Chapter 18

"Oh, is it only 'apparent'?" laughed Santoris, gaily--"Well, to those who never knew me in my boyhood's days and are therefore never hurling me back to their 'thirty years or more ago' of friendship, etc., my youth seems very actual! You see their non-ability to count up the time I have spent on earth obliges them to accept me at my own valuation! There's really nothing to explain in the matter. Everyone can keep young if he understands himself and Nature. If I were to tell you the literal truth of the process, you would not believe me,--and even if you did you would not have the patience to carry it out! But what does it matter after all? If we only live for the express purpose of dying, the sooner we get the business over and done with the better--youth itself has no charms under such circumstances. All the purposes of life, however lofty and nobly planned, are bound to end in nothingness,--and it is hardly worth while taking the trouble to breathe the murderous air!"

He spoke with a kind of passion--his eyes were luminous--his face transfigured with an almost superhuman glow, and we all looked at him in something of amazement.

Mr. Harland fidgeted uneasily in his chair.

"You go too far!" he said--"Life is agreeable as long as it lasts--"

"Have you found it so?" Santoris interrupted him. "Has it not, even in your pursuit and attainment of wealth, brought you more pain than pleasure? Number up all the possibilities of life, from the existence of the labourer in his hut to that of the king on his throne, they are none of them worth striving for or keeping if death is the ultimate end. Ambition is merest folly,--wealth a temporary possession of perishable goods which must pass to others,--fame a brief noise of one's name in mouths that will soon be dumb,--and love, sex-attraction only. What a treacherous and criminal act, then, is this Creation of Universes!--what mad folly!--what sheer, blind, reasonless wickedness!"

There was a silence. His eyes flashed from one to the other of us.

"Can you deny it?" he demanded. "Can you find any sane, logical reason for the continuance of life which is to end in utter extinction, or for the creation of worlds doomed to eternal destruction?"

No one spoke.

"You have no answer ready," he said--and smiled--"Naturally! For an answer is impossible! And here you have the key to what you consider my mystery--the mystery of keeping young instead of growing old--the secret of living instead of dying! It is simply the conscious PRACTICAL realisation that there is no Death, but only Change. That is the first part of the process. Change, or transmutation and transformation of the atoms and elements of which we are composed, is going on for ever without a second's cessation,--it began when we were born and before we were born--and the art of LIVING YOUNG consists simply in using one's soul and will-power to guide this process of change towards the ends we desire, instead of leaving it to blind chance and to the association with inimical influences, which interfere with our best actions. For example--I--a man in sound health and condition--realise that with every moment SOME change is working in me towards SOME end. It rests entirely with myself as to whether the change shall be towards continuance of health or towards admission of disease--towards continuance of youth or towards the encouragement of age,--towards life as it presents itself to me now, or towards some other phase of life as I perceive it in the future. I can advance or retard myself as I please--the proper management of Myself being my business. If I should suffer pain or illness I am very sure it will be chiefly through my own fault--if I invite decay and decrepitude, it will be because I allow these forces to encroach upon my well-being--in fact, briefly--I AM what I WILL to be!--and all the laws that brought me into existence support me in this attitude of mind, body and spirit!"

"If we could all become what we WOULD be," said Dr. Brayle, "we should attain the millennium!"

"Are you sure of that?" queried Santoris. "Would it not rather depend on the particular choice each one of us might make? You, for example, might wish to be something that would hardly tend to your happiness,--and your wish being obtained you might become what (if you had only realised it) you would give worlds not to be! Some men desire to be thieves--even murderers--and become so--but the end of their desires is not perhaps what they imagined!"

"Can you read people's thoughts?" asked Catherine, suddenly.

Santoris looked amused. He replied by a counter question.

"Would you be sorry if I could?"

She flushed a little. I smiled, knowing what was in her mind.

"It would be a most unpleasant accomplishment--that of reading the thoughts of others," said Mr. Harland; "I would rather not cultivate it." "But Mr. Santoris almost implies that he possesses it," said Dr. Brayle, with a touch of irritation in his manner; "And, after all, 'thought-reading' is a kind of society amusement nowadays. There is nothing very difficult in it."

"Nothing, indeed!" agreed Santoris, lightly; "And being as easy as it is, why do you not show us at once that antique piece of jewellery you have in your pocket! You brought it with you this evening to show to me and ask my opinion of its value, did you not?"

Brayle's eyes opened in utter amazement. If ever a man was taken completely by surprise, he was.

"How did you know?" he began, stammeringly, while Mr. Harland, equally astonished, stared at him through his round spectacles as though challenging some defiance.

Santoris laughed.

"Thought-reading is only a society amusement, as you have just observed," he said--"And I have been amusing myself with it for the last few minutes. Come!--let us see your treasure!"

Dr. Brayle was thoroughly embarrassed,--but he tried to cover his confusion by an awkward laugh.

"Well, you have made a very clever hit!" he said--"Quite a random shot, of course--which by mere coincidence went to its mark! It's quite true I have brought with me a curious piece of jewel-work which I always carry about wherever I go--and something moved me to-night to ask your opinion of its value, as well as to place its period. It is old Italian; but even experts are not agreed as to its exact date."

He put his hand in his breast pocket and drew out a small silk bag from which he took with great care a collar of jewels, designed in a kind of chain-work which made it perfectly flexible. He laid it out on the table,--and I bit my lip hard to suppress an involuntary exclamation. For I had seen the thing before--and for the immediate moment could not realise where, till a sudden flash of light through the cells of my brain reminded me of that scene of love and death in the vision of the artist's studio when the name 'Cosmo de Medicis' had been whispered like an evil omen. The murderer in that dream-picture had worn a collar of jewels precisely similar to the one I now saw; but I could only keep silence and listen with every nerve strained to utmost attention while Santoris took the ornament in his hand and looked at it with an intent earnestness in which there was almost a touch of compassion.

"A beautiful piece of workmanship," he said, at last, slowly, while Mr. Harland, Catherine, and Swinton the secretary all drew up closer to him at the table and leaned eagerly forward--"And I should say"--here he raised his eyes and looked full at the dark, brooding, sinister face of Brayle--"I should say that it belonged to the Medici period. It must have been part of the dress of a nobleman of that time--the design seems to me to be Florentine. Perhaps if these jewels could speak they might tell a strange story!--they are unhappy stones!"

"Unhappy!" exclaimed Catherine--"You mean unlucky?"

"No!--there is no such thing as luck," answered Santoris, quietly, turning the collar over and over in his hands--"Not for either jewels or men! But there IS unhappiness,--and unhappiness simply means life being put to wrong uses. I call these gems 'unhappy' because they have been wrongfully used. A precious stone is a living thing--it absorbs influences as the earth absorbs light, and these jewels have absorbed some sense of evil that renders them less beautiful than they might be. These diamonds and rubies, these emeralds and sapphires, have not the full lustre of their own true nature,--they are in the condition of pining flowers. It will take centuries before they resume their natural brilliancy. There is some tragedy hidden among them."

Dr. Brayle looked amused.

"Well, I can give you no history of them," he said--"A friend of mine bought the collar from an old Jew curiosity dealer in a back street of Florence and sent it to me to wear with a Florentine dress at a fancy dress ball. Curiously enough I chose to represent one of the Medicis, some artist having told me my features resembled their type of countenance. That's the chronicle, so far as I am concerned. I rather liked it on account of its antiquity. I could have sold it many times over, but I have no desire to part with it."

"Naturally!"--and Santoris passed on the collar to everyone to examine--"You feel a sense of proprietorship in it."

Catherine Harland had the trinket in her hand, and a curious vague look of terror came over her face as she presently passed it back to its owner. But she made no remark and it was Mr. Harland who resumed the conversation.

"That's an odd idea of yours about unhappy jewels," he said--"Perhaps the misfortune attending the possessors of the famous blue Hope diamond could be traced to some early tragedy connected with it."

"Unquestionably!" replied Santoris. "Now look at this!"--and he drew from his watch pocket a small fine gold chain to which was attached a moonstone of singular size and beauty, set in a circle of diamonds--"Here is a sort of talismanic jewel--it has never known any disastrous influences, nor has it been disturbed by malevolent surroundings. It is a perfectly happy, unsullied gem! As you see, the lustre is perfect--as clear as that of a summer moon in heaven. Yet it is a very old jewel and has seen more than a thousand years of life."

We all examined the beautiful ornament, and as I held it in my hand a moment it seemed to emit tiny sparks of luminance like a flash of moonlight on rippling waves.

"Women should take care that their jewels are made happy," he continued, looking at me with a slight smile, "That is, if they want them to shine. Nothing that lives is at its best unless it is in a condition of happiness--a condition which after all is quite easy to attain."

"Easy! I should have thought nothing was so difficult!" said Mr. Harland.

"Nothing certainly is so difficult in the ordinary way of life men choose to live," answered Santoris--"For the most part they run after the shadow and forsake the light. Even in work and the creative action of thought each ordinary man imagines that his especial work being all-important, it is necessary for him to sacrifice everything to it. And he does,--if he is filled with worldly ambition and selfish concentration; and he produces something--anything--which frequently proves to be ephemeral as gossamer dust. It is only when work is the outcome of a great love and keen sympathy for others that it lasts and keeps its influence. Now we have talked enough about all these theories, which are not interesting to anyone who is not prepared to accept them--shall we go up on deck?"

We all rose at once, Santoris holding out a box of cigars to the men to help themselves. Catherine and I preceded them up the saloon stairs to the deck, which was now like a sheet of silver in the light shed by one of the loveliest moons of the year. The water around was sparkling with phosphorescence and the dark mountains looked higher and more imposing than ever, rising as they seemed to do sheer up from the white splendour of the sea. I leaned over the deck rail, gazing down into the deep liquid mirror of stars below, and my heart was heavy and full of a sense of bitterness and tears. Catherine had dropped languidly into a chair and was leaning back in it with a strange, far-away expression on her tired face. Suddenly she spoke with an almost mournful gentleness.

"Do you like his theories?"

I turned towards her enquiringly.

"I mean, do you like the idea of there being no death and that we only change from one life to another and so on for ever?" she continued. "To me it is appalling! Sometimes I think death the kindest thing that can happen--especially for women."

I was in the mood to agree with her. I went up to her and knelt down by her side.

"Yes!" I said, and I felt the tremor of tears in my voice--"Yes, for women death often seems very kind! When there is no love and no hope of love,--when the world is growing grey and the shadows are deepening towards night,--when the ones we most dearly love misjudge and mistrust us and their hearts are closed against our tenderness, then death seems the greatest god of all!--one before whom we may well kneel and offer up our prayers! Who could, who WOULD live for ever quite alone in an eternity without love? Oh, how much kinder, how much sweeter would be utter extinction--"

My voice broke; and Catherine, moved by some sudden womanly impulse, put her arm round me.

"Why, you are crying!" she said, softly. "What is it? You, who are always so bright and happy!"

I quickly controlled the weakness of my tears.

"Yes, it is foolish!" I said--"But I feel to-night as if I had wasted a good part of my life in useless research,--in looking for what has been, after all, quite close to my hand,--only that I failed to see it!--and that I must go back upon the road I thought I had passed--"

Here I paused. I saw she could not understand me.

"Catherine," I went on, abruptly--"Will you let me leave you in a day or two? I have been quite a fortnight with you on board the 'Diana,' and I think I have had enough holiday. I should like"--and I looked up at her from where I knelt--"I should like to part from you while we remain good friends--and I have an idea that perhaps we shall not agree so well if we learn to know more of each other."

She bent her eyes upon me with a half-frightened expression.

"How strange you should think that!" she murmured--"I have felt the same--and yet I really like you very much--I always liked you--I wish you would believe it!"

I smiled.

"Dear Catherine," I said--"it is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that while there is something which attracts us to each other, there is also something which repels. We cannot argue about it or analyse it. Such mysterious things DO occur,--and they are beyond our searching out--"

"But," she interrupted, quickly--"we were not so troubled by these mysterious things till we met this man Santoris--"

She broke off, and I rose to my feet, as just then Santoris approached, accompanied by Mr. Harland and the others.

"I have suggested giving you a sail by moonlight before you leave," he said. "It will be an old experience for you under new conditions. Sailing by moonlight in an ordinary sense is an ordinary thing,--but sailing by moonlight with the moonlight as part of our motive power has perhaps a touch of originality."

As he spoke he made a sign to one of his men who came up to receive his orders, which were given in too low a tone for us to hear. Easy deck chairs were placed for all the party, and we were soon seated in a group together, somewhat silently at first, our attention being entirely riveted on the wonderful, almost noiseless way in which the sails of the 'Dream' were unfurled. There was no wind,--the night was warm and intensely still--the sea absolutely calm. Like broad white wings, the canvas gradually spread out under the deft, quick hands of the sailors employed in handling it,--the anchor was drawn up in the same swift and silent manner--then there came an instant's pause. Mr. Harland drew his cigar from his mouth and looked up amazed, as we all did, at the mysterious way in which the sails filled out, pulling the cordage tightly into bands of iron strength,--and none of us could restrain an involuntary cry of wonder and admiration as their whiteness began to glitter with the radiance of hoar-frost, the strange luminance deepening in intensity till it seemed as if the whole stretch of canvas from end to end of the magnificent schooner was a mass of fine jewel-work sparkling under the moon.

"Well! However much I disagree with your theories of life, Santoris," said Mr. Harland,--"I will give you full credit for this extraordinary yacht of yours! It's the most wonderful thing I ever saw, and you are a wonderful fellow to have carried out such an unique application of science. You ought to impart your secret to the world."

Santoris laughed lightly.

"And the world would take a hundred years or more to discuss it, consider it, deny it, and finally accept it," he said--"No! One grows tired of asking the world to be either wise or happy. It prefers its own way--just as I prefer mine. It will discover the method of sailing without wind, and it will learn how to make every sort of mechanical progress without steam in time--but not in our day,--and I, personally, cannot afford to wait while it is slowly learning its ABC like a big child under protest. You see we're going now!"

We were 'going' indeed,--it would have been more correct to say we were flying. Over the still water our vessel glided like a moving beautiful shape of white fire, swiftly and steadily, with no sound save the little hissing murmur of the water cleft under her keel. And then like a sudden whisper from fairyland came the ripple of harp-strings, running upward in phrases of exquisite melody, and a boy's voice, clear, soft and full, began to sing, with a pure enunciation which enabled us to hear every word:

Sailing, sailing! Whither? What path of the flashing sea Seems best for you and me? No matter the way, By night or day, So long as we sail together!

Sailing, sailing! Whither? Into the rosy grace Of the sun's deep setting-place? We need not know How far we go, So long as we sail together!

Sailing, sailing! Whither? To the glittering rainbow strand Of Love's enchanted land? We ask not where In earth or air, So long as we sail together!

Sailing, sailing! Whither? On to the life divine,-- Your soul made one with mine! In Heaven or Hell All must be well, So long as we sail together!

The song finished with a passionate chord which, played as it was with swift intensity, seemed to awaken a response from the sea,--at any rate a strange shivering echo trembled upward as it were from the water and floated into the spacious silence of the night. My heart beat with uncomfortable quickness and my eyes grew hot with the weight of suppressed tears;--why could I not escape from the cruel, restraining force that held my real self prisoner as with manacles of steel? I could not even speak; and while the others were clapping their hands in delighted applause at the beauty of both voice and song, I sat silent.

"He sings well!" said Santoris--"He is the Eastern lad you saw when you came on deck this morning. I brought him from Egypt. He will give us another song presently. Shall we walk a little?"

We rose and paced the deck slowly, gradually dividing in couples, Catherine and Dr. Brayle--Mr. Harland and his secretary,--Santoris and myself. We two paused together at the stern of the vessel looking towards the bowsprit, which seemed to pierce the distance of sea and sky like a flying arrow.

"You wish to speak to me alone," said Santoris, then--"Do you not? Though I know what you want to say!"

I glanced at him with a touch of defiance.

"Then I need not speak," I answered.

"No, you need not speak, unless you give utterance to what is in your true soul," he said--"I would rather you did not play at conventions with me."

For the moment I felt almost angry.

"I do not play at conventions," I murmured.

"Oh, do you not? Is that quite candid?"

I raised my eyes and met his,--he was smiling. Some of the oppression in my soul suddenly gave way, and I spoke hurriedly in a low tone.

"Surely you know how difficult it is for me?" I said. "Things have happened so strangely,--and we are surrounded here by influences that compel conventionality. I cannot speak to you as frankly as I would under other circumstances. It is easy for YOU to be yourself;--you have gained the mastery over all lesser forces than your own. But with me it is different--perhaps when I am away I shall be able to think more calmly--"

"You are going away?" he asked, gently.

"Yes. It is better so."

He remained silent. I went on, quickly.

"I am going away because I feel inadequate and unable to cope with my present surroundings. I have had some experience of the same influences before--I know I have--"

"I also!" he interrupted.

"Well, you must realise this better than I," and I looked at him now with greater courage--"and if you have, you know they have led to trouble. I want you to help me."

"I? To help you?" he said. "How can I help you when you leave me?"

There was something infinitely sad in his voice,--and the old fear came over me like a chill--'lest I should lose what I had gained!'

"If I leave you," I said, tremblingly--"I do so because I am not worthy to be with you! Oh, can you not see this in me?" For as I spoke he took my hand in his and held it with a kindly clasp--"I am so self-willed, so proud, so unworthy! There are a thousand things I would say to you, but I dare not--not here, or now!"

"No one will approach us," he said, still holding my hand--"I am keeping the others, unconsciously to themselves, at a distance till you have finished speaking. Tell me some of these thousand things!"

I looked up at him and saw the deep lustre of his eyes filled with a great tenderness. He drew me a little closer to his side.

"Tell me," he persisted, softly--"Is there very much that we do not, if we are true to each other, know already?"

"YOU know more than I do!" I answered--"And I want to be equal with you! I do! I cannot be content to feel that I am groping in the dark weakly and blindly while you are in the light, strong and self-contained! You can help me--and you WILL help me! You will tell me where I should go and study as you did with Aselzion!"

He started back, amazed.

"With Aselzion! Dear, forgive me! You are a woman! It is impossible that you should suffer so great an ordeal,--so severe a strain! And why should you attempt it? If you would let me, I would be sufficient for you." "But I will not let you!" I said, quickly, roused to a kind of defiant energy--"I wish to go to the very source of your instruction, and then I shall see where I stand with regard to you! If I stay here now--"

"It will be the same old story over again!" he said--"Love--and mistrust! Then drifting apart in the same weary way! Is it not possible to avoid the errors of the past?"

"No!" I said, resolutely--"For me it is not possible! I cannot yield to my own inward promptings. They offer me too much happiness! I doubt the joy,--I fear the glory!"

My voice trembled--the very clasp of his hand unnerved me.

"I will tell you," he said, after a brief pause, "what you feel. You are perfectly conscious that between you and myself there is a tie which no power, earthly or heavenly, can break,--but you are living in a matter-of-fact world with matter-of-fact persons, and the influence they exert is to make you incredulous of the very truths which are an essential part of your spiritual existence. I understand all this. I understand also why you wish to go to the House of Aselzion, and you shall go--"