“Féodor, I forgive you!” she said, very sweetly, in the penetrating accents which were so exclusively her own. “Now, Magician, get to your work quickly! Apollonius of Tyana and Paracelsus were only children playing on the shores of science compared to you! When you are ready, I am!”
He sprang up from his kneeling attitude, and for a moment looked about him as one half afraid and uncertain. His amazing piece of mechanism, the great Wheel, was revolving slowly and ever more slowly, for outside in the heavens the sun had sunk, and the massed light within the laboratory’s crystal dome was becoming less and less dazzling. Astonishing reflections of prismatic colour were gathered in the dark water below the Wheel, as though millions of broken rainbows had been mixed with its mysterious blackness. Quietly Diana waited, her white-robed figure contrasting singularly with all the fire-glow which enveloped her in its burning lustre, — and her heart beat scarcely one pulse the quicker when Dimitrius approached her, holding with extreme care a small but massive crystal cup. It was he who trembled, not she as she looked at him inquiringly. He spoke, striving to steady his voice to its usual even tone of composure.
“This cup,” he said—” if it contains anything, contains the true elixir for which all scientists have searched through countless ages. They failed, because they never prepared the cells of the human body to receive it. I have done all this preparatory work with you, and I have done it more successfully than I ever hoped. Every tiniest cell or group of cells that goes to form your composition as a human entity is now ready to absorb this distillation of the particles which generate and shape existence. This is the Sacramental Cup of Life!! It is what early mystics dreamed of as the Holy Grail. Do not think that I blaspheme! —— no! — I seek to show the world what Science can give it of true and positive communion with the mind of God! The elements that commingle to make this Universe and all that is therein, are the real ‘bread and wine’ of God’s love! — and whoever can and will absorb such food may well ‘preserve body and soul unto everlasting life.’ Such is the great union of Spirit with Matter — such is the truth after which the Churches have been blindly groping in their symbolic ‘holy communion’ feebly materialized in ‘bread and wine’ as God’s ‘body and blood.’ But the actual ‘body and blood’ of the Divine are the ever-changing but never destructible elements of all positive Life and Consciousness. And you are prepared to receive them.”
A thrill of strange awe ran through Diana as she heard. His reasoning was profound, yet lucid, — it was true enough, she thought, that God, — that is to say, the everlasting Spirit of creative power, — is everywhere and in everything, — yet to the average mind it never occurs to inquire deeply as to the subtle elements wherewith Divine Intelligence causes this “everywhere” and “everything” to be made. She remained silent, her eyes fixed on the crystal cup, knowing that for her it held destiny.
“You are prepared,” resumed Dimitrius. “I have left nothing undone. And yet — you are but woman—”
“Not weaker than man!” she interrupted him, quickly.
“Though men have sought to make her so in order to crush her more easily! Give me the cup!”
He looked at her in undisguised admiration.
“Wait!” he said. “You shall not lose yourself in the infinite profound, without knowing something of the means whereby you are moved. This cup, as you see, is of purest crystal, hewn rough from rocks that may have been fused in the fires of the world’s foundation. Within it are all the known discoverable particles of life’s essence, and when I say ‘discoverable,’ I wish you to understand that many of these particles were not discovered or discoverable at all till I set my soul to the work of a spy on the secrets of Nature. I have already told you that this test may be life or death to you — if it should be death, then I have failed utterly! For, by all the closest and most minute mathematical measurements, it should be life!”
Smiling, she stretched out her hand:
“Give me the cup!” she repeated.
“If it should be death,” he went on, speaking more to himself than to her—” I think it will be more your fault than mine. Not voluntarily your fault, except that perhaps you may have concealed from me details of your personality and experience which I ought to have known. And yet I believe you to be entirely honest. Success, as I have told you, depends on the perfect health and purity of the cells — so that if you were an unprincipled woman, or if you had led a tainted life — or you were a glutton, or one who drank and took drugs for imaginary ailments — the contents of this cup would kill you instantly, because the cells having been weakened and lacerated could not stand the inrush of new force. But had you been thus self-injured, you would have shown signs of it during these months of preparation, and so far I have seen nothing that should hinder complete victory.”
“Then why delay any longer? “ — and Diana gave a gesture of visible impatience—” It is more trying to me to wait here in suspense on your words than to die outright!” He looked at her half pleadingly — then turned his eyes towards the great Wheel, which was now, after sunset, going round with an almost sleepy slowness. One moment more of hesitation, and then with a firm hand he held out the cup.
“Take it!” he said—” And may God be with you!” With a smile she accepted it, and putting her lips to the crystal rim, drained its contents to the last drop. For half or quarter of a second she stood upright, — then, as though struck by a flash of lightning she fell senseless.
Quickly Dimitrius sprang to her side, picked up the empty cup as it rolled from her hand, and called:
“Vasho!” —
Instantly the fall Ethiopian appeared, and obeying his master’s instructions, assisted him to lift the prone figure and lay it on a bench near at hand. Then they both set to work to move a number of ropes and pulleys which, noiselessly manipulated, proved to be an ingenious device for lowering a sort of stretcher or couch, canopied in tentlike fashion and made entirely of the same sort of double stranded silk material in which Diana had clothed herself for her “sacrifice.” This stretcher was lowered from the very centre of the dome of the laboratory, — and upon it the two men, Dimitrius and his servant, carefully and almost religiously placed the passive form, which now had an appearance of extreme rigidity, like that of a corpse. Dimitrius looked anxiously at the dosed eyes, the waxen pallor of the features, and the evident tension of the muscles of the neck and throat, — then, with a kind of reckless swiftness and determination, he began to bind the apparently lifeless body round and round with broad strips of the same luminous sheeny stuff which composed the seeming funeral couch of his “subject” in the fashion of an Egyptian mummy. Vasho, acting under orders, assisted him as before — and very soon Diana’s form was closely swathed from head to foot, only the eyes, mouth and ears being left uncovered. The laboratory was now illumined only by its own mysterious fires — outside was a dark summer sky, powdered with faint stars, and every lingering reflex of the sunset had completely vanished. With the utmost care and minutest attention Dimitrius now looked to every detail of the strange, canopied bier on which the insensible subject of his experiment was laid, — then, giving a sign to Vasho, the ropes and pulleys by which it was suspended were once more set in motion, and slowly, aerially and without a sound it swung away and across the dark pool of water to a position just under the great Wheel. The Wheel, revolving slowly and casting out lambent rays of fire, illumined it as a white tent might be illumined on the night blackness of a bare field, — it rested just about four feet above, the level of the water and four feet below the turning rim of the Wheel. When safely and accurately lodged in this position, Dimitrius and his servant fastened the ropes and pulleys to a projection in the wall, attaching them to a padlock of which Dimitrius himself took the key. Then, pausing, they looked at each other. Vasho’s glittering eyes, rolling like dark moonstones under his jetty brows, asked mutely a thousand questions; he was stricken with awe and terror and gazed at his master as beseechingly as one
might fancy an erring mortal might look at an incarnate devil sent to punish him, but in the set white face of Dimitrius there was no sign of response or reassurance. Two or three minutes passed, and, going to the edge of the pool, Dimitrius looked steadily across it at the white pavilion with its hidden burden swung between fire and water, — then slowly, but resolutely, turned away. As he did so, Vasho suddenly fell on his knees, and catching at his master’s hand, implored him by eloquent signs of fear, pity and distress, not to abandon the hapless woman, thus bound and senseless, to a fate more strange and perhaps more terrible than any human being had yet devised to torture his fellow human being. Dimitrius shook off his touch impatiently, and bade him rise from his knees.
“Do not pray to me!” he said, harshly—” Pray to your God, if you have one! I have a God whose Intelligence is so measureless and so true that I know He will not punish me for spending the brain with which He has endowed me, in an effort to find out one of His myriad secrets. There was a time in this world when men knew nothing of the solar system, — now God has permitted them to know it. In the same way we know nothing of the secret of life, but shall we dare to say that God will never permit us to know? That would be blasphemy indeed! We ‘suffer fools gladly,’ — we allow tricksters such as ‘mediums,’ fortunetellers and the like to flourish on their frauds, but we give little help to the man of spiritual or psychological science, whose learning might help us to conquer disease and death! No, Vasho! — your fears have no persuasion for me! — I am thankful you are dumb! There is no more to do — we may go!”
Vasho’s moonstone eyes still turned lingeringly and compassionately on the white pavilion under the Wheel of fire. He made expressive signs with his fingers, to which his master answered, almost kindly:
“She will die, you think! If so, my toil is Wasted — my supreme experiment is a failure! She must live. And I have sufficient faith in the accuracies of God and Nature as to be almost sure she will! Come!”
He took the reluctant Vasho by the arm and led him to. the mysterious door, which swung up in its usual mysterious way at his touch. They passed out, and as the portal swung down again behind them, Dimitrius released a heavy copper bar from one side and clamped it across the whole door, fastening it with lock and key.
“I do this in case you should be tempted to look in,” he said, with a stem smile to his astonished attendant. “You have been faithful and obedient so far — but you know the secret of opening this door when no bar is placed across it, — but with it! — ah, my Vasho! — the devil himself may fumble in vain!”
Vasho essayed a feeble grin, — but his black skin looked a shade less black, as he heard his master’s words and saw his resolute action. Gone was the faint hope the poor blackamoor had entertained of being of some use or rescue to the victim prisoned in the laboratory, — she was evidently doomed to abide her fate. And Dimitrius walked with an unfaltering step through the long corridor from the laboratory into the hail of his house, and then sent Vasho about his usual household business, while he himself went into the garden and looked at the still beauty of the evening. Everywhere there was fragrance and peace — innumerable stars clustered in the sky, and the faint outline of the snowy Alps was dimly perceptible. From the lawn, he could see the subdued glitter of the glass dome of the laboratory; at that moment it had the effect of a crystal sphere with the palest of radiance filtering through.
“And to-morrow is the longest day!” he said with a kind of rapt exultation. “Pray Heaven the sun may shine with all its strongest force and utmost splendour from its rising to its setting! So shall we imprison the eternal fire!”
CHAPTER XX
THE next morning dawned cloudlessly, and a burning sun blazed intense summer heat through all the hours of the longest and loveliest day. Such persistent warmth brought its own languor and oppression, and though all the doors and windows of the Château Fragonard were left open, Madame Dimitrius found herself quite overwhelmed by the almost airless stillness, notwithstanding a certain under-wave of freshness which always flowed from the mountains like a breathing of the snow.
“How is Diana?” she asked of her son, as, clad in a suit of cool white linen, he sauntered in from the garden to luncheon. —
“I believe she is very well,” he answered, composedly. “She has not complained.”
“I hope she has nothing to complain of,” said the old lady, nervously. “You promised me, Feodor, that you would not let her suffer.”
“I promised you that if she was unhappy or in pain, I would do my best to spare her as much as possible,” he replied. “But, up to the present, she is neither unhappy nor in pain.”
“You are sure?” —
“Sure!”
Vasho, who was in attendance, stared at him in something of questionings terror, and his mother watched him with a mute fondness of appeal in her eyes which, however, he did not or would not see. She could not but feel a certain pride in him as she looked at his fine, intellectual face, rendered just now finer and more attractive by the tension of his inward thought. Presently he met her searching, loving gaze with a smile.
“Do you not think, mother mine,” he said, “that I merit sortie of the compassion you extend so lavishly to Miss May, who is, after all, a stranger in our house? Can you not imagine it possible that I, too, may suffer? Permit yourself to remember that it is now twenty-five years since I started on this quest, and that during that time I have not rested day or night without having my brain at work, puzzling out my problem. Now that I have done all which seems to me humanly possible, have you no thought of me and my utter despair if I fail?”
“But you will not fail—”
“In every science, for one success there are a million failures,” he replied. “And dare I complain if I am one of the million? I have been fortunate in finding a subject who is obedient, tractable, and eminently courageous, — sometimes, indeed, I have wondered whether her courage will not prove too much for me! She is a woman of character — of strong, yet firmly suppressed emotions; and she has entered a characterless household—”
“Characterless?” repeated Madame Dimitrius, in surprised tones—” Can you say that?”
“Of course! What play of character can be expected from people who are as self-centred as you and I? You have no thought in life beyond me, your erratic and unworthy son, — I have no thought beyond my scientific work and its results. Neither you nor I take interest in human affairs or human beings generally; any writer of books venturing to describe us, would find nothing to relate, because we form no associations. We let people come and go, — but we do not really care for them, and if they stayed away altogether we should not mind.”
“Well, as far as that goes, Diana tells me she is equally indifferent,” said Madame.
“Yes, — but her indifference is hardly of her own making,” he replied. “She is not aware of its source or meaning. Her actual character and temperament are deep as a deep lake over which a sudden and unusual frost has spread a temporary coating of ice. She has emotions and passions — rigidly and closely controlled. She cares for things, without knowing she cares. And at any moment she may learn her own power — —”
“A power which you have given her,” interposed his mother.
“True, — and it may be a case of putting a sword into the hand that is eager to kill,” he answered. “However, her strength will be of the psychological type, which gross material men laugh at. I do not laugh, knowing the terrific force hidden within each one of us, behind the veil of flesh and blood. Heavens! — what a world it would be if we all lived according to the spirit rather than the body! — if we all ceased to be coarse feeders and animal sensualists, and chose only the purest necessaries for existence in health and sanity! — it would be Paradise regained!”
“If your experiment succeeds as you hope,” said Madame Dimitrius, “what will happen then? You will let Diana go?”
“She will go whether I ‘let’ her or not,” he replied. “
She will have done all I require of her.”
His mother was silent, and he, as though weary of the conversation, presently rose and left the room. Stepping out on the lawn in the full blaze of noonday, he looked towards the dome of the laboratory, but could scarcely fix his eyes upon its extreme brilliancy, which was blinding at every point. He felt very keenly that it was indeed the longest day of the year; never had hours moved so slowly, — and despite the summer glory of the day, — so drearily. His thoughts dwelt persistently on the bound and imprisoned form swung in solitude under the great Wheel, which he knew must now be revolving at almost lightning speed, churning the water beneath it into prismatic spray, — and every now and then a strong temptation beset him to go and unlock the door of the prison house, and see whether his victim had wakened to the consciousness of her condition. But he restrained this impulse.
With evening the slender curve of a new moon glided into the sky, looking like the pale vision of a silver sickle, and a delicious calm pervaded the air. His thoughts gradually took on a more human tendency, — he allowed himself to pity his “subject.” After all, what an arid sort of fate had been hers! The only child of one of those painfully respectable British couples who never move out of the conventional rut, and for whom the smallest expression of honest opinion is “bad form,” — and herself endowed (by some freak of Nature) with exceptional qualities of brain, what a neutral and sad-coloured existence hers had been when love and the hope of marriage had deserted her! No wonder she had resolved to break away and seek some outlet for her cramped and imprisoned mentality.
“Though marriage is drab-coloured enough!” he mused—” Unless husband and wife are prudent, and agree to live apart from each other for so many months in the year. And now — if my experiment succeeds she will make a fool or a lunatic of every man her eyes rest upon — except myself!”
The days wore away slowly. As each one passed, Madame Dimitrius grew more and more uneasy, and more and more her eyes questioned the unresponsive face of her son. Vasho, too, could not forbear gazing with a kind of appealing terror at his master’s composed features and easy demeanour; it was more than devilish, he thought, that a man could comport himself thus indifferently when he had a poor human victim shut up within a laboratory where the two devouring elements of fire and water held the chief sway. However, there was nothing to be done. A figure of stone or iron was not more immovable than Dimitrius when once bent to the resolved execution of a task, no matter how difficult such task might be. Looking at the cold, indomitable expression of the man, one felt that he would care nothing for the loss of a thousand lives, if by such sacrifice he could attain the end in view. But though his outward equanimity remained undisturbed, he was inwardly disquieted and restless. He saw two alternatives to his possible success. His victim might die, — in which case her body would crumble to ashes in the process to which it was being subjected, — or she might lose her senses. Death would be kinder than the latter fate, but he was powerless to determine either. And even at the back of his mind there lurked a dim suggestion of some other result which he could not formulate or reckon with.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 858
