Part 27 (1/2)

The golden calf is no longer wors.h.i.+ped, cobwebs cling in festoons motionless, and the dust of selfish thoughts perverted, dry and black as the soot from Satan's fires settling therein, as the dust of an antiquated sarcophagus, rest undisturbed. Place on one side the Heaven of which gold-bound misers sing, and on the other Etidorhpa and the treasures that come with me to man and woman, (for without me neither wife, child, nor father could exist,) and from any other heaven mankind will turn away. The n.o.blest gift of Heaven to humanity is the highest sense of love, and I, Etidorhpa, am the soul of love.”

She ceased speaking, and as I looked at the form beside me I forgot myself in the rapture of that gaze.

Crush the colors of the rainbow into a single hue possessed of the attributes of all the others, and multiply that ent.i.ty to infinity, and you have less richness than rested in any of the complex colors shown in the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of her raiment. Lighten the softness of eiderdown a thousand times, and yet maintain its sense of substance, and you have not conceived of the softness of the gauze that decked her simple, flowing garments. Gather the shadows cast by a troop of radiant angels, then sprinkle the resultant shade with star dust, and color therewith a garment brighter than satin, softer than silk, and more ethereal than light itself, and you have less beauty than reposed in the modest dress that enveloped her figure. Abstract the perfume from the sweetest oriental gra.s.ses, and combine with it the essential spirit of the wild rose, then add thereto the soul of ambergris, and the quintessential extracts of the finest aromatics of the East, and you have not approached the exquisite fragrance that penetrated my very being at her approach. She stood before me, slender, lithe, symmetrical, radiant. Her hair was more beautiful than pen can depict; it was colorless because it can not be described by colors known to mortals. Her face paled the beauty of all who had preceded her. She could not be a fairy, for no conception of a fairy can approach such loveliness; she was not a spirit, for surely material substance was a part of her form; she was not an angel, for no abnormal, irrational wing protruded from her shoulder to blemish her seraphic figure.

”No,” I said musingly; ”she is a creature of other climes; the Scriptures tell of no such being; she is neither human nor angelic, but--”

”But what?” she said.

”I do not know,” I answered.

”Then I will tell you,” she replied. ”Yes; I will tell you of myself and of my companions. I will show you our home, carrying you through the shadows of heaven to exhibit that fair land, for heaven without Etidorhpa casts a shadow in comparison therewith. See,” she said, as with her dainty fingers she removed from her garment a fragment of transparent film that I had not previously observed; ”see, this is a cobweb that clung to my skirt, as, on my way to meet you, I pa.s.sed through the dismal corridors of the materialists' loveless heaven.”

She dropped it on the floor, and I stooped to pick it up, but vainly--my fingers pa.s.sed through it as through a mist.

”You must be an angel,” I stammered.

She smiled.

”Come,” she said, ”do not consume your time with thoughts of materialistic heaven; come with me to that brighter land beyond, and in those indescribable scenes we, you and I, will wander together forever.”

She held out her hand; I hesitatingly touched it, and then raised it to my lips. She made no resistance.

I dropped upon my knees. ”Are you to be mine?” I cried. ”Mine forever?”

”Yes,” she answered; ”if you will it, for he who loves will be loved in turn.”

”I will do it,” I said; ”I give myself to you, be you what you may, be your home where it may, I give up the earth behind me, and the hope of heaven before me; the here and the hereafter I will sacrifice. Let us hasten,” I said, for she made no movement.

She shook her head. ”You must yet be tempted as never before, and you must resist the tempter. You can not pa.s.s into the land of Etidorhpa until you have suffered as only the d.a.m.ned can suffer, until you have withstood the pangs of thirst, and have experienced heat and cold indescribable. Remember the warning of your former guide, mark well the words of Etidorhpa: you must not yield. 'Twas to serve you that I came before you now, 'twas to preserve you from the Drunkard's Cavern that I have given you this vision of the land beyond the End of Earth where, if you will serve yourself, we will meet again.”

She held aloft two tiny cups; I sprung to my feet and grasped one of them, and as I glanced at the throng in front of me, every radiant figure held aloft in the left hand a similar cup. All were gazing in my face. I looked at the transparent cup in my hand; it appeared to be partly filled with a green liquid. I looked at her cup and saw that it contained a similar fluid.

Forgetting the warning she had so recently given, I raised the cup to my lips, and just before touching it glanced again at her face. The fair creature stood with bowed head, her face covered with her hand; her very form and att.i.tude spoke of sorrow and disappointment, and she trembled in distress. She held one hand as though to thrust back a form that seemed about to force itself beyond her figure, for peering exultingly from behind, leered the same Satanic face that met my gaze on the preceding occasion, when in the presence of the troop of demons, I had been tempted by the perfect man.

Das.h.i.+ng the cup to the floor I shouted:

”No; I will not drink.”

Etidorhpa dropped upon her knees and clasped her hands. The Satanic figure disappeared from sight. Realizing that we had triumphed over the tempter, I also fell upon my knees in thankfulness.

CHAPTER XLI.

MISERY.

As all the bubbles in a gla.s.s shrink and vanish when the first collapses, so the troop of fairy-like forms before me disintegrated, and were gone. The delicate being, whose hand I held, fluttered as does a mist in the first gust of a sudden gale, and then dissolved into transparency. The gaily decked amphitheater disappeared, the very earth cavern pa.s.sed from existence, and I found myself standing solitary and alone in a boundless desert. I turned towards every point of the compa.s.s only to find that no visible object appeared to break the monotony. I stood upon a floor of pure white sand which stretched to the horizon in gentle wave-like undulations as if the swell of the ocean had been caught, transformed to sand, and fixed.

I bent down and scooped a handful of the sand, and raised it in the palm of my hand, letting it sift back again to earth; it was surely sand. I pinched my flesh, and pulled my hair, I tore my garments, stamped upon the sand, and shouted aloud to demonstrate that I myself was still myself. It was real, yes, real. I stood alone in a desert of sand.

Morning was dawning, and on one side the great sun rose slowly and majestically.