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

one arm on the mantelpiece, still stood, looking down upon him.

 

“Such, my dear fellow,” he went on complacently.. “is the history of the success of ‘Nourhalma.’ It certainly began with the belief that you were no longer able to benefit by the eulogy received.—

but all the same that eulogy has been uttered and cannot be UNuttered. It has led all the lovers of the highest literature to get the book for themselves, and to prove your actual worth, independently of press opinions,—and the result is an immense and steadily widening verdict in your favor. Speaking personally, I have never read anything that gave me quite so much artistic pleasure as this poem of yours except ‘Hyperion,’—only ‘Hyperion’

is distinctly classical, while ‘Nourhalma’ takes us back into some hitherto unexplored world of antique paganism, which, though essentially pagan, is wonderfully full of pure and lofty sentiment. When did the idea first strike you?”

 

“A long time ago!” returned Alwyn with a slight, serious smile—“I assure you it is by no means original!”

 

Villiers gave him a quick, surprised glance.

 

“No? Well, it seems to me singularly original!” he said.. “In fact, one of your critics says you are TOO original! Mind you, Alwyn, that is a very serious fault in this imitative age!”

 

Alwyn laughed a little. His thoughts were very busy. Again in imagination he beheld the burning “Temple of Nagaya” in his Dream of Al-Kyris,—again he saw himself carrying the corpse of his FORMER Self through fire and flame,—and again he heard the last words of the dying Zabastes—“I was the Poet’s adverse Critic, and who but I should write his Eulogy? Save me, if only for the sake of Sahluma’s future honor!—thou knowest not how warmly, how generously, how nobly, I can praise the dead!”

 

True! … How easy to praise the poor, deaf, stirless clay when sense and spirit have fled from it forever! No fear to spoil a corpse by flattery,—the heavily sealed-up eyes can never more unclose to lighten with glad hope or fond ambition; the quiet heart cannot leap with gratitude or joy at that “word spoken in due season” which aids its noblest aspirations to become realized!

The DEAD poet?—Press the cold clods of earth over him, and then rant above his grave,—tell him how great he was, what infinite possibilities were displayed in his work, what excellence, what merit, what subtlety of thought, what grace of style! Rant and rave!—print reams of acclaiming verbosity, pronounce orations, raise up statues, mark the house he lived and starved in, with a laudatory medallion, and print his once-rejected stanzas in every sort of type and fashion, from the cheap to the costly,—teach the multitude how worthy he was to be loved, and honored,—and never fear that he will move from his rigid and chill repose to be happy for once in his life, and to learn with amazement that the world he toiled so patiently for is actually learning to be grateful for his existence! Once dead and buried he can be safely made glorious,—he cannot affront us either with his superior intelligence, or make us envy the splendors of his fame!

 

Some such thoughts as these passed through Alwyn’s mind as he dreamily gazed into the red hollows of the fire, and reconsidered all that his friend had told him. He had no personal acquaintances on the press,—no literary club or clique to haul him up into the top-gallant mast of renown by persistent puffery; he was not related, even distantly, to any great personage, either statesman, professor, or divine—he had not the mysterious recommendation of being a “university man”; none of the many “wheels” within wheels which are nowadays so frequently set in motion to make up a momentary literary furore, were his to command,—and yet—the Parthenon had praised him! … Wonder of wonders! The Parthenon was a singularly obtuse journal, which glanced at the whole world of letters merely through the eyes of three or four men of distinctly narrow and egotistical opinions, and these three or four men kept it as much as possible to themselves, using its columns chiefly for the purpose of admiring one another. As a consequence of this restricted arrangement, very few outsiders could expect to be noticed for their work, unless they were in the “set,” or at least had occasionally dined with one of the mystic Three or Four, . . and so it had chanced that Alwyn’s first venture into literature had been totally disregarded by the Parthenon. In fact, that first venture, being a small and unobtrusive book, had, most probably, been thrown into the waste-paper basket, or sold for a few pence to the second-hand dealer. And now,—now because he had been imagined DEAD,—the Parthenon’s leading critic had singled him out and held him up for universal admiration!

 

Well, well! … after all, Nourhalma WAS a posthumous work,—it had been written before, ages since, when he, as Sahluma, had perished ere he had had time to give it to the world! He had merely REMEMBERED it.. drawn it forth again, as it were, from the dim, deep vistas of past deeds;—so those who had reviewed it as the production of one dead in youth, were right in their judgment, though they did not know it! … It was old,—nothing but repetition,—but now he had something new and true and passionate to say, . . something that, if God pleased, it should be his to utter with the clearness and forcibleness common to the Greek thunderers of yore, who spoke out what was in them, grandly, simply, and with the fearless majesty of thought that reeked nothing of opinions. Oh, he would rouse the hearts of men from paltry greed and covetousness, . . from lust, and hatred, and all things evil,—no matter if he lost his own life in the effort, he would still do his utmost best to lift, if only in a small degree, the deepening weight of self-wrought agony from self-blinded mankind! Yes! … he must work to fulfil the commands and deserve the blessings of Edris!

 

Edris! … ah, the memory of her pure angel-loveliness rushed upon him like a flood of invigorating warmth and light, and when he looked up from his brief reverie, his countenance, beautiful, and kindling with inward ardor, affected Villiers strangely,—almost as a very grand and perfect strain of music might affect and unsteady one’s nerves. The attraction he had always felt for his poet-friend deepened to quite a fervent intensity of admiration, but he was not the man to betray his feelings outwardly, and to shake off his emotion he rushed into speech again.

 

“By the by, Alwyn, your old acquaintance, Professor Moxall, is very much ‘down’ on your book. You know he doesn’t write reviews, except on matters connected with evolutionary phenomena, but I met him the other day, and he was quite upset about you. ‘Too transcendental’! he said, dismally shaking his bald pate to and fro—‘The whole poem is a vaporous tissue of absurd impossibilities! Ah dear, dear me! what a terrible falling-off in a young man of such hopeful ability! I thought he had done with poetry forever!—I took the greatest pains to prove to him what a ridiculous pastime it was, and how unworthy to be considered for a moment seriously as an ART,—and he seemed to understand my reasoning thoroughly. Indeed he promised to be one of our most powerful adherents, . . he had an excellent grasp of the material sciences, and a fine contempt for religion. Why, with such a quick, analytical brain as his, he might have carried on Darwin’s researches to an extremer point of the origination of species than has yet been reached! All a ruin, sir! a positive ruin,—a man who will in cold blood write such lines as these …

 

‘“Grander is Death than Life, and sweeter far The splendors of the Infinite Future, than our eyes, Weary with tearful watching, yet can see”—

 

condemns himself as a positive lunatic! And young Alwyn too!—he who had so completely recognized the foolishness and futility of expecting any other life than this one! Good heavens! …

“Nourhalma,” as I understand it, is a sort of pagan poem—but with such incredible ideas and sentiments as are expressed in it, the author might as well go and be a Christian at once!’ And with that he hobbled off, for it was Sunday afternoon, and he was on his way to St. George’s Hall to delight the assembled skeptics, by telling them in an elaborate lecture what absurd animalculae they all were!”

 

Alwyn smiled. There was a soft light in his eyes, an expression of serene contentment on his face.

 

“Poor old Moxall!” he said gently—“I am sorry for him! He makes life very desolate, both for himself and others who accept his theories. I’m afraid his disappointment in me will have to continue, . . for as it happens I AM a Christian,—that is, so far as I can, in my unworthiness, be a follower of a faith so grand, and pure, and TRUE!”

 

Villiers started, . . his month opened in sheer astonishment, . . he could scarcely believe his own ears, and he uttered some sound between a gasp and an exclamation of incredulity. Alwyn met his widely wondering gaze with a most sweet and unembarrassed calm.

 

“How amazed you look!” he observed, half playfully,—“Religion must be at a very low ebb, if in a so-called Christian country you are surprised to hear a man openly acknowledge himself a disciple of the Christian creed!”

 

There was a brief pause, during which the chiming clock rang out the hour musically on the stillness. Then Villiers, still in a state of most profound bewilderment, sat down deliberately in a chair opposite Alwyn’s, and placed one hand familiarly on his knee.

 

“Look here, old fellow,” he said impressively, “do you really MEAN

it! … Are you ‘going over’ to some Church or other?”

 

Alwyn laughed—his friend’s anxiety was so genuine.

 

“Not I!”—he responded promptly.. “Don’t be alarmed, Villiers,—I am not a ‘convert’ to any particular set FORM of faith,—what I care for is the faith itself. One can follow and serve Christ without any church dogma. He has Himself told us plainly, in words simple enough for a child to understand, what He would have us to do, . . and though I, like many others, must regret the absence of a true Universal Church where the servants of Christ may meet altogether without a shadow of difference in opinion, and worship Him as He should be worshipped, still that is no reason why I should refrain from endeavoring to fulfil, as far as in me lies, my personal duty toward Him. The fact is, Christianity has never yet been rightly taught, grasped or comprehended,—moreover, as long as men seek through it their own worldly advantage, it never will be,—so that the majority of the people are really as yet ignorant of its true spiritual meaning, thanks to the quarrels and differences of sects and preachers. But, notwithstanding the unhappy position of religion at the present day, I repeat, I am a Christian, if love for Christ, and implicit belief in Him, can make me so.”

 

He spoke simply, and without the slightest affectation of reserve.

Villiers was still puzzled.

 

“I thought, Alwyn,” he ventured to say presently with some little diffidence,—“that you entirely rejected the idea of Christ’s Divinity, as a mere superstition?”

 

“In dense ignorance of the extent of God’s possibilities, I certainly did so,” returned Alwyn quietly,—“But I have had good reason to see that my own inability to comprehend supernatural causes was entirely to blame for that rejection. Are we able to explain all the numerous and complex variations and manifestations of Matter? No. Then