all the next day el-râmi was alone. féraz went out early to fulfil the appointment made with roy ainsworth; no visitors called,—and not even old zaroba came near the study, where, shut up with his books and papers, her master worked assiduously hour after hour, writing as rapidly as hand and pen would allow, and satisfying his appetite solely with a few biscuits dipped in wine. just as the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, his long solitude was disturbed by the sharp knock of a telegraph-messenger, who handed him a missive which ran briefly thus—
“your brother stays to dine with me.—ainsworth.”
el-râmi crushed the paper in his hand, then, flinging it aside, stood for a moment, lost in meditation, with a sorrowful expression in his dark eyes.
“ay me! the emptiness of the world!” he murmured at last—“i shall be left alone, i suppose, as my betters are left, according to the rule of this curiously designed and singularly unsatisfactory system of human life. what do the young care for the solitude of their elders who have tended and loved them? new thoughts, new scenes, new aspirations beckon them, and off they go like birds on the wing,—never to return to the old nest or the old ways. i despise the majority of women myself,—and yet i pity from my soul all those who are mothers,—the miserable dignity and pathos of maternity are, in my opinion, grotesquely painful. to think of the anguish the poor delicate wretches endure in bringing children at all into the world,—then, the tenderness and watchful devotion expended on their early years,—and then—why then, these same children grow up for the most part into indifferent (when not entirely callous) men and women, who make their own lives as it seems best to themselves, and almost forget to whom they owe their very existence. it is hard—bitterly hard. there ought to be some reason for such a wild waste of love and affliction. at present, however, i can see none.”
he sighed deeply, and stared moodily into the deepening shadows.
“loneliness is horrible!” he said aloud, as though addressing some invisible auditor. “it is the chief terror of death,—for one must always die alone. no matter how many friends and relatives stand weeping round the bed, one is absolutely alone at the hour of death, for the stunned soul wanders blindly
“out of sight,
far off in a place where it is not heard.”
that solitary pause and shudder on the brink of the unseen is fearful,—it unnerves us all to think of it. if love could help us,—but even love grows faint and feeble then.”
as he mused thus, a strange vague longing came over him,—an impulse arising out of he knew not what suggestion; and, acting on his thought, he went suddenly and swiftly upstairs, and straight into the chamber of lilith. zaroba was there, and rose from her accustomed corner silently, and moved with a somewhat feeble step into the ante-room while el-râmi bent over the sleeping girl. lovelier than ever she seemed that evening,—and, as he stooped above her, she stretched out her fair white arms and smiled. his heart beat quickly,—he had, for the moment, ceased to analyse his own feelings,—and he permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty and absorb it, without, as usual, taking any thought of the scientific aspect of her condition.
“tresses twisted by fairy fingers,
in which the light of the morning lingers!”
he murmured, as he touched a rippling strand of the lovely hair that lay spread like a fleece of gold floss silk on the pillow near him,—“poor lilith!—sweet lilith!”
as if responsive to his words, she turned slightly towards him, and felt the air blindly with one wandering white hand. gently he caught it and imprisoned it within his own,—then, on a strange impulse, kissed it. to his utter amazement she answered that touch as though it had been a call.
“i am here, ... my belovëd!”
he started, and an icy thrill ran through his veins;—that word “belovëd” was a sort of electric shock to his system, and sent a dizzying rush of blood to his brain. what did she mean,—what could she mean? the last time she had addressed him she had declared that he was not even her friend—now she called him her “beloved”—as much to his amazement as his fear. presently, however, he considered that here perhaps was some new development of his experiment;—the soul of lilith might possibly be in closer communion with him than he had yet imagined. but, in spite of his attempt to reason away his emotions, he was nervous, and stood by the couch silently, afraid to speak, and equally afraid to move. lilith was silent too. a long pause ensued, in which the usually subdued tickings of the clock seemed to become painfully audible. el-râmi’s breath came and went quickly,—he was singularly excited,—some subtle warmth from the little hand he held permeated his veins, and a sense of such utter powerlessness possessed him as he had never experienced before. what ailed him? he could not tell. where was the iron force of his despotic will? he seemed unable to exert it,—unable even to think coherently while lilith’s hand thus rested in his. had she grown stronger than himself? a tingling tremor ran through him, as the strange words of the monk’s written warning suddenly recurred to his memory.
“beware the end! with lilith’s love comes lilith’s freedom.”
but lilith smiled with placid sweetness, and still left her hand confidingly in his; he held that hand, so warm and soft and white, and was loath to let it go,—he studied the rapt expression of the beautiful face, the lovely curve of the sweet shut lips, the delicately-veined lids of the closed eyes,—and was dimly conscious of a sense of vague happiness curiously intermingled with terror. by and by he began to collect his ideas which had been so suddenly scattered by the one word “belovëd,”—and he resolved to break the mystic silence that oppressed and daunted him.
“dreaming or waking, is she?” he queried aloud, a little tremulously, and as though he were talking to himself. “she must be dreaming!”
“dreaming of joy!” said lilith softly, and with quick responsiveness—“only that joy is no dream! i hear your voice,—i am conscious of your touch,—almost i see you! the cloud hangs there between us still—but god is good,—he will remove that cloud.”
el-râmi listened, perplexed and wondering.
“lilith,” he said in a voice that strove in vain to assume its wonted firmness and authority—“what say you of clouds,—you who are in the full radiance of a light that is quenchless? have you not told me of a glory that out-dazzles the sun, in which you move and have your being,—then what do you know of shadow?”
“yours is the shadow,” replied lilith—“not mine! i would that i could lift it from your eyes, that you might see the wonder and the beauty. oh, cruel shadow, that lies between my love and me!”
“lilith! lilith!” exclaimed el-râmi in strange agitation, “why will you talk of love!”
“do you not think of love?” said lilith—“and must i not respond to your innermost thought?”
“not always do you so respond, lilith!” said el-râmi quickly, recovering himself a little, and glad of an opportunity to bring back his mind to a more scientific level. “often you speak of things i know not,—things that perhaps i shall never know——”
“nay, you must know,” said lilith, with soft persistence. “every unit of life in every planet is bound to know its cause and final intention. all is clear to me, and will be so to you, hereafter. you ask me of these things—i tell you,—but you do not believe me;—you will never believe me till—the end.”
“beware the end!” the words echoed themselves so distinctly in el-râmi’s mind that he could almost have fancied they were spoken aloud in the room. “what end?” he asked eagerly.
but to this lilith answered nothing.
he looked at the small sensitive hand he held, and, stroking it gently, was about to lay it back on her bosom, when all at once she pressed her fingers closely over his palm, and sat upright, her delicate face expressive of the most intense emotion, notwithstanding her closed eyes.
“write!” she said in a clear penetrating voice that sent silvery echoes through the room—“write these truths to the world you live in. tell the people they all work for evil, and therefore evil shall be upon them. what they sow, even that shall they reap,—with the measure they have used, it shall be measured to them again. o wild world!—sad world!—world wherein the pride of wealth, the joy of sin, the cruelty of avarice, the curse of selfishness, outweigh all pity, all sympathy, all love! for this god’s law of compensation makes but one return—destruction. wars shall prevail; plague and famine shall ravage the nations;—young children shall murder the parents who bore them; theft and rapine shall devastate the land. for your world is striving to live without god,—and a world without god is a disease that must die. like a burnt-out star this earth shall fall from its sphere and vanish utterly—and its sister-planets shall know it no more. for when it is born again, it will be new.”
the words came from her lips with a sort of fervid eloquence which seemed to exhaust her, for she grew paler and paler, and her head began to sink backward on the pillow. el-râmi gently put his arm round her to support her, and, as he did so, a kind of supernatural light irradiated her features.
“believe me, o my belovëd, believe the words of lilith!” she murmured. “there is but one law leading to all wisdom. evil generates evil, and contains within itself its own retribution. good generates good, and holds within itself the germ of eternal reproduction. love begets love, and from love is born immortality!”
her voice grew fainter,—she sank entirely back on her pillow; yet once again her lips moved and the word “immortality!” floated whisperingly like a sigh. el-râmi drew his arm away from her, and at the same instant disengaged his hand from her clasp. she seemed bewildered at this, and for a minute or two felt in the air as though searching for some missing treasure,—then her arms fell passively on each side of her, seemingly inert and lifeless. el-râmi bent over her half curiously, half anxiously,—his eyes dwelt on the ruby-like jewel that heaved gently up and down on her softly rounded bosom,—he watched the red play of light around it, and on the white satiny skin beneath,—and then,—all at once his sight grew dazzled and his brain began to swim. how lovely she was!—how much more than lovely! and how utterly she was his!—his, body and soul, and in his power! he was startled at the tenor of his own unbidden thoughts,—whence, in god’s name, came these new impulses, these wild desires that fired his blood? ... furious with himself for what he deemed the weakness of his own emotions, he strove to regain the mastery over his nerves,—to settle his mind once more in its usual attitude of cold inflexibility and indifferent composure,—but all in vain. some subtle chord in his mental composition had been touched mysteriously, he knew not how, and had set all the other chords a-quivering,—and he felt himself all suddenly to be as subdued and powerless as when his mysterious visitor, the monk from cyprus, had summoned up (to daunt him, as he thought) the strange vision of an angel in his room.
again he looked at lilith;—again he resisted the temptation that assailed him to clasp her in his arms, to shower a lover’s kisses on her lips, and thus waken her to the full bitter-sweet consciousness of earthly life,—till in the sharp extremity of his struggle, and loathing himself for his own folly, he suddenly dropped on his knees by the side of the couch and gazed with a vague wild entreaty at the tranquil loveliness that lay there so royally enshrined.
“have mercy, lilith!” he prayed half aloud, and scarcely conscious of his words. “if you are stronger in your weakness than i in my strength, have mercy! repel me,—distrust me, disobey me—but do not love me! make me not as one of the foolish for whom a woman’s smile, a woman’s touch, are more than life, and more than wisdom. o let me not waste the labour of my days on a freak of passion!—let me not lose everything i have gained by long study and research, for the mere wild joy of an hour! lilith, lilith! child, woman, angel!—whatever you are, have pity upon me! i dare not love you! ... i dare not!”
so murmuring incoherently, he rose, and, walking dizzily like a man abruptly startled from deep sleep, he went straight out of the room, never looking back once, else he might have seen how divinely, how victoriously lilith smiled!
