CHAPTER XXIX
PARADISE POSTPONED
SOLARION caught the crystal cup as it dropped from Jack’s hand, and with his other arm supported his body as it fell. Argon uttered a cry of dismay. But meeting the other’s eyes, which were now filled with a soft but almost insupportable light, he recognized the benign significance behind the apparent calamity.
“We will let the body rest in the plinth,” Solarion said, lifting it as he spoke into the cavity, and replacing the cup and its golden receptacle. “He is honest and brave, all will go well with him. Tell Lamara he stood the test, and that I will meet her here on the hour appointed.”
The light grew brighter and Argon, perforce, closed his eyelids. When he looked again the column of the portal occupied its former position, and he was alone.
Of these things Jack knew nothing.
The reaching out of his spirit toward Miriam, at the moment of swallowing the elixir, had dominated all other thoughts and impulses, and by operation of spiritual law, his immaterial entity, disembarrassed from the physical, at once was swept in her direction. Distances between persons, on the spiritual plane, where nothing operates to delay the inclinations of the mind, are necessarily and immediately determined by sympathies or repulsions, as the case may be, existing between them; and, as the separation from each other of the poles of the sidereal universe hardly suffices to indicate the gulf that yawns between incompatible natures and temperaments, so, between those who love each other, a handbreadth is still too far apart. Nothing else is possible in a sphere where all things live and the inertia of lifeless matter is not.
Jack, accordingly, soon became aware that he was in Miriam’s vicinity; but he was at first perplexed by an unconsidered circumstance of their mutual conditions.
The physical eye is fashioned to perceive material objects only; it is powerless to discern the forms of thoughts or the color of emotions. And in the spiritual plane, emotion and thought constitute, respectively, the substance and the shape of things seen. On the other hand, the spiritual eye is not less unable to have cognizance of material things; and the two worlds are thus effectively disjoined one from the other. Of course, the spirit incarnate is none the less in constant relations with the spirit disincarnate; but both alike are insensible, normally, to that fact.
Jack, during his journey from our earth to Saturn, had already experienced disincarnation; but inasmuch as his environment had then been also spiritual, he had felt no discrepancy between it and himself. Now, however, he, a spirit, was confronted with material surroundings, and must depend on methods of communication more subtle than those of spiritual sight and touch in order to make his presence felt, or himself to establish consciousness of the medium in which he sought to operate.
How was he to bring the world in which he was into practical relations with that which she occupied, since neither could she see nor touch him, nor he, her? This seemed like to prove an awkward obstacle in the way of what he aimed to accomplish.
But must not Solarion have foreseen this difficulty? And would he have deliberately mocked him, through the agency of the elixir, with a useless gift? The idea was preposterous! There must be some way of solving the problem.
He stood motionless, like a man in the darkness of an unfamiliar place, and set himself to the task of withdrawing from his outward sphere of consciousness. He was presently rewarded by the perception of the gradual emergence of an inner consciousness; it was as if the pupils of the eyes of the man in the dark place, slowly expanding, were becoming sensitive to rays of light before unperceived.
A path of communication between the two worlds did, then, exist. It was not normally accessible, because its existence was unsuspected; but when intelligently sought, it might be found. And Jack realized that if it were accessible to him, from his side, it must also be accessible to Miriam from hers. The inner consciousness, in her and in him, was a sort of common ground between them, in which they could meet and have intercourse. It was neither spiritual wholly, nor wholly material, but an intermediate region. Nor was there anything radically strange in this; had he not, in the earthly life, often felt aware of her proximity before his corporeal senses informed him of it, and had he been blindfolded, would not the touch of her hand have exerted an influence distinguishable from the touch of any other? If he were alive to such intuitions, much more should she, with her finer organization, be so.
Greatly encouraged by his discovery, Jack proceeded to put it to the trial.
Without having intelligently traced his course, he had been brought to the suite of rooms which Miriam occupied. They appeared to him in shadowy form, much like the reflection of objects seen in a plate of glass, and not so distant as in a mirror. But as he grew more accustomed to the situation, the distinctness increased.
He was at first puzzled by the similarity of the rooms to those seen on his own earth; and he wondered for a moment whether Miriam could have returned to their planet during the interval of their separation. But a more concentrated scrutiny soon revealed the magical character of the appearance. Whether the magic were black or white he did not pause to determine. Here, at all events, was a laboratory, and he recognized it as the one which he had already seen in Lamara’s water-mirror. It was perhaps because of the intense emotional stress which Miriam had undergone here that he had been first led to it. But she was not here now. He glanced at the apparatus on the table and comprehended the method of its operation. He could even discern the electrons in the atom in their revolution around one another, and form an estimate of the stupendous force which would be liberated by their dissociation. But matters more urgent claimed his attention.
He passed through the doorway into the adjoining chamber; the door had been left ajar, and he was careful to go through the opening, which was somewhat narrow for his bulk, and to keep his feet to the level of the floor. He felt that he could not push the door farther open, and he did not know that he could have passed through the substance of it; it seemed to him proper to observe, so far as possible, the natural limitations amid which he found himself. It aided his recognition of them.
Upon entering the chamber he saw Miriam, with two others, standing near the window. He paid no heed to the others, nor did he see them with nearly the distinctness with which the woman he loved appeared to him. Was it her, or her spirit, that he saw? At moments it seemed to be the one, then the other. From one standpoint, indeed, they were identical. Yet there was a difference; but it was she!
A powerful irradiation of joy streamed forth from him. It was both visible and invisible to Jack himself. As a spiritual emanation, it welled out toward her and enveloped her, so that he fancied she must be aware of it—the roseate glory of it, shot through with golden quiverings. Then, remembering that the natural eye could not discern it, he was surprised to see her move slightly, as if some faint sound or remembered scent had caught her attention. But in a moment she again turned her gaze out of the window.
He approached the group. What—Jim! Undoubtedly it was Jim, but something in the presentation perplexed him—two quite distinguishable Jims, though the same; but one was the grotesque little urchin he knew, the other—he had known nothing of this wonderful brightness, as if the boy were full of light; and surely there were two complete and well-formed legs! That crutch, too; was it a crutch—or was it—what was it? Jim was speaking; it was the familiar street-gamin lingo; but within it, or above it, was another language, which Jack understood with his spiritual hearing, which conveyed beautiful things—affection, loyalty, courage, resource—qualities which the terrestrial Jim would stare even to hear mentioned. Yet they belonged to him as much as did his own patter—far more so, indeed.
The young woman who made the third of the group was manifested but dimly, for Jack had never made Jenny’s acquaintance, and perceived no more than an agreeable something of feminine purport. In truth, it had been with the side-glance only of his mind that he had observed these persons; it was Miriam who filled and overflowed the central scope of his vision. How beautiful and adorable she was! He had loved and adored her previously to the poor extent of his mortal compass; but now he saw loveliness and splendor—an harmonious interfusing of soul and flesh—an illumination of the transient with the deathless—such as made him blush with a kind of divine embarrassment, as if he had no right to such a revelation. Was it possible that a creature so transcendent loved him?
“Miriam, Miriam!” he muttered.
Ah! She had heard him! What a start she gave; and as she turned, the marvelous glory of her aura flashed out and mingled with him. He felt the beating of her heart as if it were his own, and her nerves thrilling in rime with his. She was about to utter his name, but something prompted him to make a gesture of silence. This was not the moment to make known their secret. Gazing at her, he saw the misgiving of his death shudder through her, and spontaneously there surged from him a response so tumultuous with inexhaustible life that she was at once reassured. She did not yet understand, but she knew!
He had learned much concerning his own state and powers in the few moments of his sojourn here, but Miriam’s initiation was almost instantaneous. Love opened all gates and shone through all windows; and her incarnate self took him by the hand and gave him full consciousness on the earthly plane, while retaining his spiritual powers. She, on her side, combined with her natural senses the perception of what was above the natural, and saw him and what belonged to his state as he saw her and hers. Such a fulness of communion was ineffable. Their auras blended and kindled into new exaltations, brimming with speech and vision. The pages of their memories lay open before them as living pictures of the events recorded, to be comprehended at a glance; and words spoken in the spirit conveyed significances which no eloquent volubility of earthly tongues could rival. Nevertheless, this boundless speech, descending from its superior degree into the lower, took on there the outward form of mortal utterances, as the endlessness of productivity is enclosed in the simple seed sown in the soil. Conversing together in what, to earthly ears, would seem the simplest terms, they could impart to each other kingdoms of meanings intelligible to the imperial soul.
He and Miriam now stood side by side at the window, and he found himself able to look freely through her material eyes. The swaying and struggling of the mob and its confused uproar were visible and audible to him. A sorry spectacle! But though immeasurably remote from him, and unimportant, he realized that Miriam was still in the toils of it. And he had come hither to rescue her!
Her thought spoke to him. “Dearest, will you not take me where you are? You are free from earth; why may not I be so, also?” The death of the body, the deliverance of the spirit, and immortality of love unhindered for them! A touch on the instrument in the next room could compass it!”
“La, miss, it’s gone that hot, all of a sudden!” remarked Jenny, pushing back the hair from her moist forehead; “like them July days on the beach last summer! Whatever ails me I don’t know!” She was enveloped in the fervent sphere of the lovers’ hearts.
“Dere he comes! Pipe ol’ Torpy over dere!” cried Jim, pointing excitedly to the outskirts of the crowd. “Good t’ing de boss ain’t here; he’d be runnin’ out and git his nut busted! Don’t yer worry, miss; I’ll pertect yer!”
Jack had been exquisitely sensitive to the temptation which Miriam suggested. One stroke for freedom, and all these crudities and absurdities would pass away from them forever! But the roseate atmosphere that surrounded them chilled and darkened a trifle as the impulse knocked at his heart; and the words of the two unconscious mortals made him pause. What would become of them? Had they not the right to live out their earthly lives to the end? Clear perception came to him, also, on the instant, of the greatness of Jim’s devotion and self-abnegation. He felt humbled before him!
Miriam perused his mind and saw his answer to her plea. She sighed, and fortified herself to postpone paradise. The thought of her father strengthened her.
“Yes, love, we will not slight God’s gift,” was her response. The luminous gold and rose brightened and deepened again, and the delicate filaments were interwoven in a warp and woof of lovely figures, dancing lightly through the aerial fabric, keeping time to the measure of their hearts. They drew nearer.
Contemplating with spiritual sight the scene without, they beheld these bewildered souls groping pitifully in darkness and ignorance, seeking through evil and unknown good. Driven helplessly hither and thither by monstrous spirits of hatred, greed, and terror, they fought and yelled and reeled in blind frenzies, lost to love and sanity.
And yonder loomed Torpeon, a dark shape of wrath and tyranny, like the black twist of a tornado reddened with lightnings. He, too, was driven helpless by accursed powers he knew not, most a slave when he deemed himself most dominant. He struck vengefully to right and left, laughing terribly as his victims tumbled, blasted, at his feet, blind to the souls thus freed who hurtled up unseen to assail him. At times the whole scene assumed the appearance of a writhing mass of poisonous serpents stinging one another to death, and the great serpent in the midst, venom oozing from his bloody jaws, burying his fangs in his own swollen coils. And Jack, an hour since, had longed to add his strength to make this horror yet more horrible! He groaned in humiliation.
“They are our fellow creatures; let us go out and save them!” said Miriam.
“You!” he exclaimed, disturbed. “Remember Torpeon’s mark! I will go!”
She smiled into his eyes. “I no longer fear it, or him; and you cannot prevail alone.”
Jenny and Jim were absorbed in the excitement of the battle. Neither saw Miriam turn from the window and pass out of the room, apparently alone.