“I cannot!” he said sadly—“When I go—away yonder—I seem to have so little remembrance of earthly things—I am separated from the world by thousands of air-spaces. I am always conscious that you exist on earth,—but it is always as of some one who will join me presently—not of one whom I am compelled to join. There is the strangeness of it. That is why I have very little belief in the notion of ghosts and spirits appearing to men—because I know positively that no detached soul willingly returns to or remains on earth. There is always the upward yearning. If it returns, it does so simply because it is, for some reason, commanded, not because of its own desire.”
“And who do you suppose commands it?” asked El-Râmi.
“The Highest of all Powers,”—replied Féraz reverently—“whom we all, whether spirit or mortal, obey.”
“I do not obey,”—said El-Râmi composedly—“I enforce obedience.”
“From whom?” cried Féraz with agitation—“O my brother, from whom? From mortals perhaps—yes,—so long as it is permitted to you—but from Heaven—no! No, not from Heaven can you win obedience. For God’s sake do not boast of such power!”
He spoke passionately, and in anxious earnest.
El-Râmi smiled.
“My good fellow, why excite yourself? I do not ‘boast’—I am simply—strong! If I am immortal, God Himself cannot slay me,—if I am mortal only, I can but die. I am indifferent either way. Only I will not shrink before an imaginary Divine terror till I prove what right it has to my submission. Enough!—we have talked too much on this subject, and I have work to do.”
He turned to his writing-table as he spoke and was soon busy there. Féraz took up a book and tried to read, but his heart beat quickly, and he was overwhelmed by a deep sense of fear. The daring of his brother’s words smote him with a chill horror,—from time immemorial, had not the forces divine punished pride as the deadliest of sins? His thoughts travelled over the great plain of History, on which so many spectres of dead nations stand in our sight as pale warnings of our own possible fate, and remembered how surely it came to pass that when men became too proud and defiant and absolute,—rejecting God and serving themselves only, then they were swept away into desolation and oblivion. As with nations, so with individuals—the Law of Compensation is just, and as evenly balanced as the symmetrical motion of the Universe. And the words, “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” rang through his ears, as he sat heavily silent, and wondering, wondering where the researches of his brother would end, and how?
El-Râmi himself meanwhile was scanning the last pages of his dead friend Kremlin’s private journal. This was a strange book,—kept with exceeding care, and written in the form of letters which were all addressed “To the Beloved Maroussia in Heaven”—and amply proved that, in spite of the separated seclusion and eccentricity of his life, Kremlin had not only been faithful to the love of his early days, the girl who had died self-slain in her Russian prison,—but he had been firm in his acceptance of and belief in the immortality of the soul and the reunion of parted spirits. His last “letter” ran thus—it was unfinished and had been written the night before the fatal storm which had made an end of his life and learning together,—