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

now to no emotion whatever—save..gladness! Some deadly evil seemed burnt out of his life, . . moreover her command had slain Sahluma! … Enough! … no fate however horrible, could be more so than she in her wanton wickedness deserved! …

But alas! her beauty! … He dared not think of its subtle, slumberous charm! … and stung to a new sense of desperation, he plunged recklessly toward the dusky aperture he had seen, which appeared to enlarge itself mysteriously as he approached, like the opening gateway of some magic cavern.

 

Suddenly a faint groan at his feet startled him,—and, looking down hastily, he perceived an unfortunate man lying half crushed under the ponderous fragment of a split column, which had fallen across his body in such manner that any attempt to extricate him would have been worse than useless. By the bright light of the leaping flames, Theos had no difficulty in recognizing the pallid countenance of his late acquaintance, the learned Professor of Positivism, Mira-Khabur, who was evidently very near his woeful and most positive end! Struck by an impulse of compassion he paused, . . yet what could he say? ..In such a case, where rescue was impossible, all comfort seemed mockery,—and while he stood silent and irresolute, he fancied the Professor smiled! It was a very ghastly smile,—nevertheless it hid in it a curious touch of bland and scrupulous inquiry.

 

“Is not this…a very.. remarkable occurrence?” … asked a voice so feeble and far away that it was difficult to believe it came from the lips of the suffering sage. “Of course…it arises from…a volcanic eruption! … and the mystery of the red river..

is.. solved!” Here an irrepressible moan of anguish broke through his heroic effort at equanimity;—“It is NOT a phenomenon!”.. and a gleam of obstinate self-assertion lit up his poor glazing eyes, “Nothing is phenonmenal! … only I am not able…to explain. …

I have no time…no time…to analyze.. my very …

singular…sensations!”

 

A rush of blood choked his utterance—his throat rattled, … he was dead! … and the dreary speculative smile froze on his mouth in the likeness of a solemn sneer. At that moment, a terrific swirling, surging noise, like the furious boiling of an underground whirlpool, rumbled heavily through the air, . . and lo!

with a sudden, swift shock that sent Theos reeling forward and almost falling, under the burdensome weight he carried, the earth opened, . . disclosing a huge pit of black nothingness,—an enormous chasm,—into which, with an appalling clamor as of a hundred incessant peals of thunder, the whole main area of the Temple, together with its mass of dead and dying human beings, sank in less than five seconds!—the ground closing instantaneously over its prey with a sullen roar, as though it were some gigantic beast devouring food too long denied. And instead of the vanished fane arose a mighty Pillar of Fire! … a vast increasing volume of scarlet and gold flame that spread outward and upward,—higher and higher, in tapering lines and dome-like curves of living light, . .

while Theos, being hurled along resistlessly by the force of the convulsion, had reached, though he knew not how, the dark and quiet cell-like portal with its out-leading steps, . . the only visible last hope and chance of safety, . . and he now leaned against its cold stone arch, trembling in every limb, clasping the dead Sahluma close, and looking back in affrighted awe at the tossing vortex of fury from which he had miraculously escaped.

And,—as he looked,—a host of spectral faces seemed to rise whitely out of the flames and wonder at him! … faces that were solemn, wistful, warning, and beseeching by turns! … they drifted through the fire and smiled, and wept, and vanished, to reappear again and yet again! … and as, with painfully beating heart, he strove to combat the terror that seized him at this strange spectacular delusion, all suddenly the heavy wreaths of smoke that had till now hung over the Inner Shrine of Nagaya parted like drapery drawn aside from a picture.. and for a brief breathing space of direst agony he saw Lysia once more,—Lysia, in a torture as horrible as any ever depicted in a bigot’s idea of his enemy’s Hell! Round and round her writhing form the sacred Serpent was twined in all his many coils,—with both hands she had grasped the creature’s throat in her frenzy, striving to thrust back its quivering fangs from her breast, whereon the evil “Eye of Raphon” still gleamed distinctly with its adamantine chilly stare, . . at her feet lay the body of the King her lover, dead and wrapped in a ring of flames! … Alone—all, all alone, she confronted Death in its most appalling shape.. her countenance was distorted, yet beautiful still with the beauty of a maddened Medusa, . . white and glittering as a fair ghost invoked from some deadly gulf of pain, she stood, a phantom-figure of mingled loveliness and horror, circled on every side by fire!

 

With wild, straining eyes Theos gazed upon her thus, … for the last time! … For with a crash that seemed to rend the very heavens, the great bronze columns surrounding her, which had, up to the present, resisted the repeated onslaughts of the flames, bent together all at once and fell in a melting ruin.. and the victorious fire roared loudly above them, enveloping the whole Shrine anew in dense clouds of smoke and jets of flame,—Lysia had perished! All that proud loveliness, that dazzling supremacy, that superb voluptuousness, that triumphant dominion, . . swept away into a heap of undiscoverable ashes! And Zephoranim’s haughty spirit too had fled,—fled, stained with guilt and most unroyal dishonor, all for the sake of one woman’s fairness—the fairness of body only—the brilliant mask of flesh that too often hides the hideousness of a devil’s nature!

 

For one moment Theos remained stupefied by the sheer horror of the catastrophe,—then, recalling his bewildered wits to his aid, he peered anxiously through the archway where he rested, . . there seemed to be a dim red glow at the end of the downward-leading steps, as well as a dusky azure tint, like a patch of midnight sky. The Temple was now nothing but a hissing shrieking pyramid of flames,—the hot and blinding glare was almost too intense for his eyes to endure,—yet so fascinated was he by the sublime terror and grandeur of the spectacle, that he could scarcely make up his mind to turn away from it! The thought of Sahluma, however, gave the needful spur to his flagging energies, and without pausing to consider where he might be going, he slowly and hesitatingly descended the steps before him, and presently reached a sort of small open court paved with black marble. Here he tenderly laid his burden down,—a burden grown weightier with each moment of its bearing,—and letting his aching arms drop listlessly at his sides, he looked up dreamily,—not all at once comprehending the cause of the vast lurid light that crimsoned the air like a wide aurora borealis everywhere about him, . . then,—as the truth suddenly flashed on his mind, he uttered a loud, irrepressible cry of amazement and awe!

 

Far as his gaze could see,—east, west, north, south, the whole city of Al-Kyris was in flames!—and the burning Temple of Nagaya was but a mere spark in the enormous breadth of the general conflagration! Palaces, domes, towers, and spires were tottering to red destruction, . . fire…fire everywhere! … nothing but fire,—save when a furious gust of scorching wind blew aside the masses of cindery smoke, and showed glimpses of sky and the changeless shining of a few cold quiet stars. He cast one desperate glance from earth to heaven, . . how was it possible to escape from this kindling furnace of utter annihilation! … Where all were manifestly doomed, how could HE expect to be saved! And moreover, if Sahluma was indeed dead, what remained for him but to die also!

 

*

 

Calming the frenzy of his thoughts by a strong effort, he began to vaguely wonder why and how it happened that the place where he now was, . . this small and insignificant court,—had so far escaped the fire, and was as cool and sombre as a sacred tomb set apart for some hero, … or Poet? Poet!—The word acted as a stimulant to his tired struggling brain, and he all at once remembered what Sahluma had said to him at their first meeting: “There is but one Poet in Al-Kyris, and I am he!”

 

O true, true! Only one Poet! … Only one glory of the great city, that now served him as funeral pyre!—only one name worth remembering in all its perishing history.. the name of SAH-LUMA!

Sahluma, the beautiful, the gifted, the famous, the beloved, . . he was dead! This thought, in its absorbing painfulness, straightway drove out all others,—and Theos, who had carried his comrade’s corpse bravely and unshrinkingly through a fiery vortex of imminent peril, now sank on his knees all desolate and unnerved, his hot tears dropping fast on that fair, still, white face that he knew would never flush to the warmth of life again!

 

“Sahluma! Sahluma!” he whispered, “My friend … My more than brother! Would I could have died for thee! … Would thou couldst have lived to fulfil the nobler promise of thy genius! … Better far thou hadst been spared to the world than I! … for I am Nothing, . . but thou wert Everything!”

 

And taking the clay-cold hands in his own, he kissed them reverently, and, with an unconscious memory not born of his recent adventures, folded them on the dead Laureate’s breast in the fashion of a Cross.

 

As he did this an icy spasm seemed to contract his heart, . . seized by a sudden insufferable anxiety, he stared like one spellbound into Sahluma’s wide-open, fixed, and glassy eyes. Dead eyes! …

yet how full of mysterious significance! … What—WHAT was their weird secret, their imminent meaning! … Why did their dark and frozen depths appear to retain a strange, living undergleam of melting, sorrowful, beseeching sweetness? … like the eyes of one who prays to be remembered, though changed after long absence!

What hot and terrible delirium was this that snatched at his whirling brain as he bent closer and closer over the marble quiet countenance, and studied with a sort of fierce intentness every line of those delicate, classic features, on which high thought had left so marked an impress of dignity and power! What a, marvellous, half-reproachful, half-appealing smile lingered on the finely-curved set lips! … How wonderful, how beautiful, how beloved beyond all words was this fair dead god of poesy on whom he gazed with such a passion of yearning!

 

Stooping more and more, he threw his arms round the senseless form, and partly lifting it from the ground, brought the wax-pallid face nearer to his own.. so near that the cold mouth almost touched his, . . then filled with an awful, unnamable misgiving, he scanned his murdered comrade’s perished beauty in puzzled, vague bewilderment, much as an ignorant dullard might perplexedly scan the incomprehensible characters of some hieroglyphic scroll. And, as he looked, a sharp pang shot through him like a whizzing ball of fire, . . a convulsion of mental agony shook his limbs,—he could have shrieked aloud in the extremity of his torture, but the struggling cry died gasping in his throat. Still as stone he kept his strained, steadfast gaze fixed on Sahluma’s corpse, slowly absorbing the full horror of a tremendous Suggestion, that like a scorching lava-flood swept into every subtle channel of his brain.

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