Title: The Insane Root
Author: Rosa Praed
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
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Language: English
Date first posted: August 2006
Date most recently updated: August 2006

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The Insane Root
Rosa Praed



CHAPTER I THE AMBASSADOR'S PHYSICIAN



In the Abarian Embassy in London, Isądas Pacha lay sick unto death. He
was an old man, and upon several previous occasions when he had been
stricken by illness it was thought that he could not recover.
Nevertheless, when newspapers and Cabinets were speculating upon his
probable successor, he had invariably risen up from his bed and had
again handled the reins, continuing to transact the duties of
Ambassador to the Court of St James's entrusted to him by his Imperial
master.

He was greatly in the favour of his Emperor, and was, after his own
fashion, a power in the courts of Europe. Though it was said, and
indeed with truth, that most of the business of the Chancellery was
carried on by his clever, fascinating and ambitious first secretary,
Caspar Ruel Bey, it was the brain of Isądas Pacha which inspired
despatches, the hand of Isądas Pacha--that shrivelled, forceful hand--
which gave the last decisive touch to the helm.

Isądas Pacha was old and had lived an unholy life. He had loved many
women--the prey of some, the tyrant of others--had drunk much wine,
had gambled and fought and rollicked, had nourished revenge upon the
fruit of diabolical knowledge, had strange byways of intrigue, vice
and of wisdom where was little good and much evil. He had, in fact, to
quote an austere London surgeon who attended him, violated every law
of health, morals and religion, and was a standing disproof of the
power of those laws. For his marvellous vitality and his commanding
intellect had brought him successfully through a varied career, to
what now-at its close, seemed the very zenith of influence and
popularity. Nor were the influence and popularity undeserved. He had
been a faithful servant to an effete and demoralised civilisation--a
state which from its geographical position was at that time one of the
chief factors in Christian and Mahometan policy. He had done his
country's work--not always righteous--in many lands, and had felt the
pulse-beats of many nations. He had the wile of the East and the
common sense of the West, and was consulted by both in hours of crisis
and difficulty. The decorations heaped upon him had been genuinely
won, and only a week before his illness, the last and crowning order
of merit---the highest gift in his sovereign's power to bestow--had
been sent him with an autograph letter from that sovereign, by whom he
was both loved and trusted. The ideal of an autocratic sovereignty was
the ideal to which Isądas Pacha clung. It had ruled his actions; and'
the glittering jewel which represented it, was now placed by his
desire, at the foot of his bed, and solaced his dying hours. Thus, a
strong and lasting devotion had been inspired in him by the original
of an oil painting--the portrait of a man with regular, refined
features, dark haunting eyes, and an expression of the most profound
melancholy, the most utter satiety to be seen on human countenance--
which hung at the end of the long suite of reception rooms in the
Embassy, its frame surmounted by the jewelled and gilded insignia of
Eastern monarchy. This was the portrait of his most sacred Majesty,
Abdullulah Zobeir, Emperor of Abaria.

It was in obedience to this devotion that Isądas Pacha, when taken ill
at a watering-place to which his doctors recommended him, had desired
that he should be brought back to London in order that he might die
under the Imperial flag.

The floated limply over the grey roof and straight unlovely walls of
the Embassy. There was scarcely a breath of wind in the heavy,
exhausted London atmosphere--the atmosphere of a London August.
Certainly it was only the first week in August and Parliament was not
up, and there was a stream of smart carriages drawing up in front of
the corner house of that dull, old--fashioned London square, one patch
of which had been for so long a piece of Abarian territory. From the
carriages tired footmen alighted, and cards were left and inquiries
were made. In some cases the answers to the inquiries were brought out
and repeated to beautifully-dressed ladies, past their youth maybe--
ladies whom presumably the Pacha had loved or admired. The Pacha was
witty and amusing, while his position was such that women still liked
to be admired, even loved, by him, though he was not very far from
eighty. In other instances the inquiries were evidently merely
perfunctory--official tributes to his diplomatic status. Royal
messengers came and received with a becoming expression of concern the
doctors' bulletin, and minor royalties called personally. One or two
great ladies, still in London, left bouquets of flowers or scribbled
on their cards messages of sympathy. All these were carried to the
ante-chamber of the Pacha's room that he might himself be made aware
of these marks of attention, upon which he laid much store. And the
old man, even his great sickness, gloated over the cards and the
flowers and the royal messages of sympathy.

It was just after one of these great personages had called and
departed, that a quiet doctor's brougham drove up to the Embassy.
There had been other doctors' broughams there already. Specialists had
been summoned in conjunction with the Pacha's regular attendant; but
in August, many of the principal London physicians are out of town.
Perhaps it was partly on this account, partly because he had already
met privately and had interested the Pacha, partly because he was the
cousin of Ruel Bey the first secretary, that Doctor Marillier had been
called in.

Doctor Marillier was not a great London doctor--one, that is to say,
who has won his position step by step and in accordance with the
traditions of the College of Physicians and all the written and
unwritten laws of British medical etiquette. Though to all intents and
purposes, he was British, he belonged by descent to a Jersey family.
His mother was a Greek and her sister had married the father of Ruel
Bey, a man whose exact nationality it would have been difficult to
determine. Doctor Marillier had taken his degree in Paris, and had
subsequently practised in Algeria, where he had imbibed some out-of-
the-way theories of medicine from his friend, that very singular
Eastern physician known as the Medicine Moor. He had never followed
the beaten track, and though during the last year or two he had
settled himself as a consulting physician in London, he was looked
upon as something of a quack by his medical brethren and suspected of
unprofessional practices. Early in his career he had acknowledged
himself, in a series of articles written under the shadow of the
Salpźtričre, a follower of Charcot. Then he had become an eager
disciple of the astronomer Flammarion, and later, an avowed student of
hypnotism according to the methods of the Nancy school. Probably he
would never have gained notoriety in London, had it not happened that
by chance he was called in to an important public personage, and had
cured that personage in defiance of the verdicts of other well-known
physicians. This cure had caused him to be talked about. Moreover, his
relationship to the delightful first secretary at the Abarian Embassy,
had brought him into some social prominence.

Doctor Marillier's cousin, Ruel Bey, was one of the most popular young
men in London. It was he who made the balls at the Abarian Embassy a
feature of the London season. He acted well, he sang well, he danced
divinely. In those days, the cotillon had just become a fashionable
craze, and no hostess of the great world thought her entertainment
complete unless Ruel Bey organised and led the figures. Doctor
Marillier did not dance the cotillon, did not sing, did not act, had
not that peculiar charm of manner which is found in both men and women
of mixed nationality, but he had gifts of his own, powers of his own,
even a certain odd charm all his own.

Lucien Marillier stepped out of his brougham and rang at the great
double door of the Embassy. The door was opened on the instant; the
hall-porter being the one servant in the house whose office at that
time was no sinecure. Incongruously, as some people thought, there was
no touch of the East about the Pacha's establishment. His hall-porter
was like the hall-porter of all other persons to whom such a
functionary is indispensable, and sat in a chair that might have been
built--probably was built--in the reign of Queen Anne. For the Embassy
had Adams ceilings and Georgian staircases, and panellings removed
from a mansion in Bloomsbury, and it had been decorated and furnished
in the early Victorian epoch, and was all loftiness, mahogany,
gilding, bareness and anachronisms, with, all through, a touch of
foreign lands and a suggestion, mainly under the surface, of the
sensuous East.

The butler, with his following of footmen, who appeared in answer to
Doctor Marillier's request that Ruel Bey might be informed of his
arrival, was a bland, portly, and wholly English official, quite in
keeping with the Adams frieze and the early Victorian decoration.

He ushered the visitor into a room leading off the central hall and
there left him. Doctor Marillier waited. His portrait might have been
drawn as he stood perfectly immovable against the marble mantelpiece.
A short man, with shoulders disproportionately broad in regard to his
height, thick, and slightly hunched. Out of the ungainly shoulders
rose a head which, though ugly, would, had it been placed upon a
commanding form, have made Doctor Lucien Marillier one of the most
distinguished-looking men of his day. A striking head, with darkish
hair getting grey at the temples, combed back from an intellectual
brow and cropped close behind; rugged features, a thin, slightly
beaked nose, and lips sharply curved, extremely flexible, the upper
one in its defined lines and firm moulding, showing will, order and
logic, the under one, protruding ever so little, hinting at the
emotional; the face clean-shaven and giving a curious impression of
greyness; the skin fine, the jaw strong, a cleft in the centre of the
chin; the eyes grey, keen, penetrating, somewhat pale and cold, with a
black line round the iris, and changing, when feeling was aroused, to
a grey like that of dull steel. The hands were capable, deft, strong
and tender, with broad, soft fingers, long and square at the tips, and
a full flexible thumb--the typical doctor's hands.

A door opening at the end of this room disclosed the Chancellery, a
long, sombre room, decorously busy, where fezzed heads were bending
over writing-tables set here and there beneath the windows. Ruel Bey
himself could be seen, through a second folding door, in an inner and
more luxuriously-furnished apartment, where he was writing hastily.

Presently he rose, saying a word or two in French to one of the
attachés, and coming through the outer room, he closed the door behind
him and advanced with outstretched hands to greet his cousin.

'A thousand pardons. It was absolutely necessary it I should leave a
despatch ready to be copied. The Pacha's seizure throws a great deal
upon me. You understand, Lucien?'

'Perfectly. Your credit at the Court of Abaria depends upon the way in
which you deal with this crisis, eh?'

'Oh, as to that!' The young man shrugged his shoulders in the
inimitable French manner. 'Isądas left most things to me, but his was
the responsibility. The Emperor was satisfied while Isądas signed and,
as he believed, inspired. It's extraordinary the confidence they have
over there in Isądas. But now that he cannot sign!...And the whole
wasps' nest of intriguers will be buzzing round the Emperor's ears...
Well, the time is not ripe! His Excellency must not die, Lucien. For
my sake do what you can to save him.'

'I will do what I can, not for your sake, but firstly for the sake of
my profession--secondly, for that of Isądas Pacha himself, and
thirdly, for that of European interests. Not to speak of the Emperor
of Abaria, who relies at this political juncture upon his
representative's appreciation of the English national temperament.'

Doctor Marillier spoke coldly. His deep voice vibrated when he alluded
to the sacred obligations of his profession. His accent had a burr,
due probably to his foreign extraction. 'Don't let us waste time,' he
added. 'Take me to the Pacha.'

Ruel Bey nodded and immediately led the way up the broad staircase,
stopping, as he passed through the ball to speak to the butler,
desiring him to inform Mademoiselle Isądas that Doctor Marillier had
come.

The double doors of white and gold leading to the reception-rooms
seemed to be guarded by a large stuffed leopard looking as though it
were about to spring. Marillier stopped for a moment before it. He had
been told that it was from the spring of this very leopard that Isądas
Pacha had saved the Emperor of Abaria, and thus earned the monarch's
lasting gratitude.

'Mademoiselle Isądas will wish to speak to you, said Ruel Bey to his
cousin. 'She told me last night that she had great faith in you and
that she believed you would cure the Pacha.'

'I trust that I may justify Mademoiselle Isądas's faith,' replied the
doctor, 'but the Pacha is an old man.'

'Yet he has the vitality of the devil. Ffolliot and Carus Spencer gave
him over last time, and he recovered notwithstanding. But do what you
can to reassure Rachel Isądas. She is genuinely distressed at the
thought that he may die, and, from the mere mundane and selfish point
of view, well she may be.'

Doctor Marillier looked at the young man keenly and not altogether
approvingly.

'Why? I ask from the mundane point of view.'

'Oh, well, her position would be different. One can never tell how far
she would be provided for. Isądas Pacha has lived like a rich man, but
he has never been wealthy, and I believe there is a law in the
republic of Avaran which requires that half a man's possessions must
go when he dies to his legitimate kin. You know of course that Isądas
is Avaranese by birth, and I have no idea whether he has disposed of
his family estates or if they were confiscated in the revolution. His
real name is Varenzi, and Isądas, so to speak, an official title.
Though the Abarian Government employs few Abarians, it insists that
its officials shall, technically speaking, be Abarian. By the way,
however, talking of the law of inheritance in Avaran, I have never
heard that Is-das has a single--legitimate--relation.'

Again Doctor Marillier's keen eyes searched his cousin's face. They
were standing in the first of the--reception-rooms, a desert of
gilding and upholstery, with a huge crystal chandelier in the centre,
and at one end, just over the two men, that melancholy and haunting
portrait of the Emperor of Abaria. A message had been sent apprising
the Ambassador's nurse of Doctor Marillier's arrival.

'You imply what I have not altogether understood. I have only seen
Mademoiselle Isądas once--at the last ball here. I gleaned then that
her position was equivocal. What is her exact relation to the Pacha?'

Again Ruel Bey shrugged, and the shrug was eloquent. 'The world will
tell you that she is his niece--when it speaks officially. But all the
world knows that she is not his niece, and would not hesitate to say
so--unofficially. But even officially she is not recognised. It is a
significant fact that Mademoiselle Isądas has not attended one of the
Queen's drawing-rooms, and that she does not wear the order of the
Leopard and the Lotus which the Emperor of Abaria always presents to a
daughter of an ambassador, or to an officially-recognised niece of an
ambassador, when she is the only lady in the Embassy--in that case
even to the wife of the first secretary.'

Doctor Marillier made a gesture of extreme disapproval.

'I dislike to hear you speak in that way, Caspar. You gave me the
impression that you wanted to marry Mademoiselle Isądas.'

Ruel Bey smiled.

'The wife of an aspiring Minister, a potential Ambassador, must be,
like Cęsar's wife, above suspicion--at any rate, as regards her social
antecedents. I confess that I should prefer to marry a lady with no
haziness about her parentage...But--we are human, Lucien, and a pair
of lovely eyes is apt to play the deuce with such prejudice.'

At that moment a nurse advanced towards the door of the second
reception-room. Here were massed the bouquets, and here lay the cards
and notes sent by royal, diplomatic and social admirers of the Pacha.
Doctor Marillier at once proceeded to the door of the Ambassador's
bedroom, which opened off the furthest apartment of the suite--that
which was his usual sitting--room. Ruel Bey remained in the second
reception-room idly sniffing at a bouquet of orchids and sprigs of
scented verbena. Here also, as he waited, an illustrator might have
found subject and opportunity. In odd contrast to his cousin the
doctor, striking as was the personality of each, Ruel Bey had the face
and form of a Hermes--the Apollos seem mostly insufficiently virile
for comparison. One could, however, imagine Ruel Bey with winged feet,
and the muscular development presumably to be associated with an
Olympian messenger. Certainly he might have been modelled as a Hermes,
save for his Bond Street get-up, his moustache and the fez. The fez,
however, gave a certain outlandish distinction, and its deep red
enhanced the brilliancy of his dark eyes, the clearness of his olive
skin, and the sheen of a few curling tendrils of dark hair showing
beneath it on neck and brow. As one looked at him one thought
instinctively of grape leaves, of honey-throated song, of the love of
women, and the glory of young-limbed strength. Yet though here was the
old joy in life of the Olympians, there was something, too, of the
later Hellenism, something of modern Greek craft, a touch of imported
Eastern sensuousness; much, too, of self-interest. That was to be read
at moments, in the shifty gleam of his full, soft eyes, in the
ripeness of his fruit-like mouth, in certain charming mannerisms that
did not breathe a wholehearted sincerity. He was less of a man's than
of a woman's man.

Women are intuitive, but where they love and admire, they do not
analyse. Probably few of the great ladies who petted him, of the
nobly-born women who would have married him had he been a little
richer, a little more highly placed--or of the less frailer creatures
who idolised him for a year, a month, a week--were capable of
analysing Ruel Bey. He appealed to the senses of women, not to the
soul.



CHAPTER II RACHEL



The door into the vestibule opened. There was a light step upon the
parquet of the outer reception-room. Ruel Bey put down the bouquet,
detaching a sprig of verbena, which he fastened into his buttonhole.
His hand trembled as he did so; he knew the step, and he wanted to
gain time and to conceal his agitation. Presently he looked up,
apparently frank, bright, welcoming. A girl approached through the
ornamented folding doors.

'Monsieur Ruel,' she began in formal, hesitating accents; then
glancing round and seeing that he was alone, advanced less timidly. He
put out his hand, and with that grace and charm which all women loved,
drew her to a seat.

'Dearest,' he murmured.

She shrank a little.

'No...I don't think you ought... Your cousin is here.'

'I have told him you wished to speak to him. If anyone can save the
Pacha, it is Lucien Marillier.'

'I knew that...I felt sure of it. He will not mind telling me what he
really thinks.'

'I will leave you alone with him when he comes out. He will tell you
the truth--as far as doctors ever I tell the truth. Remember that
Excellency is an old man.'

'Poor Excellence,' said the girl, softly. 'It must be hard to lie,
perhaps dying, and to be--so unloved.'

Ruel Bey waved his hand over the heaped flowers ad the array of cards.
'He is honoured, and that is better than being loved.'

'Do you think so? Oh, no, Caspar, you don't really think so.'

'No,' he answered, coming closer to her, and bending forward so that
his lips touched her hair, 'I don't think so--when I look at you.'

The girl did not answer. She seemed to be pondering his words, and not
altogether with satisfaction. He withdrew a pace or two, and leaning
against the mantelpiece, his cheek upon his hand, looked down upon her
admiringly as she sat at the corner of the fireplace in a large-armed,
gilded chair. She was very beautiful. The most ambitious of men might
well consider it more important to be loved by her than honoured by
the world.

Her absolute claims to beauty set aside, there was something
peculiarly attractive, and, at the same time, peculiarly pathetic,
about this girl. She showed race in every line of her. Was it from the
Pacha or from her mother that this was inherited? She was called the
Pacha's niece; she bore his name; it was supposed that she was his
brother's child. And yet, in the accounts printed of the Pacha's
lineage and career, no mention was made of his brother. Besides, Ruel
Bey had said, and all the world knew, that Isądas was the titular name
given with the honours that Emperor had conferred. He belonged to a
family before it became a republic, had supplied rulers to the island
kingdom of Avaran. The revolution had driven him thence, and in all
the vigour of his manhood Count Varenzi had entered the service
Abdullulah Zobeir, the youthful Emperor of Abaria. His brother's
child, had there been one, would have inherited the name of Varenzi,
but Rachel had never been known save as Mademoiselle Isądas. That
pathetic look in Rachel Isądas came from the blending of evident
dignity of race with an expression wistful, deprecating, shadowed, as
of one impressed by a certain incongruity in her position, and not
entirely free from a dread of being slighted, were she to assert that
position. Mademoiselle Isądas's proud little head had a timid droop;
her slender form, in spite of its stately carriage, a shrinking air,
as though she dreaded and wished to avoid observation; her eyes a
startled, almost beseeching gaze, when she was suddenly addressed or
taken notice of by a stranger.

Her head looked small for her body, though she was tall and very
slight. Her throat, too, was unusually slender. She had pretty, soft,
dark hair, the brown which shows reddish glints; her face was oval,
the nose finely chiselled and a little short; the upper lip short too
and extremely sensitive, like that of a child, alone in the world's
fair, and scarcely knowing whether to laugh or to weep. The eyes were
brown, soft, and plaintively appealing, with something of the
expression in the eyes of a St Bernard dog.

They were not the bright black eyes of the Avaranese, but had a
suggestion of the East in their long almond-shaped lids and their
dreamy intensity when her face was in repose, though they would light
up at moments with a childlike gladness, and had, too, the limpid
purity which one sees in the eyes of a child.

Suddenly now, she glanced up at Ruel Bey's face. The two looks met,
and both underwent a curious change. In both pairs of eyes a flame was
kindled. A magnetic impulse drew the man and woman together. She had
risen, and now moved, frightened, it seemed, of that very impulse,
half evading his outstretched arms. A dimple in her throat attracted
him. He put his lips to it, brushing the satin skin as if savouring
its sweetness, and ardently kissed the flower-like hollow at the base
of her throat.

'I love you,' he whispered.

Trembling slightly, she shrank away from him, and stood with bent head
and cheeks faintly red. Again, he would have embraced her, but she
refused the caress, not without dignity.

'I love you, sweet,' he repeated.

'You say so...but...' she spoke with hesitation. 'It is not fitting
that you should tell me so in this way. It is not the custom.'

'The conventual custom!' he said, with a laugh. 'Dear nun, we are in
London--not in the convent.'

'I wish that I were back in the convent,' she said, 'for many
reasons.'

'But you would not wish to be a nun?' he asked.

'No. I have not a vocation. But one is safe in the convent.'

'And you are not safe here? Is that what you mean?'

'I was peaceful in the convent,' she exclaimed. 'I was not torn and
troubled and frightened by strange thoughts and feelings--feelings I
had never known before.'

'Foolish one, is it of the feelings that you are afraid? Why fear what
is the only thing worth living for--love?'

'There should be peace in love, joy in love--not terror and unrest.'

'Yet you love me, Rachel? You cannot deny it?'

'I don't know. How can I tell? Your love is not the love I have
dreamed of--read of. It is not holy, pure, spiritual. It is not--' she
stopped short.

'Not the love you have read of in the journals of Saint Theresa--or in
the Meditations of St Thomas ą Kempis? No, I grant you that. It is a
more human sort of thing. A thing of the world---possibly of the
devil--not of the Church.'

Rachel shrank again, and there was puzzle and deeper dread in the
straight gaze of her brown eyes. 'Oh, it is when you say things like
that--it's that strain in you which makes me afraid. Why should you
say "not of the Church--possibly of the devil?" I don't understand.
The blessing of the Church, should be upon all true love. Marriage is
a sacrament.'

Ruel Bey gave the nameless gesture--the instinctive gesture of the
sceptic. 'How many London marriages are what you call a sacrament? But
I don't want to argue that point. It is enough for me that I love you.
Your prayers, dear saint, may call down the ecclesiastical blessing.
Assuredly mine--will not. I am content--for the moment--with love
itself, love in its least spiritual aspect, its most human joy.'

The girl blushed more deeply. She was struggling to get out some words
which were difficult.

'I suppose that you feel as a man feels. I cannot tell. But--I don't
know what it is in you that draws me, almost against myself, and then
repels me. You do not speak of love as--'

'As Saint Theresa and St Thomas ą Kempis speak of it?' he rejoined
with tender raillery. 'No. I speak of it as the diplomat, as the man
of cities, as one who belongs to the world of men, and not to the
cerulean heaven, must speak of love. I have blood in my veins, not
celestial lymph. I would clasp the flesh rather than adore the spirit.
I love you as the old Greeks loved, as the modern man loves--not after
the fashion of the medięval monk. Except Fra Lippo Lippi. He had the
courage to carry off his nun. I give him grace, and salute her
memory.'

Ruel Bey laughed and touched his finger tips, blowing a kiss to the
fair, frail Madonna whom Lippi had loved and painted, with that
enchanting mannerism which, in the drawing-rooms of a certain set of
women, had gained him the reputation of culture of a kind.

Still Rachel had not said what she wished to say; and still the red in
her cheeks, which was that pale red peculiar to such a type, deepened,
and her speech faltered.

'I did not mean what you seem to think. I cannot explain myself to
myself--how much less to you! I have told you that you draw me to
you--and yet, at the very moment, it is as though an invisible barrier
were placed between us. And I do understand. Though you laugh at the
conventual customs, I am not so ignorant as you fancy of the ways of
the world. You forget that, though it is only a few months since I
left the convent, I am nearly twenty-five, and that is not very young.
I have had friends among girls who were married, and I have seen how
such things are arranged even in London. You...It is now two weeks
since you...told me that you loved me. I have no mother--no one but my
uncle, and he seems strange and far away--but he is my guardian.
And...and...you have not asked me from him.'

'My child, is it that which is troubling your simple soul! The foreign
blood in you speaks, as well as the French bringing-up. You expected a
conseil de famille--the bargaining about settlements--the exact amount
stipulated for pin-money--all the ordinary preludes of matrimony.
Well, let me tell you frankly that I have no private means; that it
has always been expected I should marry a fortune instead of bestowing
one; that, in short, from the worldly point of view, there would be
many difficulties; that for the moment--till I am appointed Minister
to the Court of--some little minor kingdom--and that's a poor enough
basis of negotiations in the matter of pin-money and settlements--I
can't--'

'Oh! No! No!' the girl interrupted, overcome with shame. 'How could
you suppose that I thought of such things? You know...you know...'

'I know that you are adorable. I know that I you. I know that when we
are alone together, I cannot bow and give you my finger tips as if we
were dancing a minuet. I know that the temptation of that fascinating
dimple, and of those sweet lips, remind me somehow of the Song of
Solomon, can't be resisted. I know that I want to sip the honey, to
snatch the joy, and to forget the sordid details which, in any case,
dear, should not be forced into the critical hours of a serious
illness. Wait! Listen to what Marillier has to say. I think I hear him
coming out now from the Pacha's room. I will leave you to have your
talk.'



CHAPTER III THE DOCTOR AND THE WOMAN



The girl sat down again resignedly, pale now, not greatly reassured,
still, obliged to confess that there was reason in Caspar Ruel's
words, and partly ashamed of what she thought he must have fancied her
own grasping attitude.

'Forgive me,' she murmured, and he gave her a long, ardent look,
kissed her hand, and went out through the folding doors, just as the
curtains separating this room from the Pacha's sanctum were drawn
aside by the nurse for Doctor Marillier to pass through.

Rachel rose at his entrance and advanced. As she faced him, her eyes
eager, her whole countenance moved and softened by the emotion she had
been experiencing, Marillier was almost taken aback by her
extraordinary beauty. He stood awkwardly, the hunch of his shoulders
accentuated by his hesitation, his strong face reflecting both sides
of his nature, the human and the professional. He had been deeply
interested in the Pacha's case. His brain was working out theories; he
was weighing the forces of disease and life with which he had to deal.
For the moment he had forgotten everything else, and the sight of
Rachel, setting into vibration chords in him, of which he had hardly
suspected the existence, was unexpectedly disturbing.

'Doctor Marillier, she said, with her air of timid self-possession--of
withdrawal into her own sanctuary which was so marked when she spoke
to a stranger, 'Ruel Bey said you would be kind enough to tell me
exactly what you think of the Pacha's condition.'

She held out her hand, not waiting for him to answer. 'Though I did
not speak to you, I think we have seen each other before,' she went
on. 'I am Rachel Isądas; of course you know.'

'Yes,' he replied, it seemed to him mechanically. 'Of course I know.'

'And you were at the Pacha's last ball?' she said.

'Yes.'

He remembered her well, and the indefinable attraction she had even
then had for him--the curious pity that he had felt, and his vague
wonder about her; for it had struck him as strange that she should be
at once, so near to the Pacha and yet outside the state and ceremony
with which on this occasion he was surrounded. There were no other
ladies belonging to the Abarian Embassy, for none of the secretaries
were married. She was a comparatively new arrival on the scene, it
being her first season in London, thus the fact of her isolation, so
apparent to him, might not have impressed the casual crowd. He
recalled the scene--the great gilded ballroom, with mirrors at
intervals along the walls, reflecting back the lights and diamonds,
the forms and faces, all the throng of beautifully-dressed women and
of men in uniform with ribbons and orders on their breasts. The Pacha
had stood just outside the doorway, above which was a great emblazoned
shield with the Star of the Empire and a motto in the pictorial
Abarian character, receiving his guests as they came and passed
through to the ballroom. The Pacha's breast glittered with many
decorations; in truth he was the most picturesque and striking figure
present. It seemed almost by design that he was so stationed as not to
admit of another person between himself and the door, and the people
entering, might not at first have noticed the tall slender girl a pace
within, who stood behind the Pacha, and who looked, as Marillier had
put it to himself, like an angel dropped down from heaven.

An angel not entirely at ease, however, but bewildered by the
situation in which she found herself, and unconsciously realising
that, though making a tiny part of this splendid world of fashion and
diplomacy, she nevertheless did not belong to it. His physician's eye
told him that she was nervous, and that it was by the greatest effort
that she maintained her calm dignity. For she was very dignified. Her
quietude, her simplicity, the slight droop of her head, and her
involuntary shrinking from observation which, erectly though she held
herself, was so evident to him, only enhanced the dignity. How
beautiful she looked! Her brown eyes shone like stars. Her clear pale
cheeks, slightly tinged with pink, reminded him of the inner petals of
a certain white rose, her long slender neck of the white calyx of a
tropical flower, and the sensitive lips with their pathetic droop, a
thread of scarlet, were, in the phrase used by Ruel Bey, as the lips
of that fairest among women in the Song of Solomon. She had worn a
white satin gown with soft fillings and draperies, and some lilies at
her breast. She carried a bouquet of the same Eucharis lilies, and
round her neck was a single string of pearls, her only ornament. She
had no orders nor ribbons, and her little head bore neither stars nor
tiara. So she stood, an exquisite and, to him, pathetically forlorn
figure, and no one seemed to remark the pathos and forlornness of her
except himself.

Once or twice, the Pacha would turn and informally introduce her to
some lady whom he greeted, but she was not presented to the greatest
of the royal ladies whom the Pacha had descended the stairs to
welcome, and it had been quite clear that, officially speaking, she
was not recognised. Doctor Marillier observed that one great lady, a
lesser light among the royal people, looked at the girl with a
motherly curiosity and kindliness, and made an occasion to notice her.
That royal lady was ever afterwards endeared to the heart of the
doctor, and he had been pleased with the grace of Mademoiselle
Isądas's curtsey, and the soft shy lighting up of her pensive face.
Later on, when the dancing began, a bevy of would-be partners crowded
round the girl, and after that, he had only seen her as she whirled
round in a waltz or played her part in the cotillon led by Ruel Bey.
He had noticed his cousin's admiration, and a word or two that he had
by chance overheard pass between them, made him feel sure that Ruel
Bey loved the Ambassador's niece and desired to marry her.

He was hardly aware, as his memory went back to this scene and the
thoughts it had evoked, how awkwardly he stood now after that
monosyllabic 'Yes,' and how long the girl, too shy to ask him more
directly his professional opinion, waited for him to deliver it.

At last she said, seating herself again in the big gilded chair, and
motioning him to a settee opposite,---

'Doctor Marillier, you will tell me how you find the Pacha--what you
really think of his state?'

'That is a little difficult for me to put into clear words,
Mademoiselle Isądas.'

'Perhaps,' she went on, 'you are afraid; you think it may be too great
a shock for me to hear the truth. But I would always wish to know the
truth about a thing that concerns me deeply, even though it might be a
shock.'

He remembered those words of hers long afterwards. At the time, he was
gauging her with those keen doctor's eyes, weighing in his mind, her
capacity to bear the shock of a cruel truth, and he came to the
conclusion that her words were literally true, and that she was one of
those women with whom a doctor may be candid.

'I ought perhaps to tell you,' she said, mistaking the motive of his
slight hesitation, that if--if you thought ill of his condition, the
shock would not be so great to me as though I had lived always with
the Pacha, as though I were his daughter, or had been his companion
for many years.

I have been just a few months at the Embassy, and before that, I can
only remember seeing the Pacha three or four times when he came to my
convent. So we have not been very close to each other. I don't want
you to think,' she added hastily, 'that I am not sincerely attached--
that I do not appreciate the Pacha's great goodness to me. He is all I
have in the world, and if Excellence were taken away, I should be
lonely indeed.'

The little note of emotion in her voice touched him inexpressibly. She
must in very truth be lonely if the loss of that cynical, selfish old
reprobate would be the loss of her only natural protector.

'I trust, Mademoiselle Isądas, that his Excellency will be spared to
you for a little while yet, if I am correct in my diagnosis, and am
permitted to carry out the treatment I propose. In fact I may say that
I am sure his life can be saved--for the present.'

'Can anyone be sure?' she said wistfully, struck by the masterfulness
of the man's tone. 'Only God can be sure. But oh! Doctor Marillier, I
am very thankful for what you say, and I believe it. You make rue feel
that you would not speak like this unless you were confident of your
power.'

'I am confident,' he replied. 'I will tell you why. You say that no
one can be sure but God; and it may be that we doctors have a
different conception of the Force which made life and ordained death
than that which has been taught you in your convent. Perhaps it is
that we have no conception at all; that we are agnostics in the true
sense of the word; that ecclesiasticism is to us so much mummery, and
creeds and dogmas all equally meaningless and unsatisfactory. But
there is a Force we cannot deny, a Something outside ourselves which
rules life and decrees death, and it is only when, in some dim manner
which I can't explain even to myself, I come into relation with this
Force--only then that I can be sure. That does not always happen; it
happens rarely. But when I have made my diagnosis and am sure, not the
whole College of Physicians against me would shake my opinion. I can
cure the Pasha. For how long I will not say. He is a very old man, and
already his life has reached the ordinary span.'

Her look of wistful wonder deepened to one of childlike trust.

'You are strong,' she said. 'I like a man to be strong; and there are
so few--so very few men upon whom one can lean.'

'You might lean upon me,' said Doctor Marillier, 'and I should not
fail you. Of that, too, I am sure.'

He bent a little forward, and as he uttered the words, put his two
hands down flat upon his knees as though to emphasise the declaration.
She could not help noticing his hands.

'You are strong,' she repeated; 'your hands are strong.'

'They ought to be,' he answered; 'they have performed many difficult
operations.' And then he was inwardly jarred by his own professional
plain-speaking. This was not the way to talk to a young delicate girl.
What should she know about operations? His bluntness did not appear to
have struck her. She was interested, and her eyes remained still fixed
upon those firm deft hands.

'If I were very ill, and needed to have an operation performed that
would cure or kill me, I would ask you to do it,' she said; 'that is,
if you said to me, I know--'

'If I said, "I know that I can cure you"!' he returned. 'Oh, then it
would be easy to trust me, for doctors do not say "I know" about
operations unless they feel sure. But if I said, "I do not know, and
you must run the risk of life or death," what then?'

'I would trust you still,' she replied. 'And it might be,' she added
thoughtfully, 'that the trusting would not be so difficult, nor the
uncertainty so hard to bear. I do not think that life is very good,
and sometimes one might almost prefer death if it were God's will.
Then one would be sure of being happy.'

'That is what your Church teaches you. You are a Catholic, of course?
So am--so was I. But how about Purgatory?'

'Perhaps,' she said, 'to some, life is the worst Purgatory God will
call upon us to endure.'

He gave a queer little laugh.

'That's true. I wouldn't ask a worse Purgatory for my bitterest enemy,
supposing I had one, than certain portions out of my own life. I, too,
have known what loneliness is, Mademoiselle Isądas...But this is not
business, and I don't know why I'm talking to you in such an odd way.
You must think me a queer sort of doctor. Yet I'm very glad we've
talked so, for it makes me understand you better. Your saying that you
would trust me if I said "I know" in the case of an operation, or,
what is better, if I said "I don't know," makes it much easier for me
to tell you that the Pacha's life depends upon an operation that I
wish to perform and which I know will succeed. Perhaps I should say
that it depends even more upon an after treatment which I fancy few
English physicians would endorse...But there's no use in talking
technicalities to young ladies--they wouldn't understand them.'

'I don't want technicalities. You are quite right, I shouldn't
understand them,' she said, with her sweet girl's laugh, that sounded
to the doctor like distant bells over snow. 'I trust you absolutely,
Doctor Marillier, and thank you--thank you. You have lifted a weight
from my heart. Now I can be almost happy again.'

'Almost happy!' The sense of pathos in connection with her, returned
to him with that 'almost.' He got up; she rose too, and the girl and
this man stood facing each other as the other man and the girl had
faced each other. Ruel Bey had towered a head and a half above this
tiny head upon its calyx throat. As Doctor Marillier stood erect, with
frame squared, his strong, determined face was, if anything, on a
lower level than her own. The contrast came upon her with an odd
impressiveness. How was it possible that the two men were so nearly
related? In temperament, in character, no two beings could be more
apart. And each man in his way had a forcefulness which she could not
withstand. She felt, in a frightened manner, that Ruel Bey would
exercise complete control over one side of her nature, and that side,
the one she least comprehended. Another side of her would, she knew,
be affected to an enormous degree by Doctor Marillier, and this side
she was not afraid of, though it, too, she did not quite understand.

He took her hand in his. The little sensitive hand, which seemed to
him like a bundle of nerves tied together, thrilled at his touch--
thrilled for a second only, then quieted under the consciousness of
mastery and of restfulness. His medical knowledge told him that he
could healthfully magnetise the girl. Certain nerves in her, responded
sympathetically to a power which he was aware he could wield. That
power was in himself and yet was outside himself. He associated it in
some way with the Force of which he had spoken, and which was his
synonym for her conception of God. Doctor Marillier did not believe in
the Churches' God, but he believed in a Force, just as he believed in
the law of gravitation, in the law of chemical affinities, of mental
affinities, such as were exemplified in telepathy and hypnotism, in
the law of evolution, in certain other even more subtle, more occult
laws, that his medical experience had compelled him to recognise--
mysteries of the universe only to be attributed to the action of a
First Cause, expressed by words and symbols that were but words and
symbols, and after all, never really touched the heart of the mystery.
These were realities to be admitted, but not to be explained as either
spiritual or material--though his tendency, as that of most
scientists, was to the explanation that all is matter in a more or
less rarefied form. Rachel Isądas herself was sensible of the soothing
effect of his touch. She withdrew her hand slowly. 'You feel strong,'
she said. 'Yes, I trust you.'

'Trust me always. Trust me in the matter of this operation upon the
Pacha. There you are safe. I can be trusted in the most elementary
sense because I know. But trust me, too, where I don't know.'

'Doctor Marillier, that seems a strange thing for you to say to me on
the first occasion of our speaking together, and yet, though it is
strange, it is natural.'

'It is natural,' he answered, 'because it comes out of that faculty I
possess of seeing with my inner eyes things beyond. Don't ask me to
explain the faculty. That way madness lies. I do not attempt to reason
about it, even to myself. But it is a fact--one that I have tested
sufficiently to have scientific evidence of its truth. It is natural
for me to bid you trust me, because this inward vision foreshadows a
time when you will be required to trust me, and when perhaps--I can't
say--but when probably I shall not know. Of this, however, I am
certain--in the end, your trust will be justified.'

A spirit seemed to him to be looking out of her eyes.

'I, too,' she answered, 'have something--I cannot call it inward
vision. I can only call it instinct. Something which draws or repels
me, encourages or warns. I can rely upon it almost always.'

'Almost always!' he repeated. 'There should be no "almost" There is no
"almost" with me. If I am standing by the bedside of a patient doomed
by the Faculty to death, and that inward vision shows him to me safe
and sound--there is no question, it is so. If, on the other hand, I
see Death at the back of even a trifling ailment, that also is sure,
and I do not question, because I know that to Death my science must
bow.'

'You speak of patients--they are not a part of you. I have heard
before, that a doctor is only unerring when he does not love. But if
you loved--then could you be sure?'

Marillier was silent. If there were a spirit in the girl's eyes, one
seemed to be peering forth into futurity from his. Their grey had
deepened to the colour of a mountain-locked pool.

'Could I be sure? I cannot tell you, for till this day of my life I
have never lived beyond the restrictions of reason and science. My
interests have been centred in my profession, Mademoiselle Isądas, for
circumstances have limited them. I have never known love.'

'Till this day of my life.' He had uttered the words deliberately, and
while he uttered them, the inward monitor seemed to be pointing out to
him their immense significance. To Rachel Isądas they had no such
significance. They seemed the ordinary expression of a cool-headed,
steel--hearted scientist, who had not had time for the softer
emotions. She knew he was unmarried; she fancied that Ruel Bey had
told her that he was himself Marillier's nearest relation. The
remembrance spurred her speech.

'But you have--is it true that you are the only one of your name?'

'Quite true. My father was an only child and an orphan; my mother had
one sister. Ruel Bey is that sister's son. He represents to me,
therefore, all the ties of kindred.'

'But--' she hesitated again. 'Ruel Bey is lovable.'

Marillier interrupted her sharply.

'You find him so, Mademoiselle Isądas?'

The girl started as if he had struck her, and the blood rushed to her
face. She recovered herself and replied,---

'That seems an even stranger thing to say to me.'

'I do not think so. At the Pacha's ball his admiration of you was
evident enough. I was naturally interested in observing how you
received his attentions. Perhaps it would be well that I should tell
you what he himself does not know--I am not a poor man and he is my
heir. If you loved and consented to marry him, and the provision made
by the Pacha or required by the Pacha were riot adequate, I would
supplement it.'

The trouble spread over Rachel Isądas's face--the faint alarm.

'Oh, I don't know--I don't know.'

'Tell me,' said Marillier, 'is it with him as with me--when you don't
know, can you trust?'

'I don't know--I don't know,' she repeated helplessly.

The sight of her perplexity roused in Marillier something of which he
had never before been conscious.

'If you can't trust him you may trust me. That's perhaps the meaning
of the foreshadowing I have about you. I'll be true to it. Trust me,
Mademoiselle Isądas! Trust me; and by the Force that you call God,
I'll protect you against him, if need be; against your own heart, if
need be. If need be, too, against myself.'

Before she realised the meaning of his words, while still under the
spell of the look he gave her out of those clear grey eyes, in which
it seemed that two little electric sparks suddenly blazed, Rachel
Isądas found herself alone. He had abruptly turned from her and
vanished through the open half of the folding doors. When she looked
through them she was confronted by the sensuous face with its fateful
Eastern melancholy, its terrible satiety of the flesh, which gazed out
at her from the eyes of the Emperor of Abaria.



CHAPTER IV THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISĄDAS PACHA.



The operation was over. It had been wholly successful, and a new cure
was added to those which were rapidly making Doctor Marillier famous.
But there were dissensions among members of the Faculty; the Pacha's
regular physician in especial was opposed to Marillier's view of the
case. Isądas Pacha, however, decided the matter. Quickly comprehending
the situation, his brain became alert as ever, and that wonderful
power in him of diagnosing men, to which his brilliant diplomatic
career was largely attributable, now made itself felt.

Isądas, after the consultation, requested to be left alone with
Marillier. It was a strange interview, during which the Pacha's
gleaming eyes shining out of cavernous orbits from beneath the
wrinkled brows remained fixed upon the face of Marillier, reading the
man's soul as, it seemed to the doctor, no human eyes had ever before
read that closed book. The Pacha discussed his own symptoms, weighed
the arguments of the consulting physician and surgeon, demanded
reasons and details, and the grounds which Marillier had for his
conclusions, differing as they did from those of Mr Ffolliot and Dr
Carus Spencer. In his questions he displayed a knowledge, not only of
ordinary medical science, but of certain occult methods taught in the
East, but not generally admitted in Western schools, which greatly
surprised the doctor. Still more surprised was he when, after he had
explained his proposed treatment, the Pacha remarked in that deep yet
faint voice, which seemed already as though it issued from a tomb,---
'I see that you have studied under the Medicine Moor.'

Marillier started.

'It is true; but I did not know, Excellency, that you were acquainted
with that singular personage.'

A grim expression--an odd distortion of the features as by a spasm of
pain--passed over the Pacha's face as he answered,--'At one period of
my life I knew the Medicine Moor intimately. I have spent days with
him in the Kabyle hills. His was, as you say, a singular personality.
He knew many secrets of Nature and effected some wonderful cures. If
he were alive I would send for him now, for I believe that if my life
is to be prolonged he could do most to prolong it. And yet--' A dreamy
note came into the old man's voice; he paused, and the distortion of
his features was more painful, while the gleam in his eyes hardened
and intensified.

'And yet,' he went on, 'in my greatest emergency, that science, that
skill in which I trusted, failed me.'

Marillier said nothing. He felt that here he was treading upon the
thin crust of a still active volcano.

'They failed me,' the Pacha continued, 'as skill and science must
always fail when emotion prevents the will from aiding them. I cannot
altogether blame the Medicine Moor, though I think he might have done
more. Even the dread sentence--as he put it, "Will of Allah"--might
have been defied. Had I but understood then the power of human will--'
The metallic glare in the old man's eyes flickered. Weakness of the
body overpowered him for a minute or two. Marillier administered a
restorative and presently he went on.

'Doctor,' he said, 'do you not know that there are two supreme forces
by which man may, to an almost incredible extent, control his own
destiny. Those forces are Love and Will.'

Marillier smiled a little grimly.

'Love!' he repeated. 'That force at least is not within my control.'

'Yet you are one of those so constituted as to be able to absorb and
concentrate subtle energies of Nature. Take an old man's prophecy.
Believe that you have capacity to draw down power to accomplish your
desire. Do not, as was the case with me, realise that capacity when it
is too late.'

There was a short silence. Marillier's grim look had given place to a
puzzled one. The Pacha watched him carefully. Presently the old man
spoke again, this time with fiery determination.

'Now to business. If I live, we will talk of these things by-and-by. I
foresee that we shall have interesting subjects in common. Doctor
Marillier, I have decided. I place myself unreservedly in your hands.
Save me for a few years, a few months--it may be even a few weeks.
Strange as it may seem to you, I still find life sweet. The
Immensities spread beyond, yet I cling to this prison of flesh. I know
that there is one master to whom all must bow--the master Death. When
Death gives his sentence its execution cannot be delayed. But in my
case the fiat is perhaps not yet delivered. Stay it for awhile if you
can. Have no hesitation. Act. Perform the operation you propose. Carry
out the after treatment you have described. I care not a jot for the
opinion of Ffolliot and Carus Spencer, since they do not offer me
life. They may go to the devil. They shall hear from my own lips,
however, that I consent to what they consider useless and dangerous.
Have the goodness to ring.'

A strange scene followed. The Pacha summoned, as though to his
deathbed, Mademoiselle Isądas, the first secretary, his body servant
and others of his immediate entourage, including a man of law; and in
their presence had it affirmed by the physicians that he was in full
possession of his mental faculties--a point they could not dispute.

He then, in the most courteous terms, announced his intentions, and
took leave of the physicians, who departed, indignantly repudiating
responsibility, and leaving Marillier in possession of the case.

Before the operation, the Pacha again spoke privately to Marillier,
placing in his hand a sealed packet inscribed with directions that the
enclosure should be delivered to his Majesty the Emperor of Abaria.

It is possible that I may die under the knife,' he said, 'though I do
not think it likely. Will you do me the favour of keeping this letter
until the operation is over. If successful, you will return it to me.
If not--, He paused, and for a few moments seemed to be calculating
possibilities.

'I know that the operation will be successful,' said Marillier. 'How
long you may live after it, Pacha, depends, as you have said yourself,
upon whether Death has or has not, delivered his sentence. I believe
that you will live.'

'Nevertheless,' replied the Pacha, 'I should prefer that the letter
were in your keeping. It is important, and it is of a personal and
strictly private nature. I do not care to run any risk of its being
found and sent in the ordinary official course. It must be delivered
by private messenger into my Emperor's own hands. Within the outer
covering you will find another letter addressed to the Grand
Chancellor, who is my friend, by which an audience will be assured.
You will also find a sum of money amply sufficient to cover all
professional loss and expenses incurred, but totally insufficient as
an expression of my gratitude for the fulfilment of a most sacred
trust. Will you undertake this trust?'

Doctor Marillier hesitated. He had no mind to be mixed up Abarian
state intrigues. The Pacha Eagerly waited for his reply.

'If you will permit me, Excellency, to suggest--surely, since the
document is a State matter, and of importance, your first secretary,
my cousin Ruel Bey, would be a more proper custodian than I.'

The Pacha blazed out in fury. An imprecation was smothered before he
could find utterance.

'Have I not said that it is a private and personal matter, and that I
do not wish it to reach his Majesty in the ordinary official course?
And what do you think of me? Where is your penetration? Do you not
credit me with at least some knowledge of the nature of men? Ruel Bey
is the last person I should choose for such a trust. I ask you to take
charge of this letter in order that it may run no risk of falling into
the hands of my first secretary. I have studied Ruel Bey. I know to
what heights his ambition soars. I have read his pleasure-loving
nature. He has Greek blood in his veins--'

'And I also,' quietly observed Marillier.

'But you have none of the modern Greek characteristics. Forgive me,
doctor. In my diplomatic career I have had reason to distrust Greek
subtlety. And I am an autocratic old man, unaccustomed to be
contradicted or argued with. Besides, you know I am ill--I am very
ill.'

The confession of weakness appealed to Marillier much as the
confession of fractiousness from a wayward child might appeal to one
who held the temporary place of guardian to the child. He gently put
his hand on the old man, and his touch seemed to soothe the Pacha and
to give him strength. But Marillier said nothing. He wondered whether
the Pacha was aware of the attachment between Ruel Bey and
Mademoiselle Isądas, and the old man's next words seemed to answer his
question.

'I have been watching Ruel Bey closely--more closely than he has any
idea of. I have seen the conflict between passion and ambition...and I
have seen the influence he is exercising upon Mademoiselle Isądas,'
went on the Pacha, while it struck Marillier as odd that he should
speak of his niece in so formal and indifferent a fashion.

'Let Ruel Bey marry Mademoiselle Isądas if he pleases, or let him not
marry her if he so please--assuming that it be also the pleasure of
mademoiselle to marry or not to marry Ruel Bey. That is equal. I place
no compulsion on either in their wooing. I wait to give my consent or
my refusal as conditions dictate, when the matter is referred to me.
But I may die before I am referred to. That is also equal.'

The old man had lapsed into French, a frequent habit at the Embassy,
though English was the usual medium for social converse.

'Nevertheless,' he continued, 'this is important, for I may tell you
that Ruel Bey has emissaries at the Abarian Court, and his ambition
does not stop short at the attempt to succeed me. That will be as the
Fates decree, and as his Majesty may decide; but it is important that
Ruel Bey should have no temptation placed in his way to discover the
contents of this document if I die before he and Mademoiselle Isądas
have made up their minds to marry or not to marry.'

The Pacha sank back exhausted. Clearly, he was unfit for further
discussion. Something in the old man's tone, in his cold-blooded
allusion to Rachel Isądas, in his hint that the letter affected her
destinies in connection with those of Ruel Bey, caused Marillier's
heart to leap and made him decide to accept the responsibility. He
thought it possible that Isądas Pacha also suspected the
disinterestedness of Ruel Bey's love for Rachel, and that he intended
to put that love to the test, while at the same time guarding the girl
in some manner of which Marillier could have no definite notion, but
with which the letter to the Emperor of Abaria was evidently
concerned.

'I will take your letter, Excellency,' he said. 'I feel that I may
safely accept the trust, and am prepared to fulfil it. For I am
confident that I shall not be called upon to do so, and that before
long this letter will be returned into your hands.'

* * *

Marillier's statement proved to be the case. Isądas Pacha received
back his letter as soon as the doctor pronounced him out of danger.
His convalescence, however, was slow. Even Marillier, while he
sedulously pursued the treatment which was as necessary as the
operation had been, sometimes asked himself whether he had not been
too sanguine, and whether Death were not merely awaiting a convenient
season for carrying out the already pronounced sentence. This thought
seemed vaguely also in the old man's mind. He was gay, cynical,
apparently not concerned with any idea of making his salvation,
causing thereby some uneasiness to the Catholic priest who attended
him; and yet the sense of impending finality was upon him, and often
he would preface some witty and unusually sacrilegious story with the
remark, 'Before I join the Immensities I must tell you this anecdote,
which will amuse you.' And then would follow some cleverly-pointed
profanity, which generally had the effect of driving away Nurse
Dalison and leaving the doctor alone with his patient.

Nurse Dalison was a lady trained in surgical cases, who had worked for
some time under Doctor Marillier, and had been chosen by him to
supersede the Pacha's former nurse as being possessed of a good manner
and tact, and therefore more likely than another to adapt herself to
the patient's peculiarities. He had reflected also that she might
prove an agreeable companion to Rachel, who, except for her own maid,
was without female company at the Embassy.

Nurse Dalison was graceful and sympathetic. Tall, slender and refined-
looking, she had the sensibility of a woman towards the sufferings of
man or beast, but the nerve of a man where her professional duties
were in question. She was at once practical and romantic, therefore
the luxury and social importance of the Embassy, the distinction of
the Pacha and the timid sweetness of Rachel appealed to her worldly
wisdom and to her imagination. Moreover, she was professionally
interested in the success of Doctor Marillier's methods.

One of her chief recommendations to the Pacha was that she had a good
French accent and read aloud extremely well, but Marillier was often
amused when he paid his calls to see the pained and bewildered
expression on Nurse Dalison's face as she read to the Pacha from some
one of his favourite authors, and the evident relief with which she
put down the book on the doctor's entrance. The Pacha would give a
sardonic smile from among his cushions. Upon one occasion he
remarked,--'My thanks, nurse: we'll continue later. I hope that I am
helping to assuage your thirst for Eastern knowledge. Mrs Dalison is
devoted to the East, doctor. She once nursed an English attaché
through a broken leg at Constantinople. That gave her a taste. I am
introducing her to The Arabian Nights--not the original version, bien
entendu--but a most discreet translation; and entertaining, nurse,
eh--entertaining?' 'Oh! very entertaining, Excellency. Most quaint.
Only not quite English in the way of putting things, you know,'
pleaded the nurse; then turning to Marillier, 'It is in French.
Reading things in French makes such a difference.'

The Pacha chuckled.

'Dear Mrs Grundy! She is a most curious lady, your Mrs Grundy. She
will leave the newspapers in the schoolroom; she will bowdlerise
Shakespeare; she will put the Old Testament unexpurgated into her
young daughters' hands; but she won't stand The Arabian Nights--except
in French.'

Marillier laughed and relieved Nurse Dalison's embarrassment by asking
for her report. Most days, after this was given, he remained for a
chat with Isądas.

Thus a good many hours were passed by Marillier in the Ambassador's
private sitting-room---that room at the end of the suite which
adjoined his bedroom, and which was separated from the other
apartments by folding doors and heavy velvet curtains. Here the old
man, as he got better, would sit in state, clothed in a gorgeous
dressing-gown, his red fez surmounting the keen, wrinkled and yet
indescribably-attractive face--so old and yet ever young with the
immortal youth of intellect and of a psychological capacity for
passion, scarcely weakened by the impossibility of material
gratification. To the doctor, he was a strange--occasionally a
revolting--study, as he told his stories of amours and intrigues in
the cynical manner of an Eastern sensualist turned philosopher. Then
quickly perceiving the effect he produced, Isądas would launch upon
some wholly intellectual stream of talk, astonishing Marillier by his
learning, and more especially by the grasp he had of occult subjects,
out-of-the-way bits of knowledge in relation to the properties of
plants and minerals, the meaning of old myths and superstitions, and
the practical application of these in modern medicine, which was to
Marillier a subject of unfailing fascination.

The Pacha's room was lined on one side with cabinets of Eastern
design, gem-crusted and of extraordinary value, and with bookshelves
containing rare editions, mostly of works on mysticism, as well as
many old manuscripts and parchments in Hebrew, Arabic and other
characters with which Marillier was unacquainted. He had seen such
manuscripts inscribed also as some of these were, in astrological
figures, in the library of the Medicine Moor.

On the other side of the room, flanking the fireplace, and in ironic
contrast to these treasures, were ranges of ledges on which, closely
massed, were photographs and portraits of lovely women--the
acknowledged beauties of most of the European capitals, and of others,
fairer and perhaps more frail, who presumably bad not such social
distinction. One of these, a snap-shot, taken evidently by artificial
light, of an Eastern dancer, attracted Marillier's attention. The
attitude was one of incomparable seduction, yet with nothing in it of
coarseness, while the face of exquisite Oriental loveliness had a
fascination which seemed not of the earth and yet not of heaven, but
rather of the soulless under-world. This was the idea which came into
Marillier's mind. The face seemed that of some spirit enchained to
flesh by a love which only in satisfying its mortal claims could
attain deathless peace. The Pacha did not at once answer his question
concerning the photograph; the old man's eyes took that far-away gleam
which, as Marillier had found occasion to observe, usually preluded
the revelation of a side of his nature not apparent to most people.
Marillier spoke of his own vague fancy about the photograph, and the
Pacha nodded approvingly.

'You are right. I am glad to see that you have intuition of a certain
kind. One does not often meet with it. That little picture represents
my own sudden conviction of truths I had always doubted, and which I
then realised--unfortunately too late. I'll tell you something about
it--the whole story is too long, and if it were not, I am bound to
secrecy in some of its details. You have lived in Algeria, and you
knew the Medicine Moor. Well, it is not improbable that you have heard
of a peculiar sect living in the Kabyle hills, who still worship,
according to almost prehistoric rites, the Great Generative Power in
the Universe, and who use the same symbols as are found graven on the
monoliths of Yucatan--symbols which belong to a civilisation and a
faith extinct in that region centuries before the Spanish conquest.
Have you heard of this sect?'

'I have heard of the people,' Marillier replied. 'I was interested,
just lately, in tracing the correspondence you speak of between the
hieroglyphs of Central America and those of Northern Africa. But what
has that to do with this portrait of the dancer?'

'I will explain as far as I can. Nearly twenty-five years ago, there
came into my life a phase of utter scepticism--a sense of abandonment
by all spiritual powers, whether of good or evil. The desire of my
soul had been taken from me beyond the possibility of recall, and all
other things were as nothing to me--neither God nor the devil of
greater or lesser account, for I scarcely believed in either.'

The Pacha's sepulchral voice vibrated as if it were the echo,
Marillier thought, of some bygone agony which had well-nigh rent body
and spirit asunder.

'I am not sure,' the Ambassador went on, 'that I now acknowledge God
and the devil as anything more than the opposite poles of an
unknowable force, which, for anything I can tell, may be blind,
unreasoning, relentless as its material counterpart, electricity.
Then, all was as naught to me; and yet, I would, for the mere sake of
sensation, and especially for certainty of something beyond matter,
have penetrated Hades, or pledged a phantom Helen. It was in this mood
that I fell in with some members of that particular sect I spoke of.
My curiosity, my intellect, were aroused. I was present at one of
their evocatory ceremonies, held to the strains of music which is
indescribable, and which, once and for all, made me realise the truth
of that science of vibrations which has been practised by all
occultists from time immemorial. You know that strains of music, in
varying and peculiar rhythm, played a large part in the Mysteries of
old, as well as in all necromantic ceremonial. Witness the mere modern
instances of snake jugglery and Obi-worship. Anyone who has studied
these subjects must acknowledge that phenomena can be produced through
the operation of certain vibrations of sound upon corresponding
vibrations in the unseen universe.'

'Of course,' said Marillier, 'there must be X sounds as there are X
rays. We need only the apparatus by which to test them.'

Again the Pacha nodded. His voice had now become more even, and had
its usual metallic resonance.

'Well, to go on with my story. I attended, as I said, one of the
evocatory ceremonies of that particular sect. I may not speak of the
rites, but I may say that the spectacle was one of the weirdest and
most impressive I ever witnessed, and, as you may now imagine, I had
already gone through some strange experiences of the kind. I wanted to
be convinced of the existence of something beyond matter, and I had my
wish, though not to the gratification of any personal desire. A
phantom Helen--that dancer, whose picture you see, photographed by
myself--was called forth from the vapours above earth or the deeps of
the underworld--which, I cannot tell---to prove to me the might of
those forces I spoke to you of not long ago--the two supreme forces,
Love and Will. She was doubtless an emanation from the Vital Energy
which creates and maintains life on the universe, and it was shown to
me how, by means of love and will,--the indestructible principle may
be drawn upon and used by those who have been initiated into a special
form of magic, so that by it, life can literally be infused into that
which was dead and inanimate. Had I but known the secret a few months
earlier, I, too, might have tasted, if but for one short hour, the
fruit of my heart's desire.' Again the Pacha's voice thrilled his
listener with that echo of bygone passion and pain.

'But it was too late! God or Satan mocked my unavailing agony, and if
I had never before understood the full meaning of that hackneyed
phrase, "The irony of Fate," I understood it then. With my own eyes I
beheld that fair phantom, vitalised from the central source of life,
pour living fire from her warm bosom into the cold breast of a corpse.
I saw her, in one glowing kiss upon the lips of a dead old man,
restore the dried-up mummy to youth and vigour, to the joy of life and
the ecstasy of love. So, for rapturous moments that to him and her
might well have seemed eternity, the dead man lived. The moments
passed; the phantom vanished; the dead became lifeless once more. But
to me the great secret of Nature had been revealed, and I knew the
latent power which exists in man, and by which, if he has learned the
way, he may almost master his destiny. Had I practised that power in
earlier manhood, I, too, might have called down the Promethean fire.
Had I learned the magic evocation--had I conquered my own weakness and
turned love from my tyrant to my slave--had I, in truth, loved with
such knowledge as well as such intensity, that, to secure my desire, I
could have put forth my very soul in an effort of will which neither
man nor angel nor demon might have gainsaid--oh! if I could have done
this--'

The Pacha's skinny fingers beat the coverlet in a feeble paroxysm of
excitement, and for a moment or two he seemed, as he had himself
phrased it, to be face to face with the Immensities.

'Marillier,' he resumed more quietly, 'if I could have done this, I,
too, standing by the corpse of one who, living, was to me as the
vision of distant heaven, and dead, the realisation of hell, might in
a kiss have instilled life into the inanimate form, and lifting it
breathing to my breast, have drunk of immortality! It is the mystery
of mysteries, doctor, that transfusion of life into death by the magic
of love. Ponder it. Yearn for its key--the key which you hold almost
in your hand--and by the strength of your will, wrest its secret from
God or Nature or the Devil--what matter whose it be, so that you make
it your own. But remember that, to accomplish such an end, you must
project your very soul, as it were, out of your body upon the object
of your desire. Take the prophecy of an old man who has overstepped
the border of an unknown land. The desire will be born in you--the
germ already lies in your heart; the hour of struggle will arrive, and
with it the force, if you choose to put it forth, which will give you
the mastery. Bear in mind the words of one who has failed.'

The Pacha's wrinkled eyelids drooped over his brilliant eyes, and but
for his quick breathing, he himself might have been taken for a
corpse. While he spoke strange emotions surged up in Marillier's
breast. He, too, seemed on the borderland of a region hitherto
untrodden. A fierce craving seized him and an immense regret. The
regret found utterance.

'Look at me, Excellency,' he cried. 'Compare me with such a man as,
say, Ruel Bey, your first secretary. Is it likely that I shall ever
inspire love, much less subdue it, to serve my desires, though it is
true that I have always despised its lower gratifications. The only
love I could ever feel would be one all-embracing--a blending of flesh
and spirit, and yet unsatisfying; for though I might give my all to
save the woman I loved suffering, I could scarcely dare to claim any
recompense.'

The Pacha opened his eyes and scanned the strong moved face, the
thick-set, awkward figure. As he studied Marillier a faint smile
hovered about his lips.

'That is the love which conquers,' he said. 'Wait till your time comes
and then recall my words. The hour, the desire and the knowledge will
arrive together. In my case the hour and the desire ran a race with
knowledge, and were stopped on their course by Death. Knowledge won
the goal at last, and knowledge has served this body, and has given
glory and power and a certain sense of satisfaction to a career that
would otherwise have been barren. We are told that when matter ceases
to be, it changes into a higher form. I have found the process
reversed. In my case, spirit has degenerated into matter. Twenty-five
years ago I had a soul; I too, scorned the lower loves. I understood
that spiritual love of which you speak. Then the soul died, but the
flesh flourished exceedingly. In fact, I have barely regretted the
loss of an ideal. So agreeable, indeed, has matter proved, as a
substitute for spirit, that I am extremely anxious to retard its
disintegration. And it strikes me that you are forgetting the patient,
doctor, and that my medicine is due. I had intended to-day to show you
some uncanny possessions of mine that I mean to leave you in my will
as a token of gratitude for keeping me in the world a little longer.
Another time, however. Will you ring? I am inclined to sleep. And do
you, as you pass through, ask a cup of tea from Mademoiselle Isądas,
whom you will, no doubt, find at this time in the outer salon. Should
Ruel Bey be with her, inform him, please, that this week's despatches
are to be brought to me in good time for corrections, and send him
about his business to the Chancellery.'



CHAPTER V 'I WONDER WHY'



The heavy curtains of the Pacha's sitting-room closed behind
Marillier, and with a dazed sensation, as though he had been breathing
some heady Oriental perfume, he lingered for a moment or two in the
second reception-room, which was now used as a sort of ante-room to
the Ambassador's private apartments. It was strewn with flowers, and
had the usual row of cards of inquiry laid upon the inlaid centre
table. The portičre which divided this from the further and more
generally used drawing-room, was slightly parted; he could hear the
rattle of tea-cups, the gentle tones of Mademoiselle Isądas, and the
mellow voice of Ruel Bey. So absorbed were the two, that they did not
hear the approach of Marillier, and he, standing with the curtain in
his hand, could see the scene framed as if it were a picture.

A pretty picture. The tea-table was set beneath a tall palm, of which
one of the fronds hung over the portrait of the Emperor of Abaria,
casting a shadow upon the refined features and the melancholy eyes
with their haunting, world-wearied expression. As Marillier's gaze
dropped from the Emperor's portrait to the face of the girl below it,
he was struck in a sudden and, as he thought, incongruous fashion by a
faint similarity, an indescribable alikeness in the oval contour of
both faces, and in the shape, and, he fancied, the expression of the
eyes. He could not define the likeness to himself, but accounted for
it upon the supposition that Mademoiselle Isądas must be, upon her
mother's side, of Oriental descent.

He had, of course, seen her many times since the occasion of their
first interview; indeed, it had become almost a habit that when
leaving the Pacha he should, after his afternoon visit, receive a cup
of tea at her hands; but beautiful as she had always seemed, never had
her beauty struck him so forcibly as to-day. There was a tinge of pink
upon her cheeks, and a brighter light shone in her eyes, while at the
same time, he noticed a suggestion of emotion, held in check, no
doubt, by the presence of the butler, who was only now closing the
door behind him. Marillier wondered at the sudden tightening in his
own chest as he guessed the cause of the emotion. Ruel Bey was
standing by the tea-table, his Greek head thrown a little back, his
eyes lowered towards Mademoiselle Isądas, as he held towards her in
one hand a peach, in the other a bunch of purple grapes, and asked her
which she would prefer.

She chose the peach, and he seated himself and began to peel it, while
just then Rachel perceived Marillier.

She welcomed him with her soft, friendly smile--no words. It was one
of Mademoiselle Isądas's peculiarities that her eyes and smile were
often more eloquent than her utterance. She made him his tea, Russian
fashion, as he liked it, and pressed cakes upon him--little wafers
encrusted with nougat.

'Do you know,' she said, 'these are made after a receipt I brought
with me from the convent. We were allowed to have them upon certain
fźte days, and when we had specially-favoured visitors--not that this
often happened to me.'

'So you had not many visitors?' asked Marillier, helping himself to a
wafer.

'No, not many. During all those years, they were so few that I could
count them on my fingers. Thanks, monsieur,' as Ruel Bey handed her
the peach, and with a new sensation of delight Marillier watched her
little white teeth meet in the luscious fruit.

'How is the Pacha?' asked Ruel Bey

'Better,' replied the doctor. 'A little tired just now and going off
to sleep. By the way, he asked me to tell you that he wants the
despatches brought him in good time for correction.'

Marillier did not add the last part of the Pacha's injunction. It was
not necessary, for the first secretary got up at once.

'Then I must go down to the Chancellery, for I am altogether
behindhand. A thousand thanks, mademoiselle. You will permit me to
find you here this evening when I come to the Pacha after dinner? It
would be delightful to have some music.

Marillier saw the two pairs of eyes meet. Ruel Bey's full of ardent
beseeching and of a meaning at which he could only guess: the girl's
troubled, he fancied reproachful.

'I don't know,' she answered. 'Sometimes my singing annoys Excellence
instead of pleasing him.'

'That is only when you sing Irish songs,' said Ruel Bey, lightly.
'Mademoiselle, two things puzzle me. How have you--brought up in a
foreign country--learned to sing Irish melodies with an entrain that
seems born of the very soil, and, in truth, with the faintest touch of
the Irish brogue, which is the most fascinating of all accents in a
woman's speech? And why should our cold, cynical Excellence show angry
emotion over "Love's Young Dream"--the effect of which he might be
supposed to have forgotten. But no--' and, with a whimsical shake of
the head, Ruel Bey sang softly,---

'He'll never meet A joy so sweet In all his noon of fame.

Another glance at Rachel, and the whimsical manner changed to one of
scarcely-veiled tenderness as he sang on, still more softly,---

'That hallow'd form is ne'er forgot

Which first love trac'd;

Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot

On memory's waste.

'Twas odour fled

As soon as shed;

'Twas morning's winged dream;

Oh, 'twas light that ne'er can shine again

On life's dull stream.'

A quiver passed over Rachel Isądas's sensitive features. Marillier saw
that she was thrilled to the quick by a peculiar emotional note in the
voice of Ruel Bey, and he thought of what the Pacha had said
concerning the power of musical vibrations. Then came, too, into his
mind a remembrance of what Tolstoi has written on this subject in his
novel The Kreutzer Sonata. There was silence for a few moments.
Mademoiselle Isądas, recalled by Ruel Bey's reiterated question,
uttered in a tone of daring which annoyed Marillier, said gently,---

'I cannot tell why the Pacha should have been so moved as he was the
other evening by those words. But for myself, it is not strange that I
should be able to sing Irish melodies, even with a touch of the
brogue, as you say. We had an Irish nun in the convent, and she taught
me how to sing that very song, which was one of many that I found in
an old bundle of music left me by my Irish mother.'

'Your mother?' exclaimed Marillier, startled out of his previous
theories.

'Yes; my mother was an Irishwoman,' answered Mademoiselle Isądas,
'but, of course, I cannot remember her, for she died in Algeria soon
after I was born.'

Both men gave an involuntary exclamation. To both, the mystery of the
Pacha's emotion seemed solved. But Marillier felt still a little
perplexed, and unconsciously his eyes were again lifted to the
portrait of the Emperor of Abaria. How then could he have detected the
trace of Oriental descent in the features of Mademoiselle Isądas? And
it was there! Now that he had once observed this, it appeared to him
to proclaim itself remarkably. Yet the Pacha, he knew, belonged to an
old Avaranese family.

Again, Marillier was annoyed with Ruel Bey for his daring, knowing the
thought which must be in the young man's mind as well as in his own.

'And you do not remember your father either, mademoiselle?' asked the
first secretary.

'No, answered the girl, simply. 'No one has ever spoken to me about my
father. I know nothing of him. I suppose he must have died before I
was born. That, at least, is the explanation I have given myself. When
I once asked Excellence to tell me about my father he seemed to shrink
so from the subject that I concluded it was a painful one to him and I
never asked again. After all,' she added with an unconscious cynicism,
which seemed to Marillier infinitely pathetic, 'when one has been
alone from babyhood there is no great need to distress the living by
questions about a parent for whom his child had no existence.'

'That is true,' said Ruel Bey. 'Isądas Pacha would be the first, I
imagine, to appreciate your sound philosophy. Mademoiselle, I shall
bring up my violin this evening in the hope of having some music. For
the moment, adieu.' He stooped and raised the girl's little hand to
his lips. 'Excuse me, Lucien,' he added, 'we shall meet to-morrow.'

Ruel Bey went down to the Chancellery, and Marillier Mademoiselle
Isądas were left alone. She offered him some more tea; he accepted it
mechanically and mechanically also ate some grapes she which handed
him.

'Mademoiselle Isądas,' he said suddenly, 'my cousin is more fortunate
than myself. I have never heard you sing.'

'That wish can be very easily gratified, doctor,' she answered with
the sweet friendliness she always showed him. 'But I must not sing
just now, for if the Pacha is going to sleep, it would disturb him. I
wish I could do something better than that to prove to you my
gratitude.'

'What have I done, mademoiselle, that can deserve your gratitude?'

'You have saved Excellence. His death would mean a sad loss to me.'

'And yet you are not greatly attached to your uncle,' said Marillier,
bluntly.

'Am I not? How deeply you read into people's minds! That, I suppose,
comes of your power of diagnosing patients. I have heard that it is
wonderful.'

'I am right then?'

She hesitated, but seemed compelled to frankness by his searching
eyes.

'The Pacha frightens me,' she said in a low tone. 'Sometimes he repels
me, and yet sometimes he almost fascinates me. I have often tried to
analyse my feelings towards him, and I cannot. I think that I could
love him if he only cared for me.'

'You think he does not care for you?' asked Marillier, intensely
interested in the girl's confession.

'I feel that there are moments when he positively hates me,' replied
she. 'I have never said this to anybody; not even to--' she paused and
blushed. He filled up the gap.

'Not even to Ruel Bey?'

'No,' she almost whispered.

'Are you frightened of Ruel Bey too?' he asked, with a roughness of
which he was scarcely aware till the girl's startled eyes met his own.

'Why do you ask that?' she said agitatedly. 'Is there any reason for
your question--any reason why I should not feel myself safe with Ruel
Bey?'

'So that thought has occurred to you, and there have been moments in
which you have feared the fascination of Ruel Bey?'

'Oh, that is true--that is true!' she cried. 'How is it that you know?
Doctor Marillier, there is no reason why I should fear Ruel Bey; there
can be none. Tell me that I may trust him.'

'I cannot tell you that, Mademoiselle Isądas, for I--I do not know.
Your own pure instinct must that question. Trust your instinct, and
remember what I said to you the first time we ever talked together.
Trust me also, for I will defend you against him if need be; and, if
need be, even against myself.'

'There could be no need for that,' she answered, and, as in their
first interview, a childlike faith in himself which stirred the depths
of his heart, shone from her eyes.

'Mademoiselle,' he cried, 'tell me this--only this. Do you love Ruel
Bey?'

A deep flush suffused Rachel's cheeks; her eyes dropped, and she
reared her small head with, as he fancied, something of outraged
dignity. He had the sense of virginal pride aroused in her, of
maidenly passion which had been unwarrantably laid bare.

'That,' she said, 'is a question which no one but he has any right to
ask.'

'I am answered,' said Marillier, gently, and yet with some bitterness.
'I am rebuked for my presumption as I deserve to be. And yet I have
some claim to your confidence and his; for, as I told you before, if
practical difficulties should arise to interfere with your joint
hapiness, it might be in my power to smooth them. He may be--is your
lover, your future husband; think of me, to whom he stands in nearest
blood relation, as your friend. Forgive me,' he went on, and ventured
to touch the hand which Ruel Bey had kissed. 'I am much older than
you, Mademoiselle Isądas--older than the man you love; and then, my
profession, and all the graver interests of life which it forces me to
consider, removes me from the circle of ordinary acquaintanceship,
even of ordinary friendship. Grant me its privileges; they shall not
be abused. I am deeply sympathetic with you. I long to know more of
your inner feelings. If I understood them, I might be able to help you
in circumstances we can neither of us fully foresee. The power to do
this would be a compensation for the loss of joys, which from the
conditions of my life have been forbidden me. To be of service to you,
no matter in what capacity, under what limitations, would be one of
the greatest pleasures I could know.' She was moved by his appeal, and
her slim fingers grasped his, as a child's fingers might grip the
strong hand of one whom it recognised as a protector of its weakness.
Again he was thrilled by contact with, as he phrased it, that little
bundle of nerve fibres.

'I thank you,' she said. 'I trust you, as my friend--my best friend.'

'That is agreed.'

He held her hand for a moment against his breast, and she could feel
his heart throb, but he did not kiss it as Ruel Bey had done. Then he
released it, laying it gently back upon the tea-table.

'We understand each other, and we are friends--always. Mademoiselle
Isądas,' he added in a different tone, 'it seems to me that you have
not many friends.'

'You are right,' she answered. 'I have scarcely any friends, as you
would use the word. None at all in London.'

'And yet you must have made friends since you came to the Embassy,
among the English ladies whom the Pacha knows.'

She shuddered slightly.

'I think I must be different in my thoughts and feelings from the
ladies whom the Pacha knows. And you are mistaken if you think that
they come to see me at the Embassy. Of course they come very often;
but they talk chiefly to the Pacha and to the secretaries, and they
admire the trophies and the leopard outside, and the Abarian shields,
and ask to have the inscriptions translated; and they say it is all
very foreign and interesting, and they look at me strangely, and some
patronise me in a way I do not like--as though I were a part of the
foreign mise-en-scčne--odd and rather interesting too. But that is
all. They do not make friends with me.'

Marillier mentally went over his own list of women acquaintances. He
too had few intimate friends. He did not know one woman of the world
whom he could ask to befriend Mademoiselle Isądas. He regretted that
he had lived like a hermit absorbed in his profession and his books.

Mademoiselle Isądas went on,---

'There has scarcely been time to know anyone intimately. It is only
three months since I came to London. That was the middle of the
season, when everyone was busy. Then we went to Scarborough and the
Pacha got ill. But it does not matter. I am used to feeling lonely;
only I can't help missing the convent life sometimes and the dear
nuns.'

'Yet that life must have been cramped and depressing for one so young,
who was not a nun,' he said.

'Cramped and depressing?' She gave a little laugh. It seems to me that
London life--its banal fashionable life--is much more cramped and
depressing. My nuns were not at all the kind of persons you might
imagine. They were full of intellectual interests. The Reverend Mother
was wonderful. She had been a great lady; she knew the world and yet
was not of it. Many well-born girls were educated at the convent; and
the Reverend Mother and the Sisters were quite proud when their girls
made good marriages. You see we were not out of the reach of Parisian
echoes.' 'I see. It seems strange to me that you were not one of those
fated to make what you call a good marriage. Did you never go away
from the convent?'

Rachel blushed slightly.

'I stayed with my friends in their homes sometimes; but I had no
thought of marriage. I could not marry unless I loved. It would have
been impossible for me to marry as some of the girls did. All were not
happy; the outside brilliance meant very little in reality. I had one
or two friends who wrote to me afterwards, and they were miserable--
miserable. I always said to myself that, at least, should not be my
fate. At one time I thought I had a religious vocation, but it was not
so. The Reverend Mother herself questioned me and pointed out to me
that I did not understand my own nature and that I should be making a
mistake. She told me that I should wait and cling to my ideals and
hold myself apart till the time came, if it were God's will that it
should come, when my heart would be really touched.'

The girl's eyes dropped; she took up from a worktable near her a doll
she had been dressing, no doubt, when Ruel Bey interrupted the
occupation, and her fingers played with it in a manner intensely
feminine.

'This is for the Children's Fete at the convent on New Year's Day,'
she said. 'I used always to dress the dolls. The Sisters said I did it
better than any of them, and I am going to send a boxful this year.
Each doll is to represent a flower. This'--and she held up the dainty
wax thing for him to admire--'is one of the family of anemones. There
will be red and pink, and pale and dark blue, and mauve and purple.
You know how the anemones grow under the olive trees in the South?
There were woods and olive groves round my convent.'

'Where was your convent?' asked Marillier.

'Not very far from Toulon. The Convent of the Assumption. You may have
heard of it?'

'No,' said Marillier, touched and amused by the girl's simplicity.
What should he know about convent schools for girls?

'I thought it possible,' she said, 'because, for one thing, the music
was so famous. People used to come a long way to the services. And
there were lay Sisters who went about as nurses, and who were sent for
to nurse sick people--Catholics--at Hyčres and some of those winter
places. And beside, I heard you telling the Pacha that you had lived
in Algiers, and this convent was connected with one in Algiers, where
I was taken as a little baby and kept till I was old enough to be sent
over to the school.'

'You were born in Algeria,' said Marillier, thoughtfully. 'And your
mother was an Irishwoman? You don't remember your mother, Mademoiselle
Isądas?'

'I have told you; she died a fortnight after I was born.'

'So the Pacha has been your only guardian--your only relative? He
ought not to hate you, mademoiselle. That is a strange fancy of
yours.'

'I cannot help it,' she answered in the low, timid voice in which she
spoke of her relations with the Ambassador. 'Do you remember my
telling you that I had a sort of second-sight, something like that
which you described to me by which you know whether your patients will
live or die.'

'Stay!' he said. 'I spoke too confidently. I told you at first that I
knew in connection with the Pacha. Now I am obliged to tell you
frankly that I cannot say I know.'

'Do you mean,' she said, with a startled glance up at him from the
doll she was still caressing with her fingers, 'do you mean that you
are not certain whether Excellence will live or die?'

'Yes, I am obliged to say that I am not certain. I hope and think he
may live for several years yet, but my power of diagnosis in his case
seems curiously blurred. I cannot say I know.'

There was a little silence.

'I am very, very sorry,' she murmured distressfully. 'Do not think too
much of it. I will do all that my medical science enables me to do.
Beyond that, trust and wait. I was obliged to say this, because I must
be true to you, and I could not let you remain under even the
slightest misapprehension. But I bade you trust me. Trust me still.'

'Yes, I will trust you.'

'And now go on telling me. You spoke of your inward vision in regard
to your feeling that the Pacha had no real love for you.'

'Love! Oh, no, no. It has never been love, but I have interested him.
He has felt, too, that he has a duty to perform towards me. I have
read all that in his face. It was the sense of duty that made him come
and see me when I was twelve years old. He was then Abarian Ambassador
to the Court of Italy. I shall never forget the expression of his eyes
when he took my hand and looked into my face.'

'He was moved at the sight of you?'

'Yes, strangely moved. I could tell that. And he seemed to be
searching for something. I wondered afterwards if he was trying to
find a likeness in me to somebody he had loved--or hated. I wondered
if that could have been my father, and if he had hated him. For, oh!
Doctor Marillier, he did find something which made him hate me.'

'Surely you must have been mistaken. Or, if there were that momentary
feeling, it must have passed?'

'Yes, it passed. After a little while he became, just--Excellence, as
you know him, only younger and handsomer. But the strange thing is,
Doctor Marillier, that even when I knew that he hated me I did not
hate him. I was sorry for him. Every time he came to see me, though I
shrank from him at the time, I always felt sorry when he went away.
And when at last, he sent for me to come here, though I was miserable
at leaving the Reverend Mother and the Sisters, and the dear old happy
life, I was glad in a curious way--glad at the thought of being with
him and of perhaps doing something to make his life less lonely. He
has never, you know, had wife or child of his own.'

'He has had other things,' said Marillier.

'Oh, yes, he has had power and grandeur and the confidence of his
Emperor and the friendship of princes. He has had everything, I
suppose, that a successful diplomatist could have desired. But what
has it availed him now that he is going into the darkness? And he
loves life.'

'Yes, he loves life,' repeated Marillier, his mind going back to the
talk he had had with the Ambassador a little while back. 'I will do
what I can, mademoiselle, to preserve his life for him.'

'I should have liked,' she said thoughtfully, 'to make the darkness
lighter for poor Excellence, but he still hates me, Doctor Marillier;
he hated me the other evening when I sang that Irish song. And I
wonder why! I wonder why!'

Marillier echoed the words 'I wonder why!'



CHAPTER VI MANDRAGORA



The Pacha did not till some time later fulfil his promise to show
Marillier the legacy of uncanny possessions to which he had referred.
October was advancing. The autumnal mists were creeping over parks and
squares, and leaves were yellowing and fluttering to earth. London was
beginning to fill again, and often, when Marillier paid his semi-
professional afternoon call, he found the outer reception-rooms at the
Embassy fairly full of visitors, the most important and attractive of
whom were admitted one by one to the further sanctum, where the
Ambassador, prepared by a careful process of massage, curling, dyeing,
and other mysterious toilet arrangements, carried out by Soranzo, his
accomplished body-servant, sat in invalid state, and made himself
still interesting and agreeable to the charming women who sought his
society. He was sprightly, cynical and witty, as they had always found
him, and yet scarcely one left him without feeling in an indefinable
way that Death's wings hovered over the chamber.

In Marillier's mind this feeling was present at all times. He could
not say, medically speaking, that his cure had not been successful.
There was no flaw to detect. The special treatment upon which he and
the other doctors had disagreed, appeared to be doing its work, but
Marillier was not satisfied and could feel no assurance within himself
that the old man might not at any time collapse. He was unremitting in
his attentions. The treatment was carried out under his own
supervision by a young medical student whom he had himself trained and
who had been his assistant in the operation, and by Nurse Dalison, in
whom he had full confidence. These two, devoted to Marillier,
believing in his methods and jealous of his professional reputation,
were, like himself, perfectly aware that these slightly unorthodox
methods might be called in questionn overtly, if not openly, by the
London faculty if it should not be that the Ambassador's complete
recovery put the seal on their efficacy.

At that time also, certain diplomatic complications called for greater
activity in the Chancellery and more frequent communication with the
Abarian capital. An affair of moment in the East, concerning the
treatment of Christian subjects upon a province in the dominions of
the Emperor of Abaria, gave Ruel Bey an opportunity for advancing
himself at the seat of government, upon which the Pacha effusively
complimented his first secretary, but which Marillier divined he
secretly resented. For it happened that Ruel Bey had been formerly a
resident of the place in question, and had a peculiar knowledge of the
intricacies of the affair which was at the moment specially valuable.
He had received a message of commendation from his Imperial master,
which the Pacha duly delivered; and was frankly exultant, informing
Marillier that his promotion was now certain, and that it would not
surprise him were he, in the event of the Pacha's death, to be
appointed his successor. Political intrigue and press of diplomatic
work seemed just then to have thrown into the background his suit for
the hand of Mademoiselle Isądas and Marillier found himself wondering
whether Rachel Isądas, who was not officially recognised be considered
a fitting mate by the ambitious embryo ambassador. Rachel looked pale
and wretched, and seemed to shrink more than ever from touch with the
world around her. Once or twice, Marillier found her dispensing tea to
the Pacha's visitors, but it was with a shy reserve, a timid hauteur,
which accentuated her equivocal position, since it showed her
consciousness of it.

No one doubted that there was some tie between her and the Pacha, but
to all, it was clear that the Pacha himself felt no anxiety that her
claim should be recognised, also that often her presence was
distasteful to him. He did not seem at any time to greatly desire her
company, and almost the only occasions upon which she appeared to give
him any pleasure were when, after the reading over of despatches and
transaction of the day's business with Ruel Bey, he requested that the
curtains between the rooms should be opened, so that his vexed soul,
like that of Saul, might be soothed by her music, which, oddly enough,
he preferred to be of a devotional character. Rachel never again sang
Irish melodies, but she and Ruel Bey would perform some portion of a
stately mass, the two voices blending, or he accompanying Rachel on
the violin.

More than once these performances were timed so that Marillier might
hear them, and Rachel would smile up at him as he entered and begin
again, as though in friendly recognition of his right to be considered
and of the claims of their compact of friendship. When he went back to
his own house in Harley Street after these evening visits to the
Embassy, Marillier would sometimes ask himself whether his pain did
not counterbalance his pleasure; yet he made no attempt to cut them
short, and would not for the world have missed the experience.

It was clear, however, that Ruel Bey had made no formal proposal to
the Pacha for Mademoiselle Isądas's hand in marriage.

* * *

Early one afternoon in the beginning of October, Marillier found the
Pacha standing by one of the bookcases peering at the titles of some
volumes bound in old leather. One of these he had just taken from its
place.

'Can I help you?' asked Marillier. 'I see that you are looking up
authorities.'

The Pacha returned to his chair, still holding the volume.

'Do you know this?' he asked. 'It should be in your line of study.'

Marillier took the book from the shrivelled hand which trembled with
its weight.

'The Herball of John Gerarde, 1636,' he read. 'Yes, of course I know
it. What shall I look up for you?'

'I want to find a passage which relates to a belief held by some
ancient writers concerning the mandrake,' he answered. 'I mean the
property it was supposed to possess of restoring life to the dying.'

'I don't know that superstition,' replied Marillier. 'I thought the
qualities of the root were thought to mainly aphrodisiac.'

'And you look upon the whole thing as most people do, who have had no
personal experience of the matter,' said the Pacha, a note of
irritation in his voice. 'To such people the mandrake is a mere peg
for superstitious legend, as mythological as the ingredients of
Circe's potion, with which some old writer identifies it. They forget
that there has never been a myth or a mythological being, without some
foundation of fact.'

'I agree with you,' replied Marillier. 'It has always been my opinion
that myth never gathered round any production of nature unless there
were in it something to justify the superstition. That question of
occult properties in plants and minerals has always interested me.
Take the wychhazel, for instance, medicinally, and in the shape of the
divining rod. Take some of the ancient prescriptions in which the
virtue of certain plants consisted in their being gathered under
particular phases of the moon, and in which human and animal
ingredients were used, with magical formulę. Modern science has left
out magical incantations, but it restores exhausted nerve force with a
decoction of rabbits' brains, and it employs the blood of bullocks,
the thyroid gland and other organic preparations, in the treatment of
diseases. As for the moon, its influence on vegetable and animal life
cannot be disputed.'

'You remind me,' said the Pacha, 'of that Sclavonic superstition--if
you call it so--as to the power of a three-leaved fern grown and
gathered with the aid of magical incantations on St John's day at
midnight. You know the idea that St John's plants attract wandering
spirits, and that other special plants repel them. Then there are the
miracle leaves of the Catholic Church, which have made cures as well
authenticated as any in the Acts of the Saints, and the holy tree of
Kumbum, which grows leaves printed with sacred Thibetan characters. Do
you know the plant drosera, which is affected, even at a distance, by
particular metals? One might multiply examples. Why did the Sibyl of
Cumę wear a wreath of verbena--a plant that was much used in the
temples to stimulate imagination? Have you ever, by the way, tried it
on sensitives? Why did the Delphic Pythoness chew laurel to produce
ecstasy? Why were beans forbidden to the initiates in the Eleusinian
Mysteries, and a special injunction laid upon the Flamen Dialis not so
much as to mention them? And then you remember the Greek superstition
that beans hidden under manure become living beings?'

'That brings us back to the mandrake,' said Marillier, 'and the old
idea that it is engendered under earth, of the corpse of a person put
to death for murder. Of course,' he went on, 'we all know the medical
properties ascribed to the mandrake. I have often wondered that the
root has not a more prominent place in the modern pharmacopoeia.
Chloroform has superseded it as an anęsthetic, but I have sometimes
thought of verifying the ancients' use of it in surgical operations.'

'How can you suppose that a root of which sorcerers made philtres and
that witches fashioned into familiars, would be welcomed into the
respectable modern British pharmacopoeia?' said the Pacha, sneeringly.
'Have you seen a genuine mandrake? Most of the little fetiches one
buys in the East have been faked.'

'That is clear,' replied Marillier. 'No, I have often wished that I
could have seen one gathered.'

'And heard it shriek,' said the Pacha in a peculiar tone. 'I have done
so, and I can show you one that I plucked from the earth with my own
hands.'

'And did not die after it?' said Marillier, smiling. 'That's the
superstition, isn't it, in the Lebanon?'

'No, I did not die,' answered the Pacha. He was silent, and Marillier
seemed to see in the old man's face an almost diabolic suggestiveness.
'I lived and flourished,' he added with a queer little laugh. 'The
mandrake, you know, is said to bring love and health and fortune to
its possessor. My mandrake is my fetish. I confess to the idolatry.
Some day I'll tell you my story. Now, as the thing interests you, I'll
show you my little oracle. That is perhaps the most uncanny of the
possessions which will be yours when I die. May it serve you as
faithfully as it has served me.'

While he spoke, the Pacha unlocked a cabinet near, but seemed to
hesitate in his intention, and finally pulling out a tray of
curiously-shaped stones, began show them one by one to Marillier, and
to utter fascinating discourse on the virtues of the snake stone, of
the mysterious smalagrana which is perforated as though by invisible
worms and is said to possess the gift of prophecy, also the animated
ophite that the Greeks interrogated, and a miraculous stone found in
the Lebanon, whose voice in answer to a seer's invocations resembles
that of a new-born babe.

All these things and others which Isądas exhibited were remarkable and
most rare, but Marillier's fancy was set upon the mandrake, and he
again begged the Pacha to let him see it.

The old man seemed still to half repent his promise. It was perfectly
evident that he regarded his fetich as something sacred; and Marillier
began to speculate fantastically on other legends he had read
concerning the power of the mandrake to induce insanity.

Presently, with a solemnity which contrasted with the wildness of his
eyes and the fearsome trembling of his claw-like fingers as they
fumbled in a dark recess at the back of the cabinet, the Ambassador
drew out a box which appeared to be of gold, of Eastern workmanship,
and to be inscribed with Arabic characters. He touched a secret spring
cunningly concealed beneath an uncut topaz, which formed part of a
design in cabalistic figures ornamenting the four corners of the box,
carefully calling Marillier's attention as he did so to the special
stone covering the spring, and bidding him impress its position upon
his memory. The lid flew open, revealing a piece of fine silken tissue
laid over the vaguely-defined outline of what seemed to be a doll
within. Isądas's fingers trembled even more as he touched the fabric,
and the pallor of his face increased. He looked almost afraid to lift
the coverlet. When he did so, there lay exposed a strange little brown
image, a root of the potato species distorted into human shape, with
grotesquely human features, nose, lips, the indication of eyes, and
hairy filaments falling from the sides of the head and forming a kind
of beard upon the shrivelled jaw and chin. The creature appeared a
distinct miniature effigy of a man. The shape of the limbs was clearly
traceable, and two little brown tentacles of arms with rudimentary
hands lay, one by the side and the other half over the breast. Bits of
the earth from which it had been torn, still clung in the indentations
of the shape, and on the top of the head, mingling with the tufts of
hair, were the shrivelled remains of a stalk which had been removed or
had mouldered away.

Marillier examined the thing with intense curiosity, at the same time
revolted by its quasi--human appearance. He was startled by an
exclamation from the Pacha--a sound resembling a groan of despair. The
old man was bending close over the box, peering down into it with an
anxiety that had brought drops of sweat to his forehead beneath the
red fez he always wore.

'Do you see--' he gasped. 'Does anything strike you?'

'What?' asked Marillier. 'I see a vegetable monstrosity which is more
extraordinarily human than I could have imagined possible in a root
plucked straight out of the ground. Why should it cause you any
disquietude, Excellency?'

'Why!' repeated Isądas, 'why! Because--can you not see? It is alive!'
And in truth, as Marillier looked at it, one of the little tentacles
seemed to move, and the mummy-like breast to flutter slightly.

'I have not dared to open this box since I was taken ill,' the
Ambassador went on in the same horror-stricken accents. 'I knew that
as the root gave me its life, so, when my life dwindled, its own would
return to it again. See! See! The skin has filled out! It seems
fleshy, soft, pulsating as when I gathered it, not the shrivelled
inanimate thing it was three months ago. Marillier, my doom is fixed.
Death's fiat has gone forth. You have deceived yourself and not all
your science can save me. It fails, and that of the Medicine Moor
himself, if he were alive now, would fail, even as it did before in
the hour of my greater desolation. Life! life!' the old man cried,
stretching out his arms as though beseeching an inexorable deity. 'Is
all to end--to vanish like the morning glory, to rot away like dead
autumn leaves? Must the soulless shell of me join the Wandering Ones,
hungering in vain for the mortal joys they have lost?'

The Pacha staggered and sank into a chair, his eyes closed, his frame
shaking. Suddenly, in deep sepulchral tones, which seemed those of
some strange spirit in possession of his feeble frame, he gave forth
the Biblical utterance, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?'

His breathing grew laboured, and Marillier, fearing failure of the
heart's action, administered a reviving draught, and supporting him to
his couch, laid him upon the cushions.

After a few minutes the old man recovered his ordinary speech and
consciousness. His eyes turned upon Marillier with their usual alert
gleam, and in obedience to his injunction the doctor rose, and sharply
closing the lid of the jewelled box, put it back into the cabinet.

'Excellency, we must have no more of this,' he said. 'Your nerves are
shaken; you have imagined what is not. Put the mandrake out of your
thoughts. Forget your superstitious fancies, for they will retard your
recovery. The root has no more life in it than a potato would have
which had been gathered--how many years?'

'Twenty-five years, all but two weeks,' replied the Pacha. 'You
forget, my friend, that the germ of life is in the potato as it is in
the grain of corn which for six thousand years may have been enclosed
in a mummy case. Life is everywhere--in everything save in the
putrefying body of man, and out of that, arises new life in lower
form. Life is the one all-pervading essence, and the aim of all magic
has been to master the secret by which it can be concentrated, re-
created and renewed--the secret that has ever eluded my efforts, and
that for me must now remain unsolved. Marillier,' he went on, with
fatalistic conviction, 'mark my words. I shall die on the anniversary
of the day on which I plucked that mandrake root in the hills behind
Milianah.'

'Excellency,' said Marillier, 'you have talked to me of the power of
will to accomplish what it pleases. Exercise your own will, and
dismiss that phantom fancy. Otherwise, it will take hold of you, and
possibly fulfil itself. Remember what you said to me not long ago of
the capacity inherent in man, by which he may ally himself with subtle
forces of the universe.'

'I spoke of two Forces,' replied the Ambassador. 'One is omnipotent,
the other subservient to it, and yet its master. Have you forgotten?
They were Love and Will. Love is of two kinds, Marillier, the lower
and the higher. It has two forms, the spiritual and the material. For
me, twenty-five years ago, the spiritual part of love ceased to
exist--nay, I never gained it. It vanished in the hour when I might
have made it mine. What was left to me? The pride of life, the lust of
the flesh, of which that root--my fetich, my familiar, is a sort of
degraded personation. The lust of the flesh dies--it may be to live
again in subtler form a Tantalus existence, I know not--I scarcely
care; and the pride of life is extinguished. There is no use in
telling me to dismiss my phantom fancy, for it is no fancy, but a
reality that has made me its slave. I am better now, and let me talk;
it clears my brain. Listen, and I will tell you the story of how I
plucked that mandrake root.'



CHAPTER VII THE GATE OF GHOSTS



Marillier had seated himself by the couch. He felt the old man's
pulse, which was beating more steadily, and seeing that it was wisest
to humour him, moved himself also by extreme curiosity, he asked the
Ambassador to proceed.

Isądas Pacha put his hands over his eyes for a minute or two, and his
mouth quivered, as with past anguish re-born in his memory. When he
dropped his hands again, they fidgeted and picked at the embroidered
rug which Marillier had laid over his knees, while he spoke in a tone
at first low and monotonous, but which gradually deepened, filling his
listener with a sense of tragedy.

'Twenty-five years ago, come two weeks from now,' began Isądas, I was
wandering in the Kabyle country among the hills behind Milianah. You
know that district and the wildness of it?'

Marillier nodded.

'I don't suppose, however, that you have been to an old Moorish
fortress perched on the edge of a precipice called Bab-el-Khāyalāt,
otherwise the Gate of Ghosts? No, it is not likely. That place was my
headquarters during some weeks of delirious seeking--I can think of no
better phrase to describe my mood. I was seeking from man, nature, or
the devil, after a clue which should guide me in my own flesh, or
through the Gate of Ghosts, to the kingdom of the dead, and so satisfy
me that there was some existence beyond the material. It was to one of
those days and nights of frenzied search that the experience of which
I once told you--the photograph of that wraith-dancer--belongs. What
did I find? Matter, always matter--in subtler form, capable of
revivification, of assuming some former shape for a greater or lesser
space of time, and of being resolved again into its primal elements--
but still matter, always matter. Beyond it, only the secret of
recreation, revivification, which is outside the ken of ordinary
humanity, and which, all my life, has baffled me. Don't ask me to
dwell in detail upon that time of crisis. A crushing sorrow had
befallen me. You have heard me allude to it, and perhaps before I die
I may tell you what that sorrow was. Yes,' the Ambassador added, as
though a new thought had struck him, 'it will be necessary that I
should do so before the end comes. At this moment I need only speak of
its effects. For some nights following the blow, I lay in a merciful
stupor; then came the maddening restlessness, during which for nights
and nights I never closed my eyes, but laid down my wearied body
drugged with some narcotic, only to find my brain more and more
active, and my limbs twitching with the craving for movement. And then
I used to get up and stride along the ramparts of the castle
overhanging a deep gorge, scarcely able to restrain my longing to
throw myself down and end my torments. Nothing except the dread that
they would not cease, and that I should be condemning myself to a
fiercer hell, kept me back. So I watched for dawn in order that I
might again tramp the mountains and forests in the vain hope of
lulling mental pain.

'I was mad in those days, Marillier; at least, a continuance of them
would have driven me quite out of my senses, or I should have died
from sheer bodily exhaustion.

'One late afternoon I came upon country unlike any that I knew in
those parts. It was on one of the almost inaccessible spurs of
Khāyal--you know the mountain of course?'

Marillier nodded again. 'I have seen it from a distance.'

'Bab-el-Khāyalāt faces it on a jutting promontory, immensely high,
which commands all the plain of the Bahira; it must have been an
impregnable position in old days. There's a wild ravine between. One
early dawn I started from the ramparts and climbed down the ravine up
the opposite precipice--a feat for an antelope, but I was a good
mountaineer in those days. I lost myself on Khāyal--wandered for hours
in the forest that goes round her middle, then was stopped by another
deep gorge, which I was obliged to head in order to carry out my idea
of making the half circuit of the mountain and coming down into a
village that I knew. There was a stiff piece of Climbing, then I
rounded a volcanic sort of knoll and found myself with my back to
Khāyal's hump, on a gently sloping hill, which bordered desert land
and faced westward, where the sun lay like a red ball on a bank of
angry clouds. I can see the place now as though the whole scene had
been photographed on my memory. The country had an appearance of
peculiar desolation. The hillside undulated so that it seemed ploughed
into irregular furrows, and the ground was grassless and of a greyish
colour. It looked in the distance as though ashes had been vomited
upon it, and rose here and there in small Protuberances, which, when
you trod upon them, crumbled beneath your feet.

'There was no grass, I said, but spread sparsely along the sides of
the furrows were strange plants--low tufts of big fleshy leaves, green
enough to make the soil almost white in contrast. A thin forest of
trees grew upon the hill, spreading down a great way and slanting to
the sun. They were queer trees, Which cast weird shadows, a sort of
pine, but quite unlike the straight pyramidal pines you know on Zakkar
and the mountains in that district. These trees were gnarled and
twisted, looking hundreds of years old; a kind of distorted umbrella
pine with no foliage except a crest at the top, and with great naked
boughs beneath--misshapen, witch-like limbs of a livid grey, for the
bark had peeled off from age. These stretched out, as though they were
the arms of a host of monstrosities, forking at the ends into huge
fingers that I fancied were pointed at me in derision.

'I flung myself beneath one of these trees--almost a skeleton, with
only a half-withered bunch of foliage on the top, and white twisted
branches, quite bare. It was on the edge of a bank of the grey,
crumbly earth, and half way down the bank grew two or three clumps of
those odd-looking plants I have described. My legs tottered so that I
could walk no further; my whole body was utterly weary, my brain
dazed, and yet the anguish of my grief was keener at that moment than
it had been since the hour of my first desolation. A new and even more
horrible despair seized me now. Marillier, do you know what it is to
yearn for physical pain, so that you could gash yourself, bruise
yourself, if only you might thus still for a moment the inward
torture? That was how I felt then. I remember that I dug my nails into
the palms of my hands till the blood spurted. I beat my limbs against
the ground which offered them no resistance, and dashed my head
against the skeleton trunk of a tree behind me. There was something in
the atmosphere of the place which drove me to frenzy--the black
shadows of the trees, the eldritch shapes of them gibbering at me, the
clouds every now and then coming over the face of the sun and making
an eerie darkness, the feeling of electricity in the air, and the low
rumble of thunder. A wind got up and came in gusts, making a rattling
in the dead branches that reminded me of chains and gibbets, gusts
that moaned and wailed in the pine crests overhead. The trees tossed
and bent beneath each heavier blast, and their crackling and shrieking
sounded to my tortured imagination like fiends shouting in derisive
laughter.

'A blasphemous wrath overcame me. In my rage I upbraided God for
having deserted me, and I called upon Satan to give me, out of the
treasures of his kingdom, at least forgetfulness--since Heaven denied
me that boon. Out upon that desolate expanse of hill and forest and
desert plain beyond, I hurled unholy imprecations. And the low growls
of thunder rebuked me, and the devils' chorus which the wind made,
answered me with what I fancied promises of sacrilegious gifts...'

Isądas stopped. His eyes were fixed and glaring, and he seemed quite
unconscious of Marillier's presence. He was talking to himself, and
all the time his hand plucked uneasily at the coverlet, as is the way
with a man in a fever. Suddenly he threw out his arms again in a
paroxysm of blind anger, and brought them sharply back, the clenched
hands striking the couch upon which he reclined. An oath burst from
his pallid lips. The agony of remembrance seemed more than he could
bear.

Marillier waited, spellbound, not daring to check by a word this
extraordinary ebullition of pent-up feeling. Presently the old man's
face ceased working, his voice calmed and sank, it had an awed accent,
and was hardly more than a whisper.

'The wind dropped. There came a stillness--the stillness you must have
felt before a storm bursts. You know how strangely distant thunder
sounds in that brooding quiet--how it rumbles and reverberates at
intervals. How terrible it is! How supernatural! You've seen the livid
glare of forked lightning when it darts out of the blackness, cleaving
the clouds, and piercing down into the forest. I thought then--I
remembered--'

Isądas's eyes softened as he seemed to gaze beyond the walls of the
room out through the mists of the past. Presently he recited in
rhythmic tones,---

'"And ever and anon some bright white shaft Burned through the pine-
tree roof, here burned and there, As if God's messenger through the
close wood screen Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture..."

'Bah! I never could recollect English poetry. That bit has stuck,
because there was a woman---I once knew a woman who used to read
Browning. She read me those lines...It was the last time. We were
sitting in the open court of an old Moorish palace--our summer
parlour. It was roofed with roses and bougainvillea. I remember she
had some of the flowers in her left hand; she held the book with her
right. There was a fountain splashing--I used to think her laugh was
like the trickling of the water. The scent of the orange blossoms came
from the old harem garden; she would never go into that harem
garden...'

The Pacha stopped; he had been talking as though he were in a trance,
his eyes fixed on vacancy. Marillier recalled him.

'Was the palace in Algeria?' he asked.

Isądas started. 'Eh? The palace! It was not a palace altogether. It
had been a fortress--the place I told you