Part 9

‘They think so,’ laughed Pluto. ‘All here believe for a long time--as they believed like fools on earth--that all which they saw on earth or see here is real. What is real is unchangeable and eternal. Who lives in Evolution, as all do on earth or in matter, lives in the Transient. It is when they realise by mere satiety the unreality of things that their punishment comes--that of despair. Then after a season they begin to exert themselves to seek higher ideals or something new, which being attained, there comes again satiety, and then renewed effort, every new stage becoming easier, until at last man rises to the gods or God. The best experience disappointment and rebuffs; but they go on. The wise who on earth have shaped better ideals, the altruists and benevolent philosophers or Christians, and people who have not meddled with others, or lived entirely in the eyes and opinions of others, or revelled in notoriety, or been selfish and tyrannical in the small or great relations of life, these do not remain long in our world of shams. The honest poet or artist or man of letters is let off very easily, as indeed are all who have been kinder to mankind than mankind has been unto them.

‘The world is ever advancing,’ continued Pluto, ‘and to satisfy the soul with what is for the time around it on earth, or to think of carrying it on for ever into the future, as _all_ creeds do’ added his majesty significantly, ‘is _to stop_. (Flaxius, my son, be thou not like to them, but keep that holy emblem the Cup going.’) They both drained, and the Lord of Hades resumed:

‘The selfish nature thus gratified and satisfied with temporary forms does not lift its mind to, or progress with--Evolution.’

‘Ha!’ quoth Flaxius, ‘light is coming fast; I do begin to feel I have indeed immortal longings in me! This then is the faith so long foretold--which is neither Buddhist nor Christian, nor Material.’

‘Ay, Flaxius, it is the very truth, as it seems to me every one might surmise from the very infinity of creative forms in nature, from the ideals which they declare and the inexhaustibility of matter and force. All goes on, slowly it seems, but there is eternity to work in, and its great law is progress.

‘Now Evolution is the creation of new laws from old, of new types from others exhausted, of new ideals, as new patterns are created _ad infinitum_ by a revolving kaleidoscope, a continual out-blossoming and ripening of flowers which were once small, wild blossoms and are now hundred-leaved _grandifloræ_. And these again will be raised to newer and more magnificent forms. And you need not ask what is to become of Man in all this, for, rely upon it, where all is progressing, all is well. He who is magnanimous, and who can grasp in its fulness all this scheme, will not be afraid to cast himself headlong into the foaming flood and trust to its bearing him safely on. Fortune favours the bold, and he who _is_ afraid, whimpering “What is to become of poor little _Me_?” will be carried away in time all the same. But that man never loved the beautiful or nature who feared death.

‘Now we may consider all mankind on earth as a single man in hell--living in Evolution, yet ignorant of it, opposing it with his self-formed, conservative ideas--an old woman sweeping out the sea with a broom--and you have the key to the whole.’

‘It appears to me,’ observed Flaxius, who had listened to these remarks with evident approbation--if the taking a drink ever and anon and sighing with content could be interpreted as ‘Hear! Hear!’ or ‘fervent applause’--‘that there is a marvellous spirit of romance and poetry and wild adventure in Evolution as you set it forth, and exquisite inspiration to a higher devotion, and a purer and far more vigorous religion than man has ever before dreamed of. For this faith in nature with her ever-unfolding ideals, and that of self, in “_What_ I know not, but in the best, _that_ I know!” is so bold and knightly that before it all that was ever presented to man seems poor and weak and dim. The Church and conventional cant, or modern life, have well-nigh crushed out in man every trace of daring or chivalry, and this religion has in it that which will revive such qualities on a far higher scale than was found in the Middle Ages.’

‘Saving this, Flaxius,’ added his majesty, ‘that Evolution asks man to understand pure science as a basis and accept its deductions as to evolving ideals, and not rely entirely on tradition which is well-nigh folk-lore. And when the simple truth of anything has once been studied or accepted, the poetry and romance soon follow. _Crede experto Roberto!_’

‘Ay, by the Father of the Fathers of Faith!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘your majesty has had some experience. May I venture to inquire,’ he added, ‘what part this ever “freshly fresh and newly new,” as the Hindus sing it, this ever-beautiful and good young lady whom I see here has in your tremendous _pension_, or boarding-school for eternity?’

‘Eternity!’ said Pluto, with a smile. ‘Nay, you have not yet heard the last word. But as for Albana----’ Here he gave a glance of ineffably respectful, fond kindness at the subject of their discourse. ‘You have seen in life in many lands noble women who, as Sisters of Charity or slummers--go anywhere to do good. Albana ranges through hell, earth, and heaven. The pure soul is everywhere at home, and love hath no bounds. We are not so cruel in our punishment as to leave souls entirely to themselves in the task of rehabilitation. She and her sisters--love and love alone--suggest to the despairing new ideals of life.’

‘Ay,’ cried Flaxius, ‘hell is the gate to heaven, that I see. A lesson which I should have learned on earth. Yet man has been there longer than I without learning it. It must be so--“Pluto, thou reasonest well,”’ he added. (And to himself, ‘I suppose the reviewers will light on _that_ as a typographical error.’)

‘And now,’ said his majesty, ‘the lecture is over for to-day. Go with Albana as a Beatrice through my realm and visit the condemned in their homes.’

‘And the _last word_ to which you alluded?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘It is,’ said Pluto, with a smile, ‘that all which you have seen, or shall see here in Hades, as I have indeed plainly said already, is, to speak Sanscritically, only Maya, or Illusion. All smoke, but it rises from a real fire. _Ite!--missa est!_’

* * * * *

‘And what did you think of the Lower World?’ inquired the Fairy of Flaxius.

‘That it is misnamed, O Soul of the Violets!’ replied the Etruscan, ‘since it appeared to me as being one degree higher than this. For in it the average Philistine and guinea-pig and sinful gossip are gently led or induced to find out that they are fools or evil-doers, and that he who gives himself most earnestly to life goes deepest into death. Now man is destined to slowly learn this lesson through the ages, and as he progresses in it, Science will, step by step, overcome death. So that as we become idealists, so shall we also advance into earthly immortality. That, your Fairyness, is what I conclude from what I beheld. In fact I am so smitten with admiration at the beautiful humanity of hell as I saw it, that I can only declare that if there is really no such place there _ought_ to be one!’

‘It will do just as well if you write and publish an account of it,’ replied the fairy. ‘The main thing is to teach mankind the great lesson that most men left to mere commonplace and earthly ideals must inevitably damn themselves.’

‘Beyond this, O Loveliness,’ resumed Flaxius, ‘I was induced to reflect, that to avoid hell, satiety, and despair, it is necessary to have an iron _will_, and one formed on the strictest moral lines. And he who can make a perfect will unto himself, so as to make his whole soul or intellect obey his spirit or conscience or God-within, has won all that he needs in time or eternity. This, O Life of Endless Light! is the great lesson of Orcus.’

‘It would have been well worth going there to learn that,’ said the fairy, ‘had it even been all fire and suffering. But haste and write it down, for many there be who need the lesson, which is the highest of all in true wisdom.

‘He to whom the devil grants All he wishes, all he wants, However gaily time be passed Will catch the devil at the last.’

FLAXIUS AND ADELINDÈ

A LEGEND OF THE EARLY LOMBARD DAYS, BEING ONE OF THE VISIONS WHICH FLAXIUS HAD WHILE IN HELL

‘Said Chider the immortal, the ever young: “I passed by a city, a man stood near Plucking fruit that in a fair garden hung. I asked, “How long has the city been here?” He said, as the clustering fruit he caught, “There was always a city in this spot, And so there will be till time is not.” Five hundred years passed by as before: I was standing upon that spot once more.”’

WHILE the learned Flaxius repeated these lines with strange feeling, as if recalling to him missing memories, he looked intently at every object round as if he would wring from it some buried mystery or long-hidden secret. It was twilight-tide in the last golden-brown of a Carpoccio sky. Broad and wide in the rapidly dimming distance were undulating hills covered with vineyards and olives, like a waving sea topped with green foam; here and there were hamlets of white houses, and above them stately towered castles, like shepherds watching flocks of sheep at eve; long lines of stone walls, flowing with maiden-hair or helmeted with cactus--all softly fair and far away!

It was a beautiful picture; but what interested the man of many years, and by-gone lives, was what lay close about him--the grey and mossy relics of an ancient ville--it may have been a quaint, small town of well-marked fortalices, or a brave and beautiful little city in Lombard times--now all abandoned in its solitude. Here and there a run of ivied wall and a square tower still held themselves up respectably, as if opposing a stout heart to bad fortune;--a fine thing to see in any ruin, be it of man or marble. There were hillocks--ruined arches--and now it was all a home for ghosts and owls, or else some shadowy night-hag wandering slow.

And as Flaxius considered the masses of ferns and weeds, and saucy acanthus, and golden blossoms of many kinds, and arrogant asphodels, which seemed to crowd themselves into the ruins and say: ‘Poor things, _we_ will protect you and make everything look respectable,’ the sage reflected:

‘’Tis all, as in every city--where _la génération qui vient se moque de la noblesse qui va_--golden blossoms or guinea-pigs--flaunting weeds, rotting while they cover that which is older and nobler!--_avanti!_ Dandelions--_pisciacane_ in Italian--with your flowers like golden florins, and your dandy-lions of sons, begone!’

As if in answer to him he heard a bell from some church cloister far away strike twelve, softly and slowly, as if the chimes had been transfused through the honey-golden summer air which lingered into night. And with the last note all the weeds and flowers vanished; the ruins revived, shooting up again into ancient glory; towers rose from the dust--façades en-niching many a form of forgotten saints--transfigured and idealised, and over all zig-zagging and working wildly into life-like, pictured dreams, innumerable arabesques of old Lombard vines and monsters, warriors fighting dragons whose tails ended in branching dragon-wort and dogs who were half dog-wood, chasing wolves who were three-quarters wolfsbane--puns in stone, for those who can read them.

Stern and unmoved sat the man of many ages, looking at the wondrous transformation scene, as if at the opera. Like one who has had for years a season ticket, he keenly looked to see if it were well done, for he was a member of the Eternal Press which reports history, the great _Times_ of all time.

And verily he who has mastered the course of the circling ages in chronicles, and feels their soul, and has learned their lesson, may sit like Mephistopheles before the Sphinx and put such mocking questions as he will, with all the might of all that man may dare.

Then, one by one, and two by two, lights began to appear in the windows, and a great beacon fire, at first all violet, and anon waving into blended emerald and scarlet flame blazed out on the summit of the donjon-tower. And soon all the scene was translucent and fluent with a wondrous glow as if an Aurora had been suddenly born, or the Goddess of the Four Winds, amid blazing laurel and roses while the fairies sang a pæan of welcome (as a Romagna legend tells the tale). For with the out-bursting light, there rose a strange, sweet chorus of unearthly voices in the long-forgotten, Lombard-Gothic tongue; and Flaxius hummed softly to the air:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before: I am listening to the song once more.’

Then shadowy forms were seen among the shades, as if born from them, and blending in them, and as the light grew, they too became beings of light and colour and beauty, lords and ladies of the olden time with their pages and maidens dressed in the Latin-Lombard style; in which as in its sculptures, a rude, Northern strength submitted to, and was blended with, Romano-Greek grace and ornament, even as Hercules was subdued by Omphalé.

‘Five hundred years,’ hummed Flaxius, ‘that garb once more!’

In step with the music, and as if moving with the waves of coloured light, gracefully and stately as swans in a dream, there came by a walking group of gentlemen and ladies, who, seeing Flaxius, paused while one from the latter said to him in old Italian:

‘Mortal, since thou art here sleeping at midnight and in full moon-tide, thou hast won the power to behold us, and share our festivity. Join us and enter the castle.’

Gravely and almost sadly answered the man of the ages in the old Lombard-Gothic tongue:

‘I am as little mortal as ye are immortal, ye shadows of ghosts of days long passed away! But what ye offer me in courtesy, I do with thankful courtesy accept. My lord Agobard of the Amal race, I was by your side when you routed the Romans at Ravenna, and when you retreated, beaten yet glorious before the Huns in the Mark of Tuscany. Know that your name is still to be read in old chronicles. My Lady Chlodoviga, now Luisa, I am glad to see that your fire-sapphire eyes still flash as fiercely from under your golden hair as they did when we last met.’

‘Knowest thou _me_?’ exclaimed a giant-like and ancient warrior, with a vast grey beard, yet who had all the fire of youth, and by whom stood a younger noble who was like the elder in all save age. ‘Am I still remembered on earth?’

‘Well do I know thee, Master Hildebrand, and not I alone but all men living, where’er resounds the German tongue and German hymns to God are sung, for all men who can read it have read the Song of the Father and the Son, of thee and of my Lord Hahdubrand now by thy side, unto whom I offer greeting. While the Book of Heroes shall live ye will live in it.’

‘And _thou_, great master, who hast the serpent tongue of Gunlaug?’

‘Ask me not, but I am of the sorcerer race of the God Frey, and was ere thou wert born.’

So in music and light they all gravely passed into the castle, through brilliant, buzzing groups, harpers and horn-players and _citharœdi_ making music--threading the mazes of a torch-dance, till my Lord Hildebrand led Flaxius before a lady seated beneath a canopy on a double chair like a throne. The canopy was of light-brown silk from Sicily and on it were heavily embroidered dragons and leafy branches in black and gold, with many red and gold disks. The throne was of dark nut wood and ivory.

She who sat on the throne was a queen of beauty, of a beauty long passed away with the chivalry and romance of the early Gothic time. For every age, as Flaxius said, has its own beauty, which busts or portraits never portray to those who come after, though they may have been perfect likenesses, any more than the dried flower retains its early perfume. For there was in the woman’s face a nameless, stern, firm will, an unfamiliarity with little things and small sentiments, the steady glow of a soul which knew only great aims and was used to great efforts, and such were all who were leaders in those days, and in each other they all read their like, which is a noble thing for noble minds. Yet there was in her eyes a glow and glory of beauty and of passion which betrayed unearthly blood and immortal longing, and as she looked with a smile of welcome at Flaxius, there flashed into his mind a feeling of joy which she little suspected, that he was not one who could be bewitched or silenced or bullied by any magic:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before, I gaze upon those eyes once more.’

‘I present to your princely highness,’ said Lord Hildebrand, ‘a stranger of great wisdom, whom we found within the domain. Who he may be, Lady Adelindè, I cannot divine, but I warrant him well worthy a warm welcome.’

‘It is given with a good will,’ replied Adelindè in a deep, sweet voice, which was as marvellous and strange as her eyes, and which seemed like their light changed to sound. ‘And be not alarmed or astonished, sir stranger, to find yourself in what is doubtless to you a marvellous scene of enchantment.’

‘I am not,’ answered Flaxius simply, as he gazed at her. ‘There is nothing here so wonderful as thou art.’

Now be she fairy or sorceress or ghost-devil of a peeress or diabolical princess, a woman is always a woman, and the Lady Adelindè, who was something of all of these at once, divined that Flaxius was no common mortal such as she had been accustomed to catch and cajole now and then, to turn out of doors that he might find himself Rip van Winkled or Barbarossa’d or Seven Sleepered and seven years older in the morning, lying with a rheumatism on a cold stone. The lightly-rosy snow of her fair cheeks flushed to richer red at the steady glance of the stern, grey-blue eyes of her grim guest, in whom she at once felt a power perhaps beyond her own--_chi sa?_--and it was with a tone into which she infused her very best sorcery--the kind formerly conserved for kings--that she invited Flaxius to rest himself beside her on the throne.

‘You will join our banquet?’ she asked with another professional smile.

‘I have had nothing to eat all day,’ replied Flaxius, in true old Lombardo-Roman tone. (Note that there was a great deal in this manner and tone, and the princess caught it.) ‘For we all require food,’ added Flaxius. ‘Mortals or spirits, all eat and drink.’

‘_We!_’ reflected Adelindè. ‘The “mortals _and_ spirits” was an after-thought! I wonder who or what he is!’

‘Even mortals,’ continued Flaxius, ‘require scent and taste in their food, else it would not nourish them. Mere spiritual beings live simply on taste and scent, while the still more refined, or divine, exist on perfume alone. You, fairest Adelindè, have, I doubt not, very often dined on a daisy, had the scent of a pink for an _entrée_, and a sniff of a rose for dessert, but that much you absolutely required. There were even mortal queens of yore who were thus refined. Chrimhilde was one. The chronicle does not mention it, but it is true that when our old friend Hildebrand, with hero Hagen, ravished her rose-garden, they destroyed her larder.’

‘No, he is not a common mortal,’ flashed Adelindè through her mind, for she always thought in sheet-lightning ere she spoke. (And I pray you note that this metaphor is truthful enough, for a later Latin writer tells us that the voices of all unearthly beings are like thunder, there being even in their softest, dulcet tones--_si symphonia canere vel ad tibiam versus fundere_--even when they sing their sweetest in symphonies or pour forth their souls unto the witching flute, a softly murmuring undertone, or strange, dark suspicion of the grandeur of the Voice of God as it speaks in the stars.) And the spiritual sheet-lightning of Adelindè’s thought was materialised in her glances.

Meanwhile the banquet, or revel, grew wild and bold. Flaxius ate like a mortal, or like three--(‘Decidedly he is only human,’ thought Adelindè)--and drank like four, five, or six. But there was no change in the grey-blue eyes, or in his voice.

‘No, he is in-human,’ reflected the lady. ‘Mortal man could never drink like _that_!’

Yet she had seen stout drinkers in her time, in the old Roman-Longobardi days. Yes, they drank like bricks, for, as ye know, a dry brick will absorb its own equivalent of fluid. Which the Latins rendered, _Ranas superat bibendo_, and the old Italians ‘like a German’ or a cardinal--cardinal virtues being, alack, more like carnal vices in those days.

Wilder pealed the music, louder laughed and roared the company. From a revel which would have maddened a mortal, it became a Sabbath of sorcerers and witches, a Pandemonium of passions, an Inferno broken loose. Even the figures in the marvellous mosaics on the vaulted ceiling above--saints and kings and queens and warriors brave, such as we still see at Ravenna--became animated and danced or embraced, trailing after them gorgeous and jewelled robes, so that as there had been over much decay and silence and death before in the ruin, even so there now seemed to be as much excess of life and tumult.... A reverend bishop reeled and tumbled down ... while saints too fondly fondled saintesses--a rosy wine-light seemed to tinge the air, as if the very hall itself were drunk, and all were swimming in a ruby sea. _Quasi vinis Græcis Neptunus suffudit mare!_

The princess, wild as a mænad, wanton as a faun, had cast herself on the heart of her guest, while she seemed joyous as a mad panther,--the maddest of all things when gay,[5]--but she still realised to her unbounded awe, that she in all _deliria_ of delight had never for an instant cast a charm or fascination over her mystic guest.

But what was to her astounding, well-nigh petrifying, a thing new to her since a thousand years, the princess felt a mighty thrilling influence in her heart, a new-born spirit speaking in her soul, that she herself was at last being won, instead of being the winner! But why this should have so fearfully struck and startled her, not without a joyous after-glow of hope, will appear anon.

‘Great and marvellous man,’ she at length exclaimed, recovering her breath--then bursting into her true self and life,--’twas like a pale moon exploding into a noonday sun--‘tell me who or what art thou, now speaking our long-forgotten Lombard tongue, knowing all my court and me, inaccessible to my power, and oh, that I should ever dare to think and dream it! perhaps mastering me!’

‘Dost thou desire it?’ asked Flaxius calmly.

‘Does the lost soul desire to be freed from hell?’ cried the princess, in a long, wailing tone of a spirit in despair. ‘Does the prisoner on the rack wish the torture to cease? Man of mystery!’ she suddenly cried, ‘dost thou know my life and my doom?’

‘Well do I know it,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and now look me well in the eyes, thou daughter of the old Lombard line of kings, and yet a spirit’s child, for thy fated hour has come at last. Yet ere I tell thee more, answer me, great soul, what has this life which thou didst take of thy own free choice--when thou hadst liberty to choose among all--what has this life become, which was, as thou didst once declare, the only heaven thou couldst understand?’

‘It has become a hell,’ replied Adelindè, with an immortal shudder; ‘a hell of weary, worn-out, oft-repeated imagery of splendour, a tiresomeness of idle power, with the real torment of the conscience that I was--a fool!’