Ardath by Marie Corelli (best books to read in life .TXT) 📕

moment amazed and lost in thought—these sounds, he felt sure, were not of earth but of heaven! they had the same ringing sweetness as those he had heard on the Field of Ardath! What might they mean to him, here and now?

Quick as a flash the answer came—DEATH! God had taken pity upon his solitary earth wanderings,—and the prayers of Edris had shortened his world-exile and probation! He was to die! and that solemn singing was the warning,—or the promise,—of his approaching end!

 

Yes! it must be so, he decided, as, with a strange, half-sad peace at his heart, he quietly descended the steps of the Dom,-he would perhaps be permitted to finish the work he was at present doing,—

and then,—then, the poet-pen would be laid aside forever, chains would be undone, and he would be set at liberty! Such was his fixed idea. Was he glad of the prospect, he asked himself? Yes, and No! For himself he was glad; but in these latter days he had come to understand the thousand wordless wants and aspirations of mankind,—wants and aspirations to which only the Poet can give fitting speech; he had begun to see how much can be done to cheer and raise and ennoble the world by even ONE true, brave, earnest, and unselfish worker,—and he had attained to such a height in sympathetic comprehension of the difficulties and drawbacks of others, that he had ceased to consider himself at all in the question, either with regard to the Present or the immortal Future,—he was, without knowing it, in the simple, unconsciously perfect attitude of a Soul that is absolutely at one with God, and that thus, in involuntary Godlikeness, is only happy in the engendering of happiness. He believed that, with the Divine help, he could do a lasting good for his fellow-men,—and to this cause he was willing to sacrifice everything that pertained to his own mere personal advantage. But now,—now,—or so he imagined,—he was not to be allowed to pursue his labors of love,—his trial was to end suddenly,—and he, so long banished from his higher heritage, was to be restored to it without delay,—restored and drawn back to the land of perfect loveliness where Edris, his Angel, waited for him, his saint, his queen, his bride!

 

A thrill of ecstatic joy rushed through him,—joy intermingled with an almost supernal pain. For he had not as yet said enough to the world,—the world of many afflictions,—the little Sorrowful Star covered with toiling, anxious, deluded God-forgetting millions, in every unit of which was a spark of Heavenly flame, a germ of the spiritual essence that makes the angel, if only fostered aright.

 

Lost in a deep reverie, his footsteps had led him unconsciously to the Rhine bridge,—paying the customary fee, he walked about half-way across it, and stood for a while listening to the incessant swift rush of the river beneath him. Lights twinkled from the boats moored on either side,—the moon poured down a wide shower of white beams on the rapid flood,—the city, dusky and dream-like, crowned with the majestic towers of the Dom, looked picturesquely calm and grand—it was a night of perfect beauty and wondrous peace. And he was to die!—to die and leave all this, the present fairness of the world,—he was to depart, with, as he felt, his message half unspoken,—he was to be made eternally happy, while many of the thousands he left behind were, through ignorance, wilfully electing to be eternally miserable! A great, almost divine longing to save ONE,—only ONE downward drifting soul, possessed him,—and the comprehension of Christ’s Sacrifice was no longer a mystery! Yet he was so certain that death, sudden and speedy closely, awaited him that he seemed to feel it in the very air,—not like a coming chill of dread, but like the soft approach of some holy seraph bringing benediction.

It mattered little to him that he was actually in the very plenitude of health and strength,—that perhaps in all his life he had never felt such a keen delight in the physical perfection of his manhood as now,—death, without warning and at a touch, could smite down the most vigorous, and to be so smitten, he believed, was his imminent destiny. And while he lingered on the bridge, fancy-perplexed between grief and joy, a small window opened in a quaint house that bent its bulging gables crookedly over the gleaming water, and a girl, holding a small lamp, looked out for a moment. Her face, fresh and smiling, was fair to see against the background of dense shadow,—the light she carried flashed like a star,—and leaning down from the lattice she sang half-timidly, half mischievously, the first two or three bars of the old song..

“Du, du, liegst in mein Herzen … !” “Ah! Gute Nacht, Liebchen!”

said a man’s voice below.

 

“Gute Nacht! Schlafen sie wohl!”

 

A light laugh, and the window closed, “Good-night! Sleep well!”

Love’s best wish!—and for some sad souls life’s last hope,—a “good-night and sleep well!” Poor tired World, for whose weary inhabitants oftentimes the greatest blessing is sleep! Good-night!

sleep well! but the sleep implies waking.—waking to a morning of pleasure or sorrow,—or labor that is only lightened by,—Love!

Love!—love divine,—love human,—and, sweetest love of all for us, as Christ has taught when both divine and human are mingled in one!

 

Alwyn, glancing up at the clustering stars, hanging like pendent fire-jewels above him, thought of this marvel-glory of Love,—this celestial visitant who, on noiseless pinions, comes flying divinely into the poorest homes, transfiguring common life with ethereal radiance, making toil easy, giving beauty to the plainest faces and poetry to the dullest brains. Love! its tremulous hand-clasp,—its rapturous kiss,—the speechless eloquence it gives to gentle eyes!—the grace it bestows on even the smallest gift from lover to beloved, were such gift but a handful of meadow blossoms tied with some silken threads of hair!

 

Not for the poet creator of “Nourhulma” such love any more,—had he not drained the cup of Passion to the dregs in the far Past, and tasted its mixed sweetness and bitterness to no purpose save self-indulgence? All that was over;—and yet, as he walked away from the bridge, back to his hotel in the quiet moonlight, he thought what a transcendent thing Love might be, even on earth, between two whose spirits were SPIRITUALLY AKIN,—whose lives were like two notes played in tuneful concord,—whose hearts beat echoing faith and tenderness to one another,—and who held their love as a sacred bond of union—a gift from God, not to be despoiled by that rough familiarity which surely brings contempt.

And then before his fancy appeared to float the radiant visage of Edris, half-child, half-angel,—he seemed to see her beautiful eyes, so pure, so clear, so unshadowed by any knowledge of sin,—

and the exquisite lines of a poet-contemporary, whose work he specially admired, occurred to him with singular suggestiveness: “Oh, thou’lt confess that love from man to maid Is more than kingdoms,—more than light and shade In sky-built gardens where the minstrels dwell, And more than ransom from the bonds of Hell.

Thou wilt, I say, admit the truth of this, And half relent that, shrinking from a kiss, Thou didst consign me to mine own disdain, Athwart the raptures of a vision’d bliss.

 

“I’ll seek no joy that is not linked with thine, No touch of hope, no taste of holy wine, And after death, no home in any star, That is not shared by thee, supreme, afar As here thou’rt first and foremost of all things!

Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings That wait on thought, when, in thy spirit-sway, Thou dost invest a realm unknown to kings!”

 

Had not she, Edris, consigned him to his “own disdain, Athwart the raptures of a visioned bliss?” Ay! truly and deservedly!—and this disdain of himself had now reached its culminating point,—namely, that he did not consider himself worthy of her love,—or worthy to do aught than sink again into far spaces of darkness and perpetually retrospective Memory, there to explore the uttermost depths of anguish, and count up his errors one by one from the very beginning of life, in every separate phase he had passed through, till he had penitently striven his best to atone for them all! Christ had atoned! yes,—but was it not almost base on his part to shield himself with that Divine Light and do nothing further? He could not yet thoroughly grasp the amazing truth that ONE ABSOLUTELY PURE act of faith in Christ, blots out Past Sin forever,—it seemed too marvellous and great a boon!

 

When he retired to rest that night he was fully and firmly PREPARED TO DIE. With this expectation upon him he was nevertheless happy and tranquil. The line—“Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings” haunted him, and he repeated it over and over again without knowing why. Wings! the brilliant shafts of radiance that part angels from mortals,—wings, that, after all, are not really wings, but lambent rays of living lightning, of which neither painter nor poet has any true conception, . . long, dazzling rays such as encircled God’s maiden, Edris, with an arch of roseate effulgence, so that the very air was sunset-colored in the splendor of her presence! How if she were a wingless angel,—

made woman?

 

“Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings!” And with the name of his angel-love upon his lips he closed his eyes and sank into a deep and dreamless slumber.

 

CHAPTER XL.

 

IN THE CATHEDRAL.

 

A booming, thunderous, yet mellow sound! a grand, solemn, sonorous swing of full and weighty rhythm, striking the air with deep, slowly measured resonance like the rolling of close cannon! Awake, all ye people!—Awake to prayer and praise! for the Night is past and sweet Morning reddens in the east, … another Day is born,—a day in which to win God’s grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!—

open your ears to the singing of birds, the whispering of winds, the gay ripple of children’s laughter, the soft murmurs of home affection,—for all these things are freely bestowed upon you with each breaking dawn, and will you offer unto God NO thanksgiving?—

Awake! Awake! the Voice you have yourselves set in your high Cathedral towers reproaches your lack of love with its iron tongue, and summons you all to worship Him the Ever-Glorious, through whose mercy alone you live!

 

To and fro,—to and fro,—gravely persistent, sublimely eloquent, the huge, sustained, and heavy monotone went thudding through the stillness,—till, startled from his profound sleep by such loud, lofty, and incessant clangor, Alwyn turned on his pillow and listened, half-aroused, half-bewildered,—then, remembering where he was, he understood; it was the great Bell of the Dom pealing forth its first summons to the earliest Mass. He lay quiet for a little while, dreamily counting the number of reverberations each separate stroke sent quivering on the air,—but presently, finding it impossible to sleep again, he got up, and drawing aside the curtain looked out of the window of his room, which fronted on the Platz. Though it was not yet six o’clock, the city was all astir, —the Rhinelanders are an early working people, and to see the sun rise is not with them a mere fiction of poesy, but a daily fact.

It was one of the loveliest of lovely spring mornings—the sky was clear as a pale, polished sapphire, and every little bib of delicate carving and sculpture on the