Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self Part 3

"That some higher influence is working for your rescue and safety,"

replied Heliobas. "What influence I dare not presume to imagine, but--there are always angels near!"

"Angels!" Alwyn laughed aloud. "How many more fairy tales are you going to weave for me out of your fertile Oriental imagination? Angels! ...

See here, my good Heliobas, I am perfectly willing to grant that you may be a very clever man with an odd prejudice in favor of Christianity,--but I must request that you will not talk to me of angels and spirits or any such nonsense, as if I were a child waiting to be amused, instead of a full-grown man with ..."

"With so full-grown an intellect that it has out-grown G.o.d!" finished Heliobas serenely. "Quite so! Yet angels, after all, are only immortal Souls such as yours or mine when set free of their earthly tenements.

For instance, when I look at you thus," and he raised his eyes with a l.u.s.trous, piercing glance--"I see the proud, strong, and rebellious Angel in you far more distinctly than your outward shape of man ... and you ... when you look at me--"

He broke off, for Alwyn at that moment sprang from his chair, and, staring fixedly at him, uttered a quick, fierce exclamation.

"Ah! I know you now!" he cried in sudden and extraordinary excitement--"I know you well! We have met before!--Why,--after all that has pa.s.sed,--do we meet again?"

This singular speech was accompanied by a still more singular transfiguration of countenance--a dark, fiery glory burned in his eyes, and, in the stern, frowning wonder and defiance of his expression and att.i.tude, there was something grand yet terrible,--menacing yet supernaturally sublime. He stood so for an instant's s.p.a.ce, majestically sombre, like some haughty, discrowned emperor confronting his conqueror,--a rumbling, long-continued roll of thunder outside seemed to recall him to himself, and he pressed his hand tightly down over his eyelids, as though to shut out some overwhelming vision. After a pause he looked up again,--wildly, confusedly,--almost beseechingly,--and Heliobas, observing this, rose and advanced toward him.

"Peace!" he said, in low, impressive tones,--"we have recognized each other,--but on earth such recognitions are brief and soon forgotten!"

He waited for a few seconds,--then resumed lightly, "Come, look at me now! ... what do you see?"

"Nothing ... but yourself!" he replied, sighing deeply as he spoke--"yet ... oddly enough, a moment ago I fancied you had altogether a different appearance,--and I thought I saw ... no matter what! ... I cannot describe it!" His brows contracted in a puzzled line. "It was a curious phenomenon--very curious ... and it affected me strangely..."

he stopped abruptly,--then added, with a slight flush of annoyance on his face, "I perceive you are an adept in the art of optical illusion!"

Heliobas laughed softly. "Of course! What else can you expect of a charlatan, a trickster, and a monk to boot! Deception, deception throughout, my dear sir! ... and have you not ASKED to be deceived?"

There was a fine, scarcely perceptible satire in his manner; he glanced at the tall oaken clock that stood in one corner of the room--its hands pointed to eleven. "Now, Mr. Alwyn," he went on, "I think we have talked quite enough for this evening, and my advice is, that you retire to rest, and think over what I have said to you. I am willing to help you if I can,--but with your beliefs, or rather your non-beliefs, I do not hesitate to tell you frankly that the exertion of MY internal force upon YOURS in your present condition might be fraught with extreme danger and suffering. You have spoken of Truth, 'the deathful Truth'; this being, however, nothing but Truth according to the world's opinion, which changes with every pa.s.sing generation, and therefore is not Truth at all. There is another Truth--the everlasting Truth--the pivot of all life, which never changes; and it is with this alone that my science deals. Were I to set you at liberty as you desire,--were your intelligence too suddenly awakened to the blinding awfulness of your mistaken notions of life, death, and futurity, the result might be more overpowering than either you or I can imagine! I have told you what I can do,--your incredulity does not alter the fact of my capacity. I can sever you,--that is, your Soul, which you cannot define, but which nevertheless exists,--from your body, like a moth from its chrysalis; but I dare not even picture to myself what scorching flame the moth might not heedlessly fly into! You might in your temporary state of release find that new impetus to your thoughts you so ardently desire, or you might not,--in short, it is impossible to form a guess as to whether your experience might be one of supernal ecstasy or inconceivable horror." He paused a moment,--Alwyn was watching him with a close intentness that bordered on fascination and presently he continued, "It is best from all points of view, that you should consider the matter more thoroughly than you have yet done; think it over well and carefully until this time to-morrow--then, if you are quite resolved--"

"I am resolved NOW!" said Alwyn slowly and determinately. "If you are so certain of your influence, come! ... unbar my chains! ... open the prison-door! Let me go hence to-night; there is no time like the present!"

"To night!" and Heliobas turned his keen, bright eyes full upon him, with a look of amazement and reproach--"To night' without faith, preparation or prayer, you are willing to be tossed through the realms of s.p.a.ce like a grain of dust in a whirling tempest? Beyond the glittering gyration of unnumbered stars--through the sword-like flash of streaming comets--through darkness--through light--through depths of profoundest silence--over heights of vibrating sound--you--YOU will dare to wander in these G.o.d-invested regions--you a blasphemer and a doubter of G.o.d!"

His voice thrilled with pa.s.sion,--his aspect was so solemn, and earnest, and imposing that Alwyn, awed and startled, remained for a moment mute--then, lifting his head proudly, answered--

"Yes, I DARE! If I am immortal I will test my immortality! I will face G.o.d and find these angels you talk about! What shall prevent me?"

"Find the angels!" Heliobas surveyed him sadly as he spoke. "Nay! ...

pray rather that they may find THEE!" He looked long and steadfastly at Alwyn's countenance, on which there was just then the faint glimmer of a rather mocking smile,--and as he looked, his own face darkened suddenly into an expression of vague trouble and uneasiness--and a strange quiver pa.s.sed visibly through him from head to foot.

"You are bold, Mr. Alwyn,"--he said at last, moving a little away from his guest and speaking with some apparent effort--"bold to a fault, but at the same time you are ignorant of all that lies behind the veil of the Unseen. I should be much to blame if I sent you hence to-night, utterly unguided--utterly uninstructed. I myself must think--and pray--before I venture to incur so terrible a responsibility. To-morrow perhaps--to-night, no! I cannot--moreover I will not!"

Alwyn flushed hotly with anger. "Trickster!" he thought. "He feels he has no power over me, and he fears to run the risk of failure!"

"Did I hear you aright?" he said aloud in cold determined accents. "You cannot? you will not? ... By Heaven!"--and his voice rose, "I say you SHALL!" As he uttered these words a rush of indescribable sensations overcame him,--he seemed all at once invested with some mysterious, invincible, supreme authority,--he felt twice a man and more than half a G.o.d, and moved by an irresistible impulse which he could neither explain nor control, he made two or three hasty steps forward,--when Heliobas, swiftly retreating, waved him off with an eloquent gesture of mingled appeal and menace.

"Back! back!" he cried warningly. "If you come one inch nearer to me I cannot answer for your safety--back, I say! Good G.o.d! you do not know your OWN power!"

Alwyn scarcely heeded him,--some fatal attraction drew him on, and he still advanced, when all suddenly he paused, trembling violently. His nerves began to throb acutely,--the blood in his veins was like fire,--there was a curious strangling tightness in his throat that interrupted and oppressed his breathing,--he stared straight before him with large, luminous, impa.s.sioned eyes. What--WHAT was that dazzling something in the air that flashed and whirled and shone like glittering wheels of golden flame? His lips parted ... he stretched out his hands in the uncertain manner of a blind man feeling his way ... "Oh G.o.d! ...

G.o.d!" ... he muttered as though stricken by some sudden amazement,--then, with a smothered, gasping cry, he staggered and fell heavily forward on the floor--insensible!

At the self-same instant the window blew open, with a loud crash--it swung backward and forward on its hinges, and a torrent of rain poured through it slantwise into the room. A remarkable change had taken place in the aspect and bearing of Heliobas,--he stood as though rooted to the spot, trembling from head to foot,--he had lost all his usual composure,--he was deathly pale, and breathed with difficulty.

Presently recovering himself a little he strove to shut the swinging cas.e.m.e.nt, but the wind was so boisterous, that he had to pause a moment to gain strength for the effort, and instinctively he glanced out at the tempestuous night. The clouds were scurrying over the sky like great black vessels on a foaming sea,--the lightning flashed incessantly, and the thunder reverberated Over the mountains in tremendous volleys as of besieging cannon. Stinging drops of icy sleet dashed his face and the front of his white garb as he inhaled the stormy freshness of the strong, upward-sweeping blast for a few seconds--and then, with the air of one gathering together all his scattered forces, he shut to the window firmly and barred it across.

Turning now to the unconscious Alwyn, he lifted him from the floor to a low couch near at hand, and there laid him gently down. This done, he stood looking at him with an expression of the deepest anxiety, but made no attempt to rouse him from his death-like swoon. His own habitual serenity was completely broken through,--he had all the appearance of having received some unexpected and overwhelming shock,--his very lips were blanched and quivered nervously.

He waited for several minutes, attentively watching the rec.u.mbent figure before him, till gradually,--very gradually,--that figure took upon itself the pale, stern beauty of a corpse from which life has but recently and painlessly departed. The limbs grew stiff and rigid--the features smoothed into that mysteriously wise placidity which is so often seen in the faces of the dead,--the closed eyelids looked purple and livid as though bruised ... there was not a breath, not a tremor, to offer any outward suggestion of returning animation,--and when, after some little time, Heliobas bent down and listened, there was no pulsation of the heart ... it had ceased to beat! To all appearances Alwyn was DEAD--any physician would have certified the fact, though how he had come by his death there was no evidence to show. And in that condition, ... stirless, breathless ... white as marble, cold and inanimate as stone, Heliobas left him. Not in indifference, but in sure knowledge--knowledge far beyond all mere medical science--that the senseless clay would in due time again arise to life and motion; that the casket was but temporarily bereft of its jewel,--and that the jewel itself, the Soul of the Poet, had by a superhuman access of will, managed to break its bonds and escape elsewhere. But whither? ... Into what vast realms of translucent light or drear shadow? ... This was a question to which the mystic monk, gifted as he was with a powerful spiritual insight into "things unseen and eternal," could find no satisfactory answer, and in his anxious perplexity he betook himself to the chapel, and there, by the red glimmer of the crimson star that shone dimly above the altar, he knelt alone and prayed in silence till the heavy night had pa.s.sed, and the storm had slain itself with the sword of its own fury on the dark slopes of the Pa.s.s of Dariel.

CHAPTER IV.

"ANGELUS DOMINE."

The next morning dawned pallidly over a sea of gray mist--not a glimpse of the landscape was visible--nothing but a shadowy vastness of floating vapor that moved slowly fold upon fold, wave upon wave, as though bent on blotting out the world. A very faint, chill light peered through the narrow arched window of the room where Alwyn lay, still wrapped in that profound repose, so like the last long sleep from which some of our modern scientists tell us there can be no awakening. His condition was unchanged,--the wan beams of the early clay falling cross his features intensified their waxen stillness and pallor,--the awful majesty of death was on him,--the pathetic helplessness and perishableness of Body without Spirit. Presently the monastery bell began to ring for matins, and as its clear chime struck through the deep silence, the door opened, and Heliobas, accompanied by another monk, whose gentle countenance and fine, soft eyes betokened the serenity of his disposition, entered the apartment. Together they approached the couch, and gazed long and earnestly at the supernaturally slumbering man.

"He is still far away!" said Heliobas at last, sighing as he spoke. "So far away that my mind misgives me.... Alas, Hilarion! how limited is our knowledge! ... even with all the spiritual aids of spiritual life how little can be accomplished! We learn one thing, and another presents itself--we conquer one difficulty, and another instantly springs up to obstruct our path. Now if I had only had the innate perception required to foresee the possible flight of this released Immortal creature, might I not have saved it from some incalculable misery and suffering?"

"I think not," answered in rather musing accents the monk called Hilarion--"I think not. Such protection can never be exercised by mere human intelligence, if this soul is to be saved or s.h.i.+elded in its invisible journeying it will be by some means that not all the marvels of our science can calculate. You say he was without faith?"

"Entirely"

"What was his leading principle?"

"A desire for what he called Truth," replied Heliobas.

"He, like many others of his cla.s.s, never took the trouble to consider very deeply the inner meaning of Pilate's famous question, 'What IS Truth?' WE know what it is, as generally accepted--a few so called facts which in a thousand years will all be contradicted, mixed up with a few finite opinions propounded by unstable minded men. In brief, Truth, according to the world, is simply whatever the world is pleased to consider as Truth for the time being. 'Tis a somewhat slight thing to stake one's immortal destinies upon!"

Hilarion raised one of Alwyn's cold, pulseless hands--it was stiff, and white as marble.

"I suppose," he said, "there is no doubt of his returning hither?"

"None whatever," answered Heliobas decisively. "His life on earth is a.s.sured for many years yet,--inasmuch as his penance is not finished, his recompense not won. Thus far my knowledge of his fate is certain."

"Then you will bring him back to-day?" pursued Hilarion.

"Bring him back? I? I cannot!" said Heliobas, with a touch of sad humility in his tone. "And for this very reason I feared to send him hence,--and would not have done so,--not without preparation at any rate,--could I have had my way. His departure was more strange than any I have ever known--moreover, it was his own doing, not mine. I had positively refused to exert my influence upon him, because I felt he was not in my sphere, and that therefore neither I nor any of those higher intelligences with which I am in communication could control or guide his wanderings. He, however, was as positively determined that I SHOULD exert it--and to this end he suddenly concentrated all the pent up fire of his nature in one rapid effort of Will, and advanced upon me.... I warned him, but in vain! quick as lightning flash meets lightning flash, the two invisible Immortal Forces within us sprang into instant opposition,--with this difference, that while he was ignorant and unconscious of HIS power, I was cognizant and fully conscious of MINE. Mine was focused, as it were, upon him,--his was untrained and scattered,--the result was that mine won the victory: yet understand me well, Hilarion,--if I could have held myself in, I would have done so. It was he,--he who DREW my force out of me as one would draw a sword out of its scabbard--the sword may be ever so stiffly fixed in its sheath, but the strong hand will wrench it forth somehow, and use it for battle when needed."

"Then," said Hilarion wonderingly, "you admit this man possesses a power greater than your own?"

"Aye, if he knew it!" returned Heliobas, quietly. "But he does not know. Only an angel could teach him--and in angels he does not believe."

"He may believe now.... !"

"He may. He will--he must, ... if he has gone where I would have him go."

"A poet, is he not!" queried Hilarion softly, bending down to look more attentively at the beautiful Antinous-like face colorless and cold as sculptured alabaster.

"An uncrowned monarch of a world of song!" responded Heliobas, with a tender inflection in his rich voice. "A genius such as the earth sees but once in a century! But he has been smitten with the disease of unbelief and deprived of hope,--and where there is no hope there is no lasting accomplishment." He paused, and with a touch as gentle as a woman's, rearranged the cus.h.i.+ons under Alwyn's heavy head, and laid his hand in grave benediction on the broad white brow shaded by its cl.u.s.tering waves of dark hair. "May the Infinite Love bring him out of danger into peace and safety!" he said solemnly,--then turning away, he took his companion by the arm, and they both left the room, closing the door quietly behind them. The chapel bell went on tolling slowly, slowly, sending m.u.f.fled echoes through the fog for some minutes--then it ceased, and profound stillness reigned.

The monastery was always a very silent habitation,--situated as it was on so lofty and barren a crag, it was far beyond the singing-reach of the smaller sweet-throated birds--now and then an eagle clove the mist with a whirr of wings and a discordant scream on his way toward some distant mountain eyrie--but no other sound of awakening life broke the hush of the slowly widening dawn. An hour pa.s.sed--and Alwyn still remained in the same position,--as pallidly quiescent as a corpse stretched out for burial. By and by a change begin to thrill mysteriously through the atmosphere, like the flowing of amber wine through crystal--the heavy vapors shuddered together as though suddenly lashed by a whip of flame,--they rose, swayed to and fro, and parted asunder.... then, dissolving into thin, milk-white veils of fleecy film, they floated away, disclosing as they vanished, the giant summits of the encircling mountains, that lifted themselves to the light, one above another, in the form of frozen billows. Over these a delicate pink flush flitted in tremulous wavy lines--long arrows of gold began to pierce the tender s.h.i.+mmering blue of the sky--soft puffs of cloud tinged with vivid crimson and pale green were strewn along the eastern horizon like flowers in the path of an advancing hero,--and then all at once there was a slight cessation of movement in the heavens--an attentive pause as though the whole universe waited for some great splendor as yet unrevealed. That splendor came, in a red blaze of triumph the Sun rose, pouring a shower of beamy brilliancy over the white vastness of the heights covered with perpetual snow,--jagged peaks, sharp as scimetars and sparkling with ice, caught fire, and seemed to melt away in an absorbing sea of radiance, ... the waiting clouds moved on, redecked in deeper hues of royal purple--and the full Morning glory was declared. As the dazzling effulgence streamed through the window and flooded the couch where Alwyn lay, a faint tinge of color returned to his face,--his lips moved,--his broad chest heaved with struggling sighs,--his eyelids quivered,--and his before rigid hands relaxed and folded themselves together in an att.i.tude of peace and prayer. Like a statue becoming slowly and magically flushed with life, the warm hues of the naturally flowing blood deepened through the whiteness of his skin,--his breathing grew more and more easy and regular,--his features gradually a.s.sumed their wonted appearance, and presently ... without any violent start or exclamation ... he awoke!

But was it a real awakening? or rather a continuation of some strange impression received in slumber?