Ardath | Page 5

or evangelist--and with grave yet kindly courtesy, said:
"Now, my friend, I am at your disposal! In what way can Heliobas,
who is dead to the world, serve one for whom surely as yet the world is
everything?"
CHAPTER II.
CONFESSION.

His question was not very promptly answered. The stranger stood still,
regarding 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