CHAPTER V

“ARDATH”--THE STORY OF A DEAD SELF--THE WONDERFUL CITY OF AL-KYRIS--THE MISSION OF THE BOOK

In no work produced by her busy pen has Miss Corelli given such range to her imagination, to her love of the beautiful and fantastic, as in “Ardath.” This, her fourth book, abounds in wonderful accounts of a strange people in a strange place. When she sets a scene of barbaric splendor in the city of Al-Kyris, she reaches great descriptive heights; she tells, indeed, a tale of beauty, of horror, and of extraordinary amours, whose like can nowhere be found, look where you will. “Ardath” stands alone--a prose poem and a startlingly vivid narrative in one. “I have read it,” wrote Mr. Bentley (referring to the work in manuscript form), “with wonder that one small head could hold it all.”

That the authoress has a quick and appreciative eye for the picturesque, her most bitter detractor will not care to deny; she loves to write of birds and flowers, field and forest, golden sunshine and blue waters. She exhibits a passion for the bygone--in architecture and in man. In her interesting miscellany, “A Christmas Greeting,” she reproves those who would take from the charming old-worldliness of Shakespeare’s birthplace by erecting in Stratford-on-Avon ugly villas and shops suggestive of Clapham or Peckham Rye. She would--as we all would--have Stratford kept as much as possible like Stratford was when Shakespeare wandered by Avon’s banks or brooded over the fire in his home near to the old Guild Church.

“Ardath” was written in a hot glow of inspiration. Its theme is drawn from the Book of Esdras, one of the apocryphal Jewish writings which, while not used for “establishment of doctrine,” are held to be of value for historical purposes and for “instruction of manners.” Like a constantly recurring refrain in a musical composition, the passage in Esdras chosen by the authoress for her text greets the reader ever and anon as he turns the pages: “_So I went my way into the Field which is called ‘Ardath,’ and sat among the flowers._”

On this passage Miss Corelli built her romance, and so successfully did she work out her ideas that “Ardath” drew letters from all sorts and conditions of men--letters discussing the theories propounded in her writings, and asking for information and advice of encyclopædic character. Amongst the

correspondence were many flattering letters from men and women of light and leading, not only in England, but abroad. The novel under notice, which was issued in 1889, brought Miss Corelli a letter of praise from Lord Tennyson. The work was indeed so remarkable a piece of imaginative conception and picturesque writing that it appealed peculiarly to the Laureate’s sense of the poetic and artistic.

Of the mission of the book, which was of serious character, we shall speak anon. “Ardath” is one of the author’s finest efforts to further the cause of true religion. A strange outcome of the book was the proposed building, by some enthusiastic Americans, of a Corelli city in Fremont County, Colorado, U. S. A., on the Arkansas River, and a prospectus was actually issued explaining the project.

“Ardath” is divided into three parts. In the first is introduced a sceptic poet, Theos Alwyn. In the Second Book, Theos is transplanted into the city of Al-Kyris, in a bygone world, where he is supposed to have led a previous existence five thousand years before Christ’s advent. In the Third Book, Alwyn is back in London, amongst old associates, with the knowledge of all these strange experiences within him. The book has a sub-title, “The Story of a Dead Self,” and it is in the city of Al-Kyris that the peculiar “Dead Self” experience comes to Theos Alwyn, through whom Miss Corelli expounds lessons to all men--and women.

The story opens in the heart of the Caucasus Mountains, where a wild storm is gathering, and there is an early example of the descriptive delights with which the book is adorned. Miss Corelli is unique, not alone in her imaginings and in her treatment of them, but, too, in her powerful pictures of scenery. Here,

“in the lonely Caucasus heights, drear shadows drooped and thickened above the Pass of Dariel--that terrific gorge which like a mere thread seems to hang between the toppling frost-bound heights above, and black abysmal depths below. Clouds, fringed ominously with lurid green and white, drifted heavily yet swiftly across the jagged peaks where, looming largely out of the mist, the snow-capped crest of Mount Kazbek rose coldly white against the darkness of the threatening sky.... Night was approaching, though away to the west a broad gash of crimson, a seeming wound in the breast of heaven, showed where the sun had set an hour since. Now and again the rising wind moaned sobbingly through the tall and spectral pines that, with knotted roots fast clenched in the reluctant earth, clung tenaciously to their stony vantage ground; and mingling with its wailing murmur, there came a distant hoarse roaring as of tumbling torrents, while at far-off intervals could be heard the sweeping thud of an avalanche slipping from point to point on its disastrous downward way. Through the wreathing vapors the steep, bare sides of the near mountains were pallidly visible, their icy pinnacles, like uplifted daggers, piercing with sharp glitter the density of the low-hanging haze, from which large drops of moisture began presently to ooze rather than fall. Gradually the wind increased, and soon with sudden fierce gusts shook the pine-trees into shuddering anxiety,--the red slit in the sky closed, and a gleam of forked lightning leaped athwart the driving darkness. An appalling crash of thunder followed almost instantaneously, its deep boom vibrating in sullenly grand echoes on all sides of the Pass; and then--with a swirling, hissing rush of rain--the unbound hurricane burst forth alive and furious. On, on!--splitting huge boughs and flinging them aside like straws, swelling the rivers into riotous floods that swept hither and thither, carrying with them masses of rock and stone and tons of loosened snow--on, on! with pitiless force and destructive haste, the tempest rolled, thundered, and shrieked its way through Dariel.”

It was such fine writing as this, doubtless, which caught Tennyson’s fancy on casually opening the book to inspect and arrive at conclusions concerning its contents for himself, regardless of anything reviewers might have said previously in its disfavor. It was a sympathetic perusal of its many pages that drew from him a letter of commendation which he duly dispatched to its writer. It was the poetic conception of the city of Al-Kyris which appealed to the lonely Man of Wight, pondering, in his long island walks, on the strange romance of pre-Babylonian times set down by a woman who had won the whole-hearted approval of his great contemporary, William Gladstone.

Not unlike this majestic opening of “Ardath” are many of the poet’s own sublime pen-pictures. A master of verse, standing high above all others of his time as well as above most who had preceded him, the warm encomiums that he deliberately awarded to Marie Corelli should surely silence the snarls of envious Grub Street.

But to our story. Within the Monastery of Lars, “far up among the crags crowning the ravine,” are seen a group of monks whose intonations strangely stir a listener,--an Englishman,--Alwyn, whose musings on the reverential exercises of the monks indicate the religious purpose that underlies the story which follows. For Alwyn at the time is not only a poet, but an egoist and an agnostic. What sort of fellows are these monks, he muses,--fools or knaves? They must be one or the other, thinks he, else they would not thus chant praises “to a Deity of whose existence there is, and can be, no proof.” He is none the less conscious that the ending of faith and the prevalence of what he regards as Truth, would be a dreary result, destroying the beauty of the Universe. With cold and almost contemptuous feelings he watches the proceedings of these monks, and listens to the recital of their seven _Glorias_:

“Glory to God, the Most High, the Supreme and Eternal!” And with one harmonious murmur of accord the brethren respond:

“Glory forever and ever! Amen!”

Vespers over, the monks leave their chapel, and immediately the agnostic poet is face to face with one who is presumably chief of the Order--the monk who had recited the _Glorias_. And who, indeed, is he? None other than the mystic scientist, the Heliobas of “A Romance of Two Worlds,” who has now adopted this secluded monastic life. To him Theos Alwyn explains that he is miserable, and that, though an agnostic and searcher after absolute and positive proof, he desires for a time to be deluded into a state of happiness. So, the Parisian fame of Heliobas having reached him, this modern poet does not hesitate to seek from him a peace and happiness which neither his world of success nor his agnostic opinions can give him. From Heliobas he learns that this strange monk possesses a certain spiritual force which can overpower and subdue material force--that he can release the poet’s soul--“that is, the Inner Intelligent Spirit which is the actual You”--from its house of clay and allow it an interval of freedom. Alwyn pleads--even demands--that Heliobas will exercise this power at once; but the monk, amazed and reproachful, declines.

“To-night!--without faith, preparation, or prayer,--you are willing to be tossed through the realms of space like a grain of dust in a whirling tempest? Beyond the glittering gyration of unnumbered stars--through the sword-like flash of streaming comets--through darkness--through light--through depths of profoundest silence--over heights of vibrating sound--you--_you_ will dare to wander in these God-invested regions--you, a blasphemer and a doubter of God!”

Stranger than many of the marvels of the book is the scene that follows. It is a contest of Will between Alwyn and Heliobas. The former, concentrating all the powers of his mind upon the effort, declares that Heliobas _shall_ release his soul:

“He felt twice a man and more than half a God ... what--what was that dazzling something in the air that flashed and whirled and shone like glittering wheels of golden flame? His lips parted--he stretched out his hands in the uncertain manner of a blind man feeling his way. ‘Oh, God!--God!’ he muttered, as though stricken by some sudden amazement; then, with a smothered gasping cry he staggered and fell heavily forward on the floor--insensible!...”

The soul of the poet had by a superhuman access of will managed to break its bonds and escape elsewhere. “But whither? Into what vast realms of translucent light or drear shadow?” Unable to answer the question, the monk betakes himself to the monastery chapel, and prays in silence till the heavy night had passed and the storm “had slain itself with the sword of its own fury on the dark slopes of the Pass of Dariel.”

Theos for a time lies as one dead. Anon he awakes, seats himself at a table, and writes. Sometimes he murmurs “Ardath,” but he goes on writing for hours. Then Heliobas rejoins him. “I have been dreaming,” Theos says. The monk points to the written manuscript as proof that the dream has been productive, at any rate. Alwyn reads from the manuscript and recites:

“With thundering notes of song sublime I cast my sins away from me, On stairs of sound I mount--I climb! The angels wait and pray for me!”

But that, he remembers, is a stanza he had heard somewhere when he was a boy. Why does he now think of it? “_She_ has waited,--so she said,--these many thousand days!” And there was the key to the dream. There was a woman in it; and an angel.

Theos explains his dream to Heliobas, tells how he had seemed to fly into darkness, how in wild despair he cried “Oh, God, where art Thou?” and heard a great rushing sound as of a strong wind beaten through with wings, while a voice, grand and sweet as a golden trumpet blown suddenly in the silence of night, answered, “_Here!--and Everywhere!_” And then all was brightness, a slanting stream of opaline radiance cleft the gloom, and Alwyn was uplifted by an invisible strength. And then he hears some one call him by name, “Theos, my Beloved!” and a woman of entrancing beauty appears, crowned with white flowers, and robed in a garb that seems spun from midsummer moonbeams; ... a smiling maiden-sweetness in a paradise of glad sights and sounds.

And this being, bidding Alwyn return to his own star, further directs him to seek out the Field of Ardath, where she will meet him. And so they part.

Theos Alwyn awakens from his dream madly in love with this vision of loveliness, and determines, if a Field of Ardath there is, to go there and keep the appointment. Heliobas shows him where the Field of Ardath lies. It is mentioned in the Book of Esdras, in the Apocrypha, and is described as situated four miles west of the Babylonian ruins. Alwyn decides on journeying thither, first sending the poem he had written to his London friend, Francis Villiers, with the request that as “Nourhàlma; a Love Legend of the Past,” it shall be published in the usual way.

By the waters of Babylon we next find Theos Alwyn, who is soon housed in the Hermitage, near Hillah, with one Elzear of Malyana, to whom Heliobas has supplied the traveler with a letter of introduction. So impatient is this lover to prove the truth or falsity of his mystic vision at Dariel, that, on the first night of his arrival at the Hermitage, he proceeds shortly before midnight to search for the Field of Ardath which was known to the Prophet Esdras. He sets forth, and the wondrous story of his experiences immediately commences. “Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison! Kyrie eleison!” sung by full, fresh, youthful voices in clear and harmonious unison, greets his ears; though whence comes the sound, and from whom, there is nothing to show. “Was ever madman more mad than I,” he murmurs. It is a sweet and fascinating madness none the less, for the angel-lover is true to her promise. “Behold the field thou thoughtest barren, how great a glory hath the moon unveiled!” quoth the Prophet Esdras, and as Theos treads the Field of Ardath, which had appeared, when first his eyes rested upon it, a dreary and desolate place, he finds the turf covered with white blossoms, star-shaped and glossy-leaved, with deep golden centres, wherein bright drops of dew sparkled like brilliants, and whence puffs of perfume rose like incense swung at unseen altars. And here he finds, moving sedately along through the snow-white blossoms, a graceful girl. He no longer has eyes for the flower-transfiguration of the lately barren land. “My name is Edris; I came from a far, far country, Theos,--a land where no love is wasted and no promise forgotten!” she tells him. More than that, she adds that she has waited and prayed for him through long bright æons of endless glory, and he recognizes in Edris at last the angel of his vision. She upbraids him for his doubts and unhappiness, speaks slightingly of fame as a perishable diadem; and crying “O fair King Christ, Thou shalt prevail!” she leaves him, and as she goes Theos is told “prayers are heard, and God’s great patience never tires;--learn therefore _from the perils of the past, the perils of the future_.” Alwyn, falling senseless, drifts into the dream wherein he is to learn the story of his new self.

The description of Theos’s dream fills over fifteen score of pages. The reader is impelled on and on, finding in every step new subject for wonder. The city of Al-Kyris is a feast of scenic splendors, the skill of the writer providing fascinating word-pictures of incidents more strange than were ever imagined in an Arabian Nights’ entertainment. And through all runs a steady and strong undercurrent made up of the solid lesson of the book, “_learn from the perils of the past, the perils of the future_.”

Theos Alwyn could not tell how long he slept on the Field of Ardath, for his awakening was confusing. He had a consciousness of his previous life, its conditions, his position, and opinions. All now was changed. He was before a gate leading into a walled city, the entrance to which consisted of huge massive portals apparently made of finely moulded brass, and embellished on either side by thick round stone towers from the summits of which red pennons drooped idly in the air. Through the portals was seen a wide avenue paved entirely with mosaics, and along this passed an endless stream of wayfarers. A strange city and a strange people. Fruit-sellers, carrying their lovely luscious merchandise in huge gilded baskets, stood at almost every corner; flower-girls, fair as their own flowers, bore aloft in their gracefully upraised arms wide wicker trays overflowing with odorous blossoms tied into clusters and wreaths. Theos understood the language spoken. It was perfectly familiar to him--more so than his own native tongue. What was his native tongue? Who was he? “Theos Alwyn” was all he could remember. Whence did he come? The answer was direct and decisive. From Ardath. But what was Ardath? Neither a country nor a city. And his dress!--he glanced at it, dismayed and appalled--he had not noticed it till now. It bore some resemblance to the costume of ancient Greece, and consisted of a white linen tunic and loose upper vest, both garments being kept in place by a belt of silver. From this belt depended a sheathed dagger. His feet were shod with sandals, his arms were bare to the shoulder and clasped at the upper part by two broad silver armlets richly chased. The men were for the most part arrayed like himself, though here and there he met some few whose garments were of soft silk, instead of linen, who wore gold belts in place of silver, and who carried their daggers in sheaths that were literally encrusted all over with flashing jewels.

“The costume of the women was composed of a straight clinging gown, slightly gathered at the throat and bound about the waist with a twisted girdle of silver, gold, and, in some cases, jewels; their arms, like those of the men, were bare; and their small delicate feet were protected by sandals fastened with crossed bands of ribbon coquettishly knotted. The arrangement of their hair was evidently a matter of personal taste, and not the slavish copying of any set fashion. Some allowed it to hang in loosely flowing abundance over their shoulders; others had it closely braided or coiled carelessly in a thick, soft mass at the top of the head; but all without exception wore white veils--veils long, transparent and filmy as gossamer, which they flung back or draped about them at their pleasure.”

Dazed and bewildered, Theos Alwyn gazed about him. Then, following the crowd, he was borne along to a large square which bordered on the banks of a river that ran through the city. A strange gilded vessel was seen approaching. Huge oars, like golden fins, projected from the sides of the vessel and dipped lazily now and then into the water, wielded by the hands of invisible rowers. The ship sparkled all over as though it were carved out of one great burning jewel. Golden hangings, falling in rich, loose folds, draped it gorgeously from stem to stern; gold cordage looped the sails. On the deck a band of young girls, clad in white and crowned with flowers, knelt, playing softly on quaintly shaped instruments; and a cluster of tiny, semi-nude boys, fair as young cupids, were grouped in pretty, reposeful attitudes along the edge of the gilded prow, holding garlands of red and yellow blossoms which trailed down to the surface of the water.

Theos, gazing dreamily and wonderingly upon the scene, was suddenly roused to feverish excitement, and with a smothered cry of ecstasy fixed his straining eager gaze on one supreme, fair figure--the central glory of the marvelous picture.

“A woman or a Goddess?--a rainbow Flame in mortal shape?--a spirit of earth, air, fire, water?--or a Thought of Beauty embodied into human sweetness and made perfect? Clothed in gold attire, and girded with gems, she stood, leaning indolently against the middle mast of the vessel, her great sombre dusky eyes resting drowsily on the swarming masses of people, whose frenzied roar of rapture and admiration sounded like the breaking of billows.”

Beauty-stricken, Theos was roughly brought back to a sense of his position as a stranger in the city. Al-Kyris was given up to the worship of a serpent, Nagâya. This woman who had passed was Nagâya’s High Priestess, the chief power in the place. All the people worshiped her, and Theos had not, with them, fallen down before her. Immediately he was seized and roughly handled by the mob, who proclaimed him an infidel and a spy. At this opportune moment the Poet Laureate of the Realm, one Sah-Lûma, made his appearance. In Al-Kyris the Laureate was a great man, next only indeed to Zephorânim, the King.

Sah-Lûma rebuked the crowd for their ill-treatment of the stranger; and then, hearing that Theos was a poet from a far country, took him to his own palace.

Probably no vainer person than Sah-Lûma ever existed, whether in a real or imaginary world. They were very artistic in Al-Kyris. Nobody ever seemed to work except the black slaves. Apparently there was no necessity for that. The people, including the King, positively doted on poets. No wonder Sah-Lûma was the Prince of Egoists, seeing that he was the chief poet in Al-Kyris.

The Laureate explained the religion of Al-Kyris to his guest:

“We believe in no actual creed,--who does? We accept a certain given definition of a supposititious Divinity, together with the suitable maxims and code of morals accompanying that definition--we call this Religion,--and we wear it as we wear our clothing, for the sake of necessity and decency,--though truly we are not half so concerned about it as about the far more interesting details of taste in attire. Still, we have grown used to our doctrine, and some of us will fight with each other for the difference of a word respecting it,--and as it contains within itself many seeds of discord and contradiction, such dissensions are frequent, especially among the priests, who, were they but true to their professed vocation, should be able to find ways of smoothing over all apparent inconsistencies and maintaining peace and order. Of course, we, in union with all civilized communities, worship the Sun, even as thou must do,--in this one leading principle at least, our faith is universal!

“‘And yet,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘the well-instructed know through our scientists and astronomers (many of whom are now languishing in prison for the boldness of their researches and discoveries) that the Sun is no divinity at all, but simply a huge Planet,--a dense body surrounded by a luminous flame-darting atmosphere,--neither self-acting nor omnipotent, but only one of many similar orbs moving in strict obedience to fixed mathematical laws. Nevertheless, this knowledge is wisely kept back as much as possible from the multitude;--for, were science to unveil her marvels too openly to semi-educated and vulgarly constituted minds, the result would be, first Atheism, next Republicanism, and, finally, Anarchy and Ruin. If these evils--which, like birds of prey, continually hover about all great kingdoms--are to be averted, we must, for the welfare of the country and people, hold fast to some stated form and outward observance of religious belief.’”

These views were strikingly similar to those held by Theos when he was in the world, and he could thus endorse the further assertions of Sah-Lûma, who deemed even a false religion better for the masses than none at all, urging that men were closely allied to brutes. If the moral sense ceased to restrain them they at once leaped the boundary line and gave as much rein to their desires and appetites as hyenas and tigers. And in some natures the moral sense was only kept alive by fear--fear of offending some despotic invisible force that pervaded the Universe, and whose chief and most terrible attribute was not so much creative as destructive power. Thus Sah-Lûma again on the theology of Al-Kyris:

“To propitiate and pacify an unseen Supreme Destroyer is the aim of all religions,--and it is for this reason we add to our worship of the Sun that of the White Serpent, Nagâya the Mediator. Nagâya is the favorite object of the people’s adoration;--they may forget to pay their vows to the Sun, but never to Nagâya, who is looked upon as the emblem of Eternal Wisdom, the only pleader whose persuasions avail to soften the tyrannic humor of the Invincible Devourer of all things. We know how men hate Wisdom and cannot endure to be instructed; yet they prostrate themselves in abject crowds before Wisdom’s symbol every day in the Sacred Temple yonder,--though I much doubt whether such constant devotional attendance is not more for the sake of Lysia, than the Deified Worm!”

Lysia, High Priestess of Nagâya, was the charmer of the God of Al-Kyris, charmer of the serpent and of the hearts of men. “The hot passion of love is to her a toy, clasped and unclasped so!--in the pink hollow of her hand; and so long as she retains the magic of her beauty, so long will Nagâya-worship hold Al-Kyris in check.” Otherwise,--who was to know? Not Sah-Lûma and not Theos, though both were to learn later. Already in Al-Kyris, it was explained to Theos by his new friend, there were philosophers who were tired of the perpetual sacrifices and the shedding of innocent blood that marked the worship of the city. There was a Prophet Khosrûl who even denounced Lysia and Nagâya in the open streets, and gave out the faith that was in him--that far away in a circle of pure Light the true God existed,--a vast, all-glorious Being, who, with exceeding marvelous love, controlled and guided Creation towards some majestic end. Furthermore, Khosrûl held that thousands of years thence (the times described in Al-Kyris are assumed to be 5000 B.C.) this God would embody a portion of His own existence in human form, “and will send hither a wondrous creature, half God, half man, to live our life, die our death, and teach us by precept and example the surest way to eternal happiness.”

It is the prophet who gave out this faith against whom the King and the people of Al-Kyris are mostly incensed. They prefer their worship of Lysia, “The Virgin Priestess of the Sun and the Serpent,” who “receives love as statues may receive it--moving all others to frenzy she is herself unmoved.” So ’tis said. There is, however, the threatening legend:

“When the High Priestess Is the King’s mistress Then fall Al-Kyris!”

And the fall of Al-Kyris is imminent.

To the splendors of the court of Zephorânim, King of Al-Kyris, Theos is duly introduced by the Poet Laureate. He finds there that the poetic muse is adored, and Sah-Lûma is scarcely less esteemed than the King, who, indeed, his friend and devotee, would almost make the Poet supreme. The government and religion of Al-Kyris is mainly humbug. They sin freely and get absolution at an annual feast where a maiden is always slaughtered and offered as a sacrifice to Nagâya.

Theos has some quaint experiences. His great friend Sah-Lûma enchants the court with a poem--one that Theos faintly remembers he himself had written in days of old. The poet and his friend, after a court function, proceed to a reception at the Palace of Lysia. There they witness and take part in marvelous scenes; and the garden of the Palace gives the novelist an opportunity for those beautiful word-pictures that her pen evolves so brilliantly. The poets attend a midnight reception and there witness an extraordinary ballet which follows a banquet even more astounding in its incidents and in its revelations of the real character of this so-called Virgin Priestess. One, Nir-jalis, who had received favors from Lysia, and who, filled and flooded with wine, was indiscreet in his utterances, is given by her a cup of poison--the Chalice of Oblivion--which he drinks, and before a laughing, bacchanalian crowd dies a horrible death with the jeering words of Lysia in his ears, her contemptuous smile upon him. Nobody cares. In Al-Kyris, and certainly in Lysia’s Palace, they enjoy such scenes.

Theos, amazed, watches all. He, too, has another strange revelation before the night is through. In the midst of the revelry he hears a chime of bells, which reminds him of the village church of his earlier years, and of odd suggestions of fair women who were wont to pray for those they loved, and who believed their prayers would be answered. As he meditates thereon he is suddenly seized and borne swiftly along till in the moonlight he recognizes Lysia. Dramatic indeed is the scene that follows. Theos makes a passionate declaration of love to her, and has the promise from Lysia: “Thou shalt be honored above the noblest in the land ... riches, power, fame, all shall be thine--_if thou wilt do my bidding_.” The bidding is “_Kill Sah-Lûma_,” and it is Lysia who shows Theos his sleeping friend and places in his hand the dagger with which to strike. Horrified at the suggestion, Theos flings the weapon from him, escapes from the Palace, and reaches the home of Sah-Lûma, where, later, the Poet Laureate rejoins him.

The sands of Al-Kyris were fast running out, and events crowded one upon the other in rapid succession. Theos was terrorized when Sah-Lûma recited “the latest offspring of my fertile genius--my lyrical romance ‘Nourhàlma.’” Then the full title was proclaimed--“Nourhàlma: A Love-Legend of the Past”; and we are given the first line of this mysterious poem:

“_A central sorrow dwells in perfect joy._”

It was the poem written by Theos after the vision of Edris! He had to hear Sah-Lûma proclaim it as his own; to praise it, too, as the work of the other. Assuredly the cup of self-abnegation for Theos Alwyn was very full. As they talked about the poem a great commotion was heard in the streets. Theos and Sah-Lûma found themselves in the midst of a turbulent crowd, who, for once, even disregarded the Poet Laureate. The Prophet Khosrûl was predicting in the midst of excited multitudes the early destruction of the city, and the coming of the Redeemer. Upon Theos was again forced the knowledge which was his in the world whence he had been transported to this pre-Christian age; and, suddenly roused to excitement, he declared to these talented barbarians--“He HAS come! _He died for us, and rose again from the dead more than eighteen hundred years ago!_”

From the astonishment caused by this declaration the people had scarcely been roused by words from Sah-Lûma, when King Zephorânim appeared. Khosrûl, having delivered his last dread warning, fell dead; and his decease was immediately followed by the collapse of the great obelisk of the city. The people’s final terrors had begun. The last words of the Prophet Khosrûl had been a reiteration of the old forgotten warning regarding the relations of the High Priestess and the King, and the fall of the city was foretold for _that night_.

Escaping the destruction caused by the fall of the obelisk, Sah-Lûma and Theos returned to the Palace of the former, and there the Poet Laureate for the first time showed real emotion on learning that his favorite slave, Niphrâta, had left him forever. Soon Sah-Lûma and Theos were summoned by Zèl, High Priest of the Sacrificial Altar, to take part in the Great Sacrifice; for the people were terrified by the many strange happenings and were about to join in solemn unison to implore the favor of Nagâya and the gods. The Temple of Nagâya was magnificently decorated for this New Year’s Festival. There Sah-Lûma found that the maiden to be sacrificed was Niphrâta, and he made an impassioned demand, then an appeal, for her life. Niphrâta was permitted her choice, but she repudiated Sah-Lûma, appearing to be in love with some ghostly representation of the Poet and to be unconscious of his material existence. She had, she plaintively cried, waited for happiness so long; and, the Sacrificial Priest calling for the victim, she rushed upon the knife the Priest held ready for her. One second and she was seen speeding towards the knife; the next--and the whole place was enveloped in darkness. Fire broke out in every part of the Temple. A terrible scene of destruction was enacted, and the terrified people rushed hither and thither in the effort to save their lives;--efforts vain, because the last day of the city had come,--Al-Kyris was doomed,--there was rescue neither for people nor priests.

Sah-Lûma, death being certain, desired to die with Lysia, but his claim was contested by the King. Sovereign and Poet then learned that they had been rivals in love. The prophecy of Khosrûl was being fulfilled. The barbarous Lysia, even in these last moments, was fierce in her hate, and demanded of the King that he should kill Sah-Lûma. Her last order was obeyed. She could secure the death of the Poet, but she could not save herself. Her own death was one of the most terrible and appalling scenes ever conceived or described. Nagâya, the huge snake that the people of Al-Kyris had worshiped, claimed its own. Frightened by the flames, in its fear it turned upon its mistress Lysia, and, with the King vainly striving to drag her from the coils of the python, the High Priestess, chief of the city of lies, atheism, and humbug, died a death which she had many times remorselessly and gleefully decreed for others.

Theos, gazing at the funeral pyre, as it vaguely seemed to him, of a wasted love and a dead passion, passed from the scene, taking with him the dead body of his friend the Poet. And as he kept his steadfast gaze on Sah-Lûma’s corpse, “the dead Poet’s eyes grew into semblance of his own eyes, the dead Sah-Lûma’s face smiled spectrally back at him in the image of his own face!--it was as though he beheld the Picture of Himself, slain and ‘reflected in a magician’s mirror!’” Humbly he prayed to God to pardon his sins and to teach him what he should know; and again he heard soft, small voices singing _Kyrie Eleison_, and AWOKE to find himself on the Field of Ardath, the dawn just breaking, and the angel Edris near him. Then Edris told him that in the past he had been Sah-Lûma, that in those days he would neither hear Christ nor believe in Him, and that his talents had been misused; she also told Theos how his future years should be spent. She promised that afterwards he should meet her in the highest Heaven, but “not till then, _unless the longing of thy love compels_.”

It is in that portion of the work called “Poet and Angel” that the serious aim of Marie Corelli in writing this romance is clearly and emphatically brought out. Theos Alwyn is himself once again; but he is a very different self. Returning to London he is received warmly by his friend Villiers, and hears that “Nourhâlma” has brought him much of fame and profit. He had ceased to care for one or the other. He tells Villiers he has become a Christian, anxious, so far as he is able, to follow a faith so grand, and pure, and true. In his declarations on the subject we hear what our author again and again urges in many books--that Christianity and Religion are not determined by one sect or the other. In the words of Theos:

“I am not a ‘convert’ to any particular set form of faith,--what I care for is the faith itself. One can follow and serve Christ without any church dogma. He has Himself told us plainly, in words simple enough for a child to understand, what He would have us do,--and though I, like many others, must regret the absence of a true Universal Church where the servants of Christ may meet all together without a shadow of difference in opinion, and worship Him as He should be worshiped, still, that is no reason why I should refrain from endeavoring to fulfil, as far as in me lies, my personal duty towards Him. The fact is, Christianity has never yet been rightly taught, grasped, or comprehended;--moreover, as long as men seek through it their own worldly advantage, it never will be,--so that the majority of people are really as yet ignorant of its true spiritual meaning, thanks to the quarrels and differences of sects and preachers. But, notwithstanding the unhappy position of religion at the present day, I repeat I am a Christian, if love for Christ and implicit belief in Him can make me so.”

This is the text on which many of Alwyn’s powerful arguments are based, in dealing, both in and out of society, with those opinions of sceptics and agnostics which had formerly commended themselves to him but which he now combats with convincing clearness and strength. To emphasize his position he quotes that terse rebuke of Carlyle’s, in “Sartor Resartus,” as to the uselessness of Voltaire’s work:

“Cease, my much respected Herr von Voltaire,--shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios and flying sheets of reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the Divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty of that kind? Only a torch for burning and no hammer for building?--Take our thanks then--and thyself away!”

The theologian and the lay thinker alike must follow with keen interest the arguments of Theos Alwyn against atheism, materialism, and, what Miss Corelli calls, Paulism. Uncompromisingly should those writers be denounced who take immorality for their theme, and achieve considerable sales thereby. The declarations of Alwyn are of particular interest because in them expression is given to many of Marie Corelli’s own views on sacred things. The man or woman who is bewildered by the quarrels of the religious sects of these days, and whose bewilderment is increased by the teachings of the cynics, may well exclaim with Alwyn what a howling wilderness this world would be if given over entirely to materialism, and conclude with him that, if it were, scarce a line of division could be drawn between man and the brute beasts of the field! “I consider,” says the poet, “that if you take the hope of an after-joy and blessedness away from the weary, perpetually toiling Million, you destroy, at one wanton blow, their best, purest, and noblest aspirations. As for the Christian Religion, I cannot believe that so grand and holy a Symbol is perishing among us. We have a monarch whose title is ‘Defender of the Faith,’--we live in the age of civilization which is primarily the result of that faith,--and if, as it is said, Christianity is exploded,--then certainly the greatness of this hitherto great nation is exploding with it! But I do not think, that because a few sceptics uplift their wailing ‘All is vanity’ from their self-created desert of agnosticism, _therefore_ the majority of men and women are turning renegades from the simplest, most humane, most unselfish Creed that ever the world has known. It may be so, but, at present, I prefer to trust in the higher spiritual instinct of man at his best, rather than accept the testimony of the lesser Unbelieving against the greater Many, whose strength, comfort, patience and endurance, if these virtues come not from God, come not at all.”

To those who, through the atheistic views of some in the churches and of the hosts outside, begin to feel doubt as to the truth of the Christian faith, this book “Ardath” will be of enormous value. It will strengthen their faith and aid greatly to carry conviction to those who pause, unable to decide amid the chaotic teachings of conflicting theorists. We praise this book more especially for its virtue as an antidote to the pitiful writings of some female novelists whose vicious themes must do much harm amongst the women of the day. “If women give up their faith,” declares Alwyn to the Duchess de la Santoisie, “let the world prepare for strange disaster! Good, God-loving women,--women who pray,--women who hope,--women who inspire men to do the best that is in them,--these are the safety and glory of nations! When women forget to kneel,--when women cease to teach their children the ‘Our Father,’ by whose grandly simple plea Humanity claims Divinity as its origin,--then shall we learn what is meant by ‘men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.’ A woman who denies Christ repudiates Him, Who, above all others, made her sex as free and honored as everywhere in Christendom it is. He never refused woman’s prayers,--He had patience for her weakness,--pardon for her sins,--and any book written by woman’s hand that does Him the smallest shadow of wrong is to me as gross an act as that of one who, loaded with benefits, scruples not to murder his benefactor!”

The reading of “Ardath” will help many to the conviction of Theos Alwyn--“God Exists. I, of my own choice, prayer, and hope, voluntarily believe in God, in Christ, in angels, and in all things beautiful, and pure, and grand! Let the world and its ephemeral opinions wither; I will not be shaken down from the first step of the ladder whereon one climbs to Heaven!”

Such is the teaching of this remarkable book “Ardath,” which inculcates these lessons interwoven with a romantic story of fascinating interest.

Towards its close there occurs, again in the person and in the words of Heliobas, a scathing comment upon “spiritualists,” for whom six tests are suggested:

“_Firstly._--Do they serve themselves more than others?--If so, they are entirely lacking in spiritual attributes.

“_Secondly._--Will they take money for their professed knowledge?--If so, they condemn themselves as paid tricksters.

“_Thirdly._--Are the men and women of commonplace and thoroughly material life?--Then, it is plain they cannot influence others to strive for a higher existence.

“_Fourthly._--Do they love notoriety?--If they do, the gates of the unseen world are shut upon them.

“_Fifthly._--Do they disagree among themselves, and speak against one another?--If so, they contradict by their own behavior all the laws of spiritual force and harmony.

“_Sixthly_ and lastly.--Do they reject Christ?--If they do, they know nothing whatever about Spiritualism, there being _none_ without Him.”

There is a charming finale. Theos marries the angel Edris. An angel? Yes; but an angel because _a woman, most purely womanly_. That is all, and all women can be angels--“A Dream of Heaven made human!”