"I MUST remain!" I said, firmly. "Do with me whatever you like--put me
in a cell and keep me a prisoner,--give me any hardship to endure and I
will endure it--but do not turn me away without teaching me something
of your peace and power--the peace and power which Rafel possesses, and
which I too must possess if I would help him and be all in all to him--"
Here I paused, overcome by my own emotion. Aselzion looked full at me.
"That is your desire?--to help him and to be all in all to him?" he
said--"Why did you not realise this ages ago? And even now you have
wavered in the allegiance you owe to him--you have doubted him, though
all your inward instincts tell you that he is your soul's true mate,
and that your own heart beats towards him like a bird in a cage beating
against the bars towards liberty!"
I was silent. My fate seemed in a balance,--but I left it to Aselzion,
who, if his power meant anything, could read my thoughts better than I
could express them. He rose from his desk and paced slowly up and down,
absorbed in meditation. Presently he stopped abruptly in front of me.
"If you stay here," he said--"you must understand what it means. It
means that you must dwell as one apart in your own room, entirely alone
except when summoned to receive instruction--your meals will be served
there--and you will feel like a criminal undergoing punishment rather
than enlightenment--and you may speak to no one unless spoken to first.
Moreover"--he interrupted himself and beckoned me to follow him into
another room adjoining the one we were in. Here, leading me to a
window, he showed me a very different view from the sunlit landscape
and garden I had lately looked upon,--a dismal square of rank grass in
which stood a number of black crosses.
"These do not mark deaths,"--he said--"but failures! Failures--not in a
worldly sense--but failures in making of life the eternal and creative
thing it is--eternal HERE and now,--as long as we shall choose! Do you
seek to be one of them?"
"No,"--I answered, quietly--"I shall not fail!"
He gave a slight, impatient sigh.
"So they all said--they whose records are here"--and he pointed to the
crosses with an impressive gesture--"Some of the men who have thus left
their mark with us, are at this moment among the world's most brilliant
and successful personalities--wealthy, and in great social
request,--and only they themselves know where the canker lies--only
they are aware of their own futility,--and they live, knowing that
their life must lead into other lives, and dreading that inevitable
Change which is bound by law to bring them into whatever position they
have chiefly sought!"
His voice was grave and compassionate, and a faint tremor of fear ran
through me.
"These were--and are--MEN!"--he continued--"And you--a woman--would
boldly attempt the adventures in which they failed! Think for a moment
how weak and ignorant and all unprepared you are! When you first began
your psychic studies with a Teacher whom we both loved and
honoured--one whom you knew by the name of Heliobas--you had scarcely
lived at all in the world;--since then you have worked hard and done
much, but in your close application to the conquest of difficulties you
have missed many things by the way. I give you credit for patience and
faith--these have accomplished much for you--and now you are at a
crucial point in your career when your Will, like the rudder of a ship,
trembles in your hand, and you are plunging into unknown further deeps
where there may be storm and darkness. There is danger ahead for any
doubting, proud, or rebellious soul,--it is but fair to warn you!"
"I am not afraid!" I said, in a low tone--"I can but die!"
"Child, that is just what you cannot do! Grasp that fact firmly at once
and for ever! You cannot die,--there is no such thing as death! If you
could die and have done with all duties, cares, perplexities and
struggles altogether, the eternal problem would be greatly simplified.
But the idea of death is only one of a million human delusions. Death
is an impossibility in the scheme of Life--what is called by that name
is merely a shifting and re-investiture of imperishable atoms. The
endless varying forms of this shifting and re-investiture of atoms is
the secret we and our students have set ourselves to master--and some
of us have mastered it sufficiently to control both the matter and
spirit whereof we are made. But the way of learning is not an easy
way--Rafel Santoris himself could have told you that he was all but
overcome in the trial--for I spare no one!--and if you persist in your
rash intention I cannot spare you simply because of your sex."
"I do not ask to be spared,"--I said, gently--"I have already told you
I will endure anything."
A slight smile crossed his face.
"So you will, I believe!" he answered--"In the old days I can well
understand your enduring martyrdom! I can see you facing lions in the
Roman arena,"--as he thus spoke I started, and the warm blood rushed to
my cheeks--"rather than not carry out your own fixed resolve, whether
such resolve was right or wrong! I can see you preparing to drown
yourself in the waters of the Nile rather than break through man's
stupid superstition and convention! Why do you look so amazed? Am I
touching on some old memory? Come, let us leave these black embers of
coward mortality and return to the more cheerful room."
We re-entered the library together, and he seated himself again at his
desk, turning towards me with an air of settled and impressive
authority.
"What you want to learn,--and what every beginner in the study of
psychic law generally wants to learn first of all, is how to obtain
purely personal satisfaction and advantage,"--he said--"You want to
know three things--the secret of life--the secret of youth--the secret
of love! Thousands of philosophers and students have entered upon the
same research, and one perhaps out of the thousand has succeeded where
all the rest have failed. The story of Faust is perpetually a thing of
interest, because it treats of these secrets, which according to the
legend are only discoverable through the aid of the devil. WE know that
there is no devil, and that everything is divinely ordained by a Divine
Intelligence, so that in the deepest researches which we are permitted
to make there is nothing to fear--but Ourselves! Failure is always
brought about by the students, not by the study in which they are
engaged,--the reason of this being that when they know a little, they
think they know all,--with the result that they become intellectually
arrogant, an attitude that instantly nullifies all previous attainment.
The secret of life is a comparatively easy matter to understand--the
secret of youth a little more difficult--the secret of love the most
difficult of all, because out of love is generated both the perpetuity
of life and of youth. Now your object in coming here is, down at the
root of it, absolutely personal--I will not say selfish, because that
sounds hard--and I will give you credit for the true womanly feeling
you have, that being conscious in your own soul of Rafel Santoris as
your superior and master as well as your lover, you wish to be worthy
of him, if only in the steadfastness and heroism of your character. I
will grant you all that. I will also grant that it is perfectly
natural, and therefore right, that you should wish to retain youth and
beauty and health for his sake,--and I would even urge that this desire
should be SOLELY for his sake! But just now you are not quite sure
whether it is for his sake,--you wish to hold, for YOURSELF, the secret
of life and the power of life's continuance--the secret of youth and
the power of youth's continuance,--and you most certainly wish to have
for yourself, as well as for Rafel, the secret of love and the power of
love's continuance. None of these secrets can be disclosed to
worldlings--by which term I mean those who allow themselves to be moved
from their determination, and distracted by a thousand ephemeral
matters. I do not say you are such an one,--but you, like all who live
in the world, have your friends and acquaintances--people who are ready
to laugh at you and make mock of your highest aims--people whose
delight would be to block the way to your progress--and the question
with me is--Are you strong enough to ensure the mental strain which
will be put upon you by ignorant and vulgar opposition and even
positive derision? You may be,--you are self-willed enough, though not
always rightly so--for example, you want to gain knowledge apart from
and independently of Rafel Santoris, yet you are an incomplete identity
without him! The women of your day all follow this vicious policy--the
desire to be independent and apart from men--which is the suicide of
their nobler selves. None of them are complete creatures without their
stronger halves--they are like deformed birds with only one wing,--and
a straight flight is impossible to them."
He ceased, and I looked up.
"Whether I agree with you or not hardly matters,"--I said--"I admit all
my faults and am ready to amend them. But I want to learn from you all
that I may--all that you think I am capable of learning--and I promise
absolute obedience--"
A slight smile lightened his eyes.
"And humility?"