"This," said Eveleth, languidly, turning his head in the valley of
silken pillows until he could see the long figure of Aurelian drooping
in the Mexican hammock across the big room through the dim strata of
blue smoke that, in the silence, lay almost motionless, swirled now and
then into subtle curlings and windings as some drowsy smoker breathed
more white vapour into the slowly moving and rising tide,--"This is the
peace of the land of Proserpina, the faultless content of perfect
possession. Philistinism is not without honour, for behold! it has
conceived and brought forth--the Decadence."
"_Non sentir m'e gran ventura
Porò non mi distar: deh! parla basso!_"
said Aurelian, softly. "It is only a dream after all, even a dream of
the land of endless afternoon. There is lotos mingled with the tobacco,
but we wake easily."
A deeper voice came from a motionless figure prone on a tiger skin
before the crumbling fire. "Opium and Burgundy are not faultless
substitutes for the true lotos after all, but--they do very well--for
the time."
Murmurs of inarticulate assent rose and faded in the opium-heavy air,
and then the smoke grew still again. Now and then a bit of wood fell in
the fireplace. Aurelian's narghileh gurgled and sighed in slow cadence.
These things were only a modulation of the silence.
The room was vast and dim, seemingly without bounds, save on that side
where the violet flames of a drift-wood fire flickered quiveringly,
making a centre, a concentration of dull light; for the rest, a
mysterious wilderness of rugs and divans, Indian chairs and hammocks,
where silent figures lay darkly, each a primal cause of one of the many
thin streams of smoke that curled heavily upward;--smoke from strange
and curious pipes from Lahore and Gualior; small sensitive pipes from
Japan; here and there the short thick stems of opium-pipes, and by the
motionless Mexican hammock a splendid and wonderful hookah with writhing
stem. As the thin flames of the dying fire flashed into some sudden
brightness, they revealed details unseen in the general gloom,--a vast
and precious missal gorgeous with scarlet and gold and purple
illumination, open, on a carved oak lectern, spoil of some Spanish
monastery; the golden gloom of a Giovanni Bellini reft from its home in
Venice, and as yet unransomed; the glint of twisted and gilded glass in
an ebony cabinet; great folios and quartos in ancient bindings of vellum
and ivory and old calf-skin, heavily tooled with gold, and with silver
and jewelled medallions and clasps, stacked in heaps in careless
indifference; the flash and sparkle of a cabinet of gems, the red
splendour of old lacquer; the green mystery of wrought jade. And
everywhere a heavy atmosphere that lay on the chest like a strange yet
desirable dream; the warm, sick odour of tobacco and opium, striving
with the perfume of sandal-wood, and of roses that drooped and fluttered
in pieces in the hot air.
Around a brazier of green bronze, on the floor, before the fire, lay the
three men who were gently breathing in the bland opium, their dark
figures radiating from the queer brazier wrought of two ugly dragons
chasing each other around a great globe of Japanese chrystal, the
firelight gleaming on the tall glasses of champagne where the little
column of gold bubbles rose steadily. The fire fell together, and a
leaping flame cast a fitful light on heavy tapestry curtains wrought
with the story of the loves of Cupid and Psyche. Its two halves parted
slowly, and a flush of red light fell through as, in the midst, appeared
a dark figure with closed eyes, swaying softly as it leaned forward,
and, while the curtains closed, fell with a long sweep gently toward the
brazier,--not as men fall, but as a snake with its head lifted high
might advance slidingly, and as it came, droop lower and lower until it
rested prone on the uncrushed flowers. So Enderby, heavy with the suave
sleep of haschish, came among the smokers and dropped motionless in the
midst of the cushions. The movement set a tall glass quivering until it
fell to one side, and the yellow wine sank slowly into the silky fur of
a leopard skin.
Aurelian lifted his hand to a gold cord that hung over the hammock.
Presently a slim girl with flesh like firelight on ivory, clad in
translucent silk of a dusky purple that made no sound as she came,
appeared in the darkness of the farther doorway. She came to the hammock
where Aurelian was lying.
"Will the honourable master be served with the august saké?" she asked
with a voice that was like the fluttering of cherry blossoms in
Yoshiwara.
"No, O Shiratsuyu," said Aurelian, drawing the slim figure toward him,
kissing the scarlet mouth that drooped above as he lay full length,
looking sleepily upward. "No, O Shiratsuyu, but fill the glasses of the
honourable guests with the wine, there on the table."
The girl glided among the drowsy figures, filling the glasses. As she
knelt by the brazier to lift the overturned glass, her slim fingers
lingered; a head turned sleepily, and, as the lips fell on the little
hand, kissed it softly.
At a movement of Aurelian's eyes the girl vanished.
Eveleth half rose to look after her with delight. "Where did you find
that bauble, Aurelian?" he said.