Ardath by Marie Corelli (reading in the dark .txt) 📖

in spite of all my lord’s most constant kindly favor, Niphrata is not happy, ..and.. and I have sometimes thought—” here her mellow voice sank into a nervous indistinctness—“that it may be because she loves my lord Sahluma far too well!”

 

And as she said this she looked up with a sudden affright in her dark, lovely eyes, as though she were alarmed at her own presumption. Sahluma met her troubled gaze calmly and with a bright smile of complacent vanity.

 

“And dost thou plead for thine absent friend, Zoralin?” … he asked with just sufficient satire in his utterance to render it almost cruel.. “Am I to blame for the foolish fancies of all the amorous maidens in Al-Kyris? … Many there be who love me, . .

well,—what then?—Must I love many in return? Nay! Not so! the Poet is the worshiper of Ideal Beauty, and for him the brief passions of mortal men and women serve as mere pastime to while away an hour! But.. by my faith, thou hast gained wondrous boldness in thy speech to prate so glibly of the heart’s emotion, —what knowest THOU concerning such things.. thou, who hast counted scarcely fifteen summers! … hast thou caught contagion from Niphrata, and art thou too, sick of love?”

 

Oh, the dazzling smile with which he accompanied this poignant question! … the pitiless, burning ardor he managed to convey into the sleeping brilliancy of his soft, poetic eyes! … the beautiful languor of his attitude, as leaning his head back easily on one arm, he turned upon the shrinking girl a look that seemed intended to pierce into the very inmost recesses of her soul! The roseate color faded from her cheeks, . . white as a marble image she stood, her breath coming between her lips in quick, frightened gasps…

 

“My lord! …” she stammered … “I …” Here her voice failed her, and suddenly covering her face with her hands, she broke into a passion of weeping. Sahluma’s delicate brows darkened into a close frown,—and he waved his hand with a petulant gesture of impatience.

 

“Ye gods! what fools are women!” he said wearily. “Ever hovering uncertainly on a narrow verge between silly smiles and sillier tears! As I live, they are most uncomfortable play-fellows!—and dwelling with them long would drive all the inspiration out of man, no matter how nobly he were gifted! Ye butterflies—ye little fluttering souls!” and beginning to laugh as readily as he had frowned, he addressed the other maidens, who, though they did not dare to move or speak, were evidently affected by the grief of their companion—“Go hence all!-and take this sensitive baby, Zoralin, into your charge, and console her for her fancied troubles—‘tis a mere frenzy of feminine weakness, and will pass like an April shower. But, … by the Sacred Veil!—if I saw much of woman’s weeping, I would discard forever woman’s company, and dwell in peaceful hermit fashion alone among the treetops! … so heed the warning, pretty ones! … Let me witness none of your tears if ye are wise,—or else say farewell to Sahluma, and seek some less easy and less pleasing service!”

 

With this injunction he signed to them all to depart,—whereupon the awed and trembling girls noiselessly surrounded the still convulsively sobbing Zoralin, and gently leading her away, they quickly withdrew, each one making a profound obeisance to their imperious master ere leaving his presence. When they had finally disappeared Sahluma heaved a sigh of relief.

 

“Can anything equal the perverseness of these frivolous feminine toys!” he murmured pettishly, turning his head round toward Theos as he spoke—“Was ever a more foolish child than Zoralin? … Just as I would fain have consoled her for her pricking heartache, she must needs pour out a torrent of tear-drops to change my humor and quench her own delight! ‘Tis the most irksome inconsistency!”

 

Theos glanced at him with a vague emotion of wonder and self-reproachful sadness.

 

“Nay, wouldst thou indeed have consoled her, Sahluma?” he inquired gravely, “How?”

 

“How?” and Sahluma laughed musically.. “My simple friend, dost thou ask me such a babe’s question?”… He sprang from his couch, and standing erect, pushed his clustering dark hair off his wide, bold brows. . “Am I disfigured, aged, lame, or crooked-limbed? …

Cannot these arms embrace?—these lips engender kisses?—these eyes wax amorous? … and shall not one brief hour of love with me console the weariest maid that ever pined for passion? … Now, by my faith, how solemn is thy countenance! … Art thou an anchorite, good Theos, and wouldst thou have me scourge my flesh and groan, because the gods have given me youth and vigorous manhood?”

 

He drew himself up with an inimitable gesture of pride,—his attitude was statuesque and noble,—and Theos looked at him as he would have looked at a fine picture, with a sense of critically satisfied admiration.

 

“Most assuredly I am no anchorite, Sahluma!” he said smiling slightly, yet with a touch of sorrow in his voice. “But methinks the consolement thou wouldst offer to enamoured maids is far more dangerous than lasting! Thy love to them means ruin,—thy embraces shame,—thy unthinking passion death! What!—wilt thou be a spendthrift of desire?—wilt thou drain the fond souls of women as a bee drains the sweetness of flowers?—wilt thou, being honey-cloyed, behold them droop and wither around thee, and wilt thou leave them utterly destroyed and desolate? Hast thou no vestige of a heart, my friend? a poet-heart, to feel the misery of the world?

..the patient grief of all-appealing Nature, commingled with the dreadful, yet majestic silence of an unknown God? … Oh, surely, thou hast this supremest gift of genius, . . this loving, enduring, faithful, sympathetic HEART! … for without it, how shall thy fame be held long in remembrance? … how shall thy muse-grown laurels escape decay? Tell me! …” and leaning forward he caught his friend’s hand in his eagerness.. “Thou art not made of stone, . . thou art human, . . thou art not exempt from mortal suffering …”

 

“Not exempt—no!” interposed Sahluma thoughtfully … “But, as yet,—I have never really suffered!”

 

“Never really suffered!”.. Theos dropped the hand he held, and an invisible barrier seemed to rise slowly up between him and his beautiful companion. Never really suffered! … then he was no true poet after all, if he was ignorant of sorrow! If he could not spiritually enter into the pathos of speechless griefs and unshed tears,—if he could not absorb into his own being the prayers and plaints of all Creation, and utter them aloud in burning and immortal language, his calling was in vain, his election futile!

This thought smote Theos with the strength of a sudden blow,—he sat silent, and weighed with a dreary feeling of disappointment to which he was unable to give any fitting expression.

 

“I have never really suffered …” repeated Sahluma slowly: . .

“But—I have IMAGINED suffering! That is enough for me! The passions, the tortures, the despairs of imagination are greater far than the seeming REAL, petty afflictions with which human beings daily perplex themselves; indeed, I have often wondered..

“here his eyes grew more earnest and reflective …” whether this busy working of the brain called ‘Imagination’ may not perhaps be a special phase or supreme effort of MEMORY, and that therefore we do not IMAGINE so much as we remember. For instance,—if we have ever lived before, our present recollection may, in certain exalted states of the mind, serve to bring back the shadow-pictures of things long gone by, . . good or evil deeds, . . scenes of love and strife, . . ethereal and divine events, in which we have possibly enacted each our different parts as unwittingly as we enact them here!”.. He sighed and seemed somewhat troubled, but presently continued in a lighter tone.. “Yet, after all, it is not necessary for the poet to personally experience the emotions whereof he writes. The divine Hyspiros depicts murderers, cowards, and slaves in his sublime Tragedies,—but thinkest thou it was essential for him to become a murderer, coward, and slave himself in order to delineate these characters? And I … I write of Love,—love spiritual, love eternal,—love fitted for the angels I have dreamt of—but not for such animals as men,—and what matters it that I know naught of such love, . . unless perchance I knew it years ago in some far-off fairer sphere! … For me the only charm of worth in woman is beauty! … Beauty! … to its entrancing sway my senses all make swift surrender …”

 

“Oh, too swift and too degrading a surrender!” interrupted Theos suddenly with reproachful vehemence … “Thy words do madden patience!—Better a thousand times that thou shouldst perish, Sah-lama, now in the full plenitude of thy poet-glory, than thus confess thyself a prey to thine own passions,—a credulous victim of Lysia’s treachery!”

 

For one second the Laureate stood amazed, . . the next, he sprang upon his guest and grasping him fiercely by the throat.

 

“Treachery?” he muttered with white lips.. “Treachery? … Darest thou speak of treachery and Lysia in the same breath? … O thou rash fool! dost thou blaspheme my lady’s name and yet not fear to die?”

 

And his lithe brown fingers tightened their clutch. But Theos cared nothing for his own life,—some inward excitation of feeling kept him resolute and perfectly controlled.

 

“Kill me, Sahluma!” he gasped—“Kill me, friend whom I love! …

death will be easy at thy hands! Deprive me of my sad existence, . .

‘tis better so, than that I should have slain THEE last night at Lysia’s bidding!”

 

At this, Sahluma suddenly released his hold and started backward with a sharp cry of anguish, . . his face was pale, and his beautiful eyes grew strained and piteous.

 

“Slain ME! … Me! … at Lysia’s bidding!” he murmured wildly..

“O ye gods, the world grows dark! is the sun quenched in heaven?

… At Lysia’s bidding! ..Nay, . . by my soul, my sight is dimmed!

… I see naught but flaring red in the air, . . Why! …” and he laughed discordantly.. “thou poor Theos, thou shalt use no dagger’s point,—for lo! … I am dead already! … Thy words have killed me! Go, . . tell her how well her cruel mission hath sped,—

my very soul is slain…at her bidding! Hasten to her, wilt thou!”.. and his accents trembled with pathetic plaintiveness! …

“Say I am gone! … lost! drawn into a night of everlasting blackness like a taper blown swiftly out by the wind, . . tell her that Sahluma,—the poet Sahluma, the foolish-credulous Sahluma who loved her so madly is no more!”

 

His voice broke, . . his head drooped, . . while Theos, whose every nerve throbbed in responsive sympathy with the passion of his despair, strove to think of some word of comfort, that like soothing balm might temper the bitterness of his chafed and wounded spirit, but could find none. For it was a case in which the truth must be told, . . and truth is always hard to bear if it destroys, or attempts to destroy, any one of our cherished self-delusions!

 

“My friend, my friend!” he said presently with gentle earnestness,—“Control this fury of thy heart! … Why such unmanly sorrow for one who is not worthy of thee?”

 

Sahluma looked up,—his black, silky lashes were wet with tears.

 

“Not worthy! … Oh, the old poor consolation!” he exclaimed, quickly dashing the drops from his eyes, . . “Not worthy?—No! …

what mortal woman IS ever worthy of a poet’s love?—Not one in all the world! Nevertheless, worthy or unworthy, true or treacherous, naught can make Lysia