The name was lost and drowned in the wave of solemn music that rolled and throbbed upon the air, and El-Râmi’s distorted mind, catching at the dread suggestiveness of that unearthly harmony, accepted it as a sort of invisible challenge.
“What, good Death! brother Death, are you there?” he muttered fiercely, shaking his clenched fist at vacancy—“Are you here, and are you everywhere? Nay, we have crossed swords before now in desperate combat ... and I have won! ... and I will win again! Hands off, rival Death! Lilith is mine!”
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.”