Ardath | Page 5

him intently for two of three minutes with a look of peculiar pensiveness and abstraction, the heavy double fringe of his long dark lashes giving an almost drowsy pathos to his proud and earnest eyes. Soon, however, this absorbed expression changed to one of sombre scorn.
"The world!" he said slowly and bitterly. "You think I care for the world? Then you read me wrongly at the very outset of our interview, and your once reputed skill as a Seer goes for naught! To me the world is a graveyard full of dead, worm-eaten things, and its supposititious Creator, whom you have so be praised in your orisons to-night, is the Sexton who entombs, and the Ghoul who devours his own hapless Creation! I myself am one of the tortured and dying, and I have sought you simply that you may trick me into a brief oblivion of my doom, and mock me with the mirage of a life that is not and can never be! How can you serve me? Give me a few hours' respite from wretchedness! that is all I ask!"
As he spoke his face grew blanched and haggard, as though he suffered from some painfully repressed inward agony. The monk Heliobas heard him with an air of attentive patience, but said nothing; he therefore, after waiting for a reply and receiving none, went on in colder and more even tones:
"I dare say my words seem strange to you--though they should not do so if, as reported, you have studied all the varying phases of that purely intellectual despair which, in this age of excessive over-culture, crushes men who learn too much and think too deeply. But before going further I had better introduce myself. My name is Alwyn ..."
"Theos Alwyn, the English author, I presume?" interposed the monk interrogatively.
"Why, yes!" this in accents of extreme surprise--"how did you know that!"
"Your celebrity," politely suggested Heliobas, with a wave of the hand and an enigmatical smile that might have meant anything or nothing.
Alwyn colored a little. "Your mistake," he said indifferently, "I have no celebrity. The celebrities of my country are few, and among them those most admired are jockeys and divorced women. I merely follow in the rear-line of the art or profession of literature--I am that always unluckiest and most undesirable kind of an author, a writer of verse--I lay no claim, not now at any rate, to the title of poet. While recently staying in Paris I chanced to hear of you ..."
The monk bowed ever so slightly--there was a dawning gleam of satire in his brilliant eyes.
"You won special distinction and renown there, I believe, before you adopted this monastic life?" pursued Alwyn, glancing at him curiously.
"Did I?" and Heliobas looked cheerfully interested. "Really I was not aware of it, I assure you! Possibly my ways and doings may have occasionally furnished the Parisians with something to talk about instead of the weather, and I know I made some few friends and an astonishing number of enemies, if that is what you mean by distinction and renown!"
Alwyn smiled--his smile was always reluctant, and had in it more of sadness than sweetness, yet it gave his features a singular softness and beauty, just as a ray of sunlight falling on a dark picture will brighten the tints into a momentary warmth of seeming life.
"All reputation means that, I think," he said, "unless it be mediocre--then one is safe; one has scores of friends, and scarce a foe. Mediocrity succeeds wonderfully well nowadays--nobody hates it, because every one feels how easily they themselves can attain to it. Exceptional talent is aggressive--actual genius is offensive; people are insulted to have a thing held up for their admiration which is entirely out of their reach. They become like bears climbing a greased pole; they see a great name above them--a tempting sugary morsel which they would fain snatch and devour-- and when their uncouth efforts fail, they huddle together on the ground beneath, look up with dull, peering eyes, and impotently snarl! But you,"--and here his gazed rested doubtfully, yet questioningly, on his companion's open, serene countenance--'you, if rumor speaks truly, should have been able to tame YOUR bears and turn them into dogs, humble and couchant! Your marvellous achievements as a mesmerist--"
"Excuse me!" returned Heliobas quietly, "I never was a mesmerist."
"Well-as a spiritualist then; though I cannot admit the existence of any such thing as spiritualism."
"Neither can I," returned Heliobas, with perfect good-humor, "according to the generally accepted meaning of the term. Pray go on, Mr. Alwyn!"
Alwyn looked at him, a little puzzled and uncertain how to proceed. A curious sense of irritation was growing up in his mind against this monk with the grand head and flashing eyes--eyes that seemed to strip bare his innermost thoughts, as