CHAPTER VIII - THE STEWARDSHIP OF LOVE

Glarces returned, and resumed his seat beside his sister.

“Now, having done everything at present possible to solve our doubts in that direction, have you any further trouble? If so, it must be at once dispelled.”

“Nothing more, my love,” she answered, for the cloud of jealousy had vanished in her desire for his return, and now that this was granted, she had no other wish.”I am sadly afraid I have troubled you with an unworthy imagination in my complaint; but I have paid the penalty in doing so in the unwelcome loss of your company for so long.”

“So long?” he queried, with surprise. “Why, I only left you to return.”

“But it was an absence, none the less.” And the languid pleading of her eyes told him how resentfully she had accepted it. “I wonder whether you will ever be able to understand that absence is in itself painful without reference to the time it represents.”

“Even then duty must ever be paramount, and love content to take the second place.”

“But when duty only amounts to a vague suspicion,” she reasoned, with coaxing and apologetic fondness, “surely then love has the prior claim.”

“In that case,” he replied, “love must still be content to wait upon the doubt. Duty, if only presented in an imaginary form, demands precedence and attention.”

“But petulance and peevishness are never the messengers of duty.”

“Are they not? I am not quite so sure about it. Meshrac has just assured me that it is always his first consideration to secure my peace. Would my Vedrona be content to receive a devotion at my hands inferior to that I find in a servant?”

“You know I would not - could not! But enough of this; I have you now, and wish to forget all else.” Then, either first noticing his amethyst or finding therein an apology for changing the conversation, she asked: “What induced you to wear this stone on such a tunic?”

“If anything is out of place, it is the tunic, not the stone. It is your gift, my love, and is always rightly placed above my heart, and, beside, it was most fortuitous that I should be wearing it to-day.”

“For why ? What is the latest romantic idea in your mind?”

“Because it bears the powerful word which secures the protection of Apies, who watches over the welfare of individuals; and, further, the magicians and astrologers assure me it is a stone in peculiar sympathy with myself.”

“Yes-yes,” she answered, with increased animation, “Tell me what they say; I love to hear about their mystical and magical rites and interpretations. What is its meaning, or why do they say it has sympathy with you?”

“Of course, it is only a superstition,” he replied, indulgently, glad to see her roused into a semblance of activity. “The meaning they have been pleased to attach to it is ‘Deep and pure love, free from any admixture of intoxication.’”

“That is no superstition, Glarces. There is evidently a great deal more in their professions than I have been willing hitherto to believe. Yes, the amethyst is certainly your own stone, for there never has been, never will be, a man so absolutely free from love's intoxication as yourself. I shall now ask Meshrac or Zaclas to tell me which is my stone; but I will warrant you it will not be of your frigid temperament.”

“No. It will be a gem of more intrinsic value, of diviner lustre; but it cannot have a more godlike legend of its origin.”

“You are a veritable prince of imaginative romances, Glarces; but I would the gods had made you a little more so in practice,” she sighed despondently. “What is this new story you have to tell?”

“Have I not already told you of the poor prince who, to win the hand of a proud but beautiful queen, engaged to find his way to the boundary land of the Immortals, and bring from thence the priceless gems she coveted; how he necessarily failed, but by chance learning the legend of the ruby, in his determination to fulfil his desire he opened the casket he once had hoped to fill with treasure and poured therein the last rich blood of his heart, which was carried into the presence of the gods, who impressed the cooling life with the blue seal of heaven's pure truth? When the morning broke, and his knight came to attend his lord, he found him dead, and beside him stood the casket filled with a purple stone - the compound of love and truth.”

“Yes; I remember it now. That prince might have been my Glarces. I wish I had been that queen, to avert the cruel fate of such a love.”

“A cruel fate, my sister?” he asked, with incredulous astonishment. “Why, it is but in its final and unreserved sacrifice we can estimate the real value and fidelity of love.”

“And do you think the earth is so overcrowded with this kind of man that we can lightly spare one to gratify the proud ambition of a heartless monster?” she asked indignantly. Then her eyes met his, and she beheld the rapt devotion with which he silently, almost unconsciously worshipped her; at the recognition of this her soul took fire, and in the sudden frenzy of her unpent love she essayed to break down his foolish, maddening restraint and equanimity. “Oh! Glarces - Glarces, why will you be so untrue to your own heart, so blind, so stupid and ridiculously unmanly? Rouse yourself. Open your eyes. Listen to the natural cry of your better self. You have been a stone too long already. Let the love with which I cannot help regarding you, even while I hate the calm composure with which you thrust it back, warm you into life - into reciprocation. This cold complacency is unworthy of you. Its thousand invisible arms drive me from you, and keep us apart when I would take you to myself. Away with your boasted ideality, your poetic rhapsodies, your so-called divine ideas about women, and bring your understanding to recognise that as yet we are but flesh and blood, possessing reciprocative feelings with yourself. By what strange fallacy of imagination have you reached the idea that we are to be worshipped rather than accepted as companions? I tell you, as knowing my sex better than you will ever understand us, that when a woman is once assured of the true, honest love of a noble man, she needs and will tolerate no other protection than is to be found in the joy such love affords, in which she will lose herself and find the perfect mission of her life. The gods have given you, my brother, the great misfortune of an advanced soul; in its purity and godliness you already live within Elysium, and dream the holy dream of the Immortals. But you must awake and live. Our feet are not yet walking through the golden fields, and we shall be false to ourselves and the gods if we sleep and dream before the assigned work of life is over. You must first fulfil the duties of a man, my Glarces, before you can enter into the revels of the heroes. If you neglect the distinctive preparation, the gods will spurn you from their presence in the day when you hope for your reward, as an ascetic who has dreamed but never lived - as one who has falsely deceived himself and failed to fulfil his destiny. I know - have learned by a thousand evidences oft repeated - the pure nobility of your soul; I know, far better than in your generosity you would be willing to admit, the daily struggle by which you maintain the tyrannical despotism over yourself. In your deep, loving eyes I read the true language of your heart, which you falsely think is hidden from my knowledge; and, knowing you better than you know yourself, I love you, Glarces, with all the powers and energies I have received from the gods. They have given us to each other. In the fields of purity and love, where they enjoy themselves, our souls were linked together, before even our mother knew of our existence. Why should these misconceptions keep us apart, or blight and dwarf the love the gods have blessed? Come, break these false barriers down, be my brother, and in that lesser joy I will rest satisfied until our souls shall drift together in a holier union.”

“Yes, it shall be so. I will be your brother; but I must also be your guardian. The gods have committed to my care an awful stewardship in watching over and protecting such a sister, and I should prove a foul traitor to their confidence did I not return my charge to their hands as pure as I received it. Hush, my beloved! I know the sweet and tender arguments you would use, and I fear for myself under the influence your eyes and soul would lend; but my duty demands truth, and I must save and protect you, even from yourself, if need be. This danger of your pleading grows in its subtle power with every repetition; it is too much for me, and by the love you bear me I entreat you not to tempt me further. You shall be mine; but not yet. Before my love can merit such a priceless gift I must be purified by resistance, be strengthened by endurance, gain a complete victory over all that is ignoble, and raise myself into a worthy companionship with the Immortal heroes by an untarnished fidelity to the will of the mighty gods. This I will do; and though all the love I have is yours, I dare not yield even to your temptation to violate my trust.”

“I cannot understand you, oh! my poor misguided brother; and I can only pray that the mighty gods would protect you, even as you would serve them in your mistaken fidelity. But hear me, Glarces. I must speak; for the shadow of an awful sorrow - worse than death, weighted with all the terrors of Hecate to torment you - rises before me. Some woman will come, who, shielding herself in your infatuation, will part us and destroy your illusion of my sex in the torture she will inflict upon you. Will you not be advised? Will you not let my love for you - great and strong as that you bear for me - save and protect you? Is not the vision of my fear and your helplessness also from the gods, who call upon me to prevent this needless sacrifice? Glarces, will nothing move you? Can no one save you from yourself?”

“I am safe, my beloved,” he answered, with unmoved composure. “So long as I am faithful to my charge the canopy of the gods will cover me, and all must be well. Your love is the greatest gift the Immortals have power to bestow, and whatever comes, I must make myself worthy of it, or it will not be mine.”