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

moment a triumphant burst of music, like the sound of mingled flutes, hautboys, and harps, pushed through the dome like a strong wind sweeping in from the sea, and with it the hum and buzz of conversation began in good earnest. Theos, lifting his gaze toward Lysia’s seat, saw that she was now surrounded by the four attendant negresses, who, standing two on each side of her throne, held large fans of peacock plumes, which, as they were waved slowly to and fro, emitted a thousand scintillations of jewel-like splendor. A slave, attired in scarlet, knelt on one knee before her, proffering a golden salver loaded with the choicest fruits and wines; a lazy smile played on her lips—lips that outrivaled the dewy tint of half-opening roses; the serpents in her hair and on her rounded arms quivered in the light like living things; the great Symbolic Eye glanced wickedly out from the white beauty of her heaving breast; and as he surveyed her, thus resplendent in all the startling seductiveness of her dangerous charms, her loveliness entranced and intoxicated him like the faint perfume of some rare and powerful exotic, … his senses seemed to sink drowningly in the whelming influence of her soft and dazzling grace; and though he still resented, he could not resist her mesmeric power. No wonder, he thought, that Sahluma’s eyes darkened with passions as they dwelt on her! … and no wonder that he, like Sahluma, was content to be gently but surely drawn within the glittering web of her magic spell—a spell fatal, yet too bewilderingly sweet for human strength to fight against. The mysterious sense he had of danger lurking somewhere for Sahluma applied, so he fancied, in no way to himself—it did not much matter what happened to HIM—HE was a mere nobody. He could be of no use anywhere; he was as one banished into strange exile; his brain—that brain he had once deemed so clear, so subtle, so eminently reasoning and all-comprehensive—was now nothing but a chaotic confusion of vague suggestions, and only served to very slightly guide him in the immediate present, giving him no practical clue at all as to the past through which he had lived, or the circumstances he most wished to remember. He was a fool—a dreamer—ungifted—unfamous! … were he to die, not a soul would regret his loss. His own fate therefore concerned him little—he could handle fire recklessly and not feel the flame; he could, so he believed, run any risk, and yet escape, comparatively free of harm.

 

But with Sahluma it was different! Sahluma must be guarded and cherished; his was a valuable life—the life of a genius such as the world sees but once in a century—and it should not, so Theos determined,—be emperilled or wasted; no! not even for the sake of the sensuous, exquisite, conquering beauty of this dazzling Priestess of the Sun—the fairest sorceress that ever triumphed over the frail yet immortal Spirit of Man!

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

 

THE LOVE THAT KILLS.

 

How the time went he could not tell; in so gay and gorgeous a scene hours might easily pass with the swiftness of unmarked moments. Peals of laughter echoed now and again through the vaulted dome, and excited voices were frequently raised in clamorous disputations and contentious arguments that only just sheered off the boundary-line of an actual quarrel. All sorts of topics were discussed—the laws, the existing mode of government, the latest discoveries in science, and the military prowess of the King—but the conversation chiefly turned on the spread of disloyalty, atheism, and republicanism among the population of Al-Kyris,—and the influence of Khosrul on the minds of the lower classes. The episode of the Prophet’s late capture and fresh escape seemed to be perfectly well known to all present, though it had occurred so recently; one would have thought the detailed account of it had been received through some private telephone, communicating with the King’s palace.

 

As the banquet progressed and the wine flowed more lavishly, the assembled guests grew less and less circumspect in their general behavior; they flung themselves full length on their luxurious couches, in the laziest attitudes, now pulling out handfuls of flowers from the tall porcelain jars that stood near, and pelting one another with them for mere idle diversion, . . now summoning the attendant slaves to refill their wine-cups while they lay lounging at ease among their heaped-up cushions of silk and embroidery; and yet with all the voluptuous freedom of their manners, the picturesque grace that distinguished them was never wholly destroyed. These young men were dissolute, but not coarse; bold, but not vulgar; they took their pleasure in a delicately wanton fashion that was infinitely more dangerous in its influence on the mind than would have been the gross mirth and broad jesting of a similar number of uneducated plebeians. The rude licentiousness of an uncultivated boor has its safety-valve in disgust and satiety, . . but the soft, enervating sensualism of a trained and cultured epicurean aristocrat is a moral poison whose effects are so insidious as to be scarcely felt till all the native nobility of character has withered, and naught is left of a man but the shadow-wreck of his former self.

 

There was nothing repulsive in the half-ironical, half-mischievous merriment of these patrician revellers; their witticisms were brilliant and pointed, but never indelicate; and if their darker passions were roused, and ready to run riot, they showed as yet no sign of it. They ENJOYED—yes! with that selfish animal enjoyment and love of personal indulgence which all men, old and young without exception, take such delight in—unless indeed they be sworn and sorrowful anchorites, and even then you may be sure they are always regretting the easy license and libertinage of their bygone days of unbridled independence when they could foster their pet weaknesses, cherish their favorite vices, and laugh at all creeds and all morality as though Divine Justice were a mere empty name, and they themselves the super-essence of creation. Ah, what a ridiculous spectacle is Man! the two-legged pigmy of limited brain, and still more limited sympathies, that, standing arrogantly on his little grave the earth, coolly criticises the Universe, settles law, and measures his puny stature against that awful Unknown Force, deeply hidden, but majestically existent, which for want of ampler designation we call GOD—God, whom some of us will scarcely recognize, save with the mixture of doubt, levity, and general reluctance; God, whom we never obey unless obedience is enforced by calamity; God, whom we never truly love, because so many of us prefer to stake our chances of the future on the possibility of His non-existence!

 

Strangely enough, thoughts of this God, this despised and forgotten Creator, came wandering hazily over Theos’s mind at the present moment when, glancing round the splendid banquet-table, he studied the different faces of all assembled, and saw Self, Self, Self, indelibly impressed on every one of them. Not a single countenance was there that did not openly betray the complacent hauteur and tranquil vanity of absolute Egotism, Sahluma’s especially. But then Sahluma had something to be proud of—his genius; it was natural that he should be satisfied with himself—

he was a great man! But was it well for even a great man to admire his own greatness? This was a pertinent question, and somewhat difficult to answer. A genius must surely be more or less conscious of his superiority to those who have no genius? Yet why?

May it not happen, on occasions, that the so-called fool shall teach a lesson to the so-called wise man? Then where is the wise man’s superiority if a fool can instruct him? Theos found these suggestions curiously puzzling; they seemed simple enough, and yet they opened up a vista of intricate disquisition which he was in no humor to follow. To escape from his own reflections he began to pay close attention to the conversation going on around him, and listened with an eager, almost painful interest, whenever he heard Lysia’s sweet, languid voice chiming through the clatter of men’s tongues like the silver stroke of a small bell ringing in a storm at sea.

 

“And how hast thou left thy pale beauty Niphrata?” she was asking Sahluma in half-cold, half-caressing accents. “Does her singing still charm thee as of yore? I understand thou hast given her her freedom. Is that prudent? Was she not safer as thy slave?”

 

Sahluma glanced up quickly in surprise. “Safer? She is as safe as a rose in its green sheath,” he replied. “What harm should come to her?”

 

“I spoke not of harm,” said Lysia, with a lazy smile. “But the day may come, good minstrel, when thy sheathed rose may seek some newer sunshine than thy face! … when thy much poesy may pall upon her spirit, and thy love-songs grow stale! … and she may string her harp to a different tune than the perpetual adoration-hymn of Sahluma!”

 

The handsome Laureate looked amused.

 

“Let her do so then!” he laughed carelessly. “Were she to leave me I should not miss her greatly; a thousand pieces of gold will purchase me another voice as sweet as hers,—another maid as fair!

Meanwhile the child is free to shape her own fate,—her own future. I bind her no longer to my service; nevertheless, like the jessamine-flower, she clings,—and will not easily unwind the tendrils of her heart from mine.”

 

“Poor jessamine-flower!” murmured Lysia negligently, with a touch of malice in her tone. “What a rock it doth embrace; how little vantageground it hath wherein to blossom!” And her drowsy eyes shot forth a fiery glance from under their heavily fringed drooping white lids.

 

Sahluma met her look with one of mingled vexation and reproach; she smiled and raising a goblet of wine to her lips, kissed the brim, and gave it to him with an indescribably graceful, swaying gesture of her whole form that reminded one of a tall white lily bowing in the breeze. He seized the cup eagerly, drank from it and returned it,—his momentary annoyance, whatever it was, passed, and a joyous elation illumined his fine features. Then Lysia, refilling the cup, kissed it again and handed it to Theos with so much soft animation and tenderness in her face as she turned to him, that his enforced calmness nearly gave way, and he had much ado to restrain himself from falling at her feet in a transport of passion, and crying out! … “Love me, O thou sorceress-sovereign of beauty! … love me, if only for an hour, and then let me die! …

for I shall have lived out all the joys of life in one embrace of thine!” His hand trembled as he took the goblet, and he drank half its contents thirstily,—then imitating Sahluma’s example, he returned it to her with a profound salutation. Her eyes dwelt meditatively upon him.

 

“What a dark, still, melancholy countenance is thine, Sir Theos!”

she said abruptly—“Thou art, for sure, a man of strongly repressed and concentrated passions, … ‘tis a nature I love! I would there were more of thy proud and chilly temperament in Al-Kyris! … Our men are like velvet-winged butterflies, drinking honey all day and drowsing in sunshine—full to the brows of folly,—frail and delicate as the little dancing maidens of the King’s seraglio, . . nervous too, with weak heads, that art apt to ache on small provocation, and bodies that are apt to fail easily when but slightly fatigued. Aye!—thou art a man clothed complete in manliness,—moreover…”

 

She paused, and leaning forward so that the dark shower of her perfumed hair brushed his arm … “Hast ever heard travellers talk of volcanoes? … those marvellous mountains that oft wear crowns of ice on their summits and yet hold unquenchable fire