Section 11

THE MAGICIAN 131
night is seen and a turbulent sea, the dark night of the soul of which the mystics write, and the troublous sea of life whereon there is no refuge for the weary and the sick at heart.
Then, as if in pursuance of a definite plan, he analysed with a searching, vehement intensity the curious talent of the modern Frenchman, Gustave Moreau. Margaret had lately visited the Luxem- bourg, and his pictures were fresh in her memory. She had found in them little save a decorative ar- rangement marred by faulty drawing; but Oliver Haddo gave them at once a new, esoteric import. Those effects as of a Florentine jewel, the clus- tered colours like emeralds and rubies, like sap- phires deeper than the sea, the atmosphere of scented chambers, the mystic persons who seem ever about secret, religious rites, combined in his cunning phrases to create, as it were, a pattern on her soul of morbid and mysterious intricacy. Those pic- tures were filled with a strange sense of sin, and the mind that contemplated them was burdened with the decadence of Rome, and with the passionate vice of the Renaissance; and it was tortured, too, by all the introspections of this later day.
Margaret listened, rather breathlessly, with the
excitement of an explorer before whom is spread
out the plain of an undiscovered continent. The painters she knew spoke of their art technically, and this imaginative appreciation was new to her. She was horribly fascinated by the personality that
132, THE MAGICIAN
imbued these elaborate sentences. Haddo’s eyes were fixed upon hers, and she responded to his words like a delicate instrument made for recording the beatings of the heart. She felt an extraordi- nary languor. At last he stopped. Margaret neither moved nor spoke. She might have been under some spell. It seemed to her that she had no power in her limbs.
“T want to do something for you in return for what you have done for me,” he said.
He stood up and went to the piano.
“* Sit in this chair,” he said.
She did not dream of disobeying. He began to play. Margaret was hardly surprised that his exe- cution was remarkable. Yet it was almost incred- ible that those fat, large hands should have such a tenderness of touch. His fingers caressed the notes with a peculiar suavity, and he drew out of the piano effects which she had scarcely thought pos- sible. He seemed to put into the notes a trou- bling, ambiguous passion, and the instrument had the tremulous emotion of a human being. It was very strange and rather terrifying. She was vaguely familiar with the music to which she lis- tened; but there was in it, under his fingers, an exotic savour that made it harmonious with all that he had said that afternoon. His memory was in- deed astonishing. He had an infinite tact to know the feeling that occupied Margaret’s heart, and what he chose seemed to be exactly that which at
THE MAGICIAN 133
the moment she imperatively needed. Then he be- gan to play things she did not know. It was music the like of which she had never heard, barbaric, with a plaintive weirdness that brought to her fancy the moonlit nights of desert places, with palm-trees mute in the windless air, and tawny dis- tances. She seemed to know tortuous narrow streets, white houses of silence with strange moon- shadows, and the glow of yellow light within, and the tinkling of uncouth instruments, and the acrid scents of Eastern perfumes. It was like a proces- sion passing through her mind of persons who were not human, yet existed mysteriously, with a life of vampires. Monna Lisa and Saint John the Bap- tist, Bacchus and the mother of Mary, went with enigmatic motions. But the daughter of Herodias raised her hands as though, engaged for ever in a mystic rite, to invoke outlandish gods. Her face was very pale, and her dark eyes were sleepless; the jewels of her girdle gleamed with sombre fires; and her dress was of colours that have long been lost. The smile, in which was all the sorrow of the world and all its wickedness, beheld the wan head of the Saint, and with a voice that was cold with the coldness of death she murmured the words of the poet:
“TI am amorous of thy body, Iokanaan! Thy body is white like the lilies of a field that the mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white like
134 THE MAGICIAN
the snows that lie on the mountains of Judea, and come down into the valleys. The roses in the gar- den of the Queen of Arabia are not so white as thy body. Neither the roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia, the garden of spices of the Queen of Arabia, nor the feet of the dawn when they light on the leaves, nor the breast of the moon when she lies on the breast of the sea... There is noth- ing in the world so white as thy body. Suffer me to touch thy body.”
Oliver Haddo ceased to play. Neither of them stirred. At last Margaret sought by an effort to regain her self-control. ~
“T shall begin to think that you really are a magician,” she said, lightly.
“T could show you strange things if you cared to see them,” he answered, again raising his eyes to hers. |
“T don’t think you will ever get me to believe i occult philosophy,” she laughed.
“Yet it reigned in Persia with the magi, it en- dowed India with wonderful traditions, it civilised Greece to the sounds of Orpheus’ lyre.”’
He stood before Margaret, towering over her in his huge bulk; and there was a singular fascina- tion in his gaze. It seemed that he spoke only to conceal from her that he was putting forth now all the power that was in him.
“It concealed the first principles of science in
‘if 4 é
THE MAGICIAN 135
the calculations of Pythagoras. It established em- pires by its oracles, and at its voice tyrants grew pale upon their thrones. It governed the minds of some by curiosity, and others it ruled by fear.”
His voice grew very low, and it was so seductive that Margaret’s brain reeled. The sound of it was overpowering like too sweet a fragrance.
“T tell you that for this art nothing is impossible. It commands the elements, and knows the language of the stars, and directs the planets in their courses. The moon at its bidding falls blood red from the sky. The dead rise up and form into ominous words the night wind that moans through their skulls. Heaven and Hell are in its province; and all forms, lovely and hideous; and love and hate. With Circe’s wand it can change men into beasts of the field, and to them it can give a monstrous humanity. Life and death are in the right hand and in the left of him who knows its secrets. It confers wealth by the transmutation of metals and immortality Ly its quintessence.”
Margaret could not hear what he said. A grad- ual lethargy seized her under his baleful glance, and she had not even the strength to wish to free herself. She seemed bound to him already by hid- den chains.
“Tf you have powers show them,” she whispered, hardly conscious that she spoke.
Suddenly he released the enormous tension with which he held her. Like a man who had exerted
136 THE MAGICIAN
all his strength to some end, the victory won, he loosened his muscles, with a faint sigh of exhaus- tion. Margaret did not speak, but she knew that something horrible was about to happen. Her heart beat like a prisoned bird, with helpless flutterings, but it seemed too late now to draw back. Her words by a mystic influence had settled something beyond possibility of recall.
On the stove was a small bowl of polished brass ~ in which water was kept in order to give a certain moisture to the air. Oliver Haddo put his hand in his pocket and drew out a little silver box. He tapped it, with a smile, as a man taps a snuff-box, and opened it. He took an infinitesimal quantity of a blue powder that it contained and threw it on the water in the brass bowl. Immediately a bright flame sprang up, and Margaret gave a cry of alarm. Oliver looked at her quickly and motioned her to remain still. She saw that the water was on fire. It was burning as brilliantly, as hotly as if it were common gas; and it burned with the same dry. hoarse roar. Suddenly it was extinguished. She leaned forward and saw that the bowl was empty.
The water had been utterly consumed, as though it were straw, and not a drop remained. She passed her hand absently across her forehead.
“But water cannot burn,” she muttered to her- self.
It seemed that Haddo knew what she thought, for he smiled strangely.
THE MAGICIAN 137
“Do you know that nothing more destructive can be invented than this blue powder, and I have enough to burn up all the water in Paris? Who dreamt that water might be burnt like chaff?”
He paused, seeming to forget her presence. He looked thoughtfully at the little silver box.
“ But it can be made only in trivial quantities, at enormous expense and with exceeding labour; it is so volatile that you cannot keep it for three days. I have sometimes thought that with a little ingenu- ity I might make it more stable, I might so modify it that, like radium, it lost no strength as it burned; and then I should possess the greatest secret that has ever been in the mind of man. For there would be no end of it. It would continue to burn while there was a drop of water on the earth, and the whole world would be consumed. But it would be a frightful thing to have in one’s hands; for once it were cast upon the waters, the doom of all that existed would be sealed beyond repeal.”
He took a long breath, and his eyes glittered with a devilish ardour. His voice was hoarse with over- whelming emotion.
** Sometimes I am haunted by the wild desire to have seen that great and final scene when the irrev- ocable flames poured down the river, hurrying along the streams of the earth, searching out the moisture in all growing things, tearing it even from the eternal rocks; when the flames poured down like the rushing of the wind, and all that lived fled
138 THE MAGICIAN
from before them till they came to the sea; and the sea itself was consumed in vehement fire.”’
Margaret shuddered, but she did not think the man was mad. She had ceased to judge him. He took one more particle of that atrocious powder and put it in the bowl. Again he thrust his hand in his pocket and brought out a handful of some crumbling substance that might have been dried leaves, leaves of different sorts, broken and pow- dery. There was a trace of moisture in them still, for a low flame sprang up immediately at the bot- tom of the dish, and a thick vapour filled the room. It had a singular and pungent odour that Margaret did not know. It was difficult to breathe, and she coughed. She wanted to beg Oliver to stop, but could not. He took the bowl in his hands and brought it to her.
“Look,” he commanded.
She bent forward, and at the bottom saw a blue. fire, of a peculiar solidity, as though it consisted of molten metal. It was not still, but writhed strangely, like serpents of fire tortured by their own unearthly ardour.
“Breathe very deeply.”
She did as he told her. A sudden trembling came over her, and darkness fell across her eyes. She tried to cry out, but could utter no sound. Her brain reeled. It seemed to her that Haddo bade her cover her face. She gasped for breath, and it was as if the earth spun under her feet. She ap-
THE MAGICIAN 139
peared to travel at an immeasurable speed. She
_ made a slight movement, and Haddo told her not
to look round. An immense terror seized her. She did not know whither she was borne, and still they went quickly, quickly; and the hurricane it- ~ self would have lagged behind them. At last
_ their motion ceased, and Oliver was holding her
arm,
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. ‘Open your eyes and stand up.”
The night had fallen; but it was not the comfort- able night that soothes the troubled minds of mor- tal men; it was a night that agitated the soul mys- teriously so that each nerve in the body tingled. There was a lurid darkness which displayed and yet distorted the objects that surrounded them. No moon shone in the sky, but small stars appeared to dance on the heather, vague night-fires like spirits of the damned. They stood in a vast and troubled waste, with huge stony boulders and leafless trees, rugged and gnarled like tortured souls in pain. It was as if there had been a devastating storm, and the country reposed after the flood of rain and the tempestuous wind and the lightning. All things about them appeared dumbly to suffer, like a man racked by torments who has not the strength even to realise that his agony has ceased. Margaret heard the flight of monstrous birds, and they seemed to whisper strange things on their passage. Oliver took her hand. He led her steadily to a cross-
140 THE MAGICIAN
road, and she did not know if they walked amid rocks or tombs.
She heard the sound of a trumpet, and from all parts, strangely appearing where before was noth- ing, a turbulent assembly surged about her. That vast empty space was suddenly filled by shadowy forms, and they swept along like the waves of the sea, crowding upon one another’s heels. And it seemed that all the mighty dead appeared before her; and she saw grim tyrants, and painted cour- tesans, and Roman emperors in their purple, and sultans of the East. All those fierce evil women of olden time passed by her side, and now it was Monna Lisa and now the subtle daughter of Herodias. And Jezebel looked out upon her from beneath her painted brows, and Cleopatra turned away a wan, lewd face; and she saw the insatiable mouth and the wanton eyes of Messalina, and Faustine was haggard with the eternal fires of lust. She saw cardinals in their scarlet, and warriors in their steel, gay gentlemen in periwigs, and ladies in powder and patch. And on a sudden, like leaves by the wind, all these were driven before the silent throngs of the oppressed; and they were innumer- able as the sands of the sea. Their thin faces were earthly with want and cavernous from disease, and their eyes were dull with despair. They passed in their tattered motley, some in the fantastic rags of the beggars of Albrecht Diirer and some in the grey cerecloths of Le Nain; many wore the blouses
THE MAGICIAN 141
and the caps of the rabble in France, and many the dingy, smoke-grimed weeds of English poor. And they surged onward like a riotous crowd in narrow streets flying in terror before the mounted troops. It seemed as though all the world were gathered there in strange confusion.
Then all again was void; and Margaret’s gaze was riveted upon a great, ruined tree that stood in that waste place, alone, in ghastly desolation; and though a dead thing it seemed to suffer a more than human pain. The lightning had torn it asun- der, but the wind of centuries had sought in vain to drag up its roots. The tortured branches, bare of any twig, were like a Titan’s arms, convulsed with intolerable anguish. And in a moment she grew sick with fear, for a change came into the tree, and the tremulousness of life was in it; the rough bark was changed into brutish flesh and the twisted branches into human arms. It became a monstrous, goat-legged thing, more vast than the creatures of nightmare. She saw the horns and the long beard, the great hairy legs with their hoofs, and the man’s rapacious hands. The face was horrible with lust and cruelty, and yet it was divine. It was Pan, playing on his pipes, and the lecherous eyes caressed her with a hideous tender- ness. But even while she looked, as the mist of early day, rising, discloses a fair country, the ani- mal part of that ghoulish creature seemed to fall away, and she saw a lovely youth, titanic but
142 THE MAGICIAN
sublime, leaning against a massive rock. He was more beautiful than the Adam of Michael Angelo who wakes into life at the call of the Almighty; and, like him freshly created, he had the adorable languor of one who feels still in his limbs the soft rain on the loose brown earth. Naked and full of majesty he lay, the outcast son of the morning; and she dared not look upon his face, for she knew it was impossible to bear the undying pain that dark- ened it with ruthless shadows. Impelled by a great curiosity, she sought to come nearer, but the vast figure seemed strangely to dissolve into a cloud; and immediately she felt herself again surrounded by a hurrying throng. Then came all legendary monsters and foul beasts of a madman’s fancy; in the darkness she saw enormous toads, with paws pressed to their flanks, and huge limping scarabs, shelled creatures the like of which she had never seen, and noisome brutes with horny scales and round crabs’ eyes, uncouth primeval things, and winged serpents, and creeping animals begotten of the slime. She heard shrill cries and peals of laughter and the terrifying rattle of men at the point of death. Haggard women, dishevelled and lewd, carried wine; and when they spilt it there were stains like the stains of blood. And it seemed to Margaret that a fire burned in her veins, and her soul fled from her body; but a new soul came in its place, and suddenly she knew all that was obscene. She took part in some festival of hideous lust, and