Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self Part 4

He rose to his feet, pus.h.i.+ng back the hair from his brow with an entranced look of listening wonderment--his eyes were humid yet brilliant--his whole aspect was that of one inspired. He paced once or twice up and down the room, but he was evidently unconscious of his surroundings--he seemed possessed by thoughts which absorbed his whole being. Presently he seated himself at the table, and absently fingering the writing materials that were upon it, he appeared meditatively to question their use and meaning. Then, drawing several sheets of paper toward him, he began to write with extraordinary rapidity and eagerness--his pen travelled on smoothly, uninterrupted by blot or erasure. Sometimes he paused--but when he did it was always with an upraised, attentively listening expression. Once he murmured aloud "ARDATH! Nay, I shall not forget!--we will meet at ARDATH!" and again he resumed his occupation. Page after page he covered with close writing-no weak, uncertain scrawl, but a firm bold, neat caligraphy,--his own peculiar, characteristic hand. The sun mounted higher and higher in the heavens, ... hour after hour pa.s.sed, and still lie wrote on, apparently unaware of the flitting time. At mid-day the bell, which had not rung since early dawn, began to swing quickly to and fro in the chapel turret,--the deep ba.s.s of the organ breathed on the silence a thunderous monotone, and a bee-like murmur of distant voices proclaimed the words: "Angelas Domine nuntiavit Mariae."

At the first sound of this chant, the spell that enchained Alwyn's mind was broken; drawing a quick das.h.i.+ng line under what he had written, he sprang up erect and dropped his pen.

"Heliobas!" he cried loudly, "Heliobas! WHERE IS THE FIELD OF ARDATH?"

His voice seemed strange and unfamiliar to his own ears,--he waited, listening, and the chant went on--"Et Verbo caro factus est, et habitavit in n.o.bis."

Suddenly, as if he could endure his solitude no longer, he rushed to the door and threw it open, thereby nearly flinging himself against Heliobas, who was entering the room at the same moment. He drew back, ... stared wildly, and pa.s.sing his hand across his forehead confusedly, forced a laugh.

"I have been dreaming!" he said, ... then with a pa.s.sionate gesture he added, "G.o.d! if the dream were true!"

He was strongly excited, and Heliobas, slipping one arm round him in a friendly manner, led him back to the chair he had vacated, observing him closely as he did so.

"You call THIS dreaming," he inquired with a slight smile, pointing to the table strewn with ma.n.u.script on which the ink was not yet dry.

"Then dreams are more productive than active exertion! Here is goodly matter for printers! ... a fair result it seems of one morning's labor!"

Alwyn started up, seized the written sheets, and scanned them eagerly.

"It is my handwriting!" he muttered in a tone of stupefied amazement.

"Of course! Whose handwriting should it be?" returned Heliobas, watching him with scientifically keen, yet kindly interest.

"Then it IS true!" he exclaimed. "True--by the sweetness of her eyes,--true, by the love-lit radiance of her smile!--true, O thou G.o.d whom I dared to doubt! true by the marvels of Thy matchless, wisdom!"

And with this strange outburst, he began to read in feverish haste what he had written. His breath came and went quickly,--his cheeks flushed, his eyes dilated,--line after line he perused with apparent wonder and rapture,--when suddenly interrupting himself he raised his head and recited in a half whisper:

"With thundering notes of song sublime I cast my sins away from me--On stairs of sound I mount--I climb! The angels wait and pray for me!

"I heard that stanza somewhere when I was a boy ... why do I think of it now? SHE has waited,--so she said,--these many thousand days!"

He paused meditatively,--and then resumed his reading, Heliobas touched his arm.

"It will take you some time to read that, Mr. Alwyn," he gently observed. "You have written more than you know."

Alwyn roused himself and looked straight at the speaker. Putting down his ma.n.u.script and resting one hand upon it, he gazed with an air of solemn inquiry into the n.o.ble face turned steadfastly toward his own.

"Tell me," he said wistfully, "how has it happened? This composition is mine and yet not mine. For it is a grand and perfect poem of which I dare not call myself the author! I might as well s.n.a.t.c.h HER crown of starry flowers and call myself an Angel!"

He spoke with mingled fervor and humility. To any ordinary observer he would have seemed to be laboring under home strange hallucination,--but Heliobas was more deeply instructed.

"Come, come! ... your thoughts are wide of this world," he said kindly.

"Try to recall them! I can tell you nothing, for I know nothing....

you have been absent many hours."

"Absent? yes!" and Alwyn's voice thrilled with an infinite regret.

"Absent from earth.. ah! would to G.o.d I might hive stayed with her, in Heaven! My love, my love! where shal I find her if not in the FIELD OF ARDATH?"

CHAPTER V.

A MYSTIC TRYST.

As he uttered the last words, his eyes darkened into a soft expression of musing tenderness, and he remained silent for many minutes, during which the entranced, almost unearthly beauty of his face underwent a gradual change ... the mystic light that had for a time transfigured it, faded and died away--and by degrees he recovered all his ordinary self possession. Presently glancing at Heliobas, who stood patiently waiting till he should have overcome whatever emotions were at work in his mind, he smiled.

"You must think me mad!" he said. "Perhaps I am,--but if so, it is the madness of love that has seized me. Love! ... it is a pa.s.sion I have never known before.. I have used it as a mere thread whereon to string madrigals, a background of uncertain tint serving to show off the brighter lines of Poesy--but now! ... now I am enslaved and bound, conquered and utterly subdued by love! ... love for the sweetest, queenliest, most radiant creature that ever captured or commanded the wors.h.i.+p of man! I may SEEM mad--but I know I am sane--I realize the actual things of this world about me mind is--my clear, my thoughts are collected, and yet I repeat, I LOVE! ... aye! with all the force and fervor of this strongly beating human heart of mine;"--and he touched his breast as he spoke. "And it comes to this, most wise and worthy Heliobas,--if your spells have conjured up this vision of immortal youth and grace and purity that has suddenly a.s.sumed such sovereignty over my life--then you must do something further, ... you must find, or teach me how to find, the living Reality of my Dream!"

Heliobas surveyed him with some wonder and commiseration.

"A moment ago and you yourself declared your DREAM was true!" he observed. "This," and he pointed to the ma.n.u.script on the table, "seemed to you sufficient to prove it. Now you have altered you opinion: . . Why? I have worked no spells upon you, and I am entirely ignorant as to what your recent experience has been. Moreover, what do you mean by a 'living Reality'? The flesh and blood, bone and substance that perishes in a brief seventy years or so and crumbles into indistinguishable dust? Surely, ... if, as I conjecture from your words, you have seen one of the fair inhabitants of higher spheres than ours, . . you would not drag her spiritual and death unconscious brightness down to the level of the 'reality of a merely human life?

Nay, if you would, you could not!"

Alwyn looked at him inquiringly and with a perplexed air.

"You speak in enigmas," he said somewhat vexedly. "However, the whole thing is an enigma and would puzzle the most sagacious head. That the physicial workings of the brain, in a site of trance, should arouse in me a pa.s.sion of love for an imaginary being, and, at the same time, enable to write a poem such as must make the fame of any man, is certainly a remarkable and noteworthy result of scientific mesmerism!"

"Now, my dear sir," interrupted Heliobas in a tone of good-natured remonstrance,--"do not--if you have any respect for science at all--do not, I beg of you, talk to me of the 'physical workings' of a DEAD BRAIN?"

"A dead brain!" echoed Alwyn. "What do you mean?"

"What I say," returned Heliobas, composedly. "'Physical workings' of any kind are impossible unless the motive power of physical life be in action. You, regarded as a HUMAN creature merely, had during seven hours practically CEASED TO BE,--the vital principle no longer existed in your body, having taken its departure together with its inseparable companion, the Soul. When it returned, it set the clockwork of your material mechanism in motion again, obeying the sovereignty of the Spirit that sought to express by material means, the utterance of heaven-inspired thought. Thus your hand mechanically found its way to the pen--thus you wrote, unconscious of what you were writing, yielding yourself entirely to the guidance of the spiritual part of your nature, which AT THAT PARTICULAR JUNCTURE was absolutely predominant, though now weighted anew by earthy influences it has partially relaxed its supernal sway. All this I readily perceive and understand ... but what you did, and where you were conducted during the time of your complete severance from the tenement of clay in which you are again imprisoned, ... this I have yet to learn."

While Heliobas was speaking, Alwyn's countenance had grown vaguely troubled, and now into his deep poetic eyes there came a look of sudden penitence.

"True!" he said softly, almost humbly, "I will tell you everything while I remember it,--though it is not likely I shall ever forget! I believe there must be some truth after all in what you say concerning the Soul, ... at any rate, I do not at present feel inclined to call your theories in question. To begin with, I find myself unable altogether to explain what it was that happened to me during my conversation with you last night. It was a very strange sensation! I recollect that I had expressed a wish to be placed under your magnetic or electric influence, and that you had refused my request. Then an odd idea suggested itself to me--namely, that I could if I chose COMPEL your a.s.sent,--and, filled with this notion, I think I addressed you, or was about to address you, in a rather peremptory manner, when--all at once--a flash of blinding light struck me fiercely across the eyes like a scourge! Stung with the hot pain, and dazzled by the glare, I turned away from you and fled ... or so it seemed--fled on my own instinctive impulse ... into DARKNESS!"

He paused and drew a long, shuddering breath, like one who has narrowly escaped imminent destruction.

"Darkness!" he went on in low accents that thrilled with the memory of a past feat--"dense, horrible, frightful darkness!--darkness that palpitated heavily with the labored motion of unseen things!--darkness that clung and closed about me in ma.s.ses of clammy, tangible thickness,--its advancing and resistless weight rolled over me like a huge waveless ocean--and, absorbed within it, I was drawn down--down--down toward some hidden, impalpable but All Supreme Agony, the dull unceasing throbs of which I felt, yet could not name. 'O G.o.d!'

I cried aloud, abandoning myself to wild despair, 'O G.o.d! WHERE ARE THOU?' Then I heard a great rus.h.i.+ng sound as of a strong wind beaten through with wings, and a Voice, grand and sweet as a golden trumpet blown suddenly in the silence of night, answered: 'HERE! ... AND EVERYWHERE!' With that, a slanting stream of opaline radiance cleft the gloom with the sweep of a sword-blade, and I was caught up quickly ...

I know not how ... for I saw nothing!"

Again he pushed and looked wistfully at Heliobas, who in turn regarded him with gentle steadfastness.

"It was wonderful--terrible!" ... he continued slowly--"yet beautiful!

... that Invisible Strength that rescued, surrounded, and uplifted me; and--" here he hesitated, and a faint flush colored his cheeks and stole up to the roots of his cl.u.s.tering hair--"dream or no dream, I feel I cannot now altogether reject the idea of an existing Divinity.

In brief ... I believe in G.o.d!"

"Why?" asked Heliobas quietly.

Alwyn met his gaze frankly and with a soft brightening of his handsome features.

"I cannot give you any logical reasons," he said. "Moreover, logical reasoning would not now affect me in a matter which seems to me more full of conviction than any logic. I believe, ... simply because I believe!"

Heliobas smiled--a very warm and kindly smile--but said nothing, and Alwyn resumed his narrative.

"As I tell you, I was caught up,--s.n.a.t.c.hed out of that black profundity with inconceivable swiftness,--and when the ascending movement ceased, I found myself floating lightly like a wind-blown leaf through twining arches of amber mist, colored here and there with rays of living flame ... I heard whispers, and fragments of song and speech, all sweeter than the sweetest of our known music, ... and still I saw nothing.