Visionaries Part 11

I leaned back in my chair, wondering whether I should laugh or look solemn. He noted my indecision, and his eyes twinkled--they were the blue-gray of the Irish, the eyes of a seer or an amiable ironist.

"Listen! but first let us get some strong cigars. Garcon!" As we smoked our panatelas he related this history:--

"You ask me if I believe in an Antichrist, thereby betraying your slender knowledge of the Scriptures--you will pardon the liberty! I may refer you not only to John's Epistles, to the revelations of the dreamer of Patmos, but to so many learned doctors of the faith that it would take a week merely to enumerate the t.i.tles of their works all bearing on the mysterious subject. Our Holy Mother the Church has held aloof from any doctrinal p.r.o.nouncements. The Antichrist has been predicted for the past thousand years. I recall as a boy poring over the map of the world which a friend of my mother had left with her. This lady my father called 'the angel with the moulting wings,' because she was always in an ecstatic tremor over the second coming of the Messiah.

She would go to the housetop at least once every six months, and there, with a band of pious deluded geese dressed in white flowing robes, would inspect the firmament for favourable signs. Nothing ever happened, as we know, yet the predictions sown about the borders of that strange-looking chart have in a measure come true.

"There were the grimmest and most resounding quotations from the Apocalypse. 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen!' hummed in my ears for many a day. And the pale horse also haunted me. What would I have given to hear the music of that 'voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunder.' I mean the 'harpers harping with their harps' the 'new song before the throne, before the four beasts and the elders.' It is recorded that 'no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty _and_ four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.' That is a goodly mult.i.tude. Let us hope we shall be of it.

Learned Sir Thomas Browne asked what songs the sirens sang. I prefer to hear that wonderful 'harped' song.

"But I wander. The fault lies in that wondrous map of the world, with its pictured hordes of Russians sweeping down upon Europe and America like a plague of locusts, the wicked unbaptized Antichrist at the head of them, waving a cross held in reversed fas.h.i.+on. Don't ask me the meaning of this crazy symbolism. The sect to which my mother's friend belonged--G.o.d bless her, for she was a dear weak-minded lady--must have set great store by these signs. I admit that as a boy they scared me.

Sitting here now, after forty years, I can still see those cryptograms.

However, to my tale. About ten years ago I was in Paris, and in my capacity as Monsignor I had to attend a significant gathering at the emba.s.sy of the Russian amba.s.sador in this city of light." He waved his left hand, from which I caught the purple fire of amethyst.

"It was a notable affair, and I don't mind telling you now that it was largely political. I had just returned from a secret mission at Rome, and I was forced to mingle with diplomatic people. Prince Wronsky was the representative of the Czar at that time in France, a charming man with a flavour of _diablerie_ in his speech. He was a fervent Greek Catholic, like most of his countrymen, and it pleased him to fence mischievously with me on the various dogmas of our respective faiths.

He called himself _the_ Catholic; I was only a Roman Catholic. I told him I was satisfied.

"On this particular night he was rather agitated when I made my salutations. He whispered to me that madame the princess had that very day presented him with a son and heir. Naturally I congratulated him.

His restlessness increased as the evening wore on. At last he beckoned to me--we were very old friends--to follow him into his library. There he hesitated.

"'I want you to do me a favour, an odd one; but as you are known to me so long I venture to ask it. Do go upstairs and see my boy--' His tone was that of entreaty. I smiled.

"'Dear prince, I am, as a priest, hardly a judge of children. But if you wish it--is there anything wrong with the little chap's health?'

"'G.o.d forbid!' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed and piously crossed himself. We went to the first _etage_ of his palace--he was gorgeously housed--and there he said:--

"'Madame is in another wing of our apartments--go in here--the child is attended by the nurse.' With that he pushed me through a swinging door and left me standing in a semi-lighted chamber. I was very near ill temper, I a.s.sure you, for my position was embarra.s.sing. The room was large and heavily hung with tapestries. A nurse, a hag, a witch, a dark old gypsy creature, came over to me and asked me, in Russian:--

"'Do you wish to see his Royal Highness the King of Earth and Heaven?'

Thinking she was some stupid _moujik's_ wife, I nodded my head seriously, though amused by the exalted t.i.tles. She put up a thin hand and I tiptoed to a cradle of gold and ivory--it certainly seemed so to my inexperienced eyes--the nurse parted the curtains, and there I saw--I saw--but my son, you will think I exaggerate--I saw the most exquisite baby in the universe. You laugh at an old bachelor's rhapsody! In reality I don't care much for children. But that child, that supreme morsel of humanity, was too much for me. I stood and stared and stood and stared, and all the while the tiny angel was smiling in my eyes, oh!

such a celestial smile. From his large blue eyes, like flowers, he smiled into my very soul. I was chained to the floor as if by lead.

Every fibre of my soul, heart, and brain went out to that little wanderer from the infinite. It was a pathetic face, full of suppressed sorrow--_Dieu_! but he was older than his father. I found my mind beginning to wander as if hypnotized. I tried to divert my gaze, but in vain. Some subtle emanation from this extraordinary child entered my being, and then, as if a curtain were being slowly lowered, a mist encompa.s.sed my soul; I was ceding, I felt, the immortal part of me to another, and all the time I was smiling at the baby and the baby smiling back. I remember his long blond hair, parted in the middle and falling over his shoulders; but even that remarkable trait for an infant a few hours old did not puzzle me, for my sanity was surely being undermined by the persistent gaze of the boy. I vaguely recall pa.s.sing my hand across my breast as if to stop the crevice through which my personality was filtering; I was certain that my soul was about to be stolen by that d.a.m.nable child. Then the nurse dropped something, and my thoughts came back,--they were surely on the road to h.e.l.l, for they were red and flaming when I got hold of them,--and the spell, or whatever it was, snapped.

"I looked up and noticed the woman maliciously smiling--if it had been in the days of the inquisition, I would have sent her to the f.a.ggots, for she was a h.e.l.l-hag. The child had fallen back in his cradle as if the effort of holding my attention had exhausted him. Then it struck me that there was something unholy about this affair, and I resolutely strode to the crib and seized the baby.

"'What changeling is this?' I demanded in a loud voice, for the being that twisted in my grip was two or two hundred years old.

"'Lay him down, you monster!' clamoured the nurse, as I held the squirming bundle by both hands. It was a task--and I'm very strong. A superhuman strength waged against my muscles; but I was an old football half-back at the university, so I conquered the poor little devil. It moaned like a querulous old man; the nurse, throwing her weight upon me, forced me to let go my hold. As I did so the baby turned on its face, its dainty robe split wide open, and to my horror I saw on its back, between its angelically white shoulders, burnt in as if by branding irons, the crucifix--and _upside down_!"

I shuddered. I knew. He lowered his voice and spoke in detached phrases.

"It was--oh! that I live to say it--it was the dreaded Antichrist--yes, this Russian baby--it was predicted that he would be born in Russia--I trembled so that my robes waved in an invisible wind. The reversed cross--the mark of the beast--the sign by which we are to know the Human Satan--the last opponent of Christianity. I confess that I was discomposed at the sight of this little fiend, for it meant that the red star, the baleful star of the north, would rise in the black heavens and b.l.o.o.d.y war spread among the nations of the earth. It also meant that doomsday was not far off, and, good Christian as I believe myself to be, a s.h.i.+ver ran down my spine at the idea of Gabriel's trump and the resurrection of the dead. Yes, I shan't deny it--so material are the sons of men, I among them! And the very thought of Judgment Day and its blasting horrors withered my heart. Still something had to be done, prophecy or no prophecy. To fulfil the letter of the law this infernal visitor was let loose from h.e.l.l. There was one way, so I grasped--"

"Great G.o.d, Monsignor, you didn't strangle the demon?" I cried.

"No, no--something better. I rushed over to a marble wash-basin and seized a ewer of water, and, going back to the crib, despite the frantic remonstrances of the old sorceress, I baptized the Antichrist in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Before my eyes I saw the inverted cross vanish. Then I soundly spanked the presumptuous youngster and, running down the staircase, I sought the prince and said to him:--

"'Your boy is now a Roman, not a Greek Catholic. We are quits!'"

The idea of a spanked Antichrist disconsolately roaming the earth, unwilling to return to his fiery home for fear of a scolding, his guns of evil spiked, his virus innocuous, his mission of spiritual destruction a failure--for what could a baptized devil's child do but pray and repent?--all this dawned upon me, and I burst into laughter, the worthy Monsignor discreetly partic.i.p.ating. His bizarre recital proved to me that, despite his Gallic first name, Monsignor Anatole O'Bourke hailed from the County Tipperary.

VIII

THE ETERNAL DUEL

What is the sorriest thing that enters h.e.l.l?

--D.G. ROSSETTI, _Vain Virtues_.

The face set him to a strange wondering; he sat at the coffin and watched it. His wife's face it was, and above the sorrow of irrevocable parting floated the thought that she did not look happy as she lay in her bed of death. Monross had seen but two dead faces before, those of his father and mother. Both had worn upon the mask which death models an expression of relief. But this face, the face of his wife, of the woman with whom he had lived--how many years! He asked himself why he shuddered when he looked down at it, shuddered and also flushed with indignation. Had she ever been happy? How many times had she not voiced her feelings in the unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of the conquering Sphinx!

Monross, master of psychology, tormented by visions of perfection, a victim to the devouring illusion of the artist,--Monross asked himself with chagrin if he had missed the key in which had sounded the symphony of this woman's life. This woman! His wife! A female creature, long-haired, smiling, loquacious--though reticent enough when her real self should have flashed out signals of recognition at him--this wife, the Rhoda he had called day and night--what had she been?

She had understood him, had realized his n.o.bility of ideal, his gifts, his occasional grandeur of soul,--like all artistic men he was desultory in the manifestation of his talent,--and had read aloud to him those poems written for another woman in the pitch-hot pa.s.sion of his youth--before he had met her. To her he had been always, so he told himself, a cavalier in his devotion. Without wealth, he had kept the soles of her little feet from touching the sidewalks of life. Upon her dainty person he had draped lovely garments. Why then, he wondered, the vindictive expression etched, as if in aqua fortis, upon her carved features?

Some Old World superst.i.tion held him captive as he gazed. Death is the grand revealer, he thought; death alone stamps upon the crumbling canvas of mortality the truth. Rhoda was dead. Yet her face was alive for the first time. He saw its truth; and he shuddered, for he also discerned the hate that had lurked a life long in its devious and smiling expressions--expressions like a set of scenery pushed on and off as the order of the play demanded. Oh, the misery of it all! He, Monross, poet, lover, egoist, husband, to be confronted by this d.a.m.nable defiance, this early-born hate! What had he done! And in the brain cells of the man there awakened a processional fleet of pictures: Rhoda wooed; Rhoda dazzled; Rhoda won; Rhoda smiling before the altar; Rhoda resigned upon that other altar; Rhoda, wife, mother; and Rhoda--dead!

But Rhoda loved--again he looked at the face. The brow was virginally placid, the drooping, bitter mouth alone telling the unhappy husband a story he had never before suspected. Rhoda! Was it possible this tiny exquisite creature had harboured rancour in her soul for the man who had adored her because she had adored him? Rhoda! The sh.e.l.l of his egoism fell away from him. He saw the implacable resentment of this tender girl who, her married life long, had loathed the captain that had invaded the citadel of her soul, and conqueror-like had filched her virgin zone. The woman seemingly stared at the man through lids closed in death--the woman, the s.e.x that ages ago had feared the barbarian who dragged her to his cave, where he subdued her, making her bake his bread and bear his children.

In a wide heaven of surmise Monross read the confirmation of his suspicions--of the eternal duel between the man and the woman; knew that Rhoda hated him most when most she trembled at his master bidding.

And now Rhoda lay dead in her lyre-shaped coffin, saying these ironic things to her husband, when it was too late for repentance, too early for eternity.

IX

THE ENCHANTED YODLER

A MARIENBAD ELEGY

I

The remorseless rain had washed anew the face of the dark blue sky that domed Marienbad and its curved chain of hills. Hugh Krayne threw open his window and, leaning out, exclaimed, as he eagerly inhaled the soft air of an early May morning:--

"At last! And high time!" For nine days he had waded through the wet streets, heavily leaping the raging gutters and stopping before the door of every optician to scrutinize the barometer. And there are many in this pretty Bohemian health resort, where bad weather means bad temper, with enforced confinement in dismal lodgings or stuffy _restaurations_, or--last resort of the bored--the promenade under the colonnade, while the band plays as human beings shuffle ponderously over the cold stones and stare at each other in sullen desperation.

But this day was a glorious one; in high spirits the Englishman left the house on the Oberkreuzbrunnenstra.s.se and moved slowly toward the springs. He was not thirty, but looked much older, for his weight was excessive. An easy-going temperament, a good appet.i.te, a well-filled purse, and a conscience that never disturbed his night's slumber contributed to this making of flesh. He waddled, despite his great height, and was sufficiently sensitive to enjoy Marienbad as much for its fat visitors as for its curative virtues. Here at least he was not remarkable, while in London or Paris people looked at him sourly when he occupied a stall at the theatre or a seat in a cafe. Not only had he elbow room in Marienbad, but he felt small, positively meagre, in comparison with the prize specimens he saw painfully progressing about the shaded walks or puffing like obese engines up the sloping roads to the Rubezahl, the Egerlander, the Panorama, or the distant Podhorn.

The park of the Kreuzbrunnen was crowded, though the hour of six had just been signalled from a dozen clocks in the vicinity. The crowd, gathered from the four quarters of the globe, was in holiday humour, as, gla.s.s in hand, it fell into line, until each received the water doled out by uniformed officials. Occasionally a dispute as to precedence would take place when the serpentine procession filed up the steps of the old-fas.h.i.+oned belvedere; but quarrels were as rare as a lean man. A fat crowd is always good-tempered, irritable as may be its individual members. Hugh Krayne kept in position, while two women shoved him about as if he were a bale of hay. He heard them abusing him in Bohemian, a language of which he did not know more than a few words; their intonations told him that they heartily disliked his presence. Yet he could not give way; it would not have been Marienbad etiquette. At last he reached the spring and received his usual low bow from the man who turned the polished wheel--the fellow had an eye tuned for gratuities.

With the water in his gla.s.s three-fourths cold and one-fourth warm, a small napkin in his left hand, the Englishman moved with the jaunty grace of a young elephant down the smooth terraced esplanade that has made Marienbad so celebrated. The sun was riding high, and the tender green of the trees, the flas.h.i.+ng of the fountains, and the music of the band all caused Hugh to feel happy. He had lost nearly a pound since his arrival the week before, and he had three more weeks to stay. What might not happen!

Just where the promenade twists under the shaded alleys that lead to the Ferdinandsbrunnen, he saw four women holding hands. They were dressed in Tyrolean fas.h.i.+on--pleated skirts, short enough to show white, plump stockings, feet in slippers, upon the head huge caps, starched and balloony; their ma.s.sive white necks, well exposed, were encircled by collars that came low on bodices elaborately embroidered. Behind them marched several burly chaps, in all the bravery of the Austrian Tyrol--the green alpine hat, with the feather at the back, the short gray jacket, the bare knees, and the homespun stockings. Krayne regarded curiously this strolling band of singers. Their faces seemed familiar to him, and he rapidly recalled souvenirs of Salzburg and an open-air concert. But this morning there was something that arrested his attention in the group. It was a girl of eighteen or twenty, with a brilliant complexion, large blue eyes, and a robust, shapely figure. As she pa.s.sed she gave him such an imploring look, such an appealing look, that all his chivalric instincts rushed into the field of his consciousness. He awkwardly dropped his tumbler. He turned around, half expecting to see the big child still looking at him. Instead he gazed upon the athletic backs of her male companions and to the unpleasant accompaniment of hearty feminine laughter. Were these women laughing at him? No fool like a fat one, he merrily thought, as he bought a new gla.s.s at a bazaar, which a grinning, monkey-faced creature sold him at the regular price redoubled.