Читать книгу The Insane Root - Rosa Praed - Страница 9

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Marillier had seated himself by the couch. He felt the old man's pulse, which was beating more steadily, and seeing that it was wisest to humour him, moved himself also by extreme curiosity, he asked the Ambassador to proceed.

Isàdas Pacha put his hands over his eyes for a minute or two, and his mouth quivered, as with past anguish re-born in his memory. When he dropped his hands again, they fidgeted and picked at the embroidered rug which Marillier had laid over his knees, while he spoke in a tone at first low and monotonous, but which gradually deepened, filling his listener with a sense of tragedy.

'Twenty-five years ago, come two weeks from now,' began Isàdas, I was wandering in the Kabyle country among the hills behind Milianah. You know that district and the wildness of it?'

Marillier nodded.

'I don't suppose, however, that you have been to an old Moorish fortress perched on the edge of a precipice called Bab-el-Khâyalât, otherwise the Gate of Ghosts? No, it is not likely. That place was my headquarters during some weeks of delirious seeking--I can think of no better phrase to describe my mood. I was seeking from man, nature, or the devil, after a clue which should guide me in my own flesh, or through the Gate of Ghosts, to the kingdom of the dead, and so satisfy me that there was some existence beyond the material. It was to one of those days and nights of frenzied search that the experience of which I once told you--the photograph of that wraith-dancer--belongs. What did I find? Matter, always matter--in subtler form, capable of revivification, of assuming some former shape for a greater or lesser space of time, and of being resolved again into its primal elements--but still matter, always matter. Beyond it, only the secret of recreation, revivification, which is outside the ken of ordinary humanity, and which, all my life, has baffled me. Don't ask me to dwell in detail upon that time of crisis. A crushing sorrow had befallen me. You have heard me allude to it, and perhaps before I die I may tell you what that sorrow was. Yes,' the Ambassador added, as though a new thought had struck him, 'it will be necessary that I should do so before the end comes. At this moment I need only speak of its effects. For some nights following the blow, I lay in a merciful stupor; then came the maddening restlessness, during which for nights and nights I never closed my eyes, but laid down my wearied body drugged with some narcotic, only to find my brain more and more active, and my limbs twitching with the craving for movement. And then I used to get up and stride along the ramparts of the castle overhanging a deep gorge, scarcely able to restrain my longing to throw myself down and end my torments. Nothing except the dread that they would not cease, and that I should be condemning myself to a fiercer hell, kept me back. So I watched for dawn in order that I might again tramp the mountains and forests in the vain hope of lulling mental pain.

'I was mad in those days, Marillier; at least, a continuance of them would have driven me quite out of my senses, or I should have died from sheer bodily exhaustion.

'One late afternoon I came upon country unlike any that I knew in those parts. It was on one of the almost inaccessible spurs of Khâyal--you know the mountain of course?'

Marillier nodded again. 'I have seen it from a distance.'

'Bab-el-Khâyalât faces it on a jutting promontory, immensely high, which commands all the plain of the Bahira; it must have been an impregnable position in old days. There's a wild ravine between. One early dawn I started from the ramparts and climbed down the ravine up the opposite precipice--a feat for an antelope, but I was a good mountaineer in those days. I lost myself on Khâyal--wandered for hours in the forest that goes round her middle, then was stopped by another deep gorge, which I was obliged to head in order to carry out my idea of making the half circuit of the mountain and coming down into a village that I knew. There was a stiff piece of Climbing, then I rounded a volcanic sort of knoll and found myself with my back to Khâyal's hump, on a gently sloping hill, which bordered desert land and faced westward, where the sun lay like a red ball on a bank of angry clouds. I can see the place now as though the whole scene had been photographed on my memory. The country had an appearance of peculiar desolation. The hillside undulated so that it seemed ploughed into irregular furrows, and the ground was grassless and of a greyish colour. It looked in the distance as though ashes had been vomited upon it, and rose here and there in small Protuberances, which, when you trod upon them, crumbled beneath your feet.

'There was no grass, I said, but spread sparsely along the sides of the furrows were strange plants--low tufts of big fleshy leaves, green enough to make the soil almost white in contrast. A thin forest of trees grew upon the hill, spreading down a great way and slanting to the sun. They were queer trees, Which cast weird shadows, a sort of pine, but quite unlike the straight pyramidal pines you know on Zakkar and the mountains in that district. These trees were gnarled and twisted, looking hundreds of years old; a kind of distorted umbrella pine with no foliage except a crest at the top, and with great naked boughs beneath--misshapen, witch-like limbs of a livid grey, for the bark had peeled off from age. These stretched out, as though they were the arms of a host of monstrosities, forking at the ends into huge fingers that I fancied were pointed at me in derision.

'I flung myself beneath one of these trees--almost a skeleton, with only a half-withered bunch of foliage on the top, and white twisted branches, quite bare. It was on the edge of a bank of the grey, crumbly earth, and half way down the bank grew two or three clumps of those odd-looking plants I have described. My legs tottered so that I could walk no further; my whole body was utterly weary, my brain dazed, and yet the anguish of my grief was keener at that moment than it had been since the hour of my first desolation. A new and even more horrible despair seized me now. Marillier, do you know what it is to yearn for physical pain, so that you could gash yourself, bruise yourself, if only you might thus still for a moment the inward torture? That was how I felt then. I remember that I dug my nails into the palms of my hands till the blood spurted. I beat my limbs against the ground which offered them no resistance, and dashed my head against the skeleton trunk of a tree behind me. There was something in the atmosphere of the place which drove me to frenzy--the black shadows of the trees, the eldritch shapes of them gibbering at me, the clouds every now and then coming over the face of the sun and making an eerie darkness, the feeling of electricity in the air, and the low rumble of thunder. A wind got up and came in gusts, making a rattling in the dead branches that reminded me of chains and gibbets, gusts that moaned and wailed in the pine crests overhead. The trees tossed and bent beneath each heavier blast, and their crackling and shrieking sounded to my tortured imagination like fiends shouting in derisive laughter.

'A blasphemous wrath overcame me. In my rage I upbraided God for having deserted me, and I called upon Satan to give me, out of the treasures of his kingdom, at least forgetfulness--since Heaven denied me that boon. Out upon that desolate expanse of hill and forest and desert plain beyond, I hurled unholy imprecations. And the low growls of thunder rebuked me, and the devils' chorus which the wind made, answered me with what I fancied promises of sacrilegious gifts...'

Isàdas stopped. His eyes were fixed and glaring, and he seemed quite unconscious of Marillier's presence. He was talking to himself, and all the time his hand plucked uneasily at the coverlet, as is the way with a man in a fever. Suddenly he threw out his arms again in a paroxysm of blind anger, and brought them sharply back, the clenched hands striking the couch upon which he reclined. An oath burst from his pallid lips. The agony of remembrance seemed more than he could bear.

Marillier waited, spellbound, not daring to check by a word this extraordinary ebullition of pent-up feeling. Presently the old man's face ceased working, his voice calmed and sank, it had an awed accent, and was hardly more than a whisper.

'The wind dropped. There came a stillness--the stillness you must have felt before a storm bursts. You know how strangely distant thunder sounds in that brooding quiet--how it rumbles and reverberates at intervals. How terrible it is! How supernatural! You've seen the livid glare of forked lightning when it darts out of the blackness, cleaving the clouds, and piercing down into the forest. I thought then--I remembered--'

Isàdas's eyes softened as he seemed to gaze beyond the walls of the room out through the mists of the past. Presently he recited in rhythmic tones,--

'"And ever and anon some bright white shaft Burned through the pine-tree roof, here burned and there, As if God's messenger through the close wood screen Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture..."

'Bah! I never could recollect English poetry. That bit has stuck, because there was a woman--I once knew a woman who used to read Browning. She read me those lines...It was the last time. We were sitting in the open court of an old Moorish palace--our summer parlour. It was roofed with roses and bougainvillea. I remember she had some of the flowers in her left hand; she held the book with her right. There was a fountain splashing--I used to think her laugh was like the trickling of the water. The scent of the orange blossoms came from the old harem garden; she would never go into that harem garden...'

The Pacha stopped; he had been talking as though he were in a trance, his eyes fixed on vacancy. Marillier recalled him.

'Was the palace in Algeria?' he asked.

Isàdas started. 'Eh? The palace! It was not a palace altogether. It had been a fortress--the place I told you of--Bab-el-Khâyalât the Gate of Ghosts--the Gate of Ghosts...There was a tower, a very old tower--it went back to the Romans. A tower of memories. The place is shut up now--all the part of it that she lived in. I suppose the terraces are in ruins and the garden a wilderness. But the tower was of solid masonry, and will defy centuries yet.'

Marillier asked no question. Presently the Pacha went on--still brokenly. 'I bought the place, but I've never gone there since, for it's a tomb, Marillier. It's the tomb of my soul.'

Again there was a pause.

'I remembered those lines when the lightning pierced down into the forest. I wished at that moment that it had found me and struck me dead, but God's javelin aimed wide of the mark. And I could hear myself laughing! As I cursed Heaven in my impotent fury, I struck my foot against the crumbling bank on which I lay. Then a fear came on me--I held my breath, for in the stillness I heard a most curious sound; it was like the feeble wail of an infant. It reminded me...I seemed to hear again the cry of a child whom I...the cry of a new-born baby whom I hated--a cry that had knelled my own doom! I kicked the ground again...and again...and once more...and each time there was the same cry, only louder and louder, till it became a shrill shriek of pain.

'I looked down--it had come from the earth beneath me--and I saw that I had kicked at a clump of those queer, fleshy-leaved plants I told you of, and that the root of one of them lay exposed. I stooped down and examined it. There was something very strange about the root. A little brown, human face seemed to peer at me, the features writhing--I swear to you, Marillier, that they writhed--and the lips moving. I scraped away more earth till the lower part of the root was revealed, and I saw that it was half human too. Then I remembered stories of mandrakes which I had heard in Abaria, and the legend that if a man plucks a mandrake he calls down a curse upon himself and invokes the devil. I had heard how peasants, wishing to possess or to sell the roots, chain dogs to the stalk, and stand away, whipping on the beasts with a long whip, but keeping their ears stopped that they may not hear the screams the plant gives as it is torn from the ground. So this, I knew, must be a mandrake.

'At any other time I might have hesitated, but now all human and religious feeling seemed to have left me. I had only an intense curiosity, an over-mastering impulse to defy all powers of good and evil. Let them do their worst. What did it matter to me? I felt an outcast from humanity, deserted by God and man, and ready, if I could be sure there were a devil, to swear him allegiance. Even the star of the empire, the emblem of my adopted country, which has always been to me the emblem of honour and loyal servitude--yes, has been and still is so, in spite of disillusion,' Isàdas repeated solemnly; 'even that star, that ideal was fading in my breast. I had a wild thought that by destroying the mandrake I might somehow wreak vengeance upon the infant whose life had been fatal to me. I put out my hand and grasped the tuft of leaves...The thing shrieked again . . it wailed piteously...it clung to the earth...with difficulty I tore it forth and held it in my hand...the root shaped as a man which you saw a little while ago. .

'It was soft and warm, succulent, well nourished. I fancied that its breast palpitated, that its little arms moved, and that its legs quivered as if it still suffered from the violence of the wrench. Close beside it, where the soil was misplaced, I saw part of another root, and this seemed to have the shape of a woman, and each of her little brown arms clasped what looked like the tiny forms of babes. You must have seen mandrake roots which roughly represent a mother with one or two children--that is, if you have ever examined the specimens one is shown at the stalls of curiosity dealers in the East. I, at least, can vouch for their not being altogether spurious. I would not pluck the mate of my mandrake root. I needed for myself all the vitality that he could give me. Let her and her offspring die, or let her grow on widowed--it was nothing to me. I shovelled the earth back on her with my fingers, and got up from the bank, holding within my arm the root I had gathered.

'Already I felt less wearied, and, what was more strange, the awful horror of desolation which had weighed me down seemed lighter, and my brain less dazed. I became alive to the danger of being caught in a storm and obliged to spend the night among those wild hills, in which, as you know, panthers and even lions are hunted. The storm, however, was passing, and the sun shone out redly from amidst the now broken bank of dusky cloud. Overhead the sky was clear, though there was still a distant rumble of thunder. The wind had risen once more, and moaned again in the crests of the pines, while the trees bent and swayed beneath the gusts and rattled their dead limbs afresh. As I walked away, they stretched out their grey monstrous arms, seeming to be calling after me in fiendish exultation over what they thought my triumph or my subjugation--which, I could not tell.

'I left the ghostly hillside behind me and went on round the mountain, striking into more open country, and better able, as the moon rose, to guide myself by the landmarks around. I walked quickly, with no overwhelming sense of fatigue, at which I wondered, considering my wakeful nights, the scanty food I had taken, and the long days of aimless wandering. In order that my arms might be freer, I thrust the mandrake root inside my coat; it felt as though something living were clinging to my breast, clutching at me with sensitive hands; and the tremulous beat of a small heart fluttered against my own. It was very late when I reached the village, and put up at an Arab rest-house. I took the mandrake root straight to my room, and, as well as I could, cleansed it of the soil which still hung round its limbs. As I did so, the thing again seemed to me alive, and I could have believed that, as I touched it, its features were drawn up in a most woful and gruesome expression. I laid it in an empty tin box in which I had carried food; it just fitted into it. I closed the lid, and then, after eating a more hearty meal than I had managed to do for many days, went to bed, and slept for the first time soundly since the stupor into which I had been plunged when the crashing blow fell upon me. I awoke in the morning refreshed, and more like my old self. Again I ate heartily. I felt less restless, and had no longer any craving to tramp the hills. I could not understand this change, but supposed that Nature was asserting her need, and that when I had taken in new strength, the former condition of things would return. I took off the lid of thebox which contained my mandrake, and was startled at the alteration I observed. Its skin appeared to have shrivelled in the night, and all suggestion of life to have departed from it. I saw only a dry brown root--a vegetable monstrosity, as you said, in human likeness.

'And I was sorry! It troubled me that the thing which I had felt living against my breast, as I had carried it from the forest, should now be dead. A vague remorse stirred me, and I remember my own surprise at finding myself moved by pity for the suffering I had caused and regret for the life I had taken--I, who only yesterday would almost have delighted in the infliction of pain, for the sight of it would have acted as an anodyne to my own agony. Now I was mourning over the premature cutting off of a mere vegetable growth. Yet it is true that from the time the mandrake died my own personal grief lessened, and I began to take a keener pleasure in animal existence. It was as though the mandrake had given me its vitality, and not its vitality alone, but the luck which, according to both Eastern and Western superstition, attends anybody who possesses one of these homunculi Certainly it is a fact that, from the date of my discovery of the mandrake, riches and honours poured upon me, and also, in a remarkable degree, the favour of women. Love, in its spiritual essence, could never more be mine, but love, with all its lower satisfactions, was heaped upon me. I became a cynic and a sensualist, and any vestiges that remained in me of the soul of love I deliberately killed. In these twenty-five years, during which that root has gone with me wherever I have journeyed, and has dwelt with me in all the houses I have inhabited, the power of attracting women has been mine in an extraordinary degree. I may say this without vanity, for, understand, that I attribute it to no merit of fascination of my own. I may also say that I have not made untrue professions, and that if any woman has suffered through me, it has been her own fault, not mine. I have never agreed to pay for favours I received, in coin not of the currency, or jewels of unmarketable value. I have never pretended to feelings and sentiments that I knew were dead in me. And so, for twenty-five years my career has been one of uninterrupted success and pleasure.

'Call it superstition; call it insanity; call it what you will, but the conviction remains, and coincidence--if you admit nothing else--supports it, that all this I owe to the mandrake! I can only repeat, may my familiar serve you as faithfully as it has served the master who wrenched it from the earth and from its earth-love, and absorbed its life into his own being. That's true, doctor, though you and many others might say it is a mad fancy. "The insane root," you know, they called mandragora. But hasn't the practice of your profession shown you that the world's insanities approach often the eternal verities? My idea grew in me to be an established truth, a fixed faith, and, in proportion, so also grew my knowledge and the will-power to literally fulfil my belief Ah! if I had known a few years sooner all that I now know of the forces in man and in nature, I would have concentrated my own vital energies, not upon my desire, but upon the cultivation of will-strength, by which I might have secured it.

'Mark that, Marillier! Man is a demi-god, but only a demi-god. His powers and opportunities are great--greater than he can dream of, but they are limited by time, bounded by death. There is finality in everything that manifests itself here below. If man does not seize the opportunity when it is offered him, the opportunity will not return. The chance to gain is always offered those on the verge of knowledge--that is one of nature's laws. Had I not been blinded, engrossed, by the desire which held me captive, I might have learnt how to impart vitality to one I loved, and so for a time have held death at bay. Thus, in subordinating desire to will, I should have gained both. The Gate of Ghosts would have been opened to me for ever, and the fleshly union have become the everlasting blending of spirit.

'Too late! Too late, Marillier! Death has been my triumphant rival, and is now my executioner. Death is lord of all things in the material universe, and I have long realised that a day must come when that life-giving force in my mandrake root will return to its original source. When that day comes, I--Isàdas, whom you have known--shall cease to exist.'