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

>“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 manuscript and resting one hand upon it, he gazed with an air of solemn inquiry into the noble 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 snatch 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 God 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 passion 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 worship 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 assumed 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 manuscript 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 passion 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 assent,—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 masses 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 GOD!’ I cried aloud, abandoning myself to wild despair, ‘O GOD! WHERE ARE THOU?’ Then I heard a great rushing 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 clustering hair—

“dream or no dream, I feel I cannot now altogether reject the idea of an existing Divinity. In brief … I believe in God!”

 

“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,—snatched 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. Presently some one called me by name —‘THEOS! … THEOS!’ I strove to answer, but I had no words wherewith to match that silver-toned, far-reaching utterance; and once again the rich vibrating notes pealed through the vaporous fire-tinted air—‘THEOS, MY BELOVED! HIGHER! … HIGHER! … All my being thrilled and quivered to that call. I yearned to obey, … I struggled to rise—my efforts were in vain; when, to my joy and wonder, a small, invisible hand, delicate yet strong, clasped mine, and I was borne aloft with breathless, indescribable, lightning-like rapidity—on … on … and ever upward, till at last, alighting on a smooth, fair turf, thick-grown with fragrant blossoms of strange loveliness and soft hues, I beheld Her! …

and she bade me welcome.”

 

“And who,” questioned Heliobas, in tones of hushed reverence, “Who was this Being that thus enchants your memory?”

 

“I know not!” replied Alwyn, with a dreamy smile of rapture on his lips and in his eyes. “And yet her face … oh! the entrancing beauty of that face! … was not altogether unfamiliar. I felt that I must have loved and lost her ages upon ages ago! Crowned with white flowers, and robed in a garb that seemed spun from midsummer moonbeams, she stood … a smiling Maiden-Sweetness in a paradise of glad sights and sounds, … ah! Eve, with the first sunrise radiance on her brows, was not more divinely fair! …

Venus, new-springing from the silver sea-foam, was not more queenly glorious! ‘I WILL REMIND THEE OF ALL THOU HAST FORGOTTEN,’

she said, and I understood her soft, half-reproachful accents. ‘IT

IS NOT YET TOO LATE! THOU HAST LOST MUCH AND SUFFERED MUCH, AND

THOU HAST BLINDLY ERRED, BUT NOTWITHSTANDING ALL THESE THINGS, THOU ART MY BELOVED SINCE THESE MANY THOUSAND DAYS!’”

 

“Days—which the world counts as years!” murmured Heliobas. “You saw no one but her?”

 

“No one—we were alone together. A vast woodland stretched before us, she took my hand and led me beneath broad-arching trees to where a lake, silvered by some strange radiance, glittered diamond-like in the stirring of a balmy wind. Here she bade me rest—and sank gently on the flowery bank beside me. Then viewing her more closely I greatly feared her beauty—for I saw a wondrous halo wide and dazzling—a golden aureole that spread