He pondered on the matter, vaguely uneasy and dissatisfied. He, and he alone, was the master of Lilith, — he commanded and she obeyed, — but would it be always thus? The doubt turned his blood cold, — suppose she escaped him now, after all his studies and calculations! He resolved he would ask her no more questions that night, and very gently he released the little slender hands he held.
“Go, Lilith!” he said softly— “This world, as you say, is dreary — I will not keep you longer in its gloom — go hence and rest.”
“Rest?” sighed Lilith inquiringly— “Where?”
He bent above her, and touched her loose gold locks almost caressingly.
“Where you choose!”
“Nay, that I may not!” murmured Lilith sadly. “I have no choice — I must obey the Master’s will.”
El-Râmi’s heart beat high with triumph at these words.
“My will!” he said, more to himself than to her— “The force of it! — the marvel of it!-my will!”
Lilith heard, — a strange glory seemed to shine round her, like a halo round a pictured saint, and the voice that came from her lips rang out with singularly sweet clearness.
“Your will!” she echoed— “Your will — and also — God’s will!”
He started, amazed and irresolute. The words were not what he expected, and he would have questioned their meaning, but that he saw on the girl’s lovely features a certain pale composed look which he recognised as the look that meant silence.
“Lilith!” he whispered.
No answer. He stood looking down upon her, his face seeming sterner and darker than usual by reason of the intense, passionate anxiety in his burning eyes.
“God’s will!” he echoed with some disdain— “God’s will would have annihilated her very existence long ago out in the desert; — what should God do with her now that I have not done?”
His arrogance seemed to him perfectly justifiable; and yet he very well knew that, strictly speaking, there was no such thing as “annihilation” possible to any atom in the universe. Moreover, he did not choose to analyze the mystical reasons as to why he had been permitted by Fate or Chance to obtain such mastery over one human soul, — he preferred to attribute it all to his own discoveries in science, — his own patient and untiring skill, — his own studious comprehension of the forces of Nature, — and he was nearly, if not quite oblivious of the fact, that there is a Something behind natural forces, which knows and sees, controls and commands, and against which, if he places himself in opposition, Man is but the puniest, most wretched straw that was ever tossed or split by a whirlwind. As a rule, men of science work not for God so much as against Him, wherefore their most brilliant researches stop short of the goal. Great intellects are seldom devout, — for brilliant culture begets pride — and pride is incompatible with faith or worship. Perfect science, combined with perfect selflessness, would give us what we need, — a purified and reasoning Religion. But El-Râmi’s chief characteristic was pride, — and he saw no mischief in it. Strong in his knowledge, — defiant of evil in the consciousness he possessed of his own extraordinary physical and mental endowments, he saw no reason why he should bow down in humiliated abasement before forces, either natural or spiritual, which he deemed himself able to control. And his brow cleared, as he once more bent over his tranced “subject” and with all the methodical precaution of a physician, felt her pulse, took note of her temperature and judged that for the present she needed no more of that strange Elixir which kept her veins aglow with such inexplicably beauteous vitality. Then — his ex — amination done — he left the room; and as he drew the velvet portière behind him, the little white moth that had flown in for a night’s shelter, fluttered down from the golden lamp like a falling leaf, and dropped on the couch of Lilith, shrivelled and dead.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE next day was very wet and stormy. From morning to night the rain fell in torrents, and a cold wind blew. El-Râmi stayed indoors, reading, writing, and answering a few of his more urgent correspondents, a great number of whom were total strangers to him, and who nevertheless wrote to him out of the sheer curiosity excited in them by the perusal of a certain book to which his name was appended as author. This book was a very original literary production, — the critics were angry with it, because it was so unlike anything else that ever was written. According to the theories set forth in its pages, Man the poor and finite, was proved to be a creature of superhuman and almost god-like attributes, — a “flattering unction” indeed, which when laid to the souls of commonplace egoists, had the effect of making them consider El-Râmi Zarânos a very wonderful person, and themselves more wonderful still. Only the truly great mind is humble enough to appreciate greatness, and of great minds there is a great scarcity. Most of El-Râmi’s correspondents were of that lower order of intelligence which blandly accepts every fresh truth discovered as specially intended for themselves, and not at all for the world, as though indeed they were some particular and removed class of superior beings who alone were capable of understanding true wisdom. “Your work has appealed to me” — wrote one, “as it will not appeal to all, because I am able to enter into the divine spirit of things as the vulgar herd cannot do!” This, as if the “vulgar herd” were not also part of the “divine spirit of things”!
“I have delighted in your book” — wrote another, “because I am a poet, and the world, with its low aims and lower desires I abhor and despise!”
The absurdity of a man presuming to call himself a poet, and in the same breath declaring he “despises” the world, — the world which supports his life and provides him with all his needs, — never seems to occur to the minds of these poor boasters of a petty vanity. El-Râmi looked weary enough as he glanced quickly through a heap of such ill-judged and egotistical epistles, and threw them aside to be forever left unanswered. To him there was something truly horrible and discouraging in the contemplation of the hopeless, helpless, absolute stupidity of the majority of mankind. The teachings of Mother Nature being always straight and plain, it is remarkable what devious turnings and dark winding ways we prefer to stumble into rather than take the fair and open course. For example Nature says to us— “My children, Truth is simple, — and I am bound by all my forces to assist its manifestation. A Lie is difficult — I can have none of it — it needs other lies to keep it going, — its ways are full of complexity and puzzle, — why then, O foolish ones, will you choose the Lie and avoid the Truth? For, work as you may, the Truth must out, and not all the uproar of opposing multitudes can still its thunderous tongue.” Thus Nature; — but we heed her not, — we go on lying stedfastly, in a strange delusion that thereby may deceive Eternal Justice. But Eternal Justice never is deceived, — never is obscured even, save for a moment, as a passing cloud obscures the sun.
“How easy after all to avoid mischief of any kind,” mused El-Râmi now, as he put by his papers and drew two or three old reference volumes towards him— “How easy to live happily, free from care, free from sickness, free from every external or internal wretchedness, if we could but practise the one rule — Self-abnegation. It is all there, — and the ethereal Lilith may be right in her assurance as to the non-existence of Evil unless we ourselves create it. At least one half the trouble in the world might be avoided if we chose. Debt, for example, — that carking trouble always arises from living beyond one’s means, — therefore why live beyond one’s means? What for? Show? Vulgar ostentation? Luxury? Idleness? All these are things against which Heaven raises its eternal ban. Then take physical pain and sickness, — here Self is to blame again, — self-indulgence in the pleasures of the table, — sensual craving, — the marriage of weakly or ill-conditioned persons, — all simple causes from which spring incalculable evils. Avoid the causes and we escape the evils. The arrangements of Nature are all so clear and explicit, and yet we are forever going out of our way to find or invent difficulties. The farmer grumbles and writes letters to the newspapers if his turn
ip-fields are invaded by what he deems a ‘destructive pest’ in the way of moth or caterpillar, and utterly ignores the fact that these insects always appear for some wise reason or other, which he, absorbed in his own immediate petty interests, fails to appreciate. His turnips are eaten, — that is all he thinks or cares about, — but if he knew that those same turnips contain a particular microbe poisonous to human life, a germ of typhoid, cholera or the like, drawn up from the soil and ready to fructify in the blood of cattle or of men, and that these insects of which he complains are the scavengers sent by Nature to utterly destroy the Plague in embryo, he might pause in his grumbling to wonder at so much precaution taken by the elements for the preservation of his unworthy and ignorant being. Perplexing and at times maddening is this our curse of Ignorance, — but that the ‘sins of the fathers are visited on the children’ is a true saying is evident — for the faults of generations are still bred in our blood and bone.”
He turned over the first volume before him listlessly, — his mind was not set upon study, and his attention wandered. He was thinking of Féraz, with whom he had scarcely exchanged a word all day. He had lacked nothing in the way of service, for swift and courteous obedience to his brother’s wishes had characterized Féraz in every simple action, but there was a constraint between the two that had not previously existed. Féraz bore himself with a stately yet sad hauteur, — he had the air of a proud prince in chains who, being captive, performed his prison-work with exactitude and resignation as a matter of discipline and duty. It was curious that El-Râmi, who had steeled him — self as he imagined against every tender sentiment, should now feel the want of the impetuous confidence and grace of manner with which his young brother had formerly treated him.
“Everything changes—” he mused gloomily, “Everything must change, of course; and nothing is so fluctuating as the humour of a boy who is not yet a man, but is on the verge of manhood. And with Féraz my power has reached its limit, — I know exactly what I can do, and what I can not do with him, — it is a case of ‘Thus far and no further.’ Well, — he must choose his own way of life, — only let him not presume to set himself in my way, or interfere in my work! Ye gods! — there is nothing I would not do—”
He paused, ashamed; the blood flushed his face darkly and his hand clenched itself involuntarily. Conscious of the thought that had arisen within him, he felt a moment’s shuddering horror of himself. He knew that in the very depths of his nature there was enough untamed savagery to make him capable of crushing his young brother’s life out of him, should he dare to obstruct his path or oppose him in his labours. Realizing this, a cold dew broke out on his forehead and he trembled.
“O Soul of Lilith that cannot understand Evil!” he exclaimed— “Whence came this evil thought in me? Does the evil in myself engender it? — and does the same bitter gall that stirred the blood of Cain lurk in the depths of my being, till Opportunity strikes the wicked hour? Retro me, Sathanas! After all, there was something in the old beliefs — the pious horror of a devil, — for a devil there is that walks the world, and his name is Man!”
He rose and paced the room impatiently, — what a long day it seemed, and with what dreary persistence the rain washed against the windows! He looked out into the street, — there was not a passenger to be seen, — a wet dingy grayness pervaded the atmosphere and made everything ugly and cheerless. He went back to his books, and presently began to turn over the pages of the quaint Arabic volume into which Féraz had unwisely dipped, gathering therefrom a crumb of knowledge, which, like all scrappy information, had only led him to discontent.
“All these old experiments of the Egyptian priests were simple enough—” he murmured as he read,— “They had one substratum of science, — the art of bringing the countless atoms that fill the air into temporary shape. The trick is so easy and natural, that I fancy there must have been a certain condition of the atmosphere in earlier ages which of itself shaped the atoms, — hence the ideas of nymphs, dryads, fauns and watersprites; these temporary shapes which dazzled for some fleeting moments the astonished human eye and so gave rise to all the legends. To shape the atoms as a sculptor shapes clay, is but a phase of chemistry, — a pretty experiment — yet what a miracle it would always seem to the uninstructed multitude!”
He unlocked a drawer in his desk, and took from it a box full of red powder, and two small flasks, one containing minute globules of a glittering green colour like tiny emeralds, — the other full of a pale amber liquid. He smiled as he looked at these ingredients, — and then he gave a glance out through the window at the dark and rainy afternoon.
“To pass the time, why not?” he queried half aloud. “One needs a little diversion sometimes even in science.”
Whereupon he placed some of the red powder in a small bronze vessel and set fire to it. A thick smoke arose at once and filled the room with cloud that emitted a pungent perfume, and in which his own figure was scarcely discernible. He cast five or six of the little green globules into this smoke; they dissolved in their course and melted within it, — and finally he threw aloft a few drops of the amber liquid. The effect was extraordinary, and would have seemed incredible to any onlooker, for through the cloud a roseate Shape made itself slowly visible, — a Shape that was surrounded with streaks of light and rainbow flame as with a garland. Vague at first, but soon growing more distinct, it gathered itself into seeming substance, and floated nearly to the ground, — then rising again, balanced itself lightly like a blown feather sideways upon the dense mist that filled the air. In form this “corruscation of atoms” as El-Râmi called it, resembled a maiden in the bloom of youth, — her flowing hair, her sparkling eyes, her smiling lips, were all plainly discernible; — but, that she was a mere phantasm and creature of the cloud was soon made plain, for scarcely had she declared herself in all her rounded laughing loveliness, than she melted away and passed into nothingness like a dream. The cloud of smoke grew thinner and thinner, till it vanished also so completely that there was no more left of it than a pale blue ring such as might have been puffed from a stray cigar. El-Râmi, leaning lazily back in his chair, had watched the whole development and finish of his “experiment” with indolent interest and amusement.
“How admirably the lines of beauty are always kept in these effects,” — he said to himself when it was over,— “and what a fortune I could make with that one example of the concentration of atoms if I chose to pass as a Miracle-maker. Moses was an adept at this kind of thing; so also was a certain Egyptian priest named Borsa of Memphis, who just for that same graceful piece of chemistry was judged by the people as divine, — made king, — and loaded with wealth and honour; — excellent and most cunning Borsa! But we — we do not judge anyone ‘divine’ in these days of ours, not even God, — for He is supposed to be simply the lump of leaven working through the loaf of matter, — though it will always remain a question as to why there is any leaven or any loaf at all existing.”
He fell into a train of meditation, which caused him presently to take up his pen and write busily many pages of close manuscript. Féraz came in at the usual hour with supper, — and then only he ceased working, and shared the meal with his young brother, talking cheerfully, though saying little but commonplaces, and skilfully steering off any allusion to subjects which might tend to increase Féraz’s evident melancholy. Once he asked him rather abruptly why he had not played any music that day.
“I do not know” — answered the young man coldly— “I seem to have forgotten music — with other things.”
He spoke meaningly; — El-Râmi laughed; relieved and light at heart. Those “other things” meant the name of Lilith, which his will had succeeded in erasing from his brother’s memory. His eyes sparkled, and his voice gathered new richness and warmth of feeling as he said kindly —
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