Читать книгу Ardath - Marie Corelli - Страница 15

Heliobas was silent—he seemed engaged in deep and anxious thought,—and he kept his steadfast eyes fixed on Alwyn's countenance, as though he sought there the clew to some difficult problem.

"What do you know of the Nunc Dimittis?" he asked at last, with a half-smile. "You might as well say PATER NOSTER,—both canticle and prayer would be equally unmeaning to you! For poet as you are,—or let me say as you WERE,—inasmuch as no atheist was ever a poet at the same time—"

"You are wrong," interrupted Alwyn quickly. "Shelley was an atheist."

"Shelley, my good friend, was NOT an atheist [Footnote: See the last two verses of Adonais]. He strove to be one,—nay, he made pretence to be one,—but throughout his poems we hear the voice of his inner and better self appealing to that Divinity and Eternity which, in spite of the material part of him, he instinctively felt existent in his own being. I repeat, poet as your WERE, and poet as you will be again when the clouds on your mind are cleared,—you present the strange, but not uncommon spectacle of an Immortal Spirit fighting to disprove its own Immortality. In a word, you will not believe in the Soul."

"I cannot!" said Alwyn, with a hopeless gesture.

"Why?"

"Science can give us no positive proof of its existence; it cannot be defined."

"What do you mean by Science?" demanded Heliobas. "The foot of the mountain, at which men now stand, grovelling and uncertain how to climb? or the glittering summit itself which touches God's throne?"

Alwyn made no answer.

"Tell me," pursued Heliobas, "how do you define the vital principle? What mysterious agency sets the heart beating and the blood flowing? By the small porter's lantern of to-day's so-called Science, will you fling a light on the dark riddle of an apparently purposeless Universe, and explain to me why we live at all?"

"Evolution," responded Alwyn shortly, "and Necessity."

"Evolution from what?" persisted Heliobas. "From one atom? WHAT atom?

And FROM WHENCE came the atom? And why the NECESSITY of any atom?"

"The human brain reels at such questions!" said Alwyn, vexedly and with impatience. "I cannot answer them—no one can!"

"No one?" Heliobas smiled very tranquilly. "Do not be too sure of that! And why should the human brain 'reel'?—the sagacious, calculating, clear human brain that never gets tired, or puzzled, or perplexed!—that settles everything in the most practical and common-sense manner, and disposes of God altogether as an extraneous sort of bargain not wanted in the general economy of our little solar system! Aye, the human brain is a wonderful thing!—and yet by a sharp, well-directed knock with this"—and he took up from the table a paper-knife with a massive, silver-mounted, weighty horn-handle—"I could deaden it in such wise that the SOUL could no more hold any communication with it, and it would lie an inert mass in the cranium, of no more use to its owner than a paralyzed limb."

"You mean to infer that the brain cannot act without the influence of the soul?"

"Precisely! If the hands on the telegraph dial will not respond to the electric battery, the telegram cannot be deciphered. But it would be foolish to deny the existence of the electric battery because the dial is unsatisfactory! In like manner, when, by physical incapacity, or inherited disease, the brain can no longer receive the impressions or electric messages of the Spirit, it is practically useless. Yet the Spirit is there all the same, dumbly waiting for release and another chance of expansion."

"Is this the way you account for idiocy and mania?" asked Alwyn incredulously.

"Most certainly; idiocy and mania always come from man's interference with the laws of health and of nature—never otherwise. The Soul placed within us by the Creator is meant to be fostered by man's unfettered Will; if man chooses to employ that unfettered Will in wrong directions, he has only himself to blame for the disastrous results that follow. You may perhaps ask why God has thus left our wills unfettered: the answer is simple—that we may serve Him by CHOICE and not by COMPULSION. Among the myriad million worlds that acknowledge His goodness gladly and undoubtingly, why should He seek to force unwilling obedience from us castaways!"

"As we are on this subject," said Alwyn, with a tinge of satire in his tone, "if you grant a God, and make Him out to be supreme Love, why in the name of His supposed inexhaustible beneficence should we be castaways at all?"

"Because in our overweening pride and egotism we have ELECTED to be such," replied Heliobas. "As angels have fallen, so have we. But we are not altogether castaways now, since this signal," and he touched the cross on his breast, "shone in heaven."

Alwyn shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

"Pardon me," he murmured coldly, "with every desire to respect your religious scruples, I really cannot, personally speaking, accept the tenets of a worn-out faith, which all the most intellectual minds of the day reject as mere ignorant superstition. The carpenter's son of Judea was no doubt a very estimable person,—a socialist teacher whose doctrines were very excellent in theory but impossible of practice. That there was anything divine about Him I utterly deny; and I confess I am surprised that you, a man of evident culture, do not seem to see the hollow absurdity of Christianity as a system of morals and civilization. It is an ever-sprouting seed of discord and hatred between nations; it has served as a casus belli of the most fanatical and merciless character; it is answerable for whole seas of cruel and unnecessary bloodshed …"

"Have you nothing NEW to say on the subject?" interposed Heliobas, with a slight smile. "I have heard all this so often before, from divers kinds of men both educated and ignorant, who have a willful habit of forgetting all that Christ Himself prophesied concerning His creed of Self-renunciation, so difficult to selfish humanity: 'Think not that I come to send peace on the earth. I come, not to send peace, but a sword.' Again 'Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.' … 'all ye shall be offended because of me.' Such plain words as these seem utterly thrown away upon this present generation. And do you know I find a curious lack of originality among so-called 'freethinkers'; in fact their thoughts can hardly be designated as 'free' when they all run in such extremely narrow grooves of similitude—a flock of sheep mildly trotting under the guidance of the butcher to the slaughterhouse could not be more tamely alike in their bleating ignorance as to where they are going. Your opinions, for instance, differ scarce a whit from those of the common boor who, reading his penny Radical paper, thinks he can dispense with God, and talks of the 'carpenter's son of Judea' with the same easy flippancy and scant reverence as yourself. The 'intellectual minds of the day' to which you allude, are extraordinarily limited of comprehension, and none of them, literary or otherwise, have such a grasp of knowledge as any of these dead and gone authors," and he waved his hand toward the surrounding loaded bookshelves, "who lived centuries ago, and are now, as far as the general public is concerned, forgotten. All the volumes you see here are vellum manuscripts copied from the original slabs of baked clay, stone tablets, and engraved sheets of ivory, and among them is an ingenious treatise by one Remeni Adranos, chief astronomer to the then king of Babylonia, setting forth the Atom and Evolution theory with far more clearness and precision than any of your modern professors. All such propositions are old—old as the hills, I assure you; and these days in which you live are more suggestive of the second childhood of the world than its progressive prime. Especially in your own country the general dotage seems to have reached a sort of climax, for there you have the people actually forgetting, deriding, or denying their greatest men who form the only lasting glories of their history; they have even done their futile best to tarnish the unsoilable fame of Shakespeare. In that land you,—who, according to your own showing, started for the race of life full of high hopes and inspiration to still higher endeavor—you have been, poisoned by the tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly and insidiously spreading itself through all ranks, particularly among the upper classes, who, while becoming every day more lax in their morals and more dissolute of behavior, consider themselves far too wise and 'highly cultured' to believe in anything. It is a most unwholesome atmosphere, charged with the morbidities and microbes of national disease and downfall; it is difficult to breathe it without becoming fever-smitten; and in your denial of the divinity of Christ, I do not blame you any more than I would blame a poor creature struck down by a plague. You have caught the negative, agnostic, and atheistical infection from others,—it is not the natural, healthy condition of your temperament."

"On the contrary it IS, so far as that point goes," said Alwyn with sudden heat—"I tell you I am amazed,—utterly amazed, that you, with your intelligence, should uphold such a barbaric idea as the Divinity of Christ! Human reason revolts at it,—and after all, make as light of it as you will, reason is the only thing that exalts us a little above the level of the beasts."

"Nay—the beasts share the gift of reason in common with us," replied Heliobas, "and Man only proves his ignorance if he denies the fact. Often indeed the very insects show superior reasoning ability to ourselves, any thoroughly capable naturalist would bear me out in this assertion."

"Well, well!" and Alwyn grew impatient—"reason or no reason, I again repeat that the legend on which Christianity is founded is absurd and preposterous,—why, if there were a grain of truth in it, Judas Iscariot instead of being universally condemned, ought to be honored and canonized as the first of saints!"

"Must I remind you of your early lesson days?" asked Heliobas mildly. "You will find it written in a Book you appear to have forgotten, that Christ expressly prophesied, 'Woe to that man' by whom He was betrayed. I tell, you, little as you credit it, there is not a word that the Sinless One uttered while on this earth, that has not been or shall not be in time fulfilled. But I do not wish to enter into any controversies with you; you have told me your story,—I have heard it with interest,—and I may add with sympathy. You are a poet, struck dumb by Materialism because you lacked strength to resist the shock,—you would fain recover your singing-speech—and this is in truth the reason why you have come to me. You think that if you could gain some of the strange experiences which others have had while under my influence, you might win back your lost inspiration—though you do not know WHY you think this—neither do I—I can only guess."

"And your guess is…?" demanded Alwyn with an air of affected indifference.

"That some higher influence is working for your rescue and safety," replied Heliobas. "What influence I dare not presume to imagine, but—there are always angels near!"

"Angels!" Alwyn laughed aloud. "How many more fairy tales are you going to weave for me out of your fertile Oriental imagination? Angels! … See here, my good Heliobas, I am perfectly willing to grant that you may be a very clever man with an odd prejudice in favor of Christianity,—but I must request that you will not talk to me of angels and spirits or any such nonsense, as if I were a child waiting to be amused, instead of a full-grown man with …"

"With so full-grown an intellect that it has out-grown God!" finished Heliobas serenely. "Quite so! Yet angels, after all, are only immortal Souls such as yours or mine when set free of their earthly tenements. For instance, when I look at you thus," and he raised his eyes with a lustrous, piercing glance—"I see the proud, strong, and rebellious Angel in you far more distinctly than your outward shape of man … and you … when you look at me—"

He broke off, for Alwyn at that moment sprang from his chair, and, staring fixedly at him, uttered a quick, fierce exclamation.

"Ah! I know you now!" he cried in sudden and extraordinary excitement—"I know you well! We have met before!—Why,—after all that has passed,—do we meet again?"

This singular speech was accompanied by a still more singular transfiguration of countenance—a dark, fiery glory burned in his eyes, and, in the stern, frowning wonder and defiance of his expression and attitude, there was something grand yet terrible,—menacing yet supernaturally sublime. He stood so for an instant's space, majestically sombre, like some haughty, discrowned emperor confronting his conqueror,—a rumbling, long-continued roll of thunder outside seemed to recall him to himself, and he pressed his hand tightly down over his eyelids, as though to shut out some overwhelming vision. After a pause he looked up again,—wildly, confusedly,—almost beseechingly,—and Heliobas, observing this, rose and advanced toward him.

"Peace!" he said, in low, impressive tones,—"we have recognized each other,—but on earth such recognitions are brief and soon forgotten!" He waited for a few seconds,—then resumed lightly, "Come, look at me now! … what do you see?"

"Nothing … but yourself!" he replied, sighing deeply as he spoke—"yet … oddly enough, a moment ago I fancied you had altogether a different appearance,—and I thought I saw … no matter what! … I cannot describe it!" His brows contracted in a puzzled line. "It was a curious phenomenon—very curious … and it affected me strangely…" he stopped abruptly,—then added, with a slight flush of annoyance on his face, "I perceive you are an adept in the art of optical illusion!"

Heliobas laughed softly. "Of course! What else can you expect of a charlatan, a trickster, and a monk to boot! Deception, deception throughout, my dear sir! … and have you not ASKED to be deceived?"

There was a fine, scarcely perceptible satire in his manner; he glanced at the tall oaken clock that stood in one corner of the room—its hands pointed to eleven. "Now, Mr. Alwyn," he went on, "I think we have talked quite enough for this evening, and my advice is, that you retire to rest, and think over what I have said to you. I am willing to help you if I can,—but with your beliefs, or rather your non-beliefs, I do not hesitate to tell you frankly that the exertion of MY internal force upon YOURS in your present condition might be fraught with extreme danger and suffering. You have spoken of Truth, 'the deathful Truth'; this being, however, nothing but Truth according to the world's opinion, which changes with every passing generation, and therefore is not Truth at all. There is another Truth—the everlasting Truth—the pivot of all life, which never changes; and it is with this alone that my science deals. Were I to set you at liberty as you desire,—were your intelligence too suddenly awakened to the blinding awfulness of your mistaken notions of life, death, and futurity, the result might be more overpowering than either you or I can imagine! I have told you what I can do,—your incredulity does not alter the fact of my capacity. I can sever you,—that is, your Soul, which you cannot define, but which nevertheless exists,—from your body, like a moth from its chrysalis; but I dare not even picture to myself what scorching flame the moth might not heedlessly fly into! You might in your temporary state of release find that new impetus to your thoughts you so ardently desire, or you might not,—in short, it is impossible to form a guess as to whether your experience might be one of supernal ecstasy or inconceivable horror." He paused a moment,—Alwyn was watching him with a close intentness that bordered on fascination and presently he continued, "It is best from all points of view, that you should consider the matter more thoroughly than you have yet done; think it over well and carefully until this time to-morrow—then, if you are quite resolved—"

"I am resolved NOW!" said Alwyn slowly and determinately. "If you are so certain of your influence, come! … unbar my chains! … open the prison-door! Let me go hence to-night; there is no time like the present!"

"To night!" and Heliobas turned his keen, bright eyes full upon him, with a look of amazement and reproach—"To night' without faith, preparation or prayer, you are willing to be tossed through the realms of space like a grain of dust in a whirling tempest? Beyond the glittering gyration of unnumbered stars—through the sword-like flash of streaming comets—through darkness—through light—through depths of profoundest silence—over heights of vibrating sound—you—YOU will dare to wander in these God-invested regions—you a blasphemer and a doubter of God!"

His voice thrilled with passion,—his aspect was so solemn, and earnest, and imposing that Alwyn, awed and startled, remained for a moment mute—then, lifting his head proudly, answered—

"Yes, I DARE! If I am immortal I will test my immortality! I will face

God and find these angels you talk about! What shall prevent me?"

"Find the angels!" Heliobas surveyed him sadly as he spoke. "Nay! … pray rather that they may find THEE!" He looked long and steadfastly at Alwyn's countenance, on which there was just then the faint glimmer of a rather mocking smile,—and as he looked, his own face darkened suddenly into an expression of vague trouble and uneasiness—and a strange quiver passed visibly through him from head to foot.

"You are bold, Mr. Alwyn,"—he said at last, moving a little away from his guest and speaking with some apparent effort—"bold to a fault, but at the same time you are ignorant of all that lies behind the veil of the Unseen. I should be much to blame if I sent you hence to-night, utterly unguided—utterly uninstructed. I myself must think—and pray—before I venture to incur so terrible a responsibility. To-morrow perhaps—to-night, no! I cannot—moreover I will not!"

Alwyn flushed hotly with anger. "Trickster!" he thought. "He feels he has no power over me, and he fears to run the risk of failure!"

"Did I hear you aright?" he said aloud in cold determined accents. "You cannot? you will not? … By Heaven!"—and his voice rose, "I say you SHALL!" As he uttered these words a rush of indescribable sensations overcame him,—he seemed all at once invested with some mysterious, invincible, supreme authority,—he felt twice a man and more than half a god, and moved by an irresistible impulse which he could neither explain nor control, he made two or three hasty steps forward,—when Heliobas, swiftly retreating, waved him off with an eloquent gesture of mingled appeal and menace.

"Back! back!" he cried warningly. "If you come one inch nearer to me I cannot answer for your safety—back, I say! Good God! you do not know your OWN power!"

Alwyn scarcely heeded him,—some fatal attraction drew him on, and he still advanced, when all suddenly he paused, trembling violently. His nerves began to throb acutely,—the blood in his veins was like fire,—there was a curious strangling tightness in his throat that interrupted and oppressed his breathing,—he stared straight before him with large, luminous, impassioned eyes. What—WHAT was that dazzling something in the air that flashed and whirled and shone like glittering wheels of golden flame? His lips parted … he stretched out his hands in the uncertain manner of a blind man feeling his way … "Oh God! … God!" … he muttered as though stricken by some sudden amazement,—then, with a smothered, gasping cry, he staggered and fell heavily forward on the floor—insensible!

At the self-same instant the window blew open, with a loud crash—it swung backward and forward on its hinges, and a torrent of rain poured through it slantwise into the room. A remarkable change had taken place in the aspect and bearing of Heliobas,—he stood as though rooted to the spot, trembling from head to foot,—he had lost all his usual composure,—he was deathly pale, and breathed with difficulty. Presently recovering himself a little he strove to shut the swinging casement, but the wind was so boisterous, that he had to pause a moment to gain strength for the effort, and instinctively he glanced out at the tempestuous night. The clouds were scurrying over the sky like great black vessels on a foaming sea,—the lightning flashed incessantly, and the thunder reverberated Over the mountains in tremendous volleys as of besieging cannon. Stinging drops of icy sleet dashed his face and the front of his white garb as he inhaled the stormy freshness of the strong, upward-sweeping blast for a few seconds—and then, with the air of one gathering together all his scattered forces, he shut to the window firmly and barred it across. Turning now to the unconscious Alwyn, he lifted him from the floor to a low couch near at hand, and there laid him gently down. This done, he stood looking at him with an expression of the deepest anxiety, but made no attempt to rouse him from his death-like swoon. His own habitual serenity was completely broken through,—he had all the appearance of having received some unexpected and overwhelming shock,—his very lips were blanched and quivered nervously.

He waited for several minutes, attentively watching the recumbent figure before him, till gradually,—very gradually,—that figure took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which life has but recently and painlessly departed. The limbs grew stiff and rigid—the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,—the closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised … there was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of returning animation,—and when, after some little time, Heliobas bent down and listened, there was no pulsation of the heart … it had ceased to beat! To all appearances Alwyn was DEAD—any physician would have certified the fact, though how he had come by his death there was no evidence to show. And in that condition, … stirless, breathless … white as marble, cold and inanimate as stone, Heliobas left him. Not in indifference, but in sure knowledge—knowledge far beyond all mere medical science—that the senseless clay would in due time again arise to life and motion; that the casket was but temporarily bereft of its jewel,—and that the jewel itself, the Soul of the Poet, had by a superhuman access of will, managed to break its bonds and escape elsewhere. But whither? … Into what vast realms of translucent light or drear shadow? … This was a question to which the mystic monk, gifted as he was with a powerful spiritual insight into "things unseen and eternal," could find no satisfactory answer, and in his anxious perplexity he betook himself to the chapel, and there, by the red glimmer of the crimson star that shone dimly above the altar, he knelt alone and prayed in silence till the heavy night had passed, and the storm had slain itself with the sword of its own fury on the dark slopes of the Pass of Dariel.