to abandon your quest and to despair at once. It is much quicker. In
such a mood you will discover yourself becoming most pleasantly the
prey of one of the unmarried maidens who abound hereabout and who, I
assure you, are not less beautiful and certainly less exacting than
your friend. For women, according to the sage's experience, are much
the same the whole world over--a morsel of honey in which the bee has
left his sting: without the sting no honey, and no honey no sting."
"Sir," replied the scribe, "I am much indebted to you, but you know
neither Sa-adeh nor the secret of the Sphinx."
"I do not indeed, but I venture to think that to propose to oneself
a question that cannot immediately be answered is not the conduct of
a wise man and may very well give offence to Powers of which we are
becomingly ignorant."
Utterly wearied by the enquiries he had prosecuted among the learned,
Es-siddeeh turned over in his mind the many types he had encountered
in his wanderings and, recollecting the lively intelligence of those
Athenians who were not of the learned professions, he determined
to live after their manner that perchance he might hap upon the
secret. Several years were spent in acquiring sufficient money. The
subsequent spending taught him that his mind was apt to wander from
the problem in the mere enjoyment of the moment. Before, however, he
could make finally sure whether he was any nearer gaining a solution
he found himself ruined. Turned soldier, he took part in many notable
engagements and distinguished himself not a little. The itch of the
excitement of the search was for the time being eclipsed by the perils
and responsibilities of war. There were, too, other distractions, nor
were these invariably the bodiless preoccupations of the mind.... It
was the somewhat unpleasant termination of one of these episodes which
plunged him into reverie upon the past. At midnight, silently rising
from his rose-strewn couch, he determined there and then to bring to
the contemplation of the Sphinx that store of varied knowledge which he
had gathered in the course of his wanderings. Arrayed, then, in a dress
similar to that which he had worn as a youth and encircling his neck
with a necklace of scrolls he set out alone for the desert.
Since the way was long and he no longer young, a year passed ere he
approached his goal.
Then once again Es-siddeeh stood before the Sphinx.
V.
In the moonlight it seemed to him that during his thirty years of
absence the image had grown larger. That his eyes, accustomed to watch
for unexpected perils, played him no tricks he was certain, yet he
now observed the brow of the Sphinx to be wreathed in a faint vapour
as if its crest had attained the altitude of no inconsiderable hill.
The fissures between the stones seemed slightly to have filled, but
the crevices across the face were both more numerous and more deeply
scored. The pits of the eyes, too, had become immensely more cavernous.
And--could he be mistaken?--was not the smile less ambiguous? Surely
he did not remember the visage as so noble, or had it grown nobler in
his absence? How was it that, though the aspect remained as unflinching
as ever, the expression now seemed less hard and more magnanimously
stern? The cheeks had undoubtedly sunk further, but did not the muscles
appear tightened less in impatience than in endurance of suffering? The
nostrils no longer breathed scorn; they laboured with the indrawing of
breath that, like fire, was at once painful and inspiriting. To the
brow there had been added, he thought, a faint line, and its coming had
softened the contraction of the brows so that the creature appeared
even more majestic and wiser than of yore. And lastly--he took long to
discover this--in the shadow under the brows the orbs seemed to stir
with a mysterious and darkling life. "O mighty Sphinx," he murmured,
leaning his head upon her bosom, "what has come to thee? How art thou
changed! Much I fear thou hast passed beyond so small, feeble, and
ignoble an intelligence as I and that now I shall never learn the
secret that, behind thy lips, lies locked in thy heart. O Sphinx, if I
speak wilt thou answer? Time was when I came to thee and, impatiently
stamping my foot upon the mound of thy illimitable desert, beating with
my fists thine unanswering flesh, conjured thee in a voice of thunder
to yield up thy secret. But to-night, nestling against thy bosom, how
shall I speak to thee?--I, of less account among men than one of the
myriad morsels of dust out of which thou art compounded; I, whose voice
is to thine ears hardly louder than the scratch of the beetles that
crawl about thy base; I, lost in the shadowy cleft between thy breasts?
O Sphinx, I will not cry out to thine unregarding face, lost in such a
reverie as transcends the thought of such as myself, but leaning here
my fevered forehead against thy cool stones, as in a dream and scarcely
expecting an answer, let me whisper to thy heart, '_What is the secret
of thy smile, O Sphinx?_'"
Then from within the Sphinx arose a deep murmuring as of a multitude
of nigh-forgotten voices; a handful of vapour parted from the lips to
wither in the glacial moonshine.
"Scarcely am I changed," said the Sphinx. "'Tis thou art changed. Look
in thy heart: there is my secret."
So low had been the sound, so immense was the night, so lonely the
desert, that Es-siddeeh doubted whether it was not his own heart
that had spoken. Then, placing both hands against the breast of the
colossus, he cried in a despairing voice, "Is that thy all, O Sphinx?"
But there was no answer.
With spirit heavy as death, Es-siddeeh wrapped him in his cloak and
laid him down to sleep between the paws.
"Alas," said he to himself, "how brief, how obscure, and how profitless
seem all the answers given to man!" Yet, when the morning came, it
occurred to him that, if the Sphinx had indeed spoken, he would do well
to ponder the words.
So for three moons he sat pondering: "_Scarcely am I changed. 'Tis thou
art changed. Look in thy heart: there is my secret._"
Those who crossed the desert marked him, sunk in the deepest travail of
thought.
"Why do you not look at the Sphinx?" they asked.
"I begin to know something about it: that is why," he replied. "If I
gazed at it always in the present and never in memory I should learn
nothing."
One day a young scribe of great beauty approached the Sphinx and in a
low tone enquired: "_What is the secret of thy smile, O Sphinx?_"
"Speak louder. She will not hear you," called his companion.
Es-siddeeh leaped to his feet.
"Who sent thee hither?" he cried.
"Sa-adeh, the Bestower-of-Felicity," answered the youth; and turning
to his comrade, "If you wish to know why I do not shout, know that it
is because I have read the early work of a certain scribe Es-siddeeh.
It is very evident that, as with many persons of original mind, he
scarcely recognised the full import of what he was at the time writing.
Had he been acquainted with more scholars and had more experience of
life he would have spoken with greater certainty. He would have also
realised, too, I do not doubt, that his work was not so vain as it
then appeared to him. But he disappeared and none knows whither, since
his parents never spoke of him again. I, taking up his work, have
already carried it further, I think, than he had when he abandoned it.
Nevertheless I, too, have ceased to labour at it and am come hither for
the purpose thou knowest."
"Sa-adeh," echoed Es-siddeeh, waking as if from a dream; "I seem to
remember that name. Tell me now, how did you----"
But the stranger, receiving no reply from the Sphinx, had departed.
Es-siddeeh sat him down again in dejection.
That night he did not sleep. The memory of Sa-adeh overcame him with
tears. All his life passed in review. Never had his reverie seemed so
bitter, his questioning so futile as on that midnight, yet toward dawn
he suddenly stood up with a shout. An immeasurable serenity flooded his
being.
"I have it," he cried; "I have solved the secret of thy smile, O
Sphinx!"
At that moment the tropic sun arose, and in its rays he beheld the
face of the tormentor shine with an equable and golden splendour. The
eyes, no longer lacking pupils, possessed sight, and from the smile had
vanished all that he detested.
VI.
A new porter, a garrulous and slipshod wastrel, had taken the place of
the old. It appeared that nowadays the Princess had but few visitors
despite the fact that she was acknowledged almost as beautiful as
ever, albeit in a different style. Her temperament, he learned, was
difficult, her wealth greater than ever.
After but short delay he found himself in the antechamber. He
acquainted the damsel with his mission. She vanished through the
curtains, and the following conversation was borne to Es-siddeeh's ears:
"An old man, calling himself the Very Veracious, has arrived and sues
for an interview on the same subject as his forerunners."
"I cannot see him." The maid returned.
"Tell her," said Es-siddeeh, "that she is as beautiful as one red rose
in a garden of lilies."
"The compliment," he heard the Princess remark, "though graceful, is
not new; in fact so old that I scarcely distinctly recollect when I
made a fashion for it. Dismiss him."
"Tell her," said Es-siddeeh, "that her wisdom has the wings of the
rukh, the eye of the falcon, the talons of the osprey, and the voice of
the dove."
"The Very Veracious," he heard the Princess remark, "is there very much
in the wrong. If I have learned nothing else in my life I have at least
learned that my wisdom has no such enviable characteristics. Dismiss
him."
"Tell her," said Es-siddeeh, suddenly overcome with a novel misgiving,
"that I know the answer to all secrets, including the secret of the
smile of the Sphinx."
"How original!" cried the Princess. "Does he really know the secret of
the Sphinx's smile? Send him in."
Es-siddeeh went in and bowed down.
"Though changed," he said, "O Sa-adeh, you are as beautiful as ever."
"Your beard has grown so long and so white," she answered,
"that--surely thou _art_ the (what is the name?) the Es-siddeeh I once
knew, are you not?"
"I am."
"And you know all secrets?"
"I do."
Then she plied him with various questions concerning the value as
an amulet of this or that precious stone, of the pedigree of famous
horses, of music as an Emotional Sound or as an Architecture, and many
other matters of a similar nature.
All these questions he answered with such a considerable wealth of
detail that Sa-adeh appeared confused. Both fell silent.
After her eyes had rested for some time upon his face in a musing
fashion, she asked with a strange inflection, "What is love?"
He was dumbfounded.
"I believe you have forgotten," she said, and in the intonation of her
voice there was a hint of the equivocal.
His eyes filled with tears. "I have not forgotten," he said; "perhaps I
am only just beginning to learn."
She gave him a curious look; then, moving her head, proceeded with an
instant change of tone, "Well, what is the secret of the smile of the
Sphinx?"
A wave of emotion swept over him. He smiled and arose.
"With the details of my enquiry I will not trouble you. Suffice it to
say that for nearly forty years I have been searching."
"So long as that?"
"Many hard early days I spent in the desert and endured great
privations."
"Indeed? I am sorry. Forget them."
"I would not if I could--they were the price of knowledge. At one time
I came near losing my wits."
"So? I am sorry."
"Then I spent some years interrogating the wisest of earth."
"Oh?"
"But met with no answer."
"Ah."
"Then I spent further years in acquiring money--years of misery they
were and years of degradation--that I might discover the secret. I was
ruined. I repeat, I was ruined."
"Pardon me. Yes, you were ruined. I am sorry."
"I served as a soldier. I received wounds. I was captive. I was beaten.
I escaped. I rose to power. I exploited all modes of living and
fulfilling myself, but my experiments brought me no nearer the secret."
"No nearer...."
"Then I set forth on a dreary journey to renew my memory of the
Sphinx's face. I sat down beside her. For a long time I learned
nothing--the smile seemed hardly less mysterious than it had ever been.
Then--but you are not listening...."
"My friend, I am indeed; you were on a dreary journey and----"
"At length one day a youth--but I will not burden you with that, though
it was strange...."
"Why do you look so at me? I am listening."
"That night I learned the secret of the Sphinx."
"At last!"
"I learned it indeed."
"Yes. Well, what is it?"
"A difficult matter. You must listen most carefully, so subtle is its
sense; yet in its comprehension lies hid the whole secret of man's
possible happiness."
"I am listening."
There was a great stillness in the chamber. Es-siddeeh closed his eyes
to concentrate his thought. Then, opening them, he began:
"I learned the secret--that smile is the secret."
"So I supposed."
"Hush, or I shall begin to think that you do not know how to value this
gift of my whole life, which I am making you. It is very difficult, but
if all men would listen to me their lives would be easier."
"I thought the secret was for me--yet no matter. Proceed. You see how
serious I am."
"I learned its secret."
His lips trembled. He could hardly speak; at last with a great effort
he said, "Now it comes--_upon maintaining that smile, which is the sign
of the power of her existence, all her energy is bent_. She did not
tell me, but I found it written in my heart. For what is she? _In the
Sphinx, with her ravaged countenance and mutilated smile, I behold Life
itself--Life in mysterious might, ignorant of its own origin, conscious
only of its own beauty, couchant amid the wilderness of space and
eternity._"
"Is the smile of the Sphinx all that indeed? I somehow thought it was
something more intimate. But how serious you look! Do not frown--I
would not offend you for the world."
"Should I not smile?" he said bitterly.
"Yes, like the Sphinx."
"Quick! How, did you know that?"
"Don't frighten me. I was but speaking idly."
"Idly?"
"Seriously then, if you like--since you attach such importance to it.
Women always work by miracles and never know when they have performed
one.... Excellent, you are smiling, though your smile is ambiguous."
"I do but obey her."
"Not me?"
"That smile which we behold on her face is the smile we see everywhere
about us; only in her it has become more august--first by reason of her
greater consciousness of isolation in the Desert and beneath the Stars,
and, secondly, by consciousness of her strength."
"Will you hand me my fan? Thank you."
"For what are not the properties of the smile--the sovereign beauty,
the witness of power--in Nature? Wise indeed the man who knows the
bounds of what it is capable. When we are born the first thing we
behold is a smile: the Nurse smiles at us, and in that smile we
should read--were we then capable--the self-satisfaction of Nature,
proud of her reproductive powers, who dandles us in her hands with
the assurance that she knows what is best for us. Ah, how universal
is the smile! Think of the variety of smiles that exist. 'Tis all
for smiles this life! And that is at once its apparent cruelty and
its final justification. On the blackness of Eternity it expands in a
smile like a rainbow--a rainbow whose arch begins and ends, as rainbow
arches do, uncertain where. And this blossoming in Infinity justifies
itself.... How? By the beauty of its smile. Therefore smile. Smile
and be in harmony with--if not the spirit of the Universe (for the
unknown looking down from the Hill of Heaven upon the Rainbow may for
all we know smile also, and on the import of that smile opinion may be
divided), and be in harmony at least with the beauty of that fragment
of the Universe which, if we do not wholly comprehend, we can at least
worship and imitate.... But you are yawning."
"No, obedient to you, I was--smiling."
"And for how long? Until we are resolved--as the drops of the rainbow
are resolved after refracting supernal colours. Yet as a raindrop
glitters, ere it evaporate upon the flower and be again (who knows?)
drawn up in the immense cycle, with some reflection of the glory which
its passage served to make, so should we maintain that smile to the
moment of our dissolution. As indeed I, whose stormy aerial passage
is nearly over, shall do till I attain to mine. For what commoner
solace do we hear than that '_he died with a smile upon his face_'?
Such a smile may each have at his passing! How happy our friends will
be to see it, how confounded our enemies! How comforted, too, the
philosophers, who will not fail to perceive in it the reflection of
whatever faith they hold: the ineffable joy of one whose beatified
wings even now mingle with the wings of other spirits in divine
assumption; the satisfaction of the racked, whom never again the
torturers Joy and Sorrow will wake from endless sleep; the profound
irony of one who never expected his pleasures to last for ever; and the
disdain, too proud to curve itself in a full sneer, of one who opposes
to the silent smile of the unknown a smile yet more silent!"
He paused.
"I have been thinking," said the Princess.
"You wish to know more? Shall I explain?"
"No. It is unnecessary; all this amounts to that you wish to marry me,
and the announcement that you have earned the right to do so, but I
should inform you that since you were last here a gentleman, who as a
matter of fact once occupied a position menial enough but of importance
in this household, has by signal honesty and perseverance arrived at a
position where--well, in fact, to put it shortly, I have formed another
attachment."
"Madam, am I reft of my senses? You astonish me! Who?"
"The Executioner."
"Ah, heavens! Well, let me inform you, madam, that I, too, have formed
another attachment."
"You say that to my face! How dare you? But I saw directly you entered
this room that you had long ago forgotten what true love is. Your long
absence from me bears it witness. Who, may I ask, is now the object of
your affections?"
"Do not smile--or smile, madam, if you can; I love the Sphinx."
He had but that moment discovered it.
The Princess shrieked and at the sound he bent upon her such a smile as
in memory effectually prevented her ever mentioning the Sphinx and its
secrets again to anyone.
Then he walked out.
VII.
He returned to the Sphinx.
While yet afar off he was puzzled beholding a mountain range arisen in
the wilderness. As he drew nearer he recognised it for the Sphinx. If
during his thirty years' wanderings she had appeared to increase in
size, to what dimensions had she not attained during his brief absence!
The vapours of the desert, rising about her, had collected upon her
shoulders in a strata of billowy cloud, and her head, unimaginably
exalted, had now reached such an altitude that the features were almost
indistinguishable in the blaze of the sun.
Night had fallen by the time that he stood within the canyon of her
breasts. For a little he rested his head upon the rock. A great
weariness descended upon him. Physical infirmity, the inevitable sequel
of all he had suffered in body and in soul, now made him its prey. His
mind and spirit, however, remained keen and unquenchable as ever. He
wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down. At midnight he awoke. For
the first time the Sphinx, speaking in a voice of more than mortal
tenderness, had made utterance without being addressed, "Art thou
returned, my lover?"
"Thou seest me. All I love I have given thee."
"Few have bestowed upon me so much as thou. Fewer still have arrived
where thou hast arrived, while yet possessing the eye not wholly dimmed
and the tongue not altogether palsied. One thing, however, thou hast
kept from me--the seal that is on thy heart."
"Ah, Sphinx," replied Es-siddeeh, "that I cannot give; it is part of
myself. Nor would I--for it was that which first brought me hither to
scan thy face and to read thy riddle."
"I am a jealous lover."
"I know it. Yet what care I? Thy jealousy is a measure of my reward;
for though I have discovered thy secret in general, yet it is a secret
which no man perhaps will ever fathom in all particulars. Happy the
hero who attains as far as I, happier yet he who can gaze unwinkingly
upon thee as I do now, and hourly fathom something further!"
"I am a jealous lover. Thou hast not much longer to gaze."
"No matter. Eyes do not perish with me, and for myself I am rewarded."
Then was it that for Es-siddeeh the body and the face of the Sphinx
achieved a final apotheosis. Her limbs throbbed with a deep and
terrible energy. From her breast issued an all embracing warmth
similar to that of the earth. Her breathing became distinct as an
august and stupendous rhythm resembling the ascent and descent of
waters from firmament to firmament. Her cheeks flushed with a youthful
elation. Into her eyes arose an immense light fixed upon unforetold
futurities, and all her face, so worn and beautiful, became more
ravaged and even more beautiful--for the very deepening scars, wasting
and remoulding the features, gradually resolved the visage into an
ethereal harmony hitherto unknown. Around her head, entangling in
its mesh the nearer planets, there wreathed itself an enormous halo,
iridescent as that which encircles the frosty moon. Her whole being
exuded a supreme lustre until she became one living and colossal
crystal which distributed in refraction all the colours of the rainbow
and which palpitated with powers unguessed.
And to Es-siddeeh, who beheld her through the tears of one who
momentarily expects to be parted, the spectra and the palpitance
appeared in triple.
"O Sphinx, O Life the Enchantress," he cried, "my true and only love,
take if thou wilt my heart and the seal upon it, for thine am I only,
thee only would I aid, thee only do I love, thee only would I worship!"
* * * * *
A band of Arabs, journeying across the desert, found him, when dawn
came, lying between the paws of the giant--dead, more cold than the
stone which surrounded him and which now began to kindle in the morning
rays. Though there had been no dew, his garments were deluged as with
the falling of an immense tear. Upon his face there lingered a fixed
smile, and, gazing upward, they beheld its double in the sunlit face of
the familiar Sphinx.
HERE ENDS THE STORY OF THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX.
MAYEST THOU ALSO LEARN ITS SECRET.
GEORGE ELIOT
By EDMUND GOSSE
In and after 1876, when I was in the habit of walking from the
northwest of London towards Whitehall, I met several times, driven
slowly homewards, a victoria which contained a strange pair in whose
appearance I took a violent interest. The man, prematurely ageing, was
hirsute, rugged, satyr-like, gazing vivaciously to left and right; this
was George Henry Lewes. His companion was a large, thick-set sybil,
dreamy and immobile, whose massive features, somewhat grim when seen
in profile, were incongruously bordered by a hat, always in the height
of the Paris fashion, which in those days commonly included an immense
ostrich feather; this was George Eliot. The contrast between the
solemnity of the face and the frivolity of the head-gear had something
pathetic and provincial about it.
All this I mention, for what trifling value it may have, as a purely
external impression, since I never had the honour of speaking to the
lady or to Lewes. We had, my wife and I, common friends in the gifted
family of Simcox--Edith Simcox (who wrote ingeniously and learnedly
under the pen-name of H. Lawrenny) being an intimate in the household
at the Priory. Thither, indeed, I was vaguely invited, by word of
mouth, to make my appearance one Sunday, George Eliot having read some
pages of mine with indulgence. But I was shy, and yet should probably
have obeyed the summons but for an event which nobody foresaw. On the
18th of December, 1880, I was present at a concert given, I think, in
the Langham Hall, where I sat just behind Mrs. Cross, as she had then
become. It was chilly in the concert-room, and I watched George Eliot,
in manifest discomfort, drawing up and tightening round her shoulders a
white wool shawl. Four days later she was dead, and I was sorry that I
had never made my bow to her.