Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  He was on the Field of Ardath. Dawn had just broken. The east was one wide, shimmering stretch of warm gold, and over it lay strips of blue and gray, like fragments of torn battle-banners. Above him sparkled the morning star, white and glittering as a silver lamp, among the delicate spreading tints of saffron and green, . . and beside him, — her clear, pure features flushed by the roseate splendor of the sky, her hands clasped on her breast, and her sweet eyes full of an infinite tenderness and yearning, knelt EDRIS! — Edris, his flower-crowned Angel, whom last he had seen drifting upward and away like a dove through the glory of the Cross in Heaven!

  CHAPTER XXX.

  SUNRISE.

  Entranced in amazed ecstasy he lay quite quiet, . . afraid to speak or stir! This gentle Presence, — this fair, beseeching face, might vanish if he moved! So he dimly fancied, as he gazed up at her in mute wonder and worship, his devout eyes drinking in her saintly loveliness, from the deep burnished gold of her hair to the soft, white slimness of her prayerfully folded hands. And while he looked, old thoughts like home-returning birds began to hover round his soul, — sweet and dear remembrances, like the sunset lighting up the windows of an empty house, began to shine on the before semi-darkened nooks and crannies of his brain. Clearer and clearer grew the reflecting mirror of his consciousness, — trouble and perplexity seemed passing away forever from his mind, . . a great and solemn peace environed him, . . and he began to believe he had crossed the boundary of death and had entered at last into the Kingdom of Heaven! O let him not break this holy silence! … Let him rest so, with all the glory of that Angel-visage shed like summer sunbeams over him! … Let him absorb into his innermost being the exquisite tenderness of those innocent, hopeful, watchful, starry eyes whose radiance seemed to steal into the golden morning and give it a sacred poetry and infinite marvel of meaning! So he mused, gravely contented, … while all through the brightening skies overhead, came the pale, pink flushing of the dawn, like a far fluttering and scattering of rose-leaves. Everything was so still that he could hear his own heart beating forth healthful and regular pulsations, . . but he was scarcely conscious of his own existence, — he was only aware of the vast, beautiful, halcyon calm that encircled him shelteringly and soothed all care away.

  Gradually, however, this deep and delicious tranquillity began to yield to a sweeping rush of memory and comprehension, … he knew WHO he was and WHERE he was, — though he did not as yet feel absolutely certain of life and life’s so-called realities. For if the City of Al-Kyris, with all its vivid wonders, its distinct experiences, its brilliant pageantry, had been indeed a DREAM, then sorely it was possible he might be dreaming still! … Nevertheless he was able to gather up the fragments of lost recollection consecutively enough to realize, by gentle degrees, his actual identity and position in the world, . . he was Theos Alwyn, . . a man of the nineteenth century after Christ. Ah! thank God for that! … AFTER Christ! … not one who had lived five thousand years BEFORE Christ’s birth! … And this quiet, patient Maiden at his side, . . who was she? A vision? … or an actually existent Being? Unable to resist the craving desire of his heart, he spoke her name as he now remembered it, . . spoke it in a faint, awed whisper.

  “Edris!”

  “Theos, my Beloved!”

  O sweet and thrilling voice! more musical than the singing of birds in a sun-filled Spring!

  He raised himself a little, and looked at her more intently: — she smiled, — and that smile, so marvellous in its pensive peace and lofty devotion, was as though all the light of an unguessed paradise had suddenly flashed upon his soul!

  “Edris!” he said again, trembling in the excess of mingled hope and fear … “Hast thou then returned again from heaven, to lift me out of darkness? … Tell me, fair Angel, do I wake or sleep? … Are my senses deceived? Is this land a dream? … Am I myself a dream, and thou the only manifest sweet Truth in a world of drifting shadows! … Speak to me, gentle Saint! … In what vast mystery have I been engulfed? … in what timeless trance of soul-bewilderment? … in what blind uncertainty and pain? … O Sweet! … resolve my wordless wonder! Where have I strayed? … what have I seen? … Ah, let not my rough speech fright thee back to Paradise! … Stay with me! … comfort me! … I have lost thee so long! let me not lose thee now!”

  Smiling still, she bent over him, and pressed her warm, delicate ringers lightly on his brow and lips. Then softly she rose and stood erect.

  “Fear nothing, my beloved!” she answered, her silvery accents sending a throb of holy triumph through the air.. “Let no trouble disquiet thee, and no shadow of misgiving dim the brightness of thy waking moments! Thou hast slept ONE night on the Field of Ardath, in the Valley of Vision! — but lo! the Night is past!”.. and she pointed toward the eastern horizon now breaking into waves of rosy gold, “Rise! and behold the dawning of thy new Day!”

  Roused by her touch, and fired by her tone and the grand, unworldly dignity of her look and bearing, he sprang up, . . but as he met the full, pure splendor of her divine eyes, and saw, wavering round her hair, a shining aureole of amber radiance like a wreath of woven sunbeams, his spirit quailed within him, . . he remembered all his doubts of her, — his disbelief, . . and falling at her feet, he hid his face in a shame that was better than all glory, — a humiliation that was sweeter than all pride.

  “Edris! Immortal Edris!”.. he passionately prayed, “As thou art a crowned saint in Heaven, shed light on the chaos of my soul! From the depths of a penitence past thought and speech I plead with thee! Hear me, my Edris, thou who art so maiden-meek, so tender-patient! … hear me, help me, guide me…I am all thine! Say, didst thou not summon me to meet thee here upon this wondrous Field of Ardath? — did I not come hither according to thy words? — and have I not seen things that I am not able to express or understand? Teach me, wise and beloved one! … I doubt no more! I know Myself and Thee: — thou art an angel, — but I! … alas, what am I? A grain of sand in thy sight and in God’s, . . a mere Nothing, comprehending nothing, — unable even to realize the extent of my own nothingness! Edris, O Edris! … THOU canst not love me! … thou mayst pity me perchance, and pardon, and bless me gently in Christ’s dear Name! … but love! … THY love! … Oh let me not aspire to such heights of joy, where I have no place, no right, no worthiness!”

  “No worthiness!” echoed Edris! … what a rapture trembled through her sweet caressing voice!— “My Theos, who is so worthy to win back what is thine own, as thou? All Heaven has wondered at thy voluntary exile, — thy place in God’s supernal Sphere has long been vacant, . . thy right to dwell there, none have questioned, … thy throne is empty — thy crown unclaimed! Thou art an Angel even as I! … but thou art in bonds while I am free! Ah, how sad and strange it is to me to see thee here thus fettered to the Sorrowful Star, when, countless aeons since, thou mightest have enjoyed full liberty in the Eternal Light of the everlasting Paradise!”

  He listened, … a strong, sweet hope began to kindle in him like flame, . . but he made no answer. Only he caught and kissed the edge of her garment, . . its soft gray cloudy texture brushed his lips with the odorous coolness of a furled roseleaf. She seemed to tremble at his action, … but he dared not look up. Presently he felt the pulsing pressure of her hands upon his head! and a rush of strange, warm vigor thrilled through his veins like an electric flash of new and never-ending life.

  “Thou wouldst seek after and know the truth!” she said, “Truth Celestial, — Truth Unchangeable, . . Truth that permeates and underlies all the mystic inward workings of the Universe, . . workings and secret laws unguessed by Man! Vast as Eternity is this Truth, — ungraspable in all its manifestations by the merely mortal intelligence, … nevertheless thy spirit, being chastened to noble humility and repentance, hath risen to new heights of comprehension, whence thou canst partly penetrate into the wonders of worlds unseen. Did I not tell thee to ‘LEARN FROM THE PERILS OF THE PAST, THE PERILS OF THE FUTURE’ — and understandest thou not the lesson of the Vision of
Al-Kyris? Thou hast seen the Dream-reflection of thy former Poet-fame and glory in old time, — THOU WERT SAH-LUMA!”

  An agony of shame possessed him as he heard. His soul at once seized the solution of the mystery, . . his quickened thought plunged plummet-like straight through the depths of the bewildering phantasmagoria, in which mere reason had been of no practical avail, and straightway sounded its whole seemingly complex, but actually simple meaning! HE WAS SAH-LUMA! … or rather, he HAD BEEN Sah-luma in some far stretch of long-receded time, … and in his Dream of a single night, he had loved the brilliant Phantom of his Former Self more than his own present Identity! Not less remarkable was the fact that, in this strange Sleep-Mirage, he had imagined himself to be perfectly UNselfish, whereas all the while he had honored, flattered, and admired the more Appearance of Himself more than anything or everything in the world! Ay! — even his occasional reluctant reproaches to Himself in the ghostly impersonation of Sah-luma had been far more tender than severe!

  O deep and bitter ingloriousness! … O speechless degradation of all the higher capabilities of Man! to love one’s own ephemeral Shadow-Existence so utterly as to exclude from thought and sympathy all other things whether human or divine! And was it not possible that this Spectre of Self might still be clinging to him? Was it dead with the Dream of Sah-luma? … or had Sah-luma never truly died at all? … and was the fine, fire-spun Essence that had formed the Spirit of the Laureate of Al-Kyris yet part of the living Substance of his present nature, … he, a world-unrecognized English poet of the nineteenth century? Did all Sah-luma’s light follies, idle passions, and careless cruelties remain inherent in him? Had he the same pride of intellect, the same vain-glory, the same indifference to God and Man? Oh, no, no! … he shuddered at the thought! … and his head sank lower and lower beneath the benediction touch of Her whose tenderness revived his noblest energies, and lit anew in his heart the pure, bright fire of heaven-encompassing Aspiration.

  “THOU WERT SAH-LUMA!” went on the mildly earnest voice, “And all the wide, ungrudging fame given to Earth’s great poets in ancient days, was thine! Thy name was on all men’s mouths, … thou wert honored by kings, … thou wert the chief glory of a great people, … great though misled by their own false opinions, … and the City of Al-Kyris, of which thou wert the enshrined jewel, was mightier far than any now built upon the earth! Christ had not come to thee, save by dim types and vague prefigurements which only praying prophets could discern, … but God had spoken to thy soul in quiet moments, and thou wouldst neither hear Him nor believe in Him! I had called thee, but thou wouldst not listen, … thou didst foolishly prefer to hearken to the clamorous tempting of thine own beguiling human passions, and wert altogether deaf to an Angel’s whisper! Things of the earth earthly gained dominion over thee … by them thou wert led astray, deceived, and at last forsaken, … the genius God gave thee thou didst misuse and indolently waste, … thy brief life came, as thou hast seen, to sudden-piteous end, — and the proud City of thy dwelling was destroyed by fire! Not a trace of it was left to mark the spot where once it stood. The foundations of Babylon were laid above it, and no man guessed that it had ever been. And thy poems, … the fruit of thy heaven-sent but carelessly accepted inspiration, — who is there that remembers them? … No one! … save THOU! THOU hast recovered them like sunken pearls from the profound ocean of limitless Memory, … and to the world of To-day thou dost repeat the SELF-SAME MUSIC to which Al-Kyris listened entranced so many thousands of generations ago!”

  A deep sigh, that was half a groan, broke from his lips, … he could now take the measurement of his own utter littleness and incompetency! HE COULD CREATE NOTHING NEW! Everything he had written, as he fancied only just lately, had been written by himself before! The problem of the poem “Nourhalma” … was explained, … he had designed it when he had played his part on the stage of life as Sah-luma, — and perhaps not even then for the first time! In this pride-crushing knowledge there was only one consolation, … namely, that if his Dream was a true reflection of his Past, and exact in details as he felt it must be, then “Nourhalma,” had not been given to Al-Kyris, … it had been composed, but not made public. Hence, so far, it was new to the world, though not new to himself. Yet he had considered it wondrously new! a “perfectly original” idea! … Ah! who dares to boast of any idea as humanly “original” … seeing that all ideas whatsoever must be referred back to God and admitted as His and His only! What is the wisest man that ever lived, but a small, pale, ill-reflecting mirror of the Eternal Thought that controls and dominates all things! … He remembered with conscience-stricken confusion what pleasure he had felt, what placid satisfaction, what unqualified admiration, when listening to his own works recited by the ghost-presentment of his Former Self! … pleasure that had certainly exceeded whatever pain he had suffered by the then enigmatical and perplexing nature of the incident. O what a foolish Atom he now seemed, viewed by the standard of his newly aroused higher consciousness! … how poor and passive a slave to the glittering, beckoning Phantasm of his own perishable Fame!

  Thus on the Field of Ardath he drained the cup of humility to the dregs, — the cup which like that offered to the Prophet of Holy Writ was “full as it were with water, but the color of it was like fire” — the water of tears.. the fire of faith, . . and with that prophet he might have said.. “When I had drunk of it, my heart uttered understanding, and wisdom grew in my breast, for my spirit strengthened my memory.”

  Meanwhile Edris, still keeping her gentle hands on his bent head, went on:

  “In such wise didst thou, my Beloved, as the famous Sah-luma, mournfully perish.. and the nations remembered thee no more! But thy spiritual, indestructible Essence lived on, and wandered dismayed and forlorn through a myriad forms of existence in the depths of Perpetual Darkness which MUST be, even as the Everlasting Light IS. Thy immortal but perverted Will bore thee always further from God, . . further from Him, and so far from me, that thou wert at times beyond even an Angel’s ken! Ages upon ages rolled away, . . the centuries between Earth and Earths purposed redemption passed, … and, . . though in Heaven these measured spaces of time that appear so great to men are as a mere world’s month of summer, . . still, to me, for once God’s golden days seemed long! I had lost THEE! Thou wert my soul’s other soul, my king! — my immortality’s completion! … and though thou wert, alas! a fallen brightness, yet I held fast to my one hope, . . the hope in thy diviner nature, which, though sorely overcome, WAS NOT, and COULD NOT BE wholly destroyed. I knew the fate in store for thee, . . I knew that thou with other erring spirits wert bound to live again on earth when Christ had built His Holy Way therefrom to Heaven, — and never did I cease for thy dear sake to wait and watch and pray! At last I found thee, … but ah! how I trembled for thy destiny! To thee had been delivered, as to all the children of men, the final message of salvation.. the Message of Love and Pardon which made all the angels wonder! … but thou didst utterly reject it — and with the same willful arrogance of thy former self, Sah-luma, thou wert blindly and desperately turning anew into darkness! O my Beloved, that darkness might have been eternal! … and crowded with memories dating from the very beginning of life! … Nay, let me not speak of that Supernal Agony, since Christ hath died to quench its terrors! … Enough! — by happy chance, through my desire, thine own roused better will, and the strength of one who hath many friends in Heaven, thy spirit was released to temporary liberty, . . and in thy vision at Dariel, which was NO vision, but a Truth, I bade thee meet me here. And why? … SOLELY TO TEST THY POWER OF OBEDIENCE TO A DIVINE IMPULSE UNEXPLAINABLE BY HUMAN REASON, — and I rejoiced as only angels can rejoice, when of thine own Free-Will thou didst keep the tryst I made with thee! Yet thou knewest me not! … or rather thou WOULDST NOT KNOW ME, . . till I left thee! … ’Tis ever the way of mortals, to doubt their angels in disguise!”

  Her sweet accents shook with a liquid thrill suggestive of tears, — but he was silent. It seemed to him that he would be
well content to hold his place forever, if forever he might hear her thus melodiously speak on! Had she not called him her “other soul, her king, her immortality’s completion!” — and on those wondrous words of hers his spirit hung, impassioned, dazzled, and entranced beyond all Time and Space and Nature and Experience!

  After a brief pause, during which his ravished mind floated among the thousand images and vague feelings of a whole Past and Future merged in one splendid and celestial Present, she resumed, always softly and with the same exquisite tenderness of tone:

  “I left thee, Dearest, but a moment, … and in that moment, He who hath himself shared in human sorrows and sympathies, — He who is the embodiment of the Essence of God’s Love, — came to my aid. Plunging thy senses in deep sleep, as hath been done before to many a saint and prophet of old time here on this very field of Ardath, — he summoned up before thee the phantoms of a PORTION of thy Past, … phantoms which, to thee, seemed far more real than the living presence of thy faithful Edris! … alas, my Beloved! … thou art not the only one on the Sorrowful Star who accepts a Dream for Reality and rejects Reality as a Dream!”

  She paused again, — and again continued: “Nevertheless, in some degree thy Vision of Al-Kyris was true, inasmuch as thou wert shown therein as in a mirror, ONE phase, ONE only of thy former existence upon earth. The final episode was chosen, — as by the end of a man’s days alone shall he be judged! As much as thy dreaming-sight was able to see, — as much as thy brain was able to bear, appeared before thee, … but that thou, slumbering, wert yet a conscious Personality among Phantoms, and that these phantoms spoke to thee, charmed thee, bewildered thee, tempted thee, and swayed thee, . . this was the Divine Master’s work upon thine own retrospective Thought and Memory. He gave the shadows of thy bygone life, seeming color, sense, motion, and speech, — He blotted out from thy remembrance His own Most Holy Name, . . and, shutting up the Present from thy gaze, He sent thy spirit back into the Past. There, thou, perplexed and sorrowful, didst painfully re-weave the last fragments of thy former history, . . and not till thou hadst abandoned the Shadow of Thyself, didst thou escape from the fear of destruction! Then, when apparently all alone, and utterly forsaken, a cloud of angels circled round thee, . . THEN, at thy first repentant cry for help, He who has never left an earnest prayer unanswered bade me descend hither, to waken and comfort thee! … Oh, never was His bidding more joyously obeyed! Now I have plainly shown thee the interpretation of thy Dream, . . and dost thou not comprehend the intention of the Highest in manifesting it unto thee? Remember the words of God’s Prophet of old: