it was yet early in the afternoon when he arrived back in london. he went straight home to his own house, letting himself in as usual with his latch-key. in the hall he paused, listening. he half expected to hear féraz playing one of his delicious dreamy improvisations,—but there was not a sound anywhere, and the deep silence touched him with an odd sense of disappointment and vague foreboding. his study door stood slightly ajar,—he pushed it wider open very noiselessly and looked in. his young brother was there, seated in a chair near the window, reading. el-râmi gazed at him dubiously, with a slowly dawning sense that there was some alteration in his appearance which he could not all at once comprehend. presently he realised that féraz had evidently yielded to some overwhelming suggestion of personal vanity, which had induced him to put on more brilliant attire. he had changed his plain white linen garb for one of richer material, composed in the same eastern fashion,—he wore a finely-chased gold belt, from which a gold-sheathed dagger depended,—and a few gold ornaments gleamed here and there among the drawn silken folds of his upper vest. he looked handsome enough for a new agathon as he sat there apparently absorbed in study,—the big volume he perused resting partly on his knee,—but el-râmi’s brow contracted with sudden anger as he observed him from the half-open doorway where he stood, himself unseen,—and his dark face grew very pale. he threw the door back on its hinges with a clattering sound and entered the room.
“féraz!”
féraz looked up, lifting his eyelids indifferently and smiling coldly.
“what, el-râmi! back so early? i did not expect you till nightfall.”
“did you not?” said his brother, advancing slowly—“pray how was that? you know i generally return after a night’s absence early in the next day. where is your usual word of welcome? what ails you? you seem in a very odd humour!”
“do i?”—and féraz stretched himself a little,—rose, yawning, and laid down the volume he held on the table—“i am not aware of it myself, i assure you. how did you find your old madman? and did you tell him you were nearly as mad as he?”
el-râmi’s eyes flashed indignant amazement and wrath.
“féraz!—what do you mean?”
with a fierce impulsive movement féraz turned and fully faced him,—all his forced and feigned calmness gone to the winds,—a glowing picture of youth and beauty and rage commingled.
“what do i mean?” he cried—“i mean this! that i am tired of being your slave—your ‘subject’ for conjurer’s tricks of mesmerism,—that from henceforth i resist your power,—that i will not serve you—will not obey you—will not yield—no!—not an inch of my liberty—to your influence,—that i am a free man, as you are, and that i will have the full rights of both my freedom and manhood. you shall play no more with me; i refuse to be your dupe as i have been. this is what i mean!—and as i will have no deception or subterfuge between us,—for i scorn a lie,—hear the truth from me at once;—i know your secret—i have seen her!”
el-râmi stood erect,—immovable;—he was very pale; his breath came and went quickly—once his hand clenched, but he said nothing.
“i have seen her!” cried féraz again, flinging up his arms with an ecstatic wild gesture—“a creature fairer than any vision!—and you—you have the heart to bind her fast in darkness and in nothingness,—you it is who have shut her sight to the world,—you have made for her, through your horrible skill, a living death in which she knows nothing, feels nothing, sees nothing, loves nothing! i tell you it is a cursed deed you are doing,—a deed worse than murder—i would not have believed it of you! i thought your experiments were all for good,—i never would have deemed you capable of cruelty to a helpless woman! but i will release her from your spells,—she is too beautiful to be made her own living monument,—zaroba is right—she needs life—joy—love!—she shall have them all;—through me!”
he paused, out of breath with the heat and violence of his own emotions;—el-râmi stood, still immovably regarding him.
“you may be as angered as you please”—went on féraz with sullen passion—“i care nothing now. it was zaroba who bade me go up yonder and see her where she slept; ... it was zaroba——”
“‘the woman tempted me and i did eat—’” quoted el-râmi coldly,—“of course it was zaroba. no other than a woman could thus break a sworn word. naturally it was zaroba,—the paid and kept slave of my service, who owes to me her very existence,—who persuaded my brother to dishonour.”
“dishonour!” and féraz laid his hand with a quick, almost savage gesture on the hilt of the dagger at his belt. el-râmi’s dark eyes blazed upon him scornfully.
“so soon a braggart of the knife?” he said. “what theatrical show is this? you—you—the poet, the dreamer, the musician—the gentle lad whose life was one of peaceful and innocent reverie—are you so soon changed to the mere swaggering puppy of manhood who pranks himself out in gaudy clothing, and thinks by vulgar threatening to overawe his betters? if so, ’tis a pity—but i shall not waste time in deploring it. hear me, féraz—i said ‘dishonour,’—swallow the word as best you may, it is the only one that fits the act of prying into secrets not your own. but i am not angered,—the mischief wrought is not beyond remedy, and if it were there would be still less use in bewailing it. what is done cannot be undone. now tell me,—you say you have seen her. whom have you seen?”
féraz regarded him amazedly.
“whom have i seen?” he echoed—“whom should i see, if not the girl you keep locked in those upper rooms,—a beautiful maiden, sleeping her life away, in cruel darkness and ignorance of all things true and fair!”
“an enchanted princess, to your fancy—” said el-râmi derisively. “well, if you thought so, and if you believed yourself to be a new sort of prince charming, why, if she were only sleeping, did you not wake her?”
“wake her?” exclaimed féraz excitedly.—“oh, i would have given my life to see those fringed lids uplift and show the wonders of the eyes beneath! i called her by every endearing name—i took her hands and warmed them in my own—i would have kissed her lips——”
“you dared not!” cried el-râmi, fired beyond his own control, and making a fierce bound towards him—“you dared not pollute her by your touch!”
féraz recoiled,—a sudden chill ran through his blood. his brother was transformed with the passion that surged through him,—his eyes flashed—his lips quivered—his very form seemed to tower up and tremble and dilate with rage.
“el-râmi!” he stammered nervously, feeling all his newly-born defiance and bravado oozing away under the terrible magnetism of this man, whose fury was nearly as electric as that of a sudden thunderstorm,—“el-râmi, i did no harm,—zaroba was there beside me——”
“zaroba!” echoed el-râmi furiously—“zaroba would stand by and see an angel violated, and think it the greatest happiness that could befall her sanctity! to be of common clay, with household joys and kitchen griefs, is zaroba’s idea of noble living. oh rash unhappy féraz! you say you know my secret—you do not know it—you cannot guess it! foolish, ignorant boy!—did you think yourself a new christ with power to raise the dead?”
“the dead?” muttered féraz, with white lips—“the dead? she—the girl i saw—lives and breathes ...”
“by my will alone!” said el-râmi—“by my force—by my knowledge—by my constant watchful care,—by my control over the subtle threads that connect spirit with matter. otherwise, according to all the laws of ordinary nature, that girl is dead—she died in the syrian desert six years ago!”
