Part 42 (2/2)
Why was there no answer? Because his speech was too gross for her to hearken to? Why did she not speak? Because his ears were deaf? Was this an illusion? No! a thousand times. When he approached she vanished, but what of it? He was mortal, she a spirit; they might not mix.
Yet in her own method she did speak, spoke to his soul, bidding the scales fall from its eyes so that it might see. And it saw what human imagination could not fas.h.i.+on. Behold those gardens, those groves that hang upon the measureless mountain face, and the white flowers which droop in tresses from the dark bough of yonder towering poplar tree, and the jewelled serpent nestling at its root.
Oh! they are gone, and when the flame-eyed Figure smote, the vast, barring, precipices fall apart and the road is smooth and open.
How far? A million miles? No, twenty thousand millions. Look, yonder s.h.i.+nes the destined Star; now come! So, it is reached. Nay, do not stop to stare. Look again! out through utter s.p.a.ce to where the low light glows. So, come once more. The suns float past like windblown golden dust--like the countless lamps of boats upon the bosom of a summer sea.
There, beneath, lies the very home of Power. Those springing sparks of light? They are the ineffable Decrees pa.s.sing outward through infinity.
That sound? It is the voice of worlds which wors.h.i.+p.
Look now! Out yonder see the flaming gases gather and cohere. They burn out and the great globe blackens. Cool mists wrap it, rains fall, seas collect, continents arise. There is life, behold it, various and infinite. And hearken to the whisper of this great universe, one tiny note in that song of praise you heard but now. Yes, the life dies, the ball grows black again; it is the carcase of a world. How long have you watched it? For an hour, a breath; but, as you judge time, some ten thousand million years. Sleep now, you are weary; later you shall understand.
Thus the wraith of Stella spoke to his soul in visions. Presently, with drumming ears and eyes before which strange lights seemed to play, Morris staggered from the place, so weak, indeed, that he could scarcely thrust one foot before the other. Yet his heart was filled with a mad joy, and his brain was drunken with the deep cup of a delight and a knowledge that have seldom been given to man.
On other nights the visions were different. Thus he saw the spirits of men going out and returning, and among them his own slumbering spirit that a vast and shadowy Stella bore in her arms as a mother bears a babe.
He saw also the Vision of Numbers. All the infinite inhabitants of all the infinite worlds pa.s.sed before him, marching through the ages to some end unknown. Once, too, his mind was opened, and he understood the explanation of Evil and the Reason of Things. He shouted at their glorious simplicity--shouted for joy; but lo! before he rose from his chair they were forgotten.
Other visions there were without count. Also they would mix and fall into new patterns, like the bits of gla.s.s in a kaleidoscope. There was no end to them, and each was lovelier, or grander, or fraught with a more sweet entrancement, than the last. And still she who brought them, she who opened his eyes, who caused his ears to hear and his soul to see; she whom he wors.h.i.+pped; his heart's twin, she who had sworn herself to him on earth, and was there waiting to fulfil the oath to all eternity; the woman who had become a spirit, that spirit that had taken the shape of a woman--there she stood and smiled and changed, and yet was changeless. And oh! what did it matter if his life was draining from him, and oh! to die at those glittering feet, with that perfumed breath stirring in his hair! What did he seek more when Death would be the great immortal waking, when from twilight he pa.s.sed out to light? What more when in that dawn, awful yet smiling, she should be his and he hers, and they twain would be one, with thought that answered thought, since it was the same thought?
There is much that might be told--enough to fill many pages. It would be easy, for instance, to set out long lists of the entrancing dreams which were the soul speech of the spirit of Stella, and to some extent, to picture them. Also the progress of the possession of Morris might be described and the student of his history shown, step by step, how the consummation that in her life days Stella had feared, overtook him; how ”the thing got the mastery of him,” and he became ”unfitted for his work on earth!” How, too, his body wasted and his spiritual part developed, till every physical sight and deed became a cause of irritation to his new nature, and at times even a source of active suffering.
Thus an evil odour, the spectacle of pain, the cry of grief, the sight of the carcases of dead animals, to take a few examples out of very many, were agonies to his abnormal, exasperated nerves. Nor did it stop there, since the misfortune which threatened Stella when at length she had succeeded in becoming bodily conscious of the presence of the eidolon of her sister, and ”heard discords among the harmonies” of the rich music of her violin, overtook him also.
Thus, for instance, in the scent of the sweetest rose at times Morris would discover something frightful; even the guise of tender childhood ceased to be lovely in his eyes, for now he could see and feel the budding human brute beneath. Worse still, his beautiful companion, Mary, fair and gracious as she was, became almost repulsive to him, so that he shrank from her as in common life some delicate-nurtured man might shrink from a full-bodied, coa.r.s.e-tongued young fishwife. Even her daily need of food, which was healthy though not excessive, disgusted him to witness,--he who was out of touch with all wholesome appet.i.tes of earth, whose distorted nature sought an alien rest and solace.
Of Mary herself, also, it might be narrated how, after first mocking at the thought and next thrusting it away, by degrees she grew to appreciate the reality of the mysterious foreign influence which reigned in her home. It might be told how in that spiritual atmosphere, shedding its sleepy indolence, her own spirit awoke and grew conscious and far-seeing, till impressions and hints which in the old days she would have set aside as idle, became for her pregnant with light and meaning.
Then at last her eyes were opened, and understanding much and guessing more she began to watch. The att.i.tude of the Colonel also could be studied, and how he grew first suspicious, then sarcastic, and at last thoroughly alarmed, even to his ultimate evacuation of the Abbey House, detailed at length.
But to the chronicler of these doings and of their unusual issues at any rate, it appears best to resist a natural temptation; to deny the desire to paint such closing scenes in petto. Much more does this certainty hold of their explanation. Enough has been said to enable those in whom the spark of understanding may burn, to discover by its light how much is left unsaid. Enough has been hinted at to teach how much there is still to guess. At least few will deny that some things are best abandoned to the imagination. To attempt to drag the last veil from the face of Truth in any of her thousand shapes is surely a folly predoomed to failure. From the beginning she has been a veiled divinity, and veiled, however thinly, she must and will remain. Also, even were it possible thus to rob her, would not her bared eyes frighten us?
It was late, very late, and there, pale and haggard in the low light of the fire, once again Morris stood pleading with the radiant image which his heart revealed.
”Oh, speak! speak!” he moaned aloud. ”I weary of those pictures. They are too vast; they crush me. I grow weak. I have no strength left to fight against the power of this fearful life that is discovered. I cannot bear this calm everlasting life. It sucks out my mortality as mists are sucked up by the sun. Become human. Speak. Let me touch your hand. Or be angry. Only cease smiling that awful smile, and take those solemn eyes out of my heart. Oh, my darling, my darling! remember that I am still a man. In pity answer me before I die.”
Then a low and awful cry, and Morris turned to behold Mary his wife. At last she had seen and heard, and read his naked heart. At last she knew him--mad, and in his madness, most unfaithful--a man who loved one dead and dragged her down to earth for company.
Look! there in his charmed and secret sight stood the spirit, and there, over against her, the mortal woman, and he--wavering--he lost between the two.
Certainly he had been sick a long while, since the sun-ray touched the face of the old abbot carved in that corner of the room to support the hammer beam. This, as he had known from a child, only chanced at mid-summer. Mary was bending over him, but he was astonished to find that he could sit up and move. Surely, then, his mind must have been more ill than his body.
”Hus.h.!.+” she said, ”drink this, dear, and go to sleep.”
<script>