The Cosmic Courtship by Julian Hawthorne - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXXIII
 JIM’S REWARD

AN East Indian reclining chair, eased with soft pillows and placed in the embrasure of a western window, took the rays of the sinking sun, and was breathed upon by the light evening air. The window was open, and across a breadth of green park enclosure was visible the broad gleam of the Hudson, flowing seaward beneath its parapets of brown rock. Miriam, as she lay in the chair, had just opened her eyes upon this familiar scene; and not less familiar was the spacious room which she knew she could see by turning her head; she had often sat there on summer evenings like this, holding discourse with Mary Faust on matters, deep or trifling, of heaven and earth. There was a wonderful scent of roses in the room, and when she lifted a hand indolently to her head she was surprised to find herself wearing a crown of roses; roses, too, trailed along the sides of the chair and hung down to the floor, as if she were lying upon a bed of them. Magnificent flowers they were, and not of any species that she remembered. Where had they come from?

As she idly debated this question in her mind, she was conscious of a sort of gentle puzzlement in her thoughts; the continuity of events seemed broken; she could not recall what had preceded her coming to this room. Had she fallen asleep, and had Mary caused her to be conveyed hither in that condition? She was not wont to take naps at this hour. Had she been ill? That seemed still more unlikely; illness and she were strangers. Had Mary, for some undisclosed purpose, thrown her into a trance? Least probable of all!

What had they been doing that day? She had arrived early; she had found Mary absorbed in mathematical calculations of the transcendent order; they had exchanged a few words, and then Miriam had gone alone into the laboratory. There she had paced up and down for a while, revolving the great enterprise which they had so long been working on together. Would it, after all, prove actually practicable? Theoretically, there seemed to be no opening for doubt; and yet— Finally, the better to pursue her meditations, she remembered seating herself in the chair of the psycho-physical engine; and her hand—her right hand—had rested on the head of the great lever. Would anything really happen were she to press it down?

She recalled the flitting of that thought through her brain. The lever was so nicely adjusted as to move at a very slight impulse; and then—

She uttered a sharp cry—a cry of terror. She huddled down in the chair, half raising her hands as if to ward off a blow. She panted as from a race. Her feeling was that a world was falling down upon her to crush her. After a few moments she pressed her hands over her eyes and quick moans broke from her. She felt a hand laid gently on her head—a cool, soothing hand. By and by she sat up and stared fearfully about her.

“Oh, Mary, what happened?” she muttered. “Was it true?”

“Take your time, dear,” Mary replied. “You got back safe. It’s all right. Shall I tell Jenny to bring you a cup of tea?”

“Jenny! But she was—we were taken up in a moment. Oh, my poor Jenny!”

“Jenny was my affair,” said Mary Faust, with her grave smile. “I furnished her, and of course I provided for her return. She is none the worse for the trip.”

Miriam had not yet recovered her spiritual footing. “Saturn!” she murmured. “Lamara—Zarga! Torpeon!”

Suddenly she snatched at the right sleeve of her dress, and tore it across, exposing the shoulder. She scrutinized it eagerly. The mark was still there, but instead of red it now appeared as a white scar. Mary Faust eyed it with interest.

“He must have stamped it deep!” she observed. “It has survived your Saturnian incarnation. But its power is gone; it’s only a memento now.”

“I was there!” said Miriam wonderingly; “and this is our own earth again!”

“It was a trying experience,” said her friend in a matter-of-fact tone; “but our science is vindicated, and we need never repeat the experiment. We’ll talk it over at our leisure some other time. What lovely roses you brought back with you! The place looked like a conservatory! We understand the principle, of course; but it was exquisitely done! I wish I could have been with you; but I kept in touch as well as I could.”

“They know and honor you there; and Solarion!” “Yes, I have much to thank him for. But don’t be agitated, dear; things will take their proper places by degrees. The world will be under a great obligation to you. Your departure was a little premature, but after all it was better so. There was only one sad thing about it; and that, too, has beauty and consolation. Dear little Jim!”

Miriam turned and bent upon her friend a long and poignant look. She tried to command herself, but her lips quivered and tears ran down her face.

“So may worlds,” she faltered, “and death in all of them! Jim was a hero, and he died for me; but why must the other be taken, and I be left? Without him, what use am I? I had begun to know what love is; and now I am alone! Mary, his spirit was with me in that last terrible scene; I could even see him and hear his voice. Why couldn’t he stay with me, if only as a spirit? God has all power, in heaven and on earth!”

“The scope of science does not include such problems,” said Mary Faust composedly. “But I should suppose that any conscious intercourse between the two planes of life must be exceptional and transient—in our present stage of development, at any rate. Spirit consorts with spirit, and flesh with flesh; that is normal and wholesome. To overstep the boundaries is dangerous and leads to confusions. Neither side can be of use in its place if it is continually trespassing upon the other. If I had a lover, and knew that he was still alive and loved me, why should I mourn because his senses and mine function for a while under different conditions, and are themselves of a different order? If he had ceased to be, or loved me no more, that might be a cause for mourning.”

“You are wise and reasonable,” said Miriam, with a sigh; “but it seems to me to be cause for mourning, too, that a warm, loving, beating human heart must survive in the ice of your logic, with only a memory and a hope—which may become frozen, too.”

“Matters may turn out better than you think,” was Mary Faust’s reply. “Meanwhile, your father is waiting in the next room. Will you go to him?”

“Dearest father!” exclaimed Miriam rising. “Yes, there are more loves than one.”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks, and with the rose-wreaths still clinging about her, followed her friend into the shadowy spaces of the laboratory.

From the gloom the sturdy figure of the white-headed old contractor started forward, grasped his daughter by the shoulders with trembling hands, and gazed into her face with a devouring look.

“Me own colleen!” he cried in a breaking voice. “Come back safe and alive to her old daddy! Glory be to God and all the blessed saints! Oh, honey, honey, don’t ye never be doin’ the likes again. Sure, the heart was most bruck in me!” He held her to him with an almost desperate clutch. “Take all ye want in this world—marry any man ye like—but, stay where the old daddy that loves ye can feast his eyes on ye.”

“Darling daddy!” murmured she; “You’re all I have left; thank God for you.”

“Long live Oireland!” rejoined the old man fervently but incoherently.

Two tall figures stood in the background; one of them began to come forward, not quickly, but with an inevitableness like the drawing of planet to planet. The other, with a cigar between his fingers, watched the scene with an amused but genuine interest.

Miriam did not observe the newcomer till he was close upon her. Without directly looking at him, she involuntarily drew back a little, with a feeling that no outsider should intrude upon this meeting. At this moment Mary Faust touched a button, and the room was filled with light.

Miriam’s arms fell to her sides, nor was there strength in her to lift a finger. Nor had her lips power to form themselves into a smile; but the soul within her rushed into her widely opened eyes with such a radiance of speechless joy that the others turned aside and retired noiselessly into a remote part of the great chamber, realizing that the place of these two was holy ground. He came forward another step; but not yet did she believe that this was more than a return of that blessed vision which had been granted her on the other side of space. Oh, was not this happiness enough!

She seemed to herself to be floating in a shining void of heaven, with the glow of a great warmth suffusing her. How real, how near seemed his face. Or was it that she herself had unawares been borne to paradise, and they were met to part no more!

“I cannot bear it, love!” she whispered. “It seems too real. And then to have you go again.”

But now she felt a touch; his arms, firm and strong, were round her; his lips were upon her lips, and no illusion or magic prevented them. Her cry sprang forth like the warbling of a bird—joy, passion, and music in one:

“Oh, Jack; my darling, my love, my own! It’s you; it’s you, you, your own blessed self! Jack, it’s forever!” Her hands caught at him, gripped him hard, his arms, his shoulders, his face; her fingers plunged in his hair. “Oh, love, you were dead, and are alive again!”

Twilight had entered into night when the lovers compelled themselves to issue from their paradise, and join the others where they sat at a table near an open window in the laboratory. The window was wide and high, and commanded a large view of the heavens in that quarter. A great star hung midway aloft, giving out a serene light. The lights in the room had been lowered, as if not to detract from its radiance. Miriam’s hold upon her lover’s arm tightened:

“Jack, we were there”

“Eight hundred million miles!” said he.

“And you went there for me!”

“I would go to Sirius for you; the universe is not large enough to keep me from you. Nothing is too far for love.”

The tall man who had been Jack’s companion rose from the table, and came forward with a jolly bow and smile. Miriam recognized Sam Paladin.

“I’m very glad to see you home again, Miss Mayne,” he said, grasping her hand. “I used to fancy I’d done some trotting about, but I shall sit at your feet henceforth. As for that boy Jack, he deserves less credit. Who wouldn’t do as much for such an object?”

“Sure and I’d have gone meself, if they’d let me,” said Terence Mayne.

Jenny brought the tea, curtsying happily to her mistress and looking more natural than ever.

After some chat about some business and politics, chiefly between Terence and Sam, Mary Faust suddenly excused herself and went out. She returned after a few minutes.

“I have had a message from our friends,” she said, addressing Miriam and Jack more especially, and with as much simplicity as if the message were from down-town. “Lamara and the judges have conferred, and she wishes you to know the result. Will you follow me—all of you?”

They got up, and she led them to a part of the laboratory partitioned off from the main room, and fitted up somewhat after the manner of an oratory. Neither the lovers nor the other two had any notion of what was to happen.

There was an oval window looking to the south and east, through which the rays of the planet Saturn fell and rested upon a couch, draped with a robe of white samite, bordered with blue. Mary Faust, with a reverent gesture, turned back this coverlet, and the body of Jim was revealed, with his crutch beside him. There was no other illumination in the place than what proceeded from the planet: but as the eyes of the spectators grew accustomed to the dimness, the face of the little gnome was distinctly visible. There was a trace of the good-humored grin on his lips, with which he had met all the vagaries of fortune; but also an innocent lovableness which his indomitable spirit had disguised during his earthly life. All gazed upon this spectacle with affectionate sympathy.

“Lamara told me,” said Mary Faust, breaking the silence, “that the highest honor among Saturnians is indicated by a halo, symbolizing the perfect love that has no thought of self. It is bestowed by the ruler of the planet, sitting in counsel with the wisest of the realm; but the gift does not come from them, but from the Source of life and love, who communicates it to them as almoners. And she asked me to bring you here for witness.”

As they stood about the couch, Miriam’s hand in Jack’s, Sam and Terence gravely attentive, the faint, diffused light gathered more definitely upon the dead urchin’s head. At length it seemed as if the light emanated therefrom, rather than from the distant globe. Still it brightened, and now assumed the form of a ring of purest radiance, shining above his forehead; if a circle of pearls could be fire, they would appear thus. It was visible for several minutes; and whether it then vanished, or whether the eyes of the onlookers were unable any longer to discern it, was doubtful. Perhaps it was a thing which only persons of good will and pure heats could have seen at all.

They went out in silence; but the meaning of the halo sank deep into the lovers’ souls, and its light guided their life.

END