The Tales of the Thames (Thriller & Action Adventure Books - Boxed Set). Pemberton Max

thought thus, and closed my eyes, opening them again when some minutes had gone. The light was still shining, and it shone with a greater power, as it seemed to me, making clear the darker portions of the room, lighting the niches and the black recesses. The air I breathed seemed laden with a strange perfume, as of the perfume of unknown flowers; but to breathe it was to take strength, to feel a newer energy and a newer life. I looked around the chamber, raising myself upon my elbows in the great bed, and sitting up so that I saw all the wondrous sight. It was a great room, banked up by twenty couches,—for that upon which I rested proved to be a couch,—and, as I judged, at least a hundred silver lanterns hung down from its painted roof. All the upper portions—the metopes in the frieze of the entablature, and the frieze itself—were covered with strange Eastern pictures depicting fables and tales from the myths of Greece and the richer stories of the East. But no pen may tell of the splendor of the mosaics let into the painted walls, or of the paintings which filled the lower panels. When I looked at length from the walls to the centre of the room the sight that met my gaze was not less bewildering. There were vases of jasper and of agate, from which there stood out wide-spreading palms and the lesser palms of the forests of the East; there were tables studded with gems and with precious stones, the like of which I had seen in no land; there were hookahs in pure amber, and smaller lamps in amethyst stone from which the vapor rose. Many smaller tables placed by the couches were heaped up with fruit such as was not then to be had in London, and there were goblets chased after the fashion of the chalice known to the Western Church. I saw that a dish of the fruit and one of these goblets had been placed at the foot of my own bed, and I drank of the wine,—a deep draught and luscious,—and as I drank the sensation of pleasure, pure and without blemish, came upon me. Perhaps for the first time in my life I lived—lived in an existence which no tongue can make clear; an existence which promised to be infinite, unmarred by any bridge of death, wanting nothing of the promise of priests; an existence of the imagination, in which the body had no part. And in the very ecstasy of living I leaned back in my cushions and closed my eyes to dream.

      When I opened them again it was to look into the face of an old man. He sat squat upon his haunches, with the mouthpiece of a hookah in his hand. He had the face of an Eastern, yet moulded somewhat finely in the features; and his jet-black hair hung in ringlets upon his shoulders. His robe was woven in one piece,—a robe of purple silk,—but there was no turban on his head, and his legs and feet were bare but for slippers studded with gems. Jewels shone from rings on his hands, and his one woven vestment was bound about him at the girdle with a cincture of fine linen studded with diamonds. A quaint figure and impressive; a mind not lacking thought or purpose, I surmised, and something kindly in the black eyes which then looked upon me.

      "Son, I give you greeting," he said, "and thanks that you wait upon me."

      "The thanks are yours," I replied. "To drink that wine is to live."

      "It is good wine," he said thoughtfully; "and good wine is one of the factors of life—blessed be him that made it!"

      "It is new to me as an Englishman," I answered; "and if I were not a stranger to you, I would ask questions."

      "Son, he that asks questions is a poor learner; ask nothing from life, but take it as it comes to you. He that asks shall learn lies."

      "You are a philosopher, I see."

      He laughed scornfully in reply.

      "la philosopher! Nay, my son, I am no philosopher. I am the concentration of life, which I have squeezed as you squeeze a lemon, until it has poured its last drop into my skin—blessed be he that made it!"

      "Wonderful man! You have learned, then, to live, and you keep the secret to yourself?"

      "Nay, not so, since you are here to share it. I have waited for you many days until I could give you what you wished; for what you wish is another factor of your life. To-night it is in my power to put before you the realization of the dream which has been in your mind the month past. I intend to do so without condition; for condition is not an element of satisfaction, though made one by your teachers here, who would have no sustenance or employment if limitation were not part of their gospel. To-night you are my guest in the secret of pleasure as in the freedom of my house; and again I give you greeting."

      He said the words, putting his hand upon an ivory knob in the floor beside him, when of a sudden the hundred silver lanterns about him slowly waxed radiant with a soft rose light that fell upon us and lit the scarlet and the gold of the tapestries so wonderfully wrought. I knew not until that time how large that chamber was, and I fell to wondering what sort of house it was which possessed such an apartment, and where it lay. But I had small opportunity to wonder, for at the lanterns' light there was the sound of distant music, and a surpassing strange sensation of singers and dancers near to me, yet all invisible. I was conscious only of a movement of the warm and perfumed air and of the presence of women surpassingly lovely, though unseen by me. The spirit-music, too, was entrancing beyond all music that I have heard—harmonious in its discordance, message-bearing, sensuous music, by which the walls of cities might have been built. Again, it was a sensation, and not a grasp of mathematical sound. I heard, and was not sure that I heard; I shut my ears, and yet was moved; hearkened for melody, and yet took none to me. But the delight was transcendent, indescribable; and I lay ravished, troubled as a woman in the ecstasy of her love. And he who had made the sign watched me, inhaling a thin vapor from the amber bowl, drinking of the cup which was at his hand.

      The music ceased suddenly with a mad crash of strings. The man who sat before me pressed again upon the knob, and doors burst open in the wall behind him. I was conscious that a woman veiled in gauze, but whose rounded limbs showed pink and white beneath the veiling, was bending before him, and anon others, like dressed to her, spread meats at our feet. The old man made a sign to them, and they withdrew; but to me he spoke not, only pointing at the dishes as he cast the amber behind him. Then, too, I ate of the meats, which were cut in portions as the size of toast dressings, but had a flavor most curious and unknown to me. I found that so much as one mouthful had satisfied my hunger, but had produced a prodigious thirst, slaked only in many draughts from the goblet, which was deep and long- bodied. It was new tome thus to dine, and I asked him whose guest I was and what kind were the meats which he had set before me.

      "Son," he said, "the guest asks not of the host, What do I eat with thee? Nor does he who would dine waste his moments on words which have been said by others, and better said. As you are a stranger, I make light of your fault; but hark to this; When you shall know how to live you shall know also that man, who has labored two thousand years and more to learn the things of life, has given not one year to learn of those things which are of the essence of life. He remains as the beasts, taking the fodder of the field, and where food should be his idol be has no reverence for it. Eat you, then, as the wise who have found light."

      But I was satisfied, and could eat no more. The drink in the goblet, too, swayed me in a paroxysm of sensuous ecstasy. The room seemed a very bower of rose light. The jewels sent myriads of rays dancing toward me and blinding the eyes. Again the music arose, again he who ate touched the knob at his side, and the door in the wall of tapestry flew open. I saw the figure of a woman pass in, she veiled as the others had been; but she passed on to my side, and drawing back the veil, showed a face wondrous fair.

      It was the face of Lelia, for whom I had waited so long at the theatre.

       Part III—The Seven Men with the Seven Sands

      When the pleasures of the lantern-room had continued three days, it came that the third night fell, and a deep sleep held me. Many hours passed, and I lay in a trance,—the trance of living death,—knowing nothing even of dreams, nor of that consciousness of rest which waits upon a brain yet active. I awoke at length, to find myself alone and in another chamber. A soft light—the dim light of day—fell from a rose window in the ceiling of the room, but there was no other aperture, and I could not distinguish any visible door which gave access to the place. For my own part, I lay upon a low bed, whose curtains were of silk, and I saw that an ivory table at my side had meat and drink upon it; but it was not the food which I had tasted when the old man served me, nor was the wine dream-giving as the wine of the other time.

      For many hours I lay, suffering much