The fated eve,--eve of the longest day in the year,--came in a soft
splendour of misty violet skies and dimly glittering stars--after
lovely hours of light and warmth which had bathed all nature in radiant
summer glory from earliest dawn till sunset. Diana had risen with the
sun itself in the brightest of humours without any forebodings of
evil or danger resulting from the trial to which she was ready to be
subjected, and when Madame Dimitrius came up to spend the afternoon
with her as usual, she was gayer and more conversational than she had
been for many a day. It was Madame who seemed depressed and anxious,
and Diana, looking quite charming in her simple gown of white batiste
with a bunch of heliotrope at her bosom, rather rallied her on her low
spirits.
“Ah, my dear!” sighed the old lady--“If I could only understand
Féodor!--but I cannot! He does not seem to be my son--he grows harsh
and impatient,--this wicked science of his has robbed him of nature!
He is altogether unlike what he used to be when he first began these
studies--and to-day the reason I am sad is that he tells me I am not
to come to you any more till the afternoon of the twenty-fifth!--five
days!--it seems so strange! It frightens me----”
“Dear, why be frightened?” and Diana smiled encouragingly. “You know
now what he is trying to do--and you can see for yourself that he has
partially succeeded! I’m quite pleased to hear that you are coming to
see me again in five days!--that shows he thinks I shall be alive to
receive you!”
Madame Dimitrius looked at her in a scared way.
“Alive? But of course! Surely, oh, surely, you have never thought it
possible----”
“That Science may kill me?” Diana finished, carelessly. “Very naturally
I _have_ thought it possible! Science sometimes kills more than it
saves,--owing to our fumbling ignorance. And I wonder--supposing Dr.
Féodor makes sure of his discovery--supposing he _can_ give youth and
beauty to those who are willing to go through his experiment--I wonder
whether it is worth while to possess these attractions without any
emotional satisfaction?”
“Then you are not satisfied?” asked Madame a little sorrowfully. “You
are not happy?”
Diana moved to the open window, and with an expressive gesture, pointed
to the fair landscape of lake and mountain.
“With this I am happy!” she answered. “With this I am satisfied! I feel
that all this is part of _Me_!--it is one with me and I with it--my own
blood cannot be closer to me than this air and light. But the pleasure
a woman is supposed to take in her looks if she is beautiful,--the
delight in pretty things for one’s self,--this does not touch me. I
have lost all such sensations. When I was a girl I rather liked to look
at myself in the glass,--to try contrasts of colour or wear a dainty
jewelled trinket,--but now when I see in the mirror a lovely face that
does not belong to me, I am not even interested!”
“But, my dear Diana, the lovely face _does_ belong to you!” exclaimed
Madame Dimitrius. “You are yourself, and no other!”
Diana looked at her rather wistfully.
“I am not so sure of that!” she said. “Now please don’t think I am
losing my senses, for I’m not! I’m perfectly sane, and my thoughts
are particularly clear. But Science is a terrible thing!--it is a
realisation more or less of the Egyptian Sphinx--a sort of monster
with the face of a spirit and the body of an animal. Science, dear
Madame--please don’t look so frightened--has lately taught men more
about killing each other than curing! It also tells us that nothing
is, or can be lost; all sights and sounds are garnered up in the
treasure-houses of air and space. The forms and faces of human
creatures long dead are about us,--the _aura_ of their personalities
remains though their bodies have perished. Now _I_ feel just as if I
had unconsciously absorbed somebody else’s outward personality--and
here I am, making use of it as a sort of cover to my own. My own
interior self admires my outward appearance without any closer
connection than that felt by anyone looking at a picture. I live
_within_ the picture--and no one seeing the picture could think it was
I!”
Poor Madame Dimitrius listened to Diana’s strange analysis of herself
with feelings of mingled bewilderment and terror. In her own mind she
began to be convinced that her son’s “experiment” would destroy his
“subject’s” mentality.
“It seems all very dreadful!” she murmured, tremblingly. “And I think,
dear Diana, you should say something of this to Féodor. For I am afraid
he is making you suffer, and that you are unhappy.”
“No,--that is not so,” and Diana smiled reassuringly. “I do not
suffer--I have forgotten what suffering is like! And I am not unhappy,
because what is called ‘happiness’ has no special meaning for me.
I exist--that is all! I am conscious of the principal things of
existence--air, light, movement--these keep me living without any real
effort or desire on my own part to live!”
She spoke in a dreamy way, with a far-off look in her eyes,--then,
perceiving that Madame Dimitrius looked nervously distressed, she
brought herself back from her dreamland as it were with an effort, and
went on:
“You must not worry about me in the least, dear Madame! After all,
it may be an excellent thing for me that I appear to have done with
emotions! One has only to think how people constantly distress
themselves for nothing! People who imagine themselves in love, for
instance!--how they torment themselves night and day!--if they fail
to get letters from each other!--if they quarrel!--if they think
themselves neglected!--why, it is a perpetual turbulence! Then the
parents who spend all their time looking after their children!--and
the children grow up and go their own way,--they grow from pretty
little angels into great awkward men and women, and it is as if one had
played with charming dolls, and then saw them suddenly changed into
clothes-props! Well, I am free from all these tiresome trivialities--I
have what I think the gods must have,--Indifference!”
Madame Dimitrius sighed.
“Ah, Diana, it is a pity you were never made a happy wife and mother!”
she said, softly.
“I thought so too,--once!” and Diana laughed carelessly--“But I’m sure
I’m much better off as I am! Now, dear, we’ll part for the present. I
want to rest a little--and to say my prayers--before Dr. Féodor sends
for me.”
Madame at once rose to leave the room. But, before doing so, she took
Diana in her arms and kissed her tenderly.
“God bless and guard thee, dear child!” she murmured. “Thou art brave
and loyal, and I have grown to love thee! If Féodor should bring thee
to harm, he is no son of mine!”
For a moment the solitary-hearted, unloved woman felt a thrill of
pleasure in this simple expression of affection,--the real sensation
of youth filled her veins, as if she were a confiding girl with
her mother’s arms about her, and something like tears sprang to her
eyes. But she suppressed the emotion quickly. Smiling and apparently
unmoved, she let the gentle old lady go from her, and watched her to
the last as she moved with the careful step of age along the entresol
and out through the entrance to the head of the staircase, where she
disappeared. Once alone, Diana stood for a few moments lost in thought.
She knew instinctively that her life was at stake,--Dimitrius had
reached the final test of his mysterious dealings with the innermost
secrets of Nature, and he had passed the “problem of the Fourth,
Sixth and Seventh,” which according to his theories, meant certain
refractions and comminglings of light. Now he had arrived at “the
ultimate culmination of the Eighth,” or, as he described it “the close
or the rebound of the Octave,”--and in this “rebound” or “culmination”
his subject, Diana, was to take part as a mote within a sun-ray. She
did not disguise from herself the danger in which she stood,--but she
had thought out every argument for and against the ordeal which she
had voluntarily accepted. She measured the value of her life from
each standpoint and found it _nil_, except in so far as her love for
natural beauty was concerned. She would be sorry, she said inwardly, to
leave the trees, the flowers, the birds, the beautiful things of sky
and sea, but she would not be sorry at all to see the last of human
beings! With all her indifference, which even to her own consciousness,
enshrined her as within barriers of ice, her memory was keen,--she
looked back to the few months of distance and time which separated her
from the old life of the dutiful daughter to inconsiderate and selfish
parents--and beyond that, she went still further and saw herself as
a young girl full of hope and joy, given up heart and soul to the
illusion of love, from which she was torn by the rough hand of the
very man to whom she had consecrated her every thought. In all this
there was nothing enviable or regrettable that she should now be sorry
or afraid to die--and in her life to come--if she lived--what would
there be? Her eyes turned almost without her own consent towards the
mirror--and there she read the answer. She would possess the power to
rule and sway the hearts of all men,--if she cared! But now it had so
happened that she did _not_ care. Smouldering in her soul like the
last spent ashes of a once fierce fire, there was just one passion
left--the strong desire of vengeance on all the forces that had spoilt
and embittered her natural woman’s life. She was no longer capable of
loving, but she knew she could hate! A woman seldom loves deeply and
truly more than once in her life--she stakes her all on the one chance
and hope of happiness, and the man who takes advantage of that love and
ruthlessly betrays it may well beware. His every moment of existence is
fraught with danger, for there is no destructive power more active and
intense than love transformed to hate through falsehood and injustice.
And Diana admitted to herself, albeit reluctantly, that she could hate
deeply and purposefully. She hated herself for the fact that it was
so,--but she was too honest not to acknowledge it. Her spirit had been
wounded and maltreated by all on whom she had set her affections,--and
as her way of life had been innocent and harmless, she resented the
unfairness of her fate. Wrong or right, she longed to retaliate in some
way on the petty slights, the meannesses, the hypocrisies and neglect
of those who had assisted in spoiling her youth and misjudging her
character, and though she was willing to “love her enemies” in a broad
and general sense, she was not ready to condone the easy callousness
and cruelty of the persons and circumstances which had robbed her of
the natural satisfaction and peace of happy womanhood.
For a long time she sat at the open window, lost in a reverie--till
she saw the sun beginning to sink in a splendid panoply of crimson and
gold, with streaming clouds of fleecy white and pale amber spreading
from east to west, from north to south, like the unfurling flags of
some great fairy’s victorious army, and then a sudden thrill ran
through her blood which made her heart beat and her face grow pale--it
was close upon the destined hour when--ah!--she would not stop to
think of the “when” or the “where”--instinctively she knelt down, and
with folded hands said her prayers simply as a child, though with more
than a child’s fervour. She had scarcely breathed the last “Amen,”
when a light tap came on her door, and on her calling “Come in”--Vasho
entered, carrying a small parcel with a note from Dimitrius. Handing it
to her, he signified by his usual expressive signs that he would wait
outside for the answer. As soon as he had retired, she opened the note
and read as follows:
“You will please disrobe yourself completely, and wear only this
garment which I send. No other material must touch any part of your
body. Let your hair be undone and quite free--no hairpins must remain
in it, and no metal of any sort must be upon your person,--no ring,
bracelet, or anything whatsoever. When you are ready, Vasho will bring
you to me in the laboratory.”
Having mastered these instructions she undid the packet which
accompanied them,--and unfolded a plain, long, white robe of the most
exquisitely beautiful texture woven apparently of many double strands
of silk. It was perfectly opaque--not the slightest glimmer of the
light itself could be seen through it, yet it shone with a curious
luminance as though it had been dipped in frosted silver. For a moment
she hesitated. A tremor of natural dread shook her nerves,--then, with
a determined effort, mastering herself, she hurried into her bedroom,
and there undressing, laid all her clothes neatly folded up on the
bed. The action reminded her of the way she had folded up her clothes
with similar neatness and left them on the rocks above the sea on the
morning she had decided to effect a lasting disappearance by “drowning.”
“And now”--she thought--“Now comes a far greater plunge into the
unknown than ever I could have imagined possible!”
In a few minutes she was “attired for the sacrifice,” as she said,
addressing these words to herself in the mirror, and a very fair
victim she looked. The strange, white sheeny garment in which she was
clothed from neck to feet gave her the appearance of an angel in a
picture,--and the youthful outline of her face, the delicacy of her
skin, the deep brilliancy of her eyes, all set off against a background
of glorious amber-brown hair, which rippled in plentiful waves over her
shoulders and far below her waist, made her look more of a vision than
a reality.
“Good-bye, you poor, lonely Diana!” she said, softly. “If you never
come back I am glad I saw you just like this--for once!”
She kissed her hand to her own reflection, then turned and went
swiftly through the rooms, not looking back. Vasho, waiting for her
in the outer hall, could not altogether disguise his wonderment at
sight of her,--but he saluted in his usual passively humble Eastern
manner, and led the way, signing to her to follow. The house was very
quiet,--they met no one, and very soon arrived at the ponderous door of
the laboratory, which swung noiselessly upwards to give them entrance.
Within, there seemed to be a glowing furnace of fire; the great Wheel
emitted such ceaseless and brilliant showers of flame in its rotations
that the whole place was filled with light that almost blinded the
eyes, and Diana could scarcely see Dimitrius, when, like a black
speck detaching itself from the surrounding sea of crimson vapour,
he advanced to meet her. He was exceedingly pale, and his eyes were
feverishly brilliant.
“So you have come!” he said. “I am such a sceptic that at this last
moment I doubted whether you would!”
She looked at him steadfastly, but answered nothing.
“You are brave--you are magnificent!” he went on, his voice sinking to
a lower tone--“But, Diana--I want you to say one thing before I enter
on this final task--and that is--‘I forgive you!’”
“I will say it if you like,” she answered. “But why should I? I have
nothing to forgive!”
“Ah, you will not see,--you cannot understand----”
“I see and understand perfectly!” she said, quickly. “But, if I live,
my life remains my own--if I die, it will be your affair--but there can
be no cause for grudge either way!”
“Diana,” he repeated, earnestly--“Say just this--‘Féodor, I forgive
you!’”
She smiled--a strange little smile of pity and pride commingled, and
stretched out both hands to him. To her surprise he knelt before her
and kissed them.
“Féodor, I forgive you!” she said, very sweetly, in the penetrating
accents which were so exclusively her own.--“Now, Magician, get to your
work quickly! Apollonius of Tyana and Paracelsus were only children
playing on the shores of science compared to you! When _you_ are ready,
_I_ am!”
He sprang up from his kneeling attitude, and for a moment looked about
him as one half afraid and uncertain. His amazing piece of mechanism,
the great Wheel, was revolving slowly and ever more slowly, for
outside in the heavens the sun had sunk, and the massed light within
the laboratory’s crystal dome was becoming less and less dazzling.
Astonishing reflections of prismatic colour were gathered in the dark
water below the Wheel, as though millions of broken rainbows had
been mixed with its mysterious blackness. Quietly Diana waited, her
white-robed figure contrasting singularly with all the fire-glow which
enveloped her in its burning lustre,--and her heart beat scarcely one
pulse the quicker when Dimitrius approached her, holding with extreme
care a small but massive crystal cup. It was he who trembled, not she,
as she looked at him inquiringly. He spoke, striving to steady his
voice to its usual even tone of composure.
“This cup,” he said--“if it contains anything, contains the true
elixir for which all scientists have searched through countless ages.
They failed, because they never prepared the cells of the human body
to receive it. I have done all this preparatory work with you, and
I have done it more successfully than I ever hoped. Every tiniest
cell or group of cells that goes to form your composition as a human
entity is now ready to absorb this distillation of the particles which
generate and shape existence. This is the Sacramental Cup of Life! It
is what early mystics dreamed of as the Holy Grail. Do not think that
I blaspheme!--no!--I seek to show the world what Science can give it
of true and positive communion with the mind of God! The elements that
commingle to make this Universe and all that is therein, are the real
‘bread and wine’ of God’s love!--and whoever can and will absorb such
food may well ‘preserve body and soul unto everlasting life.’ Such
is the great union of Spirit with Matter--such is the truth after
which the Churches have been blindly groping in their symbolic ‘holy
communion’ feebly materialised in ‘bread and wine’ as God’s ‘body
and blood.’ But the actual ‘body and blood’ of the Divine are the
ever-changing but never destructible elements of all positive Life and
Consciousness. And you are prepared to receive them.”
A thrill of strange awe ran through Diana as she heard. His reasoning
was profound, yet lucid,--it was true enough, she thought; that
God,--that is to say, the everlasting spirit of creative power,--is
everywhere and in everything,--yet to the average mind it never
occurs to inquire deeply as to the subtle elements wherewith Divine
Intelligence causes this “everywhere” and “everything” to be made. She
remained silent, her eyes fixed on the crystal cup, knowing that for
her it held destiny.
“You are prepared,” resumed Dimitrius. “I have left nothing undone. And
yet--you are but woman----”
“Not weaker than man!” she interrupted him, quickly. “Though men have
sought to make her so in order to crush her more easily! Give me the
cup!”
He looked at her in undisguised admiration.
“Wait!” he said. “You shall not lose yourself in the infinite profound,
without knowing something of the means whereby you are moved. This
cup, as you see, is of purest crystal, hewn rough from rocks that may
have been fused in the fires of the world’s foundation. Within it are
all the known discoverable particles of life’s essence, and when I say
‘discoverable,’ I wish you to understand that many of these particles
were not discovered or discoverable at all till I set my soul to
the work of a spy on the secrets of Nature. I have already told you
that this test may be life or death to you--if it should be death,
then I have failed utterly! For, by all the closest and most minute
mathematical measurements, it should be life!”
Smiling, she stretched out her hand:
“Give me the cup!” she repeated.
“If it should be death,” he went on, speaking more to himself than to
her--“I think it will be more your fault than mine. Not voluntarily
your fault, except that perhaps you may have concealed from me details
of your personality and experience which I ought to have known. And
yet I believe you to be entirely honest. Success, as I have told you,
depends on the perfect health and purity of the cells--so that if
you were an unprincipled woman, or if you had led a tainted life--or
you were a glutton, or one who drank and took drugs for imaginary
ailments--the contents of this cup would kill you instantly, because
the cells having been weakened and lacerated could not stand the inrush
of new force. But had you been thus self-injured, you would have shown
signs of it during these months of preparation, and so far I have seen
nothing that should hinder complete victory.”
“Then why delay any longer?”--and Diana gave a gesture of visible
impatience--“It is more trying to me to wait here in suspense on your
words than to die outright!”
He looked at her half pleadingly--then turned his eyes towards the
great Wheel, which was now, after sunset, going round with an almost
sleepy slowness. One moment more of hesitation, and then with a firm
hand he held out the cup.
“Take it!” he said--“And may God be with you!”
With a smile she accepted it, and putting her lips to the crystal rim,
drained its contents to the last drop. For half or quarter of a second
she stood upright,--then, as though struck by a flash of lightning, she
fell senseless.
Quickly Dimitrius sprang to her side, picked up the empty cup as it
rolled from her hand, and called:
“Vasho!”
Instantly the tall Ethiopian appeared, and obeying his master’s
instructions, assisted him to lift the prone figure and lay it on a
bench near at hand. Then they both set to work to move a number of
ropes and pulleys which, noiselessly manipulated, proved to be an
ingenious device for lowering a sort of stretcher or couch, canopied in
tent-like fashion and made entirely of the same sort of double stranded
silk material in which Diana had clothed herself for her “sacrifice.”
This stretcher was lowered from the very centre of the dome of the
laboratory,--and upon it the two men, Dimitrius and his servant,
carefully and almost religiously placed the passive form, which now had
an appearance of extreme rigidity, like that of a corpse. Dimitrius
looked anxiously at the closed eyes, the waxen pallor of the features,
and the evident tension of the muscles of the neck and throat,--then,
with a kind of reckless swiftness and determination, he began to bind
the apparently lifeless body round and round with broad strips of the
same luminous sheeny stuff which composed the seeming funeral couch
of his “subject” in the fashion of an Egyptian mummy. Vasho, acting
under orders, assisted him as before--and very soon Diana’s form was
closely swathed from head to foot, only the eyes, mouth and ears
being left uncovered. The laboratory was now illumined only by its
own mysterious fires--outside was a dark summer sky, powdered with
faint stars, and every lingering reflex of the sunset had completely
vanished. With the utmost care and minutest attention Dimitrius now
looked to every detail of the strange, canopied bier on which the
insensible subject of his experiment was laid,--then, giving a sign
to Vasho, the ropes and pulleys by which it was suspended were once
more set in motion, and slowly, aerially and without a sound it swung
away and across the dark pool of water to a position just under the
great Wheel. The Wheel, revolving slowly and casting out lambent rays
of fire, illumined it as a white tent might be illumined on the night
blackness of a bare field,--it rested just about four feet above the
level of the water and four feet below the turning rim of the Wheel.
When safely and accurately lodged in this position, Dimitrius and his
servant fastened the ropes and pulleys to a projection in the wall,
attaching them to a padlock of which Dimitrius himself took the key.
Then, pausing, they looked at each other. Vasho’s glittering eyes,
rolling like dark moonstones under his jetty brows, asked mutely a
thousand questions; he was stricken with awe and terror and gazed at
his master as beseechingly as one might fancy an erring mortal might
look at an incarnate devil sent to punish him, but in the set white
face of Dimitrius there was no sign of response or reassurance. Two or
three minutes passed, and, going to the edge of the pool, Dimitrius
looked steadily across it at the white pavilion with its hidden burden
swung between fire and water,--then slowly, but resolutely, turned
away. As he did so, Vasho suddenly fell on his knees, and catching at
his master’s hand, implored him by eloquent signs of fear, pity and
distress, not to abandon the hapless woman, thus bound and senseless,
to a fate more strange and perhaps more terrible than any human being
had yet devised to torture his fellow human being. Dimitrius shook off
his touch impatiently, and bade him rise from his knees.
“Do not pray to _me_!” he said, harshly--“Pray to your God, if you have
one! _I_ have a God whose Intelligence is so measureless and so true
that I know He will not punish me for spending the brain with which
He has endowed me, in an effort to find out one of His myriad secrets.
There was a time in this world when men knew nothing of the solar
system,--now God has permitted them to know it. In the same way we know
nothing of the secret of life, but shall we dare to say that God will
never permit us to know? That would be blasphemy indeed! We ‘suffer
fools gladly,’--we allow tricksters such as ‘mediums,’ fortune-tellers
and the like to flourish on their frauds, but we give little help to
the man of spiritual or psychological science, whose learning might
help us to conquer disease and death! No, Vasho!--your fears have no
persuasion for me!--I am thankful you are dumb! There is no more to
do--we may go!”
Vasho’s moonstone eyes still turned lingeringly and compassionately on
the white pavilion under the Wheel of fire. He made expressive signs
with his fingers, to which his master answered, almost kindly:
“She will die, you think! If so, my toil is wasted--my supreme
experiment is a failure! She must live. And I have sufficient faith in
the _accuracies_ of God and Nature as to be almost sure she _will_!
Come!”
He took the reluctant Vasho by the arm and led him to the mysterious
door, which swung up in its usual mysterious way at his touch. They
passed out, and as the portal swung down again behind them, Dimitrius
released a heavy copper bar from one side and clamped it across the
whole door, fastening it with lock and key.
“I do this in case you should be tempted to look in,” he said, with a
stern smile to his astonished attendant. “You have been faithful and
obedient so far--but you know the secret of opening this door when no
bar is placed across it,--but _with_ it!--ah, my Vasho!--the devil
himself may fumble in vain!”
Vasho essayed a feeble grin,--but his black skin looked a shade less
black, as he heard his master’s words and saw his resolute action.
Gone was the faint hope the poor blackamoor had entertained of being
of some use or rescue to the victim prisoned in the laboratory,--she
was evidently doomed to abide her fate. And Dimitrius walked with an
unfaltering step through the long corridor from the laboratory into
the hall of his house, and then sent Vasho about his usual household
business, while he himself went into the garden and looked at the
still beauty of the evening. Everywhere there was fragrance and
peace--innumerable stars clustered in the sky, and the faint outline
of the snowy Alps was dimly perceptible. From the lawn, he could see
the subdued glitter of the glass dome of the laboratory; at that moment
it had the effect of a crystal sphere with the palest of radiance
filtering through.
“And to-morrow is the longest day!” he said with a kind of rapt
exultation. “Pray Heaven the sun may shine with all its strongest
force and utmost splendour from its rising to its setting! So shall we
imprison the eternal fire!”