swept that sweet, sonorous note,—till—growing gradually fainter and fainter, it died entirely away from human hearing, and seemed to pass out and upwards into the gathering sun-rays that poured brightly from the east, there to take its place, perchance, in that immense diapason of vibrating tone-music that fills the star-strewn space for ever and ever. It was the last sound struck from the great Star-Dial:—for Karl, terrified at the solemn din, wasted no more time in speculative hesitation, but, taking the flask El-Râmi had given him, he opened it tremblingly and poured all its contents on the surface of the crystal. The red liquid ran over the stone like blood, crumbling it as it ran and extinguishing its brilliancy,—eating its substance away as rapidly as vitriol eats away the human skin,—blistering it and withering it visibly before Karl’s astonished eyes,—till, as El-Râmi had said, it was hardly distinguishable from the dust and mortar around it. One piece lasted just a little longer than the rest—it curled and writhed like a living thing under the absolutely noiseless and terribly destructive influence of that blood-like liquid that seemed to sink into it as water sinks into a sponge,—Karl watched it, fascinated—till all at once it broke into a sparkle like flame, gleamed, smouldered, leaped high ... and—disappeared. The wondrous Dial, with its “perpetual motion” and its measured rhythm, was as if it had never been,—it had vanished as utterly as a destroyed Planet,—and the mighty Problem reflected on its surface remained ... and will most likely still remain ... a mystery unsolved.
XXXII.
For two or three weeks after he had received the news of Kremlin’s death, El-Râmi’s mind was somewhat troubled and uneasy. He continued his abstruse studies ardently, yet with less interest than usual,—and he spent hour after hour in Lilith’s room, sitting beside the couch on which she reposed, saying nothing, but simply watching her, himself absorbed in thought. Days went by and he never roused her,—never asked her to reply to any question concerning the deep things of time and of eternity with which her aërial spirit seemed conversant. He was more impressed by the suddenness and terror of Kremlin’s end than he cared to admit to himself,—and the “Light-Maps” and other papers belonging to his deceased old friend, all of which had now come into his possession, were concise enough in many marvellous particulars to have the effect of leading him almost imperceptibly to believe that after all there was a God,—an actual Being whose magnificent attributes baffled the highest efforts of the imagination, and who indeed, as the Bible grandly hath it—“holds the Universe in the hollow of His hand.” And he began to go back to the Bible for information;—for he, like most students versed in Eastern philosophies, knew that all that was ever said or will be said on the mysteries of life and death is to be found in that Book, which, though full of much matter that does not pertain to its actual teaching, remains the one chief epitome of all the wisdom of the world. When it is once remembered that the Deity of Moses and Aaron was their own invented hobgoblin, used for the purpose of terrifying and keeping the Jews in order, much becomes clear that is otherwise impossible to accept or comprehend. Historians, priests, lawgivers, prophets and poets have all contributed to the Bible,—and when we detach class from class and put each in its proper place, without confounding them all together in an inextricable jumble as “Divine inspiration,” we obtain a better view of the final intention of the whole. El-Râmi considered Moses and Aaron in the light of particularly clever Eastern conjurers,—and not only conjurers, but tacticians and diplomatists, who had just the qualities necessary to rule a barbarous, ignorant, and rebellious people. The thunders of Mount Sinai, the graving of the commandments on tablets of stone,—the serpent in the wilderness,—the bringing of water out of a rock,—the parting of the sea to let an army march through; he, El-Râmi, knew how all these things were done, and was perfectly cognisant of the means and appliances used to compass all these seemingly miraculous events.
“What a career I could make if I chose!” he thought—“What wealth I could amass,—what position! I who know how to quell the wildest waves of the sea,—I who, by means of a few drops of liquid, can corrode a name or a device so deeply on stone that centuries shall not efface it—I who can do so many things that would astonish the vulgar and make them my slaves,—why am I content to live as I do, when I could be greater than a crowned king? Why, because I scorn to trick the ignorant by scientific skill which I have neither the time nor the patience to explain to them—and again—because I want to fathom the Impossible;—I want to prove if indeed there is any Impossible. What can be done and proved, when once it is done and proved, I regard as nothing,—and because I know how to smooth the sea, call down the rain, and evoke phantoms out of the atmosphere, I think such manifestations of power trifling and inadequate. These things are all provable; and the performance of them is attained through a familiar knowledge of our own earth elements and atmosphere, but to find out the subtle Something that is not of earth, and has not yet been made provable,—that is the aim of my ambition. The Soul! What is it? Of what ethereal composition? of what likeness? of what feeling? of what capacity? This, and this alone, is the Supreme Mystery,—when once we understand it, we shall understand God. The preachers waste their time in urging men and women to save their souls, so long as we remain in total ignorance as to what the Soul is. We cannot be expected to take any trouble to “save” or even regard anything so vague and dubious as the Soul under its present conditions. What is visible and provable to our eyes is that our friends die, and, to all intents and purposes, disappear. We never know them as they were any more, ... and, ... what is still more horrible to think of, but is nevertheless true,—our natural tendency is to forget them,—indeed, after three or four years, perhaps less, we should find it difficult, without the aid of a photograph or painted picture, to recall their faces to our memories. And it is curious to think of it, but we really remember their ways, their conversation, and their notions of life better than their actual physiognomies. All this is very strange and very perplexing too,—and it is difficult to imagine the reason for such perpetual tearing down of affections, and such bitter loss and harassment, unless there is some great Intention behind it all,—an Intention of which it is arranged we shall be made duly cognisant. If we are not to be made cognisant,—if we are not to have a full and perfect Explanation,—then the very fact of Life being lived at all is a mere cruelty,—a senseless jest which lacks all point,—and the very grandeur and immensity of the Universe becomes nothing but the meanest display of gigantic Force remorselessly put forth to overwhelm creatures who have no power to offer resistance to its huge tyranny. If I could but fathom that ultimate purpose of things!—if I could but seize the subtle clue—for I believe it is something very slight and delicate which by its very fineness we have missed,—something which has to do with the Eternal Infinitesimal—that marvellous power which creates animated and regularly organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies laid together would not extend one inch. It is not to the Infinitely Great one must look for the secret of creation, but to the Infinitely Little.”
So he mused, as he sat by the couch of Lilith and watched her sleeping that enchanted sleep of death-in-life. Old Zaroba, though now perfectly passive and obedient, and fulfilling all his commands with scrupulous exactitude, was not without her own ideas and hopes as she went about her various duties connected with the care of the beautiful tranced girl. She seldom spoke to Féraz now except on ordinary household matters, and he understood and silently respected her reserve. She would sit in her accustomed corner of Lilith’s regal apartment, weaving her thread-work mechanically, but ever and anon lifting her burning eyes to look at El-Râmi’s absorbed face and note the varied expressions she saw, or fancied she saw there.
“The feverish trouble has begun”—she muttered to herself on one occasion, as she heard her master sigh deeply—“The stir in the blood,—the restlessness—the wonder—the desire. And out of heart’s pain comes heart’s peace;—and out of desire, accomplishment; and shall not the old gods of the world rejoice to see love born again of flames and tears and bitter-sweet as in the ancient days? For there is no love now such as there used to be—the pale Christ has killed it,—and the red rose aglow with colour and scent is now but a dull weed on a tame shore, washed by the salt sea, but never warmed by the sun. In the days of old, in the nights when Ashtaroth was queen of the silver hours, the youths and maidens knew what it was to love in the very breath of Love!—and the magic of all Nature, the music of the woods and waters, the fire of the stars, the odours of the flowers—all these were in the dance and beat of the young blood, and in the touch of the soft red lips as they met and clung together in kisses sweeter than honey in wine. But now—now the world has grown old and cold, and dreary and joyless,—it is winter among men and the summer is past.”
So she would murmur to herself in her wild half-poetical jargon of language—her voice never rising above an inarticulate whisper. El-Râmi never heard her or seemed to regard her—he had no eyes except for the drowsing Lilith.
If he had been asked, at this particular time, why he went to that room day after day, to stare silently at his beautiful “subject” and ponder on everything connected with her, he could not have answered the question. He did not himself know why. Something there was in him, as in every portion of created matter, which remained inexplicable,—something of his own nature which he neither understood nor cared to analyse. He who sought to fathom the last depth of research concerning God and the things divine would have been compelled to own, had he been cross-examined on the matter, that he found it impossible to fathom himself. The clue to his own Ego was as desperately hard to seize, as curiously subtle and elusive, as the clue to the riddle of Creation. He was wont to pride himself on his consistency—yet in his heart of hearts he knew that in many things he was inconsistent,—he justly triumphed in his herculean Will-force,—yet now he was obliged to admit to himself that there was something in the silent placid aspect of Lilith as she lay before him, subservient to his command, that quite unnerved him and scattered his thoughts. It had not used to be so—but now,—it was so. And he dated the change, whether rightly or wrongly, from the day on which the monk from Cyprus had visited him, and this thought made him restless and irritable, and full of unjust and unreasonable suspicions. For had not the “Master,” as he was known in the community to which he belonged, said that he had seen the Soul of Lilith, while he, El-Râmi, had never attained to so beatific an altitude of vision? Then was it not possible that, notwithstanding his rectitude and steadfastness of purpose, the “Master,” great and Christ-like in self-denial though he was, might influence Lilith in some unforeseen way? Then there was Féraz—Féraz, whose supplications and protestations had won a smile from the tranced girl, and who therefore must assuredly have roused in her some faint pleasure and interest. Such thoughts as these rankled in his mind and gave him no peace—for they conveyed to him the unpleasing idea that Lilith was not all his own as he desired her to be,—others had a share in her thoughts. Could he have nothing entirely to himself? he would demand angrily of his own inner consciousness—not even this life which he had, as it were, robbed from death? And an idea, which had at first been the merest dim suggestion, now deepened into a passionate resolve—he would make her his own so thoroughly and indissolubly that neither gods nor devils should snatch her from him.