“But that the dread of something after death.
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will.”
“Ay, puzzles the will and confounds it! But must I be baffled then? — or is it my own fault that I cannot believe? Is it truly her spirit that speaks to me? — or is it my own brain acting upon hers in a state of trance? If it be the latter, why should she declare things that I never dream of, and which my reason does not accept as possible? And if it is indeed her Soul, or the ethereal Essence of her that thus soars at periodic intervals of liberty into the Unseen, how is it that she never comprehends Death or Pain? Is her vision limited only to behold harmonious systems moving to a sound of joy?”
And seized by a sudden resolution, he caught both the hands of the tranced girl and held them in his own, the while he fixed his eyes upon her quiet face with a glance that seemed to shoot forth flame.
“Lilith! Lilith! By the force of my will and mastery over thy life, I bid thee return to me! O flitting spirit, ever bent on errands of pleasure, reveal to me the secrets of pain! Come back, Lilith! I call thee — come!”
A violent shudder shook the beautiful reposeful figure, — the smile faded from her lips, and she heaved a profound sigh.
“I am here!”
“Listen to my bidding!” said El-Râmi, in measured accents that sounded almost cruel. “As you have soared to heights ineffable, even so descend to lowest depths of desolation! Understand and seek out sorrow, — pierce to the root of suffering,-explain the cause of unavailing agony! These things exist. Here in this planet of which you know nothing save my voice, — here, if nowhere else in the wide Universe, we gain our bread with bitterness and drink our wine with tears. Solve me the mystery of Pain, — of Injustice, — of an innocent child’s anguish on its death-bed, — ay! though you tell me there is no death! — of a good man’s ruin, — of an evil woman’s triumph, — of despair — of self-slaughter, — of all the horrors upon horrors piled, which make up this world’s present life. Listen, O too ecstatic and believing Spirit! — we have a legend here that a God lives, — a wise all-loving God, — and He, this wise and loving one, has out of His great bounty invented for the torture of his creatures, — HELL! Find out this Hell, Lilith! — Prove it! — bring the plan of its existence back to me. Go, — bring me news of devils, — and suffer, if spirits can suffer, in the unmitigated sufferings of others! Take my command and go hence, — find out God’s Hell! — so shall we afterwards know the worth of Heaven!”
He spoke rapidly, — impetuously, — passionately; — and now he allowed the girl’s hands to fall suddenly from his clasp. She moaned a little, — and instead of folding them one over the other as before, raised them palm to palm in an attitude of prayer. The colour faded entirely from her face, — but an expression of the calmest, grandest wisdom, serenity and compassion came over her features as of a saint prepared for martyrdom. Her breathing grew fainter and fainter till it was scarcely perceptible, — and her lips parted in a short sobbing sigh, — then they moved and whispered something. El-Râmi stooped over her more closely.
“What is it?” he asked eagerly— “what did you say?”
“Nothing...only...farewell!” and the faint tone stirred the silence like the last sad echo of a song— “And yet...once more...farewell!”
He drew back, and observed her intently. She now looked like a recumbent statue, with those upraised hands of hers so white and small and delicate, — and El-Râmi remembered that he must keep the machine of the Body living, if he desired to receive through its medium the messages of the Spirit. Taking a small phial from his breast, together with the necessary surgeon’s instrument used for such purposes, he pricked the rounded arm nearest to him, and carefully injected into the veins a small quantity of a strange sparkling fluid which gave out a curiously sweet and pungent odour; — as he did this, the lifted hands fell gently into their original position, crossed over the ruby star. The breathing grew steadier and lighter, — the lips took fresh colour, — and El-Râmi watched the effect with absorbed interest and attention.
“One might surely preserve her body so for ever,” he mused half aloud. “The tissues renewed, — the blood re-organized, — the whole system completely nourished with absolute purity; and not a morsel of what is considered food, which contains so much organic mischief, allowed to enter that exquisitely beautiful mechanism, which exhales all waste upon the air through the pores of the skin as naturally as a flower exhales perfume through its leaves. A wonderful discovery! — if all men knew it, would not they deem themselves truly immortal, even here? But the trial is not over yet, — the experiment is not perfect. Six years has she lived thus, but who can say whether indeed Death has no power over her? In those six years she has changed, — she has grown from childhood to womanhood, — does not change imply age? — and age suggest death, in spite of all science? O inexorable Death! — I will pluck its secret out if I die in the effort!”
He turned away from the couch, — then seemed struck by a new idea.
“If I die, did I say? But can I die? Is her Spirit right? Is my reasoning wrong? Is there no pause anywhere? — no cessation of thought? — no end to the insatiability of ambition? Must we plan and work and live — FOR EVER?”
A shudder ran through him, — the notion of his own perpetuity appalled him. Passing a long mirror framed in antique silver, he caught sight of himself in it, — his dark handsome face, rendered darker by the contrasting whiteness of his hair, — his full black eyes,-his fine but disdainful mouth, — all looked back at him with the scornful reflex of his own scornful regard.
He laughed a little bitterly.
“There you are, El-Râmi Zarânos!” he murmured half aloud. “Scoffer and scientist, — master of a few common magnetic secrets such as the priests of ancient Egypt made sport of, though in these modern days of ‘culture,’ they are sufficient to make most men your tools! What now? Is there no rest for the inner calculations of your mind? Plan and work and live for ever? Well, why not? Could I fathom the secrets of a thousand universes, would that suffice me? No! I should seek for the solving of a thousand more!”
He gave a parting glance round the room, — at the fair tranced form on the couch, at the placid Zaroba slumbering in a corner, at the whole effect of the sumptuous apartment, with its purple and gold, its roses, its crystal and ivory adornments, — then he passed out, drawing to the velvet curtains noiselessly behind him. In the small anteroom, he took up the slate and wrote upon it —
“I shall not return hither for forty-eight hours. During this interval admit as much full daylight as possible. Observe the strictest silence, and do not touch her.
“EL-RMI.”
Having thus set down his instructions he descended the stairs to his own room, where, extinguishing the electric light, he threw himself on his hard camp-bedstead and was soon sound asleep.
CHAPTER VI.
“I DO not believe in a future state. I am very much distressed about it.”
The speaker was a stoutish, able-bodied individual in clerical dress, with rather a handsome face and an easy agreeable manner. He addressed himself to El-Râmi, who, seated at his writing-table, observed him with something of a satirical air.
“You wrote me this letter?” queried El-Râmi, selecting one from a heap beside him. The clergyman bent forward to look, and recognising his own handwriting, smiled a bland assent.
“You are the Rev. Francis Anstruther, Vicar of Laneck, — a great favourite with the Bishop of your diocese, I understand?”
The gentleman bowed blandly again, — then assumed a meek and chastened expression.
“That is, I was a favourite of the Bishop’s at one time” — he murmured regretfully-”and I suppose I am now, only I fear that this matter of conscience—”
“Oh, it is a matter of conscience?” said El-Râmi slowly— “You are sure of that?”
“Quite sure of that!” and the Revere
nd Francis Anstruther sighed profoundly.
“‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all—’”
“I beg your pardon?” and the clergyman opened his eyes a little.
“Nay, I beg yours! — I was quoting ‘Hamlet.’”
“Oh!”
There was a silence. El-Râmi bent his dark flashing eyes on his visitor, who seemed a little confused by the close scrutiny. It was the morning after the circumstances narrated in the previous chapter, — the clock marked ten minutes to noon, — the weather was brilliant and sunshiny, and the temperature warm for the uncertain English month of May. El-Râmi rose suddenly and threw open the window nearest him, as if he found the air oppressive.
“Why did you seek me out?” he demanded, turning towards the reverend gentleman once more.
“Well, it was really the merest accident—”
“It always is!” said El-Râmi with a slight dubious smile.
“I was at Lady Melthorpe’s the other day, and I told her my difficulty. She spoke of you, and said she felt certain you would be able to clear up my doubts—”
“Not at all. I am too busy clearing up my own,” said El-Râmi brusquely.
The clergyman looked surprised.
“Dear me! — I thought, from what her ladyship said, that you were scientifically certain of—”
“Of what?” interrupted El-Râmi— “Of myself? Nothing more uncertain in the world than my own humour, I assure you! Of others? I am not a student of human caprice. Of life? — of death? Neither. I am simply trying to prove the existence of a ‘something after death’ — but I am certain of nothing, and I believe in nothing, unless proved.”
“But,” said Mr. Anstruther anxiously— “you will, I hope, allow me to explain that you leave a very different impression on the minds of those to whom you speak, than the one you now suggest. Lady Melthorpe, for instance,—”
“Lady Melthorpe believes what it pleases her to believe,” — said El-Râmi quietly— “All pretty, sensitive, imaginative women do. That accounts for the immense success of Roman Catholicism with women. It is a graceful, pleasing, comforting religion, — moreover it is really becoming to a woman, — she looks charming with a rosary in her hand, or a quaint old missal, — and she knows it. Lady Melthorpe is a believer in ideals, — well, there is no harm in ideals, — long may she be able to indulge in them.”
“But Lady Melthorpe declares that you are able to tell the past and the future,” persisted the clergyman— “And that you can also read the present; — if that is so, you must surely possess visionary power?”
El-Râmi looked at him stedfastly.
“I can tell you the past;” — he said— “And I can read your present; — and from the two portions of your life I can calculate the last addition, the Future, — but my calculation may be wrong. I mean wrong as regards coming events; — past and present I can never be mistaken in, because there exists a natural law, by which you are bound to reveal yourself to me.”
The Reverend Francis Anstruther moved uneasily in his chair, but managed to convey into his countenance the proper expression of politely incredulous astonishment.
“This natural law,” went on El-Râmi, laying one hand on the celestial globe as he spoke, “has been in existence ever since man’s formation, but we are only just now beginning to discover it, or rather re-discover it, since it was tolerably well-known to the priests of ancient Egypt. You see this sphere;” — and he moved the celestial globe round slowly— “It represents the pattern of the heavens according to our solar system. Now a Persian poet of old time, declared in at few wild verses, that solar systems taken in a mass, could be considered the brain of heaven, the stars being the thinking, moving molecules of that brain. A sweeping idea, — what your line-and-pattern critics would call ‘far-fetched’ — but it will serve me just now for an illustration of my meaning. Taking this ‘brain of heaven’ by way of simile then, it is evident we — we human pigmies, — are, notwithstanding our ridiculous littleness and inferiority, able to penetrate correctly enough into some of the mysteries of that star-teeming intelligence, — we can even take patterns of its shifting molecules” — and again he touched the globe beside him,— “we can watch its modes of thought — and calculate when certain planets will rise and set, — and when we cannot see its action, we can get its vibrations of light, to the marvellous extent of being able to photograph the moon of Neptune, which remains invisible to the eye even with the assistance of a telescope. You wonder what all this tends to? — well, — I speak of vibrations of light from the brain of heaven, — vibrations which we know are existent; and which we prove by means of photography; and because we see the results in black and white, we believe in them. But there are other vibrations in the Universe, which cannot be photographed, — the vibrations of the human brain, which like those emanating from the ‘brain of heaven’ are full of light and fire, and convey distinct impressions or patterns of thought. People speak of ‘thought-transference’ from one subject to another as if it were a remarkable coincidence, — whereas you cannot put a stop to the transference of thought, — it is in the very air, like the germs of disease or health, — and nothing can do away with it.”
“I do not exactly understand” — murmured the clergyman with some bewilderment.
“Ah, you want a practical demonstration of what seems a merely abstract theory? Nothing easier!” — and moving again to the table he sat down, fixing his dark eyes keenly on his visitor— “As the stars pattern heaven in various shapes, like the constellation Lyra, or Orion, so you have patterned your brain with pictures or photographs of your past and your present. All your past, every scene of it, is impressed in the curious little brain-particles that lie in their various cells, — you have forgotten some incidents, but they would all come back to you if you were drowning or being hung; — because suffocation or strangulation would force up every infinitesimal atom of brain-matter into extraordinary prominence for the moment. Naturally your present existence is the most vivid picture with you, therefore perhaps you would like me to begin with that?”
“Begin? — how?” asked Mr. Anstruther, still in amazement.
“Why, — let me take the impression of your brain upon my own. It is quite simple, and quite scientific. Consider yourself the photographic negative, and me the sensitive paper to receive the impression! I may offer you a blurred picture, but I do not think it likely. Only if you wish to hide anything from me I would advise you not to try the experiment.”
“Really, sir, — this is very extraordinary! — I am at a loss to comprehend—”
“Oh, I will make it quite plain to you—” said El-Râmi with a slight smile— “There is no witchcraft in it — no trickery, — nothing but the commonest A B C science. Will you try? — or would you prefer to leave the matter alone? My demonstration will not convince you of a ‘future state,’ which was the subject you first spoke to me about, — it will only prove to you the physiological phenomena surrounding your present constitution and condition.”
The Reverend Francis Anstruther hesitated. He was a little startled by the cold and convincing manner with which El-Râmi spoke, — at the same time he did not believe in his words, and his own incredulity inclined him to see the “experiment,” whatever it was. It would be all hocus-pocus, of course, — this Oriental fellow could know nothing about him, — he had never seen him before, and must therefore be totally ignorant of his private life and affairs. Considering this for a moment, he looked up and smiled.
“I shall be most interested and delighted,” — he said— “to make the trial you suggest. I am really curious. As for the present picture or photograph on my brain, I think it will only show you my perplexity as to my position with the Bishop in my wavering state of mind—”
“Or conscience—” suggested El-Râmi— “You said it was a matter of conscience.”
“Quite so — quite so! And conscience is the most powerful motor of a man’s actions Mr. — Mr. El
-Râmi! It is indeed the voice of God!”
“That depends on what it says, and how we hear it—” said El-Râmi rather dryly— “Now if we are to make this ‘demonstration,’ will you put your left hand here, in my left hand? So, — your left palm must press closely upon my left palm, — yes — that will do. Observe the position, please; — you see that my left fingers rest on your left wrist, and are therefore directly touching the nerves and arteries running through your heart from your brain. By this, you are, to use my former simile, pressing me, the sensitive paper, to your photographic negative — and I make no doubt we shall get a fair impression. But to prevent any interruption to the brainwave rushing from you to me, we will add this little trifle,” and he dexterously slipped a steel band over his hand and that of his visitor as they rested thus together on the table, and snapt it to,— “a sort of handcuff, as you perceive. It has nothing in the world to do with our experiment. It is simply placed there to prevent your moving your hand away from mine, which would be your natural impulse if I should happen to say anything disagreeably true. And to do so, would of course cut the ethereal thread of contact between us. Now, are you ready?”
The clergyman grew a shade paler. El-Râmi seemed so very sure of the result of this singular trial, that it was a little bit disagreeable. But having consented to the experiment, he felt he was compelled to go through with it, so he bowed a nervous assent. Whereupon El-Râmi closed his brilliant eyes, and sat for one or two minutes silent and immovable. A curious fidgetiness began to trouble the Reverend Francis Anstruther, — he tried to think of something ridiculous, something altogether apart from himself, but in vain, — his own personality, his own life, his own secret aims seemed all to weigh upon him like a sudden incubus. Presently tingling sensations pricked his arm as with burning needles, — the hand that was fettered to that of El-Râmi felt as hot as though it were being held to a fire. All at once El-Râmi spoke in a low tone, without opening his eyes —
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 245
