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

who hath many friends in Heaven, thy spirit was released to temporary liberty, . . and in thy vision at Dariel, which was NO vision, but a Truth, I bade thee meet me here. And why? … SOLELY TO TEST THY POWER OF OBEDIENCE TO A DIVINE IMPULSE

UNEXPLAINABLE BY HUMAN REASON,—and I rejoiced as only angels can rejoice, when of thine own Free-Will thou didst keep the tryst I made with thee! Yet thou knewest me not! … or rather thou WOULDST NOT KNOW ME, . . till I left thee! … ‘Tis ever the way of mortals, to doubt their angels in disguise!”

 

Her sweet accents shook with a liquid thrill suggestive of tears, —but he was silent. It seemed to him that he would be well content to hold his place forever, if forever he might hear her thus melodiously speak on! Had she not called him her “other soul, her king, her immortality’s completion!”—and on those wondrous words of hers his spirit hung, impassioned, dazzled, and entranced beyond all Time and Space and Nature and Experience!

 

After a brief pause, during which his ravished mind floated among the thousand images and vague feelings of a whole Past and Future merged in one splendid and celestial Present, she resumed, always softly and with the same exquisite tenderness of tone: “I left thee, Dearest, but a moment, … and in that moment, He who hath himself shared in human sorrows and sympathies,—He who is the embodiment of the Essence of God’s Love,—came to my aid.

Plunging thy senses in deep sleep, as hath been done before to many a saint and prophet of old time here on this very field of Ardath,—he summoned up before thee the phantoms of a PORTION of thy Past, … phantoms which, to thee, seemed far more real than the living presence of thy faithful Edris! … alas, my Beloved!

… thou art not the only one on the Sorrowful Star who accepts a Dream for Reality and rejects Reality as a Dream!”

 

She paused again,—and again continued: “Nevertheless, in some degree thy Vision of Al-Kyris was true, inasmuch as thou wert shown therein as in a mirror, ONE phase, ONE only of thy former existence upon earth. The final episode was chosen,—as by the end of a man’s days alone shall he be judged! As much as thy dreaming-sight was able to see,—as much as thy brain was able to bear, appeared before thee, … but that thou, slumbering, wert yet a conscious Personality among Phantoms, and that these phantoms spoke to thee, charmed thee, bewildered thee, tempted thee, and swayed thee, . . this was the Divine Master’s work upon thine own retrospective Thought and Memory. He gave the shadows of thy bygone life, seeming color, sense, motion, and speech,—He blotted out from thy remembrance His own Most Holy Name, . . and, shutting up the Present from thy gaze, He sent thy spirit back into the Past. There, thou, perplexed and sorrowful, didst painfully re-weave the last fragments of thy former history, . . and not till thou hadst abandoned the Shadow of Thyself, didst thou escape from the fear of destruction! Then, when apparently all alone, and utterly forsaken, a cloud of angels circled round thee, . . THEN, at thy first repentant cry for help, He who has never left an earnest prayer unanswered bade me descend hither, to waken and comfort thee! … Oh, never was His bidding more joyously obeyed! Now I have plainly shown thee the interpretation of thy Dream, . . and dost thou not comprehend the intention of the Highest in manifesting it unto thee? Remember the words of God’s Prophet of old: “‘Behold the Field thou thoughtest barren, how great a glory hath the moon unveiled!

“‘And I beheld and was sore amazed, for I was no longer Myself, but Another

“‘And the sword of death was in that Other’s soul,—and yet that Other was but Myself in pain “‘And I knew not the things which were once familiar, and my heart failed within me for very fear!’”

 

She spoke the quaint and mystic lines with a grave, pure, rhythmic utterance that was like the far-off singing of sweet psalmody;—

and when she ceased, the stillness that followed seemed quivering with the rich vibrations of her voice, … the very air was surely rendered softer and more delicate by such soul-moving sound!

 

But Theos, who had listened dumbly until now, began to feel a sudden sorrowful aching at his heart, a sense of coming desolation, . . a consciousness that she would soon depart again, and leave him and, with a mingled reverence and passion, he ventured to draw one of the fair hands that rested on his brows, down into his own clasp. He met with no resistance, and half-happy, half-agonized, he pressed his lips upon its soft and dazzling whiteness, while the longing of his soul broke forth in words of fervid, irrepressible appeal.

 

“Edris!” he implored.. “If thou dost love me give me my death!

Here,—now, at thy feet where I kneel! … of what avail is it for me to struggle in this dark and difficult world? … O deprive me of this fluctuating breath called Life and let me live indeed! I understand.. I know all thou hast said,—I have learned my own sins as in a glass darkly,—I have lived on earth before, and as it seems, made no good use of life, … and now: now I have found THEE! Then why must I lose thee? … thou who camest to me so sweetly at the first? … Nay, I cannot part from thee—I will not! … If thou leavest me, I have no strength to follow thee; I shall but miss the way to thine abode!”

 

“Thou canst not miss the way!”—responded Edris softly, . . “Look up, my Theos,—be of good cheer, thou Poet to whom Heaven’s greatest gifts of Song are now accorded! Look up and tell me, . . is not the way made plain?”

 

Slowly and in reverential fear, he obeyed, and raised his eyes, still holding her by the hand,—and saw behind her a distinctly marked shadow that seemed flung downward by the reflection of some brilliant light above, . . the shadow of a Cross, against which her delicate figure stood forth in shining outlines. Seeing, he understood,—but nevertheless his mind grew more and more disquieted. A thousand misgivings crowded upon him,—he thought of the world, . . he remembered what it was, . . he was living in an age of heresy and wanton unbelief, where not only Christ’s Divinity was made blasphemous mock of, but where even God’s existence was itself called in question.. and as for ANGELS! … a sort of shock ran through his nerves as he reflected that though preachers preached concerning these supernatural beings,—though the very birth of Christ rested on Angels’ testimony,—though poets wrote of them, and painters strove to delineate them on their most famous canvases, each and all thus PRACTICALLY DEMONSTRATING THE

SECRET INSTINCTIVE INTUITION OF HUMANITY that such celestial Forms ARE,—yet it was most absolutely certain that not a man in the prosaic nineteenth century would, if asked, admit, to any actual belief in their existence! Inconsistent? … yes!—but are not men more inconsistent than the very beasts of the field their tyranny controls? What, as a rule, DO men believe in? … Themselves! …

only themselves! They are, in their own opinion, the Be-All and the End-All of everything! … as if the Supreme Creative Force called God were incapable of designing any Higher Form of Thinking-Life than their pigmy bodies which strut on two legs and, with two eyes and a small, quickly staggered brain, profess to understand and weigh the whole foundation and plan of the Universe!

 

Growing swiftly conscious of all that in the Purgatory of the Present awaited him, Theos felt as though the earth-chasm that had swallowed up Al-Kyris in his dream had opened again before him, affrighting him with its black depth of nothingness and annihilation,—and in a sudden agony of self-distrust he gazed yearningly at the fair, wistful face above him, . . the divine beauty that was HIS after all, if he only knew how to claim it!—

Something, he knew not what, filled him with a fiery restlessness,—a passion of protest and aspiration, which for a moment was so strong that it seemed to him he must, with one fierce effort, wrench himself free from the trammels of mortality, and straightway take upon him the majesty of immortal nature, and so bear his Angel love company whithersoever she went! Never had the fetters of flesh weighed upon him with such-heaviness! …

but, in spite of his feverish longing to escape, some authoritative yet gentle Force held him prisoner.

 

“God!” he muttered … “Why am I thus bound?—why can I not be free?”

 

“Because thy time for freedom has not come!” said Edris, quickly answering his thought … “Because thou hast work to do that is not yet done! Thy poet labors have, up till now, been merely REPETITION, … the repetition of thy Former Self, … Go! the tired world waits for a new Gospel of Poesy, … a new song that shall rouse it from its apathy, and bring it closer unto God and all things high and fair! Write!—for the nations wait for a trumpet-voice of Truth! … the great poets are dead, . . their spirits are in Heaven, . . and there is none to replace them on the Sorrowful Star save THOU! Not for Fame do thy work—nor for Wealth, . . but for Love and the Glory of God!—for Love of Humanity, for Love of the Beautiful, the Pure, the Holy! … let the race of men hear one more faithful Apostle of the Divine Unseen, ere Earth is lost in the withering light of a larger Creation! Go! … perform thy long-neglected mission,—that mission of all poets worthy the name.. TO RAISE THE WORLD! Thou shalt not lack strength nor fervor, so long as thou dost write for the benefit of others. Serve God and live!—serve Self and die!

Such is the Eternal Law of Spheres Invisible, . . the less thou seest of Self, the more thou seest of Heaven! … thrust Self away, and lo! God invests thee with His Presence! Go forth into the world, . . a King uncrowned, . . a Master of Song, . . and fear not that I, Edris, will forsake thee,—I, who have loved thee since the birth of Time!”

 

He met her beautiful, luminous, inspired eyes, with a sad interrogativeness in his own. What a hard fate was meted out to him! … To teach the world that scoffed at teaching!—to rouse the gold-thirsting mass of men to a new sense of things divine! O

vain task!—O dreary impossibility! … Enough surely, to guide his own Will aright, without making any attempt to guide the wills of others!

 

Her mandate seemed to him almost cruel,—it was like driving him into a howling wilderness, when with one touch, one kiss, she might transport him into Paradise! If SHE were in the world, . . if SHE were always with him.. ah! then how different, how easy life would be! Again he thought of those strange entrancing words of hers.. “My other soul, . . my king.. my immortality’s completion!”—

and a sudden wild idea took swift possession of his brain.

 

“Edris!” he cried.. “If I may not yet come to thee, then come THOU

to me! … Dwell thou with me! … O by the force of my love, which God knoweth, let me draw thee, thou fair Light, into my heart’s gloom! Hear me while I swear my faith to thee as at some holy shrine! …