standing in an attitude more of resignation than expectancy, he waited, listening. he heard the street-door open and shut again,—then came a brief pause, followed by the sound of a firm step in the outer hall,—and féraz re-appeared, ushering in with grave respect a man of stately height and majestic demeanour, cloaked in a heavy travelling ulster, the hood of which was pulled cowl-like over his head and almost concealed his features.
“greeting to el-râmi zarânos—” said a rich mellow voice, “and so this is the weather provided by an english month of may! well, it might be worse,—certes, also, it might be better. i should have disburdened myself of these ‘lendings’ in the hall, but that i knew not whether you were quite alone—” and, as he spoke, he threw off his cloak, which dripped with rain, and handed it to féraz, disclosing himself in the dress of a carthusian monk, all save the disfiguring tonsure. “i was not certain,” he continued cheerfully—“whether you might be ready or willing to receive me.”
“i am always ready for such a visitor—” said el-râmi, advancing hesitatingly, and with a curious diffidence in his manner—“and more than willing. your presence honours this poor house and brings with it a certain benediction.”
“gracefully said, el-râmi!” exclaimed the monk with a keen flash of his deep-set blue eyes—“where did you learn to make pretty speeches? i remember you of old time as brusque of tongue and obstinate of humour,—and even now humility sits ill upon you,—’tis not your favourite practised household virtue.”
el-râmi flushed, but made no reply. he seemed all at once to have become even to himself the merest foolish nobody before this his remarkable-looking visitor with the brow and eyes of an inspired evangelist, and the splendid lines of thought, aspiration, and endeavour marking the already noble countenance with an expression seldom seen on features of mortal mould. féraz now came forward to proffer wine and sundry other refreshments, all of which were courteously refused.
“this lad has grown, el-râmi—” said the stranger, surveying féraz with much interest and kindliness,—“since he stayed with us in cyprus and studied our views of poesy and song. a promising youth he seems,—and still your slave?”
el-râmi gave a gesture of deprecation.
“you mistake—” he replied curtly—“he is my brother and my friend,—as such he cannot be my slave. he is as free as air.”
“or as an eagle that ever flies back to its eyrie in the rocks out of sheer habit—” observed the monk with a smile—“in this case you are the eyrie, and the eagle is never absent long! well—what now, pretty lad?” this, as féraz, moved by a sudden instinct which he could not explain to himself, dropped reverently on one knee.
“your blessing—” he murmured timidly. “i have heard it said that your touch brings peace,—and i—i am not at peace.”
the monk looked at him benignly.
“we live in a world of storm, my boy—” he said gently—“where there is no peace but the peace of the inner spirit. that, with your youth and joyous nature, you should surely possess,—and, if you have it not, may god grant it you! ’tis the best blessing i can devise.”
and he signed the cross on the young man’s forehead with a gentle lingering touch,—a touch under which féraz trembled and sighed for pleasure, conscious of the delicious restfulness and ease that seemed suddenly to pervade his being.
“what a child he is still, this brother of yours!” then said the monk, turning abruptly towards el-râmi—“he craves a blessing,—while you have progressed beyond all such need!”
el-râmi raised his dark eyes,—eyes full of a burning pain and pride,—but made no answer. the monk looked at him steadily—and heaved a quick sigh.
“vigilate et orate ut non intretis in tentationem!” he murmured,—“truly, to forgive is easy—but to forget is difficult. i have much to say to you, el-râmi,—for this is the last time i shall meet you ‘before i go hence and be no more seen.’”
féraz uttered an involuntary exclamation.
“you do not mean,” he said almost breathlessly—“that you are going to die?”
“assuredly not!” replied the monk with a smile—“i am going to live. some people call it dying—but we know better,—we know we cannot die.”
“we are not sure—” began el-râmi.
“speak for yourself, my friend!” said the monk cheerily—“i am sure,—and so are those who labour with me. i am not made of perishable composition any more than the dust is perishable. every grain of dust contains a germ of life—i am co-equal with the dust, and i contain my germ also, of life that is capable of infinite reproduction.”
el-râmi looked at him dubiously yet wonderingly. he seemed the very embodiment of physical strength and vitality, yet he only compared himself to a grain of dust. and the very dust held the seeds of life!—true!—then, after all, was there anything in the universe, however small and slight, that could die utterly? and was lilith right when she said there was no death? wearily and impatiently el-râmi pondered the question,—and he almost started with nervous irritation when the slight noise of the door shutting told him that féraz had retired, leaving him and his mysterious visitant alone together.
some minutes passed in silence. the monk sat quietly in el-râmi’s own chair, and el-râmi himself stood close by, waiting, as it seemed, for something; with an air of mingled defiance and appeal. outside, the rain and wind continued their gusty altercation;—inside, the lamp burned brightly, shedding warmth and lustre on the student-like simplicity of the room. it was the monk himself who at last broke the spell of the absolute stillness.
“you wonder,” he said slowly—“at the reason of my coming here,—to you who are a recreant from the mystic tie of our brotherhood,—to you, who have employed the most sacred and venerable secrets of our order, to wrest from life and nature the material for your own self-interested labours. you think i come for information—you think i wish to hear from your own lips the results of your scientific scheme of supernatural ambition,—alas, el-râmi zarânos!—how little you know me! prayer has taught me more science than science will ever grasp,—there is nothing in all the catalogue of your labours that i do not understand, and you can give me no new message from lands beyond the sun. i have come to you out of simple pity,—to warn you and if possible to save.”
el-râmi’s dark eyes opened wide in astonishment.
“to warn me?” he echoed—“to save? from what?—such a mission to me is incomprehensible.”
“incomprehensible to your stubborn spirit,—yes, no doubt it is—” said the monk, with a touch of stern reproach in his accents,—“for you will not see that the veil of the eternal, though it may lift itself for you a little from other men’s lives, hangs dark across your own, and is impervious to your gaze. you will not grasp the fact that, though it may be given to you to read other men’s passions, you cannot read your own. you have begun at the wrong end of the mystery, el-râmi,—you should have mastered yourself first, before seeking to master others. and now there is danger ahead of you—be wise in time,—accept the truth before it is too late.”
el-râmi listened, impatient and incredulous.
“accept what truth?” he asked somewhat bitterly—“am i not searching for truth everywhere? and seeking to prove it? give me any sort of truth to hold, and i will grasp it as a drowning sailor grasps the rope of rescue!”
the monk’s eyes rested on him in mingled compassion and sorrow.
“after all these years—” he said—“are you still asking pilate’s question?”
“yes—i am still asking pilate’s question!” retorted el-râmi with sudden passion—“see you—i know who you are,—great and wise, a master of the arts and sciences, and with all your stores of learning, still a servant of christ, which to me is the wildest, maddest incongruity. i grant you that christ was the holiest man that ever lived on earth,—and if i swear a thing in his name i swear an oath that shall not be broken. but in his divinity, i cannot, i may not, i dare not believe!—except in so far that there is divinity in all of us. one man, born of woman, destined to regenerate the world!—the idea is stupendous,—but impossible to reason!”
he paced the room impatiently.
“if i could believe it—i say ‘if,’”—he continued, “i should still think it a clumsy scheme. for every human creature living should be a reformer and regenerator of his race.”
“like yourself?” queried the monk calmly. “what have you done, for example?”
el-râmi stopped in his walk to and fro.
“what have i done?” he repeated—“why—nothing! you deem me proud and ambitious,—but i am humble enough to know how little i know. and as to proofs,—well, it is the same story—i have proved—nothing.”
“so! then are your labours wasted?”
“nothing is wasted,—according to your theories even. your theories—many of them—are beautiful and soul-satisfying, and this one of there being no waste in the economy of the universe is, i believe, true. but i cannot accept all you teach. i broke my connection with you because i could not bend my spirit to the level of the patience you enjoined. it was not rebellion,—no! for i loved and honoured you—and i still revere you more than any man alive, but i cannot bow my neck to the yoke you consider so necessary. to begin all work by first admitting one’s weakness!—no!—power is gained by never-resting ambition, not by a merely laborious humility.”
“opinions differ on that point”—said the monk quietly—“i never sought to check your ambition—i simply said—take god with you. do not leave him out. he is. therefore his existence must be included in everything, even in the scientific examination of a drop of dew. without him you grope in the dark—you lack the key to the mystery. as an example of this, you are yourself battering against a shut door, and fighting with a force too strong for you.”
“i must have proofs of god!” said el-râmi very deliberately—“nature proves her existence; let god prove his!”
“and does he not prove it?” inquired the monk with mingled passion and solemnity—“have you to go farther than the commonest flower to find him?”
el-râmi shrugged his shoulders with an air of light disdain.
“nature is nature,”—he said—“god—an there be a god—is god. if god works through nature he arranges things very curiously on a system of mutual destruction. you talk of flowers,—they contain both poisonous and healing properties,—and the poor human race has to study and toil for years before finding out which is which. is that just of nature—or god? children never know at all,—and the poor little wretches die often through eating poison-berries of whose deadly nature they were not aware. that is what i complain of—we are not aware of evil, and we are not made aware. we have to find it out for ourselves. and i maintain that it is wanton cruelty on the part of the divine element to punish us for ignorance which we cannot help. and so the plan of mutual destructiveness goes on, with the most admirable persistency; the eater is in turn eaten, and, as far as i can make out, this seems to be the one everlasting law. surely it is an odd and inconsequential arrangement? as for the business of creation, that is easy, if once we grant the existence of certain component parts of space. look at this, for example”—and he took from a corner a thin steel rod about the size of an ordinary walking cane—“if i use this magnet, and these few crystals”—and he opened a box on the table, containing some sparkling powder like diamond dust, a pinch of which he threw up into the air—“and play with them thus, you see what happens!”
and with a dexterous steady motion he waved the steel rod rapidly round and round in the apparently empty space where he had tossed aloft the pinch of powder, and gradually there grew into shape out of the seeming nothingness a round large brilliant globe of prismatic tints, like an enormously magnified soap-bubble, which followed the movement of the steel magnet rapidly and accurately. the monk lifted himself a little in his chair and watched the operation with interest and curiosity—till presently el-râmi dropped the steel rod from sheer fatigue of arm. but the globe went on revolving steadily by itself for a time, and el-râmi pointed to it with a smile—
“if i had the skill to send that bubble-sphere out into space, solidify it, and keep it perpetually rolling,” he said lightly, “it would in time exhale its own atmosphere and produce life, and i should be a very passable imitation of the creator.”
at that moment the globe broke, and vanished like a melting snowflake, leaving no trace of its existence but a little white dust which fell in a round circle on the carpet. after this display, el-râmi waited for his guest to speak, but the monk said nothing.
“you see,” continued el-râmi—“it requires a great deal to satisfy me with proofs. i must have tangible fact, not vague imagining.”
the monk raised his eyes,—what searching calm eyes they were!—and fixed them full on the speaker.
“your sphere was a fact,”—he said quietly—“visible to the eye, it glittered and whirled—but it was not tangible, and it had no life in it. it is a fair example of other facts,—so called. and you could not have created so much as that perishable bubble, had not god placed the materials in your hands. it is odd you seem to forget that. no one can work without the materials for working,—the question remains, from whence came those materials?”
el-râmi smiled with a touch of scorn.
“rightly are you called supreme master!” he said—“for your faith is marvellous—your ideas of life both here and hereafter, beautiful. i wish i could accept them. but i cannot. your way does not seem to me clear or reasonable,—and i have thought it out in every direction. take the doctrine of original sin for example—what is original sin, and why should it exist?”
“it does not exist—” said the monk quickly—“except in so far that we have created it. it is we, therefore, who must destroy it.”
el-râmi paused, thinking. this was the same lesson lilith had taught.
“if we created it—” he said at last, “and there is a god who is omnipotent, why were we allowed to create it?”
the monk turned round in his chair with ever so slight a gesture of impatience.
“how often have i told you, el-râmi zarânos,” he said,—“of the gift and responsibility bestowed on every human unit—free-will. you, who seek for proofs of the divine, should realise that this is the only proof we have in ourselves of our close relation to ‘the image of god.’ god’s laws exist,—and it is our first business in life to know and understand these—afterwards, our fate is in our own hands,—if we transgress law, or if we fulfil law, we know, or ought to know, the results. if we choose to make evil, it exists till we destroy it—good we cannot make, because it is the very breath of the universe, but we can choose to breathe in it and with it. i have so often gone over this ground with you that it seems mere waste of words to go over it again,—and if you cannot, will not see that you are creating your own destiny and shaping it to your own will, apart from anything that human or divine experience can teach you, then you are blind indeed. but time wears on apace,—and i must speak of other things;—one message i have for you that will doubtless cause you pain.” he waited a moment—then went on slowly and sadly—“yes,—the pain will be bitter and the suffering long,—but the fiat has gone forth, and ere long you will be called upon to render up the soul of lilith.”
el-râmi started violently,—flushed a deep red, and then grew deadly pale.
“you speak in enigmas—” he said huskily and with an effort—“what do you know—how have you heard——”
he broke off,—his voice failed him, and the monk looked at him compassionately.
“judge not the power of god, el-râmi zarânos!” he said solemnly—“for it seems you cannot even measure the power of man. what!—did you think your secret experiment safely hid from all knowledge save your own?—nay! you mistake. i have watched your progress step by step—your proud march onward through such mysteries as never mortal mind dared penetrate before,—but even these wonders have their limits—and those limits are, for you, nearly reached. you must set your captive free!”
“never!” exclaimed el-râmi passionately. “never, while i live! i defy the heavens to rob me of her!—by every law in nature, she is mine!”
“peace!” said the monk sternly—“nothing is yours,—except the fate you have made for yourself. that is yours; and that must and will be fulfilled. that, in its own appointed time, will deprive you of lilith.”
el-râmi’s eyes flashed wrath and pain.
“what have you to do with my fate?” he demanded—“how should you know what is in store for me? you are judged to have a marvellous insight into spiritual things, but it is not insight after all so much as imagination and instinct. these may lead you wrong,—you have gained them, as you yourself admit, through nothing but inward, concentration and prayer—my discoveries are the result of scientific exploration,—there is no science in prayer!”
“is there not?”—and the monk, rising from his chair, confronted el-râmi with the reproachful majesty of a king who faces some recreant vassal—“then with all your wisdom you are ignorant,—ignorant of the commonest laws of simple sound. do you not yet know—have you not yet learned that sound vibrates in a million million tones through every nook and corner of the universe? not a whisper, not a cry from human lips is lost—not even the trill of a bird or the rustle of a leaf. all is heard—all is kept,—all is reproduced at will for ever and ever. what is the use of your modern toys, the phonograph and the telephone, if they do not teach you the fundamental and eternal law by which these adjuncts to civilisation are governed? god—the great, patient, loving god—hears the huge sounding-board of space re-echo again and yet again with rough curses on his name,—with groans and wailings; shouts, tears, and laughter send shuddering discord through his everlasting vastness, but amid it all there is a steady strain of music,—full, sweet, and pure—the music of perpetual prayer. no science in prayer! such science there is, that by its power the very ether parts asunder as by a lightning stroke—the highest golden gateways are unbarred,—and the connecting-link ’twixt god and man stretches itself through space, between and round all worlds, defying any force to break the current of its messages.”
he spoke with fervour and passion,—el-râmi listened silent and unconvinced.
“i waste my words, i know—” continued the monk—“for you, yourself suffices. what your brain dares devise,—what your hand dares attempt, that you will do, unadvisedly, sure of your success without the help of god or man. nevertheless—you may not keep the soul of lilith.”
his voice was very solemn yet sweet; el-râmi, lifting his head, looked full at him, wonderingly, earnestly, and as one in doubt. then his mind seemed to grasp more completely his visitor’s splendid presence,—the noble face, the soft commanding eyes,—and instinctively he bent his proud head with a sudden reverence.
“truly you are a god-like man—” he said slowly—“god-like in strength, and pure-hearted as a child. i would trust you in many things, if not in all. therefore,—as by some strange means you have possessed yourself of my secret,—come with me,—and i will show you the chiefest marvel of my science—the life i claim—the spirit i dominate. your warning i cannot accept, because you warn me of what is impossible. impossible—i say, impossible!—for the human lilith, god’s lilith, died—according to god’s will; my lilith lives, according to my will. come and see,—then perhaps you will understand how it is that i—i, and not god any longer,—claim and possess the soul i saved!”
with these words, uttered in a thrilling tone of pride and passion, he opened the study door and, with a mute inviting gesture, led the way out. in silence and with a pensive step, the monk slowly followed.
