St. Elmo Part 19

Her sweet, flexible voice, gradually losing its tremor, rolled soothingly through the room; and when she knelt and repeated the prayer selected for the occasion--a prayer of thanks for the safe return of a traveller to the haven of home--her tone was full of pathos and an earnestness that strangely stirred the proud heart of the wanderer as he stood there, looking through his fingers at her uplifted face, and listening to the first prayer that had reached his ears for nearly nineteen weary years of sin and scoffing.

When Edna rose from her knees he had left the room, and she heard his swift steps echoing drearily through the rotunda.

CHAPTER XII.

"I do not wish to interrupt you. There is certainly room enough in this library for both, and my entrance need not prove the signal for your departure."

Mr. Murray closed the door as he came in, and walking up to the book-cases, stood carefully examining the t.i.tles of the numerous volumes. It was a cold, dismal morning, and sobbing wintry winds and the ceaseless pattering of rain made the outer world seem dreary in comparison with the genial atmosphere and the ruddy glow of the cosy, luxurious library, where choice exotics breathed their fragrance and early hyacinths exhaled their rich perfume. In the centre of the morocco-covered table stood a tall gla.s.s bowl, filled with white camellias, and from its scalloped edges drooped a fringe of scarlet fuchsias; while near the window was a china statuette, in whose daily adornment Edna took unwearied interest. It was a lovely Flora, whose slender fingers held aloft small tulip-shaped vases, into which fresh blossoms were inserted every morning. The head was so arranged as to contain water, and thus preserve the wreath of natural flowers which crowned the G.o.ddess. To-day golden crocuses nestled down on the streaming hair, and purple pansies filled the fairy hands, while the tiny, rosy feet sank deep in the cus.h.i.+on of fine, green mosses, studded with double violets.

Edna had risen to leave the room when the master of the house entered, but at his request resumed her seat and continued reading.

After searching the shelves unavailingly, he glanced over his shoulder and asked:

"Have you seen my copy of De Guerin's 'Centaur' anywhere about the house? I had it a week ago."

"I beg your pardon, sir, for causing such a fruitless search; here is the book. I picked it up on the front steps, where you were reading a few afternoons since, and it opened at a pa.s.sage that attracted my attention."

She closed the volume and held it toward him, but he waved it back.

"Keep it if it interests you. I have read it once, and merely wished to refer to a particular pa.s.sage. Can you guess what sentence most frequently recurs to me? If so, read it to me."

He drew a chair close to the hearth and lighted his cigar.

Hesitatingly Edna turned the leaves.

"I am afraid, sir, that my selection would displease you."

"I will risk it, as, notwithstanding your flattering opinion to the contrary, I am not altogether so unreasonable as to take offense at a compliance with my own request."

Still she shrank from the task he imposed, and her fingers toyed with the scarlet fuchsias; but after eyeing her for a while, he leaned forward and pushed the gla.s.s bowl beyond her reach.

"Edna, I am waiting."

"Well, then, Mr. Murray, I should think that these two pa.s.sages would impress you with peculiar force."

Raising the book she read with much emphasis:

"Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus! which is the science of the will of the G.o.ds; AND THOU ROAMEST FROM PEOPLE TO PEOPLE, LIKE A MORTAL DRIVEN BY THE DESTINIES. In the times when I kept my night- watches before the caverns, I have sometimes believed that I was about to surprise the thoughts of the sleeping Cybele, and that the mother of the G.o.ds, betrayed by her dreams, would let fall some of her secrets. But I have never yet made out more than sounds which faded away in the murmur of night, of words inarticulate as the bubbling of the rivers.

"Seekest thou to know the G.o.ds, O Macareus! and from what source men, animals, and the elements of the universal fire have their origin? The aged ocean, the father of all things, keeps locked within his own breast these secrets; and the nymphs who stand around sing as they weave their eternal dance before him, to cover any sound which might escape from his lips, half opened by slumber.

Mortals dear to the G.o.ds for their virtue have received from their hands lyres to give delight to man, or the seeds of new plants to make him rich, but from their inexorable lips--nothing!"

"Mr. Murray, am I correct in my conjecture?"

"Quite correct," he answered, smiling grimly.

Taking the book from her hand he threw it on the table, and tossed his cigar into the grate, adding in a defiant, challenging tone:

"The mantle of Solomon did not fall at Le Cayla on the shoulders of Maurice de Guerin. After all, he was a wretched hypochondriac, and a tinge of le cahier vert doubtless crept into his eyes."

"Do you forget, sir, that he said, 'When one is a wanderer, one feels that one fulfills the true condition of humanity'? and that among his last words are these, 'The stream of travel is full of delight. Oh! who will set me adrift on this Nile?'"

"Pardon me if I remind you, par parenthese, of the preliminary and courteous En garde! which should be p.r.o.nounced before a thrust. De Guerin felt starved in Languedoc, and no wonder! But had he penetrated every nook and cranny of the habitable globe, and traversed the vast zaarahs which science accords the universe, he would have died at last as hungry as Ugolino. I speak advisedly, for the true Io gad-fly, ennui, has stung me from hemisphere to hemisphere, across tempestuous oceans, scorching deserts, and icy mountain ranges. I have faced alike the bourrans of the steppes and the Samieli of Shamo, and the result of my vandal life is best epitomized in those grand but grim words of Bossuet: 'On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le neant.' Nineteen years ago, to satisfy my hunger, I set out to hunt the daintiest food this world could furnish, and, like other fools, have learned finally, that life is but a huge, mellow, golden Osher, that mockingly sifts its bitter dust upon our eager lips. Ah! truly, on trouve au fond de tout le vide et le neant!"

"Mr. Murray, if you insist upon your bitter Osher smile, why shut your eyes to the palpable a.n.a.logy suggested? Naturalists a.s.sert that the Solanum, or apple of Sodom, contains in its normal state neither dust nor ashes, unless it is punctured by an insect (the Tenthredo), which converts the whole of the inside into dust, leaving nothing but the rind entire, without any loss of color. Human life is as fair and tempting as the fruit of 'Ain Jidy,' till stung and poisoned by the Tenthredo of sin."

All conceivable suaviter in modo characterized his mocking countenance and tone, as he inclined his haughty head and asked:

"Will you favor me by lifting on the point of your dissecting-knife this stinging sin of mine to which you refer? The noxious brood swarm so teasingly about my ears that they deprive me of your cool, clear, philosophic discrimination. Which particular Tenthredo of the buzzing swarm around my spoiled apple of life would you advise me to select for my anathema maranatha?"

"Of your history, sir, I am entirely ignorant; and even if I were not, I should not presume to levy a tax upon it in discussions with you; for, however vulnerable you may possibly be, I regard an argumentum ad hominem as the weakest weapon in the armory of dialectics--a weapon too often dipped in the venom of personal malevolence. I merely gave expression to my belief that miserable, useless lives are sinful lives; that when G.o.d framed the world, and called the human race into it, he made most munificent provision for all healthful hunger, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; and that it is a morbid, diseased, distorted nature that wears out its allotted years on earth in bitter carping and blasphemous dissatisfaction. The Greeks recognized this immemorial truth-- wrapped it in cla.s.sic traditions, and the myth of Tantalus const.i.tuted its swaddling-clothes. You are a scholar, Mr. Murray; look back and a.n.a.lyze the derivation and significance of that fable.

Tantalus, the son of Pluto, or Wealth, was, according to Pindar, 'a wanderer from happiness,' and the name represents a man abounding in wealth, but whose appet.i.te was so insatiable, even at the ambrosial feast of the G.o.ds, that it ultimately doomed him to eternal unsatisfied thirst and hunger in Tartarus. The same truth crops out in the legend of Midas, who found himself starving while his touch converted all things to gold."

"Doubtless you have arrived at the charitable conclusion that, as I am endowed with all the amiable idiosyncrasies of ancient cynics, I shall inevitably join the snarling Dives Club in Hades, and swell the howling chorus. Probably I shall not disappoint your kind and eminently Christian expectations; nor will I deprive you of the gentle satisfaction of hissing across the gulf of perdition, which will then divide us, that summum bonum of feminine felicity, 'I told you so!'"

The reckless mockery of his manner made Edna s.h.i.+ver, and a tremor crept across her beautiful lips as she answered sadly:

"You torture my words into an interpretation of which I never dreamed, and look upon all things through the distorting lenses of your own moodiness. It is worse than useless for us to attempt an amicable discussion, for your bitterness never slumbers, your suspicions are ever on the qui vive."

She rose, but he quickly laid his hand on her shoulder, and pressed her back into the chair.

"You will be so good as to sit still, and hear me out. I have a right to all my charming, rose-colored views of this world. I have gone to and fro on the earth, and life has proved a Barmecide's banquet of just thirty-eight years' duration."

"But, sir, you lacked the patience and resolution of Shacabac, or, like him, you would have finally grasped the splendid realities. The world must be conquered, held in bondage to G.o.d's law and man's reason, before we can hope to levy tribute that will support our moral and mental natures; and it is only when humanity finds itself in the inverted order of serfdom to the world, that it dwarfs its capacities, and even then dies of famine."

The scornful gleam died out of his eyes, and mournful compa.s.sion stole in.

"Ah! how impetuously youth springs to the battlefield of life! Hope exorcises the gaunt spectre of defeat, and fancy fingers unwon trophies and fadeless bays; but slow-stepping experience, pallid, blood-stained, spent with toil, lays her icy hand on the rosy veil that floats before bright, brave, young eyes, and lo' the hideous wreck, the bleaching bones, the grinning, ghastly horrors that strew the scene of combat! No burnished eagles nor streaming banners, neither spoils of victory nor paeans of triumph, only silence and gloom and death--slow-sailing vultures--and a voiceless desolation!

Oh, child! if you would find a suitable type of that torn and trampled battlefield--the human heart--when vice and virtue, love and hate, revenge and remorse, have wrestled fiercely for the mastery--go back to your Tacitus, and study there the dismal picture of that lonely Teutoburgium, where Varus and his legions went down in the red burial of battle! You talk of 'conquering the world-- holding it in bondage!' What do you know of its perils and subtle temptations--of the glistening quicksands whose smooth lips already gape to engulf you? The very vilest fiend in h.e.l.l might afford to pause and pity your delusion ere turning to machinations destined to rouse you rudely from your silly dreams. Ah! you remind me of a little innocent, happy child, playing on some s.h.i.+ning beach, when the sky is quiet, the winds are hushed, and all things wrapped in rest, save

'The water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple was.h.i.+ng in the reeds'--

a fair, fearless child, gathering polished pearly sh.e.l.ls with which to build fairy palaces, and suddenly, as she catches the mournful murmur of the immemorial sea, that echoes in the flushed and folded chambers of the stranded sh.e.l.ls, her face pales with awe and wonder- -the childish lips part, the childish eyes are strained to discover the mystery; and while the whispering monotone admonishes of howling storms and sinking argosies, she smiles and listens, sees only the glowing carmine of the fluted reels, hears only the magic music of the sea sirens--and the sky blackens, the winds leap to their track of ruin, the great deep rises wrathful and murderous, bellowing for victims, and Cyclone reigns? Thundering waves sweep over and bear away the frail palaces that decked the strand, and even while the sh.e.l.l symphony still charms the ear, the child's rosy feet are washed from their sandy resting-place; she is borne on howling billows far out to a lashed and maddened main, strewn with human drift; and numb with horror she sinks swiftly to a long and final rest among purple algae! Even so, Edna, you stop your ears with sh.e.l.ls, and my warning falls like snow-flakes that melt and vanish on the bosom of a stream.

"No, sirs I am willing to be advised. Against what would you warn me?"

"The hollowness of life, the fatuity of your hopes, the treachery of that human nature of which you speak so tenderly and reverently. So surely as you put faith in the truth and n.o.bility of humanity, you will find it as soft-lipped and vicious as Paolo Orsini, who folded his wife, Isabella de Medici, most lovingly in his arms, and while he tenderly pressed her to his heart, slipped a cord around her neck and strangled her."

"I know, sir, that human nature is weak, selfish, sinful--that such treacherous monsters as Ezzolino and the Visconti have stained the annals of our race with blood-blotches, which the stream of time will never efface; but the law of compensation operates here as well as in other departments, and brings to light a 'fidus Achates' and Antoninus. I believe that human nature is a curious amalgam of meanness, malice and magnanimity, and that an earnest, loving Christian charity is the only safe touchstone, and furnishes (if you will tolerate the simile) the only elective affinity in moral chemistry. Because ingots are not dug out of the earth, is it not equally unwise and ungrateful to ridicule and denounce the hopeful, patient, tireless laborers who handle the alloy and ultimately disintegrate the precious metal? Even if the world were bankrupt in morality and religion--which, thank G.o.d, it is not--one grand s.h.i.+ning example, like Mr. Hammond, whose unswerving consistency, n.o.ble charity, and sublime unselfishness all concede and revere, ought to leaven the ma.s.s of sneering cynics, and win them to a belief in their capacity for rising to pure, holy, almost perfect lives."

"Spare me a repet.i.tion of the rhapsodies of Madame Guyon! I am not surprised that such a novice as you prove yourself should, in the stereotyped style of orthodoxy, swear by the h.o.a.ry Tartuffe, that hypocritical wolf, Allan Hammond--"

"Stop, Mr. Murray! You must not, shall not use such language in my presence concerning one whom I love and revere above all other human beings! How dare you malign that n.o.ble Christian, whose lips daily lift your name to G.o.d, praying for pardon and for peace? Oh! how ungrateful, how unworthy you are of his affection and his prayers!"