Sighing, she clasped her hands about her knees and rocked herself to and fro, as though she were in pain. Féraz stood gazing at her wistfully and with a somewhat troubled air,—her words impressed him uncomfortably,—her very attitude suggested misery. The sunlight beaming across her bent figure, flashed on the silver bangles that circled her brown arms, and touched her rough gray hair to flecks of brightness,—her black eyes almost hid themselves under their tired drooping lids,—and when she ceased speaking her lips still moved as though she inwardly muttered some weird incantation. Growing impatient with her, he knew not why, the young man paced slowly up and down the room; her deafness precluded him from speaking to her, and he just now had no inclination to communicate with her in the usual way by writing. And while he thus walked about, she continued her rocking movement, and peered at him dubiously from under her bushy gray brows.
“It is ill work meddling with the gods;”—she began again presently—“In old time they were vengeful,—and have they changed because the times are new? Nay, nay! The nature of a man may alter with the course of his passions,—but the nature of a god!—who shall make it otherwise than what it has been from the beginning? Cruel, cruel are the ways of the gods when they are thwarted;—there is no mercy in the blind eyes of Fate! To tempt Destiny is to ask the thunderbolt to fall and smite you,—to oppose the gods is as though a babe’s hand should essay to lift the Universe. Have I not prayed the Master, the wise and the proud El-Râmi Zarânos, to submit and not contend? As God liveth, I say, let us submit while we can like the slaves that we are, for in submission alone is safety!”
Féraz heard her with increasing irritation,—why need she come to him with all this melancholy jabbering, he thought angrily. He leaned far out of the open window and looked at the ugly houses of the little square,—at the sooty trees, the sparrows hopping and quarrelling in the road, the tradesmen’s carts that every now and again dashed to and from their various customers’ doors in the aggravatingly mad fashion they affect, and tried to realise that he was actually in busy practical London, and not, as seemed at the moment more likely, in some cavern of an Eastern desert, listening to an ancient sibyl croaking misfortune. Just then a neighbouring clock struck nine, and he hastily drew in his head from the outer air, and, making language with his eloquent fingers, he mutely asked Zaroba if she were going upstairs now, or whether she meant to wait till El-Râmi himself came down?
She left off rocking to and fro, and half rose from her chair,—then she hesitated.
“I have never waited”—she said—“before,—and why? Because the voice of the Master has roused me from my deepest slumbers,—and, like a finger of fire laid on my brain, his very thought has summoned my attendance. But this morning no such voice has called,—no such burning touch has stirred my senses,—how should I know what I must do? If I go unbidden, will he not be angered?—and his anger works like a poison in my blood! ... yet ... it is late, ... and his silence is strange——”
She paused, passing her hand wearily across her eyes,—then stood up, apparently resolved.
“I will obey the voices that whisper to me,”—she said, with a certain majestic resignation and gravity—“The voices that cry to my heart ‘Sorrow! Sorrow!’ and yet again ‘Sorrow!’ If grief must come, then welcome, grief!—one cannot gainsay the Fates. I will go hence and prove the message of the air,—for the air holds invisible tongues that do not lie.”
With a slow step she moved across the room,—and on a sudden impulse Féraz sprang towards her exclaiming, “Zaroba!—stay!”—then recollecting she could not hear a word, he checked himself and drew aside to let her pass, with an air of indifference which he was far from feeling. He was in truth wretched and ill at ease,—the exhilaration with which he had arisen from sleep had given way to intense depression, and he could not tell what ailed him.
“Awake, Féraz! To-day dreams end, and life begins.” Those were the strange words he had heard the first thing on awaking that morning,—what could they mean, he wondered rather sadly? If dreams were indeed to end, he would be sorry,—and if life, as mortals generally lived it, were to begin for him, why then, he would be sorrier still. Troubled and perplexed, he began to set the breakfast in order, hoping by occupation to divert his thoughts and combat the miserable feeling of vague dread which oppressed him, and which, though he told himself how foolish and unreasonable it was, remained increasingly persistent. All at once such a cry rang through the house as almost turned his blood to ice,—a cry wild, despairing and full of agony. It was repeated with piercing vehemence,—and Féraz, his heart beating furiously, cleared the space of the room with one breathless bound and rushed upstairs, there to confront Zaroba tossing her arms distractedly and beating her breast like a creature demented.
“Lilith!” she gasped,—“Lilith has gone ... gone! ... and El-Râmi is dead!”