Ardath, Marie Corelli [e ink ebook reader txt] 📗

visible shudder ran through his strong, supple frame. The low, cold, merciless laughter of the beautiful Priestess cut through the air hissingly like the sweep of a scimetar.

 

“Thou art wondrous merry, Nirjalis,” she said, in languid, lazily enunciated accents. “Knowest thou not that too much mirth engenders weeping, and that excessive rejoicing hath its fitting end in grievous lamentation? Nay, even now already thou lookest more sadly! What sombre cloud has crossed thy wine-hued heaven? Be happy while thou mayest, good fool! … I blame thee not! Sooner or later all things must end! … in the mean time, make thou the most of life while life remains; ‘tis at its best an uncertain heritage, that once rashly squandered can never be restored,—

either here or hereafter.”

 

The words were gently, almost tenderly, spoken; but Nirjalis hearing them, grew white as death—his smile faded, leaving his lips set and stern as the lips of a marble mask. Stooping, he raised his fallen goblet and held it out almost mechanically to a passing slave, who refilled it with wine, which he drank off thirstily at a draught, though the generous liquid brought no color back to his drawn and ashy features.

 

Lysia paid no further heed to his evident discomfiture; bidding Sahluma and Theos follow her, she descended the few steps that led from the raised platform into the body of the brilliant hall; the rocky screen of amethyst closed behind her as noiselessly as it had opened, and in another moment she stood among her assembled guests, who at once surrounded her with eager salutations and gracefully worded flatteries. Smiling on them all with that strange smile of hers that was more scornful than sweet, and yet so infinitely bewitching, she said little in answer to their greetings, . . she moved as a queen moves through a crowd of courtiers, the varied light of crimson and green playing about her like so many sparkles of living flame, . . her dark head, wreathed with those jewelled serpents, lifting itself proudly erect from her muffling golden mantle, and her eyes shining with that frosty gleam of mockery which made them look so lustrous yet so cold. And now Theos perceived that at one end of the splendid banquet table a dais was erected, draped richly in carnation-colored silk, and that on this dais a throne was placed—a throne composed entirely of BLACK crystals, whose needle-like points sparkled with a dark flash as of bayonets seen through the smoke of battle. It was cushioned in black velvet, and above it was a bent arch of ivory on which glittered a twisted snake of clustered emeralds.

 

With that slow, superb ease that distinguished all her actions, Lysia, attended closely by her tigress, mounted the dais,—and as she did so a loud clash of brazen bells rang out from some invisible turret beyond the summit of the great dome. At the sound of the jangling chime four negresses appeared—goblin creatures that looked as though they had suddenly sprung from some sooty, subterranean region of gnomes—and humbly prostrating themselves before Lysia, kissed the ground at her feet. This done, they rose, and began to undo the fastenings of her golden, domino-like garment; but either they were slow, or the fair priestess was impatient for she suddenly shook herself free of their hands, and, loosening the gorgeous mantle herself from its jewelled clasps, it fell slowly from her symmetrical form on the perfumed floor with a rustle as of falling leaves.

 

A sigh quivered audibly through the room—whether of grief, joy, hope, relief, or despair it was difficult to tell. The pride and peril of a matchless loveliness was revealed in all its fatal seductiveness and invincible strength—the irresistible perfection of woman’s beauty was openly displayed to bewilder the sight and rouse the reckless passions of man! Who could look on such delicate, dangerous, witching charms unmoved? Who could gaze on the exquisite outlines of a form fairer than that of any sculptured Venus and refuse to acknowledge its powerfully sweet attraction?

 

The Virgin Priestess of the Sun had stepped out of her shrine; . . no longer a creature removed, impersonal, and sacred, she had become most absolutely human. Moreover, she might now have been taken for a bacchante, a dancer, or any other unsexed example of womanhood inasmuch as with her golden mantle she had thrown off all disguise of modesty. Her beautiful limbs, rounded and smooth as pearl, could be plainly discerned through the filmy garb of silvery tissue that clung like a pale mist about the voluptuous curves of her figure and floated behind her in shining gossamer folds; her dazzling white neck and arms were bare; and from slim wrist to snowy shoulder, little twining diamond snakes glistened in close coils against the velvety fairness of her flesh. A silver serpent with a head of sapphires girdled her waist, and just above the full wave of her bosom, that rose and fell visibly beneath the transparent gathers of her gauzy drapery, shone a large, fiery jewel, fashioned in the semblance of a human Eye. This singular ornament was so life-like as to be absolutely repulsive, and as it moved to and fro with its wearer’s breathing it seemed now to stare aghast,—anon to flash wickedly as with a thought of evil,—

while more often still it assumed a restlessly watchful expression as though it were the eye of a fiend-inquisitor intent on the detection of some secret treachery. Poised between those fair white breasts it glared forth a glittering Menace; . . a warning of unimaginable horror; and Theos, gazing at it fixedly, felt a curious thrill run through him, as if, so to speak, a hook of steel had been suddenly thrust into his quivering veins to draw him steadily and securely on toward some pitfall of unknown tortures. Then he remembered what Sahluma had said about the “all-reflecting Eye, the weird mirror and potent dazzler of human sight,” and wondered whether its mystical properties were such as to compel men to involuntarily declare their inmost thoughts, for it seemed to him that its sinister glow penetrated into the very deepest recesses of his mind, and there discovered all the hidden weaknesses, follies, and passions of the worst side of his nature!

 

He trembled and grew faint,—his dazed eyes wandered over the dainty grace and marvel of Lysia’s almost unclad loveliness with mingled emotions of allurement and repugnance. Fascinated, yet at the same time repelled, his soul yearned toward her as the soul of the knight in the Lore-lei legend yearned toward the singing Rhine-siren, whose embrace was destruction; and then.. … he became filled with a strange, sudden fear; fear, not for himself, but for Sahluma, whose ardent glance burned into her dark, languid-lidded, amorous orbs with the lustre of flame meeting flame—Sahluma, whose beautiful flushed face was as that of a god inspired, or lover triumphant. What could he do to shield and save this so idolized friend of his?—this dear familiar for whom he had such close and ever-increasing sympathy! Might he not possibly guard him in some way and ward off impending danger? But what danger? What spectral shadow of dread hovered above this brilliant scene of high feasting and voluptuous revelry? None that he could imagine or define, and yet he was conscious, of an omimous, unuttered premonition of peril in the very air—peril for Sahluma, always for Sahluma, never for himself, … Self seemed dead and entombed forever! Involuntarily lifting his eyes to the great green dome where the globe of fire twirled rapidly like a rolling star, he saw some words written round it in golden letters, they were large and distinct, and ran thus:

 

“Live in the Now, but question not the Afterwards!”

 

A wise axiom! … yet almost a platitude, for did not every one occupy themselves exclusively with the Now, regardless of future consequences? Of course! Who but sages—or fools—would stop to question the Afterwards!

 

Just then Lysia ascended her black crystal throne in all her statuesque majesty, and sinking indolently amid its sable cushions, where she shone in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl set in ebony, she signed to her guests to resume their places at table. She was instantly obeyed. Sahluma took what was evidently his accustomed post at her right hand, while Theos found a vacant corner on her left, next to the picturesque, lounging figure of the young man Nir jahs, who looked up at him with a half smile as he seated himself, and courteously made more room for him among the tumbled emerald silk diapers of the luxurious divan, they now shared together. Nir jahs was by no means sober, but he had recovered a little of his self-possession since Lysia’s sleepy eyes had darted such cold contempt upon him, and he seemed for the present to be on his guard against giving any further possible cause of offence.

 

“Thou art a new comer,—a stranger, if I mistake not?” he inquired in a low, abrupt, yet kindly tone.

 

“Yes,” replied Theos in the same soft sotto-voce. “I am a mere sojourner in Al-Kyris for a few days only, … the guest of the divine Sahluma.”

 

Nir-jahs raised his eyebrows with an expression of amused wonder.

 

“Divine!” he ejaculated “By my faith! what neophyte have we here!”

and supporting himself on one elbow he stared at his companion as though he saw in him some singular human phenomenon. “Dost thou really believe,” he went on jestingly, “in the divinity of poets?

Dost thou think they write what they mean, or practice what they preach? Then art thou the veriest innocent that ever wore the muscular semblance of man! Poets, my friend, are the most absolute impostors, . . they melodize their rhymed music on phases of emotion they have never experienced; as for instance our Lameate yonder will string a pretty sonnet on the despair of love, he knowing nothing of despair, . . he will write of a broken heart, his own being unpricked by so much as a pin’s point of trouble; and he will speak in his verso of dying for love when he would not let his little finger ache for the sake of a woman who worshipped him!

Look not so vaguely! ‘tis so, indeed! and as for the divine part of him, wait but a little, and thou shalt see thy poet-god become a satyr!”

 

He laughed maliciously, and Theos felt an angry flush rising to his brows. He could not bear to hear Sahluma thus lightly maligned even by this half-drunken reveller, it stung him to the quick, as if he personally were included in the implied accusation of unworthiness. Nirjalis perceived his annoyance, and added good naturedly:

 

“Tush, man! Vex not thy soul as to thy friend’s virtues or vices—

what are they to thee? And of truth Sahluma is no worse than the rest of us. All I maintain is that he is certainly no better. I have known many poets in my day, and they are all more or less alike—petulant as babes, peevish as women, selfish as misers, and conceited as peacocks. They SHOULD be different? Oh, yes!—they SHOULD be the perpetual youth of mankind, the faithful singers of love idealized and made perfect. But then none of us are what we ought to be! Besides, if we were all virtuous, . . by the gods! the world would become too dull a hole to live in! Enough! Wilt drink with me?” and beckoning a slave, he had his own goblet and that of Theos filled to the brim with wine.

 

“To our more intimate acquaintance!” he said smilingly, and Theos, somewhat captivated by the easy courtesy of his manner, could do no less than respond cordially to the proffered toast. At that