"And to-night--?" I said, softly.

He rose from his chair and stood up to his full superb stature, looking down upon me with a certain mingling of kindness and pity.

"To-night,"--he replied--"we shall send for you! You will confront the Brethren, as one who has pa.s.sed the same mental test through which they are pa.s.sing! And you will face the last fear! I do not think you will go back upon yourself--I hope not--I strongly desire you to keep your courage to the end!"

I ventured to touch his hand.

"And afterwards?" I queried.

He smiled.

"Afterwards--Life and its secrets are all with you and Love!"

XX

INTO THE LIGHT

When I was left alone once more I gave myself up to the enchanting sense of perfect happiness that now seemed to possess my whole being.

The world of glorious Nature showed me an aspect of brilliancy and beauty that could no more be shadowed by fear or foreboding--it was a mirror in which I saw reflected the perfect Mind of the Divine. Nothing existed to terrify or daunt the advancing Soul which had become cognisant of its own capabilities, and which, by the very laws governing it, is preordained to rise to the utmost height of supernal power. I had dimly guessed this truth--but I had never surely known it till now. Now, I recognised that everything is and must be subservient to this interior force which exists to 'replenish the earth and subdue it'--and that nothing can hinder the accomplishment of its resolved Will. As I sat by the window thinking and dreaming, I began to wonder what would be the nature of that 'last fear' of which Aselzion had spoken? Why should the word 'fear' be mentioned, when there was no cause for fear of any kind? Fear can only arise from a sense of cowardice,--and cowardice is the offspring of weakness. From this argument it followed that my strength was not yet thoroughly tested to Aselzion's satisfaction,--that he still thought it possible that some latent weakness in my spirit might display itself on further trial. And I resolved that if such was his idea, he should be proved wrong.

Nothing, I vowed, should move me now--not all the world arrayed in arms against me should hinder my advance towards the completion of myself in the love of my Beloved!

I have already said that there was no visible chronicle of time in the House of Aselzion, save such as was evidenced by the broadening or waning light of day. Just now I knew it was late afternoon, as the window where I sat faced the west, and the sun was sinking in a blaze of glory immediately opposite to me. Bars of gold and purple and pale blue formed a kind of cloud gateway across the heavens, and behind this the splendid orb shone in a halo of deep rose. Watching the royal pageantry of colour on all sides, I allowed myself to go forth as it were in spirit to meet and absorb it,--inwardly I set my whole being in tune with the great wave of light which opened itself over the sea and land, and as I did so found every nerve in my body thrilled with responsive ecstasy, even as harpstrings may be thrilled into sound by the sweep of the wind. I rose and went out, through the loggia into the garden--feeling more like a disembodied spirit than a mortal, so light and free and joyous were my very movements--so entirely in unison was I with everything in Nature. The sunset bathed me in its ruby and purple magnificence,--I lifted my eyes to the heavens and murmured almost unconsciously--"Thank G.o.d for Life! Thank G.o.d for Love! Thank G.o.d for all that Life and Love must bring to me!"

A sea-gull soaring inland flew over my head with a little cry--its graceful poise reminded me of the days I had pa.s.sed in Morton Harland's yacht, when I had watched so many of these snow-white creatures dipping into the waves, and soaring up again to the skies--and on a sudden impulse I stretched out my hand, determining to stay the bird's flight if I could and bring it down to me. The effort succeeded,--slowly, and as if checked by some obstacle it felt but could not see, the lovely winged thing swept round and round in an ever descending circle and finally alighted on my wrist. I held it so for a moment--it turned its head towards me, its ruby-brown eyes sparkling in the sun--then I tossed it off again into the air of its own freedom, where after another circling sweep or two it disappeared, and I walked on in a happy reverie, realising that what I could do with the visible things of Nature I could do as easily with the invisible. A sense of power vibrated through me [Footnote: The philosophy of Plato teaches that Man originally by the power of the Divine Image within him could control all Nature, but gradually lost this power through his own fault.]--power to command, and power to resist,--power that forbade all hesitation, vacillation or uncertainty--power which being connected by both physical and spiritual currents with this planet, the Earth, and the atmosphere by which it is surrounded, lifts all that it desires towards itself, as it rejects what it does not need.

Returning slowly through the garden, and lingering by the beds of flowers that adorned it, I noticed how when I bent over any particular blossom, it raised itself towards me as though drawn upward by a magnet. I was not inclined to gather a single one for my own pleasure--some occult sympathy had become established between me and these beautiful creations--and I could no more sever a rose from its stem than I could kill a bird that sang its little song to me. On re-entering my room I found the usual refection prepared for me--fresh fruit and bread and water--the only kind of food I was allowed. It was quite sufficient for me,--in fact I had not felt at any time the sensation of hunger. I began to wonder how long I had been a 'probationer' in the House of Aselzion? Days or weeks? I could not tell. I was realising the full truth that with the things of the infinite time has no existence, and I recalled the verse of the ancient psalm:

"A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone, Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun."

And while my thoughts ran in this groove, I opened the book of the 'Secret of Life'--and as if in answer to my inward communing, found the following:

THE DELUSION OF TIME

"Time has no existence outside this planet. Humanity counts its seasons, its days and hours by the Sun--but beyond the Sun there are millions and trillions of other and larger suns, compared with which our guiding orb is but a small star. Out in the infinitude of s.p.a.ce there is no Time, but only Eternity. Therefore the Soul which knows itself to be eternal should a.s.sociate Itself with eternal things, and should never count its existence by years. To its Being there can be no end--therefore it never ages and never dies. It is only the sham religionists who talk of death,--it is only the inefficient and unspiritual who talk of age. The man who allows himself to sink into feebleness and apathy merely because of the pa.s.sing of years has some mental or spiritual weakness in him which he has not the Will to overcome--the woman who suffers her beauty and freshness to wane and fade on account of what she or her 'dearest' friends are pleased to call 'age,' shows that she is dest.i.tute of spiritual self-control. The Soul is always young, and its own radiation can preserve the youth of the Body in which it dwells. Age and decrepitude come to those with whom the Soul is 'an unknown quant.i.ty.' The Soul is the only barrier against the forces of disintegration which break down effete substances in preparation for the change which humanity calls 'Death.' If the barrier is not strong enough, the enemy takes the city. These facts are simple and true; too simple and too true to be accepted by the world.

The world goes to church and asks a Divinity to save its soul, practically showing in all its ways of society and government an utter disbelief in the Soul's existence. Men and women die when they might as well have lived. If we examine into the cause of their deaths we shall find it in the manner of their lives. Obstinacy and selfishness have murdered more human beings than any other form of plague. The blasphemy of sham religion has insulted the majesty of the Creator more than any other form of sin, and He has answered it by His Supreme Silence. The man who attends a ritual of prayer which he does not honestly believe in, merely for the sake of social custom and observance, is openly deriding his Maker and the priests who gain their living out of such ritual are trading on the Divine. Let the people of this Earth be taught that they live not in Time but Eternity,--that their thoughts, words and deeds are recorded minutely and accurately--and that each individual human unit is expected to contribute towards the general beauty and adornment of G.o.d's scheme of Perfection. Every man, every woman, must give of his or her best. The artist must give his n.o.blest art, not for what it brings to him personally of gain or renown, but for what it does to others in the way of uplifting;--the poet must give his highest thought, not for praise, but for love;--the very craftsman must do his best and strongest work not for the coin paid, but for the fact that it is work, and as such must be done well--and none must imagine that they can waste the forces wherewith they have been endowed. For no waste and no indolence is permitted, and in the end no selfishness. The att.i.tude of the selfish human being is pure disintegration,--a destroying microbe which crumbles and breaks down the whole const.i.tution, not only ruining the body but the mind, and frequently making havoc of the very wealth that has been too selfishly guarded. For wealth is ephemeral as fame--only Love and the Soul are the lasting things of G.o.d, the Makers of Life and the Rulers of Eternity."

So far I read--then laying down my book I listened. Music, solemn and exquisitely beautiful, stole on my ears from the far distance--it seemed to float through the open window as though in a double chorus--rising from the sea and falling from the heavens. Delicious harmonies trembled through the air, soft as fine rain falling on roses,--and with their penetrating tenderness a thousand suggestions, a thousand memories came to me, all infinitely sweet. I began to think that even if Rafel Santoris were separated from me by some mischance, or changed to me in any way, it need not affect me over-much so long as I cherished the love I had for him in my own soul. Our pa.s.sion was of a higher quality than the merely material,--it was material and spiritual together, the spiritual predominating, thus making of it the only pa.s.sion that can last. What difference could a few years more or less bring, if we were bound, by the eternal laws governing us, to become united in the end? The joy of life is to love rather than to be loved,--and the recipient of love is never so fully conscious of perfect happiness as the giver.

The music went on in varying moods of lovely harmony, and my mind, like a floating cloud, drifted lazily above the waves of sound. I thought compa.s.sionately of the unrest and discontent of thousands who devote themselves to the smallest and narrowest aims in life,--people with whom the loss of a mere article of wearing apparel is more important than a national difficulty--people who devote all their faculties to social schemes of self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt--people who discuss trifles till discussion is worn threadbare, and ears are tired and brain is weary--people who, a.s.suming to be religious and regular church-goers, yet do the meanest things, and have no scruple in playing the part of tale-bearer and mischief-maker, setting themselves deliberately to break friendships and destroy love--people who talk of G.o.d as though He were their intimate, and who have by their very lives drawn everything of G.o.d out of them--I thought of all these, I say--and I thought how different this world would be if men would hold by the n.o.blest ideals, and suffer the latent greatness in them to have its way--if they would truly rule their own universe and not allow its movements to fall into chaos--how fair life would become!--how replete with health and joy!--what a paradise would be created around us!--and what constant benediction we should draw down upon us from the Most High! And gradually as I sat absorbed in my own reveries the afternoon waned into twilight, and twilight into dusk--one star brilliant as a great diamond, flashed out suddenly above a rift of cloud--and a soft darkness began to creep stealthily over sky and sea. I moved away from the window and paced slowly up and down the room, waiting and wondering. The music still continued,--but it had now grown slower and more solemn, and founded like a great organ being played in a cathedral. It impressed me with a sense of prayer and praise--more of praise than prayer, for I had nothing to pray for, G.o.d having given me my own Soul, which was all!

As the darkness deepened, a soft suffused light illumined the room--and I now noticed that it was the surface of the walls that shone in this delicate yet luminous way. I put my hand on the wall nearest to me--it was quite cold to the touch, yet bright to the eyes, and was no more fatiguing to look at than the sunshine on a landscape. I could not understand how the light was thus arranged and used, but its effect was beautiful. As I walked to and fro, looking at the various graceful and artistic objects which adorned the room, I perceived an easel, on which a picture was placed with a curtain of dark velvet drawn across it.

Moved by curiosity, I drew the curtain aside,--and my heart gave a quick bound of delight,--it was an admirably painted portrait of Rafel Santoris. The grave blue eyes looked into my own,--a smile rested on the firm, handsome mouth--the whole picture spoke to me and seemed to ask 'Wherefore didst thou doubt?' I stood gazing at it for several minutes, enrapt,--realising how much even the 'counterfeit presentment'

of a beloved face may mean. And then I began to think how strange it is that we never seem ready to admit the strong insistence of Nature on individuality and personality. Up at a vast height above the Earth, and looking down upon a crowd of people from the car of a balloon, or from an aeroplane, all human beings look the same--just one black ma.s.s of tiny moving units; but, in descending among them, we find every face and figure wholly different, and though all are made on the same model there are no two alike. Yet there are many who argue and maintain that though individual personality in bodies may be strongly marked, there is no individual personality in souls--ergo, that Nature thinks so little of the intelligent Spirit inhabiting a mortal form that she limits individuality to that which is subject to change and has no care for it in that which is eternal! Such an hypothesis is absurd on the face of it, since it is the Soul that gives individuality to the Body.

The individual personality of Rafel Santoris, expressed even in his painted portrait, appealed to me as being that of one I had loved long and tenderly,--there was no strangeness in his features but only an adorable familiarity. Long long ago, in centuries that had proved like mere days down the vista of time, the Soul in those blue eyes had looked love into mine! I recognised their tender, half-entreating, half-commanding gaze,--I knew the little fleeting, wistful smile which said so little and yet so much--I felt that the striving, ambitious spirit of this man had sought mine as the help and completion of his own uplifting, and that I had misunderstood him and turned from him at the crucial moment when all might have been well. And I studied his picture long and earnestly, so moved by its aspect that I found myself talking to it softly as though it were a living thing.

"I wonder if I shall ever meet you again?" I murmured--"Will you come to me?--or shall I go to you? How shall we find each other? When shall I be able to tell you that I know you now to be the only Beloved!--the one centre of my life round which all other things must for evermore revolve,--the very mainspring of my best thought and action,--the G.o.d of my universe from whose love and pleasure spring the light and splendour of creation! When shall I see you again to tell you all that my heart longs to express?--when may I fold myself in your arms as a bird folds its wings in a nest, and be at peace, knowing that I have gained the summit of all ambition and desires in love's perfect union?

When shall we attune our lives together in that harmonious chord which shall sound its music sweetly through eternity? When shall our Souls make a radiant ONE, through which G.o.d's power and benediction shall vibrate like living fire, creating within us all beauty, all wisdom, all courage, all supernal joy?--For this is bound to be our future--but--when?"

Moved by my own imagining, I stretched out my arms to the picture of my love, and tears filled my eyes. I was nothing but the weakest of mortals in the sudden recollection of the happiness I might have won long ago had I been wise in time!

A door opened quietly behind me, and I turned round quickly. Aselzion's messenger, Honorius, stood before me--and I greeted him with a smile, though my eyes were wet.

"Have you come to fetch me?"--I asked--"I am ready."

He inclined his head a little.

"You are not quite ready"--he said--and with the word he gave into my hands a folded garment and veil--"You must attire yourself in these. I will wait for you outside."

He retired and left me, and I quickly changed my own things for those which had been brought. They were easily put on, as they consisted simply of one long white robe of a rather heavy make of soft silk, and a white veil which covered me from head to foot. My attiring took me but a few minutes, and when all was done I touched the bell by which I had previously summoned Aselzion. Honorius entered at once--his looks were grave and preoccupied.

"If you should not return to this room,"--he said, slowly--"is there any message--any communication you would like me to convey to your friends?"

My heart gave a quick bound. There was some actual danger in store for me, then? I thought for a moment--then smiled.

"None!" I answered--"I shall be able to attend to all such personal matters myself--afterwards!"

Honorius looked at me, and his handsome but rather stern face was grave even to melancholy.

"Do not be too sure!"--he said, in a low tone--"It is not my place to speak, but few pa.s.s the ordeal to which you are about to be subjected.

Only two have pa.s.sed it in ten years."

"And one of these two was--?"

For answer, he pointed to the portrait of Santoris, thus confirming my instinctive hope and confidence.

"I am not afraid!" I said--"And I am ready to follow you now wherever you wish me to go."

He made no further remark and, turning round, led the way out of the apartment.

We went down many stairs and through many corridors,--some dimly lit, some scarcely illumined at all. The night had now fully come,--and through one of two of the windows we pa.s.sed I could see the dark sky patterned with stars. We came to the domed hall where the fountain played, and this was illumined by the same strange all-penetrating light I had previously noticed,--the lovely radiance played on the spray of the fountain, making the delicate frondage of ferns and palms and the hues of flowers look like a dream of fairyland. Pa.s.sing through the hall, I followed my guide down a dark narrow pa.s.sage--then I found myself suddenly alone. Guided by the surging sound of organ music, I went on,--and all at once saw a broad stream of light pouring out from the open door of the chapel. Without a moment's hesitation, I entered--then paused--the symbol of the Cross and Star flamed opposite to me--and on every side wherever I looked there were men in white robes with cowls thrown back on their shoulders, all standing in silent rows, watching me as I came. My heart beat quickly,--my nerves thrilled--I trembled as I walked, thankful for the veil that partially protected me from that mult.i.tude of eyes!--eyes that looked at me in wonder, but not unkindly--eyes that mutely asked questions never to be answered--eyes that said as plainly as though in actual speech--"Why are you among us?--you, a woman? Why should you have conquered difficulties which we have still to overcome? Is it pride, defiance, or ambition with you?--or is it all love?"

I felt a thousand influences moving around me--the power of many brains at work silently cross-examined my inner spirit as though it were a witness in defence of some great argument--but I made up my mind not to yield to the overpowering nervousness and sudden alarm of my own position which threatened to shake my self-control. I fixed my eyes on the glittering symbol of the Cross and Star and moved on slowly--I must have looked a strangely solitary creature, draped in white like a victim for sacrifice and walking all alone towards those burning, darting rays of light which enveloped the whole of the chapel in a flood of almost blinding splendour. The music still thundered on round me--and I thought I heard voices far off singing--I could distinguish words that came falling through the music, like blossoms falling through rain:

Into the Light, Into the heart of the fire!

To the innermost core of the deathless flame I ascend--I aspire!

Under me rolls the whirling Earth, With the noise of a myriad wheels that run Ever round and about the Sun,-- Over me circles the splendid heaven, Strewn with the stars of morn and even, And I, the queen Of my soul serene, Float with my rainbow wings unfurled, Alone with Love, 'twixt G.o.d and the world!

My heart beat rapidly; every nerve in me trembled--yet I went on resolvedly, not allowing myself to even think of danger.

And then I saw Aselzion--Aselzion, transfigured into an almost supernatural beauty of aspect by the radiance which bathed him in its l.u.s.trous glory!--Aselzion, with outstretched hands beckoning me towards him--and as I approached I instinctively sank on my knees. The music died away suddenly, and there was a profound silence. I felt, though I could not see, that the eyes of all present were fixed upon me. And Aselzion spoke:

"Rise!" he said--and his voice was clear and imperative--"Not here must thou kneel--not here must thou rest! Rise and go onward!--thou hast gone far, but the way is still beyond! The gate of the Last Probation stands open--enter!--and may G.o.d be thy Guide!"

I rose as he commanded me,--and a dazzling flash of light struck my eyes as though the heavens had opened. The blazing Cross and Star became suddenly severed in two separate portions, dividing asunder and disclosing what seemed to be a Hall of living fire! Flames of every colour burned vividly, leaping and falling without pause or cessation,--it was a kind of open furnace in which surely everything must be consumed! I looked at Aselzion in silent enquiry--not in fear--and in equally silent answer he pointed to the glowing vault. I understood--and without another moment's hesitation I advanced towards it. As in a dream I heard a kind of murmuring behind me--and suppressed exclamations from the students or disciples of Aselzion who were all a.s.sembled in the chapel--but I paid no heed to this--my whole soul was set on fulfilling the last task demanded of me. Step by step I went on--I pa.s.sed Aselzion with a smile--