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‘Look!’ he whispered impatiently. ‘The Calvary is not alone in the alcove.’
Mechanically Rose’s glance shifted to the couch; and in that moment shame and apprehension and the sickness of being were precipitated in him as in golden flakes of rapture.
Something, that in the instant of revelation had seemed part only of the soft tinted shadows, resolved itself into a presentment of loveliness so pure, and so pathetic in its innocent self-surrender to the passionate tyranny of his gaze, that the manhood in him was abashed in the very flood of its exaltation. He put a hand to his face before he looked a second time, to discipline his dazzled eyes. They were turned only upon his soul, and found it a reflected glory. Had the vision passed? His eyes, in a panic, leaped for it once more.
Yes, it was there – dreaming upon its silken pillow; a grotesque carved dragon in ivory looking down, from a corner of the fluted couch, upon its supernal beauty – a face that, at a glance, could fill the vague desire of a suffering, lonely heart – spirit informing matter with all the flush and essence of some flower of the lost garden of Eden.
And this expressed in the form of one simple slumbering girl; in its drifted heap of hair, bronze as copper-beech leaves in spring; in the very pulsing of its half-hidden bosom, and in its happy morning lips, like Psyche’s, night-parted by Love and so remaining entranced.
A long light robe, sulphur-coloured, clung to the sleeper from low throat to ankle; bands of narrow nolana-blue ribbon crossed her breast and were brought together in a loose cincture about her waist; her white, smooth feet were sandalled; one arm was curved beneath her lustrous head; the other lay relaxed and drooping. Chrysoberyls, the sea-virgins of stones, sparkled in her hair and lay in the bosom of her gown like dewdrops in an evening primrose.
The gazer turned with a deep sigh, and then a sputter of fury—
‘Why do you show me this? You cruel beast, was not my life barren enough before?’
‘Can it ever be so henceforward? Look again.’
‘Does the devil enter? Something roars in me! Have you no fear that I shall kill you?’
‘None. I cannot die.’
Amos broke into a mocking, fierce laugh. Then, his blood shooting in his veins, he seized the sleeper roughly by her hand.
‘Wake!’ he cried, ‘and end it!’
With a sigh she lifted her head. Drowsiness and startled wonderment struggled in her eyes; but in a moment they caught the vision of the stranger standing aside, and smiled and softened. She held out her long, white arms to him.
‘You have come, dear love,’ she said, in a happy, low voice, ‘and I was not awake to greet you.’
Rose fell on his knees.
‘Oh, God in Heaven!’ he cried, ‘bear witness that this is monstrous and unnatural! Let me die rather than see it.’
The stranger moved forward.
‘Do honour, Adnah, to this our guest; and minister to him of thy pleasure.’
The white arms dropped. The girl’s face was turned, and her eyes, solemn and witch-like, looked into Amos’s. He saw them, their irises golden-brown shot with little spars of blue; and the soul in his own seemed to rush towards them and to recoil, baffled and sobbing.
Could she have understood? He thought he saw a faint smile, a gentle shake of the head, as she slid from the couch and her sandals tapped on the marble floor.
She stooped and took him by the hand.
‘Rise, I pray you,’ she said, ‘and I will be your handmaiden.’
She led him unresisting to a chair, and bade him sweetly to be seated. She took from him his hat and overcoat, and brought him rare wine in a cup of crystal.
‘My lord will drink,’ she murmured, ‘and forget all but the night and Adnah.’
‘You I can never forget,’ said the young man, in a broken voice.
As he drank, half-choking, the girl turned to the other, who still stood apart, silent and watchful.
‘Was this wise?’ she breathed. ‘To summon a witness on this night of all – was this wise, beloved?’
Amos dashed the cup on the floor. The red liquid stained the marble like blood.
‘No, no!’ he shrieked, springing to his feet. ‘Not that! It cannot be!’
In an ecstasy of passion he flung his arms about the girl, and crushed all her warm loveliness against his breast. She remained quite passive – unstartled even. Only she turned her head and whispered: ‘Is this thy will?’
Amos fell back, drooping, as if he had received a blow.
‘Be merciful and kill me,’ he muttered. ‘I – even I can feel at last the nobility of death.’
Then the voice of the stranger broke, lofty and passionless.
‘Tell him what you see in me.’
She answered, low and without pause, like one repeating a cherished lesson—
‘I see – I have seen it for the nine months I have wandered with you – the supreme triumph of the living will. I see that this triumph, of its very essence, could not be unless you had surmounted the tyranny of any, the least, gross desire. I see that it is incompatible with sin; with offence given to oneself or others; that passion cannot live in its serene atmosphere; that it illustrates the enchantment of the flesh by the intellect; that it is happiness for evermore redeemed.’
‘How do you feel this?’
‘I see it reflected in myself – I, the poor visionary you took from the Northern Island. Week by week I have known it sweetening and refining in my nature. None can taste the bliss of happiness that has not you for master – none can teach it save you, whose composure is unshadowed by any terror of death.’
‘And love that is passion, Adnah?’
‘I hear it spoken as in a dream. It is a wicked whisper from far away. You, the lord of time and of tongues, I worship – you, only you, who are my God.’
‘Hush! But the man of Nazareth?’
‘Ah! His name is an echo. What divine egotism taught He?’
Where lately had Amos heard this phrase? His memory of all things real seemed suspended.
‘He was a man, and He died,’ said Adnah simply.
The stranger threw back his head, with an odd expression of triumph; and almost in the same moment abased it to the crucifix on the wall.
Amos stood breathing quickly, his ears drinking in every accent of the low musical voice. Now, as she paused, he moved forward a hurried step, and addressed himself to the shadowy figure by the couch—
‘Who are you, in the name of the Christ you mock and adore in a breath, that has wrought this miracle of high worship in a breathing woman?’
‘I am he that has eaten of the Tree of Life.’
‘Oh, forego your fables! I am not a child.’
‘It could not of its nature perish’ (the voice went on evenly, ignoring the interruption). ‘It breathes its immortal fragrance in no transplanted garden, invisible to sinful eyes, as some suppose. When the curse fell, the angel of the flaming sword bore it to the central desert; and the garden withered, for its soul was withdrawn. Now, in the heart of the waste place that is called Tiah-Bani-Israïl, it waits in its loveliness the coming of the Son of God.’
‘He has come and passed.’
It might have been an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders that twitched the tall figure by the couch. If so, it converted the gesture into a bow of reverence.
‘Is He not to be revealed again in His glory? But there, set as in the crater of a mountain of sand, and inaccessible to mortal footstep, stands unperishing the glory of the earth. And its fragrance is drawn up to heaven, as through a wide chimney; and from its branches hangs the undying fruit, lustrous and opalescent; and in each shining globe the world and its starry system are reflected in miniature, moving westwards; but at night they glow, a cluster of tender moons.’
‘And whence came your power to scale that which is inaccessible?’
‘From Death, that, still denying me immortality, is unable to encompass my destruction.’
The young man burst into a harsh and grating laugh.
‘Here is some inconsistency!’ he cried, ‘By your own showing you were not immortal till you ate of the fruit!’
Could it be that this simple deductive snip cut the thread of coherence? A scowl appeared to contract the lofty brow for an instant. The next, a gay chirrup intervened, like a little spark struck from the cloud.
‘The pounding logic of the steam engine!’ cried the stranger, coming forward at last with an open smile. ‘But we pace in an altitude refined above sensuous comprehension. Perhaps before long you will see and believe. In the meantime let us be men and women enjoying the warm gifts of Fortune!’
IV
Nous pensions comme un songe
Le récit de vos maux;
Nous traitions de mensonge
Tous vos plus grands travaux!
In that one night of an unreality that seemed either an enchanted dream or a wilfully fantastic travesty of conventions, Amos alternated between fits of delirious self-surrender and a rage of resignation, from which now and again he would awake to flourish an angry little bodkin of irony.
Now, at this stage, it appeared a matter for passive acquiescence that he should be one of a trio seated at a bronze table, that might have been recovered from Herculaneum, playing three-handed cribbage with a pack of fifteenth-century cards – limned, perhaps, by some Franceso Bachiacca – and an ivory board inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl. To one side a smaller ‘occasional’ table held the wine, to which the young man resorted at the least invitation from Adnah.
In this connection (of cards), it would fitfully perturb him to find that he who had renounced sin with mortality, had not only a proneness to avail himself of every oversight on the part of his adversaries, but frequently to peg-up more holes than his hand entitled him to. Moreover, at such times, when the culprit’s attention was drawn to this by his guest – at first gently; later, with a little scorn – he justified his action on the assumption that it was an essential interest of all games to attempt abuse of the confidence of one’s antagonist, whose skill in checkmating any movement of this nature was in right ratio with his capacity as a player; and finally he rose, the sole winner of a sum respectable enough to allow him some ingenuous expression of satisfaction.
Thereafter conversation ensued; and it must be remarked that nothing was further from Rose’s mind than to apologise for his long intrusion and make a decent exit. Indeed, there seemed some thrill of vague expectation in the air, to the realisation of which his presence sought to contribute; and already – so rapidly grows the assurance of love – his heart claimed some protective right over the pure, beautiful creature at his feet.
For there, at a gesture from the other, had Adnah seated herself, leaning her elbow, quite innocently and simply, on the young man’s knee.
The sweet strong Moldavian wine buzzed in his head; love and sorrow and intense yearning went with flow and shock through his veins. At one moment elated by the thought that, whatever his understanding of the ethical sympathy existing between these two, their connection was, by their own acknowledgement, platonic; at another, cruelly conscious of the icy crevasse that must gape between so perfectly proportioned an organism and his own atrabilarious personality, he dreaded to avail himself of a situation that was at once an invitation and a trust; and ended by subsiding, with characteristic lameness, into mere conversational commonplace.
‘You must have got over a great deal of ground,’ said he to his host, ‘on that constitutional hobby horse of yours?’
‘A great deal of ground.’
‘In all weathers?’
‘In all weathers; at all times; in every country.’
‘How do you manage – pardon my inquisitiveness – the little necessities of dress and boots and such things?’
‘Adnah,’ said the stranger, ‘go fetch my walking suit and show it to our guest.’
The girl rose, went silently from the room, and returned in a moment with a single garment, which she laid in Rose’s hands.
He examined it curiously. It was a marvel of sartorial tact and ingenuity; so fashioned that it would have appeared scarcely a solecism on taste in any age. Built in one piece to resemble many, and of the most particularly chosen material, it was contrived and ventilated for any exigencies of weather and of climate, and could be doffed or assumed at the shortest notice. About it were cunningly distributed a number of strong pockets or purses for the reception of diverse articles, from a comb to a sandwich-box; and the position of these was so calculated as not to interfere with the symmetry of the whole.
‘It is indeed an excellent piece of work,’ said Amos, with considerable appreciation; for he held no contempt for the art which sometimes alone seemed to justify his right of existence.
‘Your praise is deserved,’ said the stranger, smiling, ‘seeing that it was contrived for me by one whose portrait, by Giambattista Moroni, now hangs in your National Gallery.’
‘I have heard of it, I think. Is the fellow still in business?’
‘The tailor or the artist? The first died bankrupt in prison – about the year 1560, it must have been. It was fortunate for me, inasmuch as I acquired the garment for nothing, the man disappearing before I had settled his claim.’
Rose’s jaw dropped. He looked at the beautiful face reclining against him. It expressed no doubt, no surprise, no least sense of the ludicrous.
‘Oh, my God!’ he muttered, and ploughed his forehead with his hands. Then he looked up again with a pallid grin.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘You play upon my fancied credulity. And how did the garment serve you in the central desert?’
‘I had it not then, by many centuries. No garment would avail against the wicked Samiel – the poisonous wind that is the breath of the eternal dead sand. Who faces that feels, pace by pace, his body wither and stiffen. His clothes crackle like paper, and so fall to fragments. From his eyeballs the moist vision flakes and flies in powder. His tongue shrinks into his throat, as though fire had writhed and consumed it to a little scarlet spur. His furrowed skin peels like the cerements of an ancient mummy. He falls, breaking in his fall – there is a puff of acrid dust, dissipated in a moment – and he is gone.’
‘And this you met unscathed?’
‘Yes; for it was preordained that Death should hunt, but never overtake me – that I might testify to the truth of the first Scriptures.’
Even as he spoke, Rose sprang to his feet with a gesture of uncontrollable repulsion; and in the same instant was aware of a horrible change that was taking place in the features of the man before him.
V
Trahentibus autem Judaeis Jesum extra praetorium cum venisset ad ostium, Cartaphilus praetorii ostiarius et Pontii Pilati, cum per ostium exiret Jesus, pepulit Eum pugno contemptibiliter post tergum, et irridens dixit, ‘Vade, Jesu citius, vade, quid moraris?’ Et Jesus severo vultu et oculo respiciens in eum, dixit: ‘Ego, vado, et expectabis donec veniam!’ Itaque juxta verbum Domini expectat adhuc Cartaphilus ille, qui tempore Dominicae passionis – erat quasi triginta annorum, et semper cum usque ad centum attigerit aetatem redeuntium annorum redit redivivus ad illum aetatis statum, quo fuit anno quand passus est Dominus.
Matthew of Paris, Historia Major
The girl – from whose cheek Rose, in his rough rising, had seemed to brush the bloom, so keenly had its colour deepened – sank from the stool upon her knees, her hands pressed to her bosom, her lungs working quickly under the pressure of some powerful excitement.
‘It comes, beloved!’ she said, in a voice half-terror, half-ecstasy.
‘It comes, Adnah,’ the stranger echoed, struggling – ‘this periodic self-renewal – this sloughing of the veil of flesh that I warned you of.’
His soul seemed to pant grey from his lips; his face was bloodless and like stone; the devils in his eyes were awake and busy as maggots in a wound. Amos knew him now for wickedness personified and immortal, and fell upon his knees beside the girl and seized one of her hands in both his.
‘Look!’ he shrieked. ‘Can you believe in him longer? believe that any code or system of his can profit you in the end?’
She made no resistance, but her eyes still dwelt on the contorted face with an expression of divine pity.
‘Oh, thou sufferest!’ she breathed; ‘but thy reward is near!’
