/Within/ the palace of the Princess Ziska a strange silence reigned.
In whatever way the business of her household was carried on, it was
evidently with the most absolute noiselessness, for not a sound
disturbed the utter stillness environing her. She herself, clad in
white garments that clung about her closely, displaying the perfect
outlines of her form, stood waiting for her guest in a room that was
fairly dazzling to the eye in its profusion of exquisitely assorted
and harmonized colors, as well as impressive to the mind in its
suggestions of the past rather than of the present. Quaint musical
instruments of the fashion of thousands of years ago hung on the walls
or lay on brackets and tables, but no books such as our modern time
produces were to be seen; only tied-up bundles of papyri and curious
little tablets of clay inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs. Flowers
adorned every corner--many of them strange blossoms which a
connoisseur would have declared to be unknown in Egypt,--palms and
ferns and foliage of every description were banked up against the
walls in graceful profusion, and from the latticed windows the light
filtered through colored squares, giving a kind of rainbow-effect to
the room, as though it were a scene in a dream rather than a reality.
And even more dream-like than her surroundings was the woman who
awaited the approach of her visitor, her eyes turned towards the
door--fiery eyes filled with such ardent watchfulness as seemed to
burn the very air. The eyes of a hawk gleaming on its prey,--the eyes
of a famished tiger in the dark, were less fraught with terrific
meaning than the eyes of Ziska as she listened attentively to the
on-coming footsteps through the outside corridor which told her that
Gervase was near.
“At last!” she whispered, “at last!”
The next moment the Nubian flung the door wide open and announced
“Monsieur Armand Gervase!”
She advanced with all the wonderful grace which distinguished her,
holding out both her slim, soft hands. Gervase caught them in his own
and kissed them fervently, whereupon the Nubian retired, closing the
door after him.
“You are very welcome, Monsieur Gervase,” said the Princess then,
speaking with a measured slowness that was attractive as well as
soothing to the ear. “You have left all the dear English people well
at the Gezireh Palace? Lady Fulkeward was not too tired after her
exertions at the ball? And you?”
But Gervase was gazing at her in a speechless confusion of mind too
great for words. A sudden, inexplicable emotion took possession of
him,--an emotion to which he could give no name, but which stupefied
him and held him mute. Was it her beauty which so dazzled his senses?
Was it some subtle perfume in the room that awoke a dim haunting
memory? Or what was it that seemed so strangely familiar? He struggled
with himself, and finally spoke out his thought:
“I have seen you before, Princess; I am quite sure I have! I thought I
had last night; but to-day I am positive about it. Strange, isn’t it?
I wonder where we really met?”
Her dark eyes rested on him fully.
“I wonder!” she echoed, smiling. “The world is so small, and so many
people nowadays make the ‘grand tour,’ that it is not at all
surprising we should have passed each other _en route_ through our
journey of life.”
Gervase still hesitated, glancing about him with a singularly
embarrassed air, while she continued to watch him intently. Presently
his sensations, whatever they were, passed off, and gradually
recovering his equanimity, he became aware that he was quite alone
with one of the most fascinating women he had ever seen. His eyes
flashed, and he smiled.
“I have come to paint your picture,” he said softly. “Shall I begin?”
She had seated herself on a silken divan, and her head rested against
a pile of richly-embroidered cushions. Without waiting for her answer,
he threw himself down beside her and caught her hand in his.
“Shall I paint your picture?” he whispered. “Or shall I make love to
you?”
She laughed,--the sweet, low laugh that somehow chilled his blood
while it charmed his hearing.
“Whichever you please,” she answered. “Both performances would no
doubt be works of art!”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you not understand? If you paint my picture it will be a work of
art. If you make love to me it will equally be a work of art: that is,
a composed thing--an elaborate study.”
“Bah! Love is not a composed thing,” said Gervase, leaning closer to
her. “It is wild, and full of libertinage as the sea.”
“And equally as fickle,” added the Princess composedly, taking a fan
of feathers near her and waving it to and fro. “Man’s idea of love is
to take all he can get from a woman, and give her nothing in return
but misery sometimes, and sometimes death.”
“You do not,--you cannot think that!” said Gervase, looking at her
dazzling face with a passion of admiration he made no attempt to
conceal. “Men on the whole are not as cruel or as treacherous as
women. I would swear, looking at you, that, beautiful as you are, you
are cruel, and that is perhaps why I love you! You are like a splendid
tigress waiting to be tamed!”
“And you think you could tame me?” interposed Ziska, looking at him
with an inscrutable disdain in her black eyes.
“Yes, if you loved me!”
“Ah, possibly! But then it happens that I do not love you. I love no
one. I have had too much of love; it is a folly I have grown weary
of!”
Gervase fixed his eyes on her with an audacious look which seemed to
hint that he might possibly take advantage of being alone with her to
enforce his ideas of love more eloquently than was in accordance with
the proprieties. She perceived his humor, smiled, and coldly gave him
back glance for glance. Then, rising from the divan, she drew herself
up to her full height and surveyed him with a kind of indulgent
contempt.
“You are an unprincipled man, Armand Gervase,” she said; “and do you
know I fear you always will be! A cleansing of your soul through
centuries of fire will be necessary for you in the next world,--that
next world which you do not believe in. But it is perhaps as well to
warn you that I am not without protection in this place. … See!” and
as she spoke she clapped her hands.
A clanging noise as of brazen bells answered her,--and Gervase,
springing up from his seat, saw, to his utter amazement, the
apparently solid walls of the room in which they were, divide rapidly
and form themselves in several square openings which showed a much
larger and vaster apartment beyond, resembling a great hall. Here were
assembled some twenty or thirty gorgeously-costumed Arab
attendants,--men of a dark and sinister type, who appeared to be fully
armed, judging from the unpleasant-looking daggers and other weapons
they carried at their belts. The Princess clapped her hands again, and
the walls closed in the same rapid fashion as they had opened, while
the beautiful mistress of this strange habitation laughed mirthfully
at the complete confusion of her visitor and would-be lover.
“Paint me now!” she said, flinging herself in a picturesque attitude
on one of the sofas close by; “I am ready.”
“But _I_ am not ready!” retorted Gervase, angrily. “Do you take me for
a child, or a fool?”
“Both in one,” responded the Princess, tranquilly; “being a man!”
His breath came and went quickly.
“Take care, beautiful Ziska!” he said. “Take care how you defy me!”
“And take care, Monsieur Gervase; take care how you defy _me_!” she
responded, with a strange, quick glance at him. “Do you not realize
what folly you are talking? You are making love to me in the fashion
of a brigand, rather than a nineteenth-century Frenchman of good
standing,--and I--I have to defend myself against you also
brigand-wise, by showing you that I have armed servants within call!
It is very strange,--it would frighten even Lady Fulkeward, and I
think she is not easily frightened. Pray commence your work, and leave
such an out-of-date matter as love to dreamers and pretty
sentimentalists, like Miss Helen Murray.”
He was silent, and busied himself in unstrapping his canvas and
paint-box with a great deal of almost vicious energy. In a few moments
he had gained sufficient composure to look full at her, and taking his
palette in hand, he began dabbing on the colors, talking between
whiles.
“Do you suppose,” he said, keeping his voice carefully subdued, “that
you can intimidate me by showing me a score of wretched black rascals
whom you have placed on guard to defend you out there? And why did you
place them on guard? You must have been afraid of me! _Pardieu!_ I
could snatch you out of their midst, if I chose! You do not know me;
if you did, you would understand that not all the world, armed to the
teeth should balk me of my desires! But I have been too hasty--that I
own,--I can wait.” He raised his eyes and saw that she was listening
with an air of amused indifference. “I shall have to mix strange tints
in your portrait, _ma belle_! It is difficult to find the exact hue of
your skin--there is rose and brown in it; and there is yet another
color which I must evolve while working,--and it is not the hue of
health. It is something dark and suggestive of death; I hope you are
not destined to an early grave! And yet, why not? It is better that a
beautiful woman should die in her beauty than live to become old and
tiresome. …”
“You think that?” interrupted the Ziska suddenly, smiling somewhat
coldly.
“I do, most honestly. Had I lived in the early days of civilization,
when men were allowed to have as many women as they could provide for,
I would have mercifully killed any sweet favorite as soon as her
beauty began to wane. A lovely woman, dead in her first exquisite
youth,--how beautiful a subject for the mind to dwell upon! How it
suggests all manner of poetic fancies and graceful threnodies! But a
woman grown old, who has outlived all passion and is a mere bundle of
fat, or a mummy of skin and bone,--what poetry does her existence
suggest? How can she appeal to art or sentiment? She is a misery to
herself and an eyesore to others. Yes, Princess, believe me,--Love
first, and Death afterwards, are woman’s best friends.”
“You believe in Death?” asked the Princess, looking steadily at him.
“It is the only thing I do believe in,” he answered lightly. “It is a
fact that will bear examination, but not contradiction. May I ask you
to turn your head slightly to the left--so! Yes, that will do; if I
can catch the look in your eyes that gleams there now,--the look of
intense, burning, greedy cruelty which is so murderously fascinating,
I shall be content.”
He seated himself opposite to her, and, putting down his palette, took
up his canvas, and posing it on his knee, began drawing the first
rough outline of his sketch in charcoal. She, meanwhile, leaning
against heaped-up cushions of amber satin, remained silent.
“You are not a vain woman,” he pursued, “or you would resent my
description of your eyes. ‘Greedy cruelty’ is not a pretty expression,
nor would it be considered complimentary by the majority of the fair
sex. Yet, from my point of view, it is the highest flattery I can pay
you, for I adore the eyes of savage animals, and the beautiful eye of
the forest-beast is in your head,--_diableresse charmante comme vous
êtes!_ I wonder what gives you such an insatiate love of vengeance?”
He looked up and saw her eyes glistening and narrowing at the corners,
like the eyes of an angry snake.
“If I have such a feeling,” she replied slowly, “it is probably a
question of heritage.”
“Ah! Your parents were perhaps barbaric in their notions of love and
hatred?” he queried, lazily working at his charcoal sketch with
growing admiration for its result.
“My parents came of a race of kings!” she answered. “All my ancestors
were proud, and of a temper unknown to this petty day. They resented a
wrong, they punished falsehood and treachery, and they took a life for
a life. _Your_ generation tolerates every sin known in the calendar
with a smile and a shrug,--you have arrived at the end of your
civilization, even to the denial of Deity and a future life.”
“That is not the end of our civilization, Princess,” said Gervase,
working away intently, with eyes fixed on the canvas as he talked.
“That is the triumphal apex, the glory, the culmination of everything
that is great and supreme in manhood. In France, man now knows himself
to be the only God; England--good, slow-pacing England--is approaching
France in intelligence by degrees, and I rejoice to see that it is
possible for a newspaper like the _Agnostic_ to exist in London. Only
the other day that excellent journal was discussing the possibility of
teaching monkeys to read, and a witty writer, who adopts the _nom de
plume_ of ‘Saladin,’ very cleverly remarked ‘that supposing monkeys
were able to read the New Testament, they would still remain monkeys;
in fact, they would probably be greater monkeys than ever.’ The fact
of such an expression being allowed to pass muster in once pious
London is an excellent sign of the times and of our progress towards
the pure Age of Reason. The name of Christ is no longer one to conjure
with.”
A dead silence followed his words, and the peculiar stillness and
heaviness of the atmosphere struck him with a vague alarm. He lifted
his eyes,--the Princess Ziska met his gaze steadily, but there was
something in her aspect that moved him to wonderment and a curious
touch of terror. The delicate rose-tint of her cheeks had faded to an
ashy paleness, her lips were pressed together tightly and her eyes
seemed to have gained a vivid and angry lustre which Medusa herself
might have envied.
“Did you ever try to conjure with that name?” she asked.
“Never,” he replied, forcing a smile and remonstrating with himself
for the inexplicable nature of his emotions.
She went on slowly:
“In my creed--for I have a creed--it is believed that those who have
never taken the sacred name of Christ to their hearts, as a talisman
of comfort and support, are left as it were in the vortex of
uncertainties, tossed to and fro among many whirling and mighty
forces, and haunted forever by the phantoms of their own evil deeds.
Till they learn and accept the truth of their marvellous Redemption,
they are the prey of wicked spirits who tempt and lead them on to
divers miseries. But when the great Name of Him who died upon the
Cross is acknowledged, then it is found to be of that transfiguring
nature which turns evil to good, and sometimes makes angels out of
fiends. Nevertheless, for the hardened reprobate and unbeliever the
old laws suffice.”
Gervase had stopped the quick movement of his “fusin,” and looked at
her curiously.
“What old laws?” he asked.
“Stern justice without mercy!” she answered; then in lighter accents
she added: “Have you finished your first outline?”
In reply, he turned his canvas round to her, showing her a head and
profile boldly presented in black and white. She smiled.
“It is clever; but it is not like me,” she said. “When you begin the
coloring you will find that your picture and I have no resemblance to
each other.”
He flushed with a sense of wounded _amour propre_.
“Pardon, madame!--I am no novice at the art of painting,” he said;
“and much as your charms dazzle and ensnare me, they do not disqualify
my brain and hand from perfectly delineating them upon my canvas. I
love you to distraction; but my passion shall not hinder me from
making your picture a masterpiece.”
She laughed.
“What an egoist you are, Monsieur Gervase!” she said. “Even in your
professed passion for me you count yourself first,--me afterwards!”
“Naturally!” he replied. “A man must always be first by natural
creation. When he allows himself to play second fiddle, he is a fool!”
“And when he is a fool--and he often is--he is the first of fools!”
said the Princess. “No ape--no baboon hanging by its tail to a
tree--looks such a fool as a man-fool. For a man-fool has had all the
opportunities of education and learning bestowed upon him; this great
universe, with its daily lessons of the natural and the supernatural,
is his book laid open for his reading, and when he will neither read
it nor consider it, and, moreover, when he utterly denies the very
Maker of it, then there is no fool in all creation like him. For the
ape-fool does at least admit that there may be a stronger beast
somewhere,--a creature who may suddenly come upon him and end his joys
of hanging by his tail to a tree and make havoc of his fruit-eating
and chattering, while man thinks there is nothing anywhere superior to
himself.”
Gervase smiled tolerantly.
“I am afraid I have ruffled you, Princess,” he said. “I see you have
religious ideas: I have none.”
Once again she laughed musically.
“Religious ideas! I! Not at all. I have a creed as I told you, but it
is an ugly one--not at all sentimental or agreeable. It is one I have
adopted from ancient Egypt.”
“Explain it to me,” said Gervase; “I will adopt it also, for your
sake.”
“It is too supernatural for you,” she said, paying no heed to the
amorous tone of his voice or the expressive tenderness of his eyes.
“Never mind! Love will make me accept an army of ghosts, if
necessary.”
“One of the chief tenets of my faith,” she continued, “is the eternal
immortality of each individual Soul. Will you accept that?”
“For the moment, certainly!”
Her eyes glowed like great jewels as she proceeded:
“The Egyptian cult I follow is very briefly explained. The Soul begins
in protoplasm without conscious individuality. It progresses through
various forms till individual consciousness is attained. Once
attained, it is never lost, but it lives on, pressing towards
perfection, taking upon itself various phases of existence according
to the passions which have most completely dominated it from the
first. That is all. But according to this theory, you might have lived
in the world long ago, and so might I: we might even have met; and for
some reason or other we may have become re-incarnated now. A disciple
of my creed would give you that as the reason why you sometimes
imagine you have seen me before.”
As she spoke, the dazed and troubled sensation he had once previously
experienced came upon him; he laid down the canvas he held and passed
his hand across his forehead bewilderedly.
“Yes; very curious and fantastic. I’ve heard a great deal about the
doctrine of re-incarnation. I don’t believe in it,--I can’t believe in
it! But if I could: if I could imagine I had ever met you in some
bygone time, and you were like what you are at this moment, I should
have loved you,--I _must_ have loved you! You see I cannot leave the
subject of love alone; and your re-incarnation idea gives my fancy
something to work upon. So, beautiful Ziska, if your soul ever took
the form of a flower, I must have been its companion blossom; if it
ever paced the forest as a beast of prey, I must have been its mate;
if it ever was human before, then I must have been its lover! Do you
like such pretty follies? I will talk them by the hour.”
Here he rose, and with a movement that was half fierce and half
tender, he knelt beside her, taking her hands in his own.
“I love you, Ziska! I cannot help myself. I am drawn to you by some
force stronger than my own will; but you need not be afraid of me--not
yet! As I said, I can wait. I can endure the mingled torture and
rapture of this sudden passion and make no sign, till my patience
tires, and then--then I will win you if I die for it!”
He sprang up before she could speak a word in answer, and seizing his
canvas again, exclaimed gayly:
“Now for the hues of morning and evening combined, to paint the
radiance of this wicked soul of love that so enthralls me! First, the
raven-black of midnight for the hair,--the lustre of the coldest,
brightest stars for eyes,--the blush-rose of early dawn for lips and
cheeks. Ah! How shall I make a real beginning of this marvel?”
“It will be difficult, I fear,” said Ziska slowly, with a faint, cold
smile; “and still more difficult, perchance, will be the end!”