ili;^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDD5^DD7E5 (t^o* 0*0 • • • » ''^%. ^ \ *** rr-.** ^0' :•, v,^* /^V/,.-o '-^^^ .**• ,N c>. * ^.■y\ --m- J\. '--m^ A i.if ^0^ ^oV' ^ V c'^ * .0^ o^JL**. 'o. o, ♦^TVr* A K A R M A BY LAFCADIO HEARN NEW YORK BONI AND LIVERIGHT 1918 Copyright, 1918 Bt BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc. JAN -3 1919 iCI,A5l2U0 •-v\ Ki ^ \ CONTENTS PAGE Karma *^ . 11 A Ghost 59 The First Muezzin, Bilal .... 70 China and the Western World . . . lio EDITOR'S NOTE THE stories and articles by Lafcadio Hearn in this volume are now collected in book form for the first time. They rank with his best work. The opening story "Karma" is the most personal product from Hearn's pen, as he rarely took the public into his confidence. No doubt the ideal love de- scribed in this great tale was an experience of his own. The story originally appeared in Lippincotfs Magazine for May, 1890. "A Ghost" — a beautiful prose-poem — ap- peared in Harper s Magazine for Decem- ber, 1889. "Bilal" was a work of great labor and love. In his letters to H. E. Krehbiel he makes nu- merous references to "Bilal." It appeared in the New Orleans Times-Democrat in 1884. The sketch was considered lost to the world. I inquired from Mr. Krehbiel about it; he dis- 5 6 editor' s note covered it in a scrap-book which he kindly placed at my disposal. "China and the Western World" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1896; this article shows a keen insight into international relations and is particularly timely to-day. I wish to thank Captain Mitchell McDonald of the United States Navy, Hearn's friend and literary executor, for permission to reprint "Karma." I also wish to thank in behalf of Captain McDonald, Harper Brothers for per- mission to include "A Ghost" in the present volume, and the Atlantic Monthly Publishing Company for permission to include "China and the Western World." Albert Mordell. KARMA WITH all her exceptional mental training, there was an almost childish ingenuousness in her every word and act, — a simplicity and direct- ness of manner that invited every worthy con- fidence: yet he had never presumed to praise her. Behind that radiant girlishness, natural to her life as azure to sky, he knew some settled power, — some forceful intelligence to which a compliment would seem a rudeness. And, coerced to plainest frankness by his very sense of her personality, he found that it needed no little courage to make his declaration. For weeks he had attempted in vain to devise some way of softening the difficulty by prelim- inaries, — of giving some turn to conversation that might help him to approach the matter by gentle degrees. But she remained always 11 12 KARMA SO invulnerable to suggestion, — so strangely impregnable in her maidenly self-posses- sion! . . . To many lovers thus ill at ease, in- tuition tells the advantage of being alone with the adored girl somewhere beyond the shadow of walls, — in some solitude where Nature soft- ens hearts with her silence and her loveliness and perpetual prompting of what is tender and true, — a park, a wood, an umbraged lane. But to her. Nature and silence seemed to give larger power to awe him; — the splendid light itself seemed to ally with her against him. He lived near enough to be often with her; and they walked much together on quiet beautiful coimtry-roads ; and he never could find courage to do more than admire her by stealth, while conversing on subjects totally foreign to his thoughts. But each time more and more her charm bewildered him : the secret of ideal grace seemed to live in her, — that something in every motion and poise which is like melody made visible, — ^which makes you think you hear music when you see it. With the passing of time his embarrassment KARMA 13 only grew. Sometimes he would even find it impossible to maintain a sensible conversa- tion, — conscious of nothing but his idolatry; answering questions vaguely, or not at all. . . .1 And at such a moment of his confusion, one day, — as they were returning from a walk to her home, — she turned near the little gate, and, looking into his face with her archest smile, exclaimed : — —"Well, what is it? Tell me all about it " 11 Who does not know that luminous hour of Love's illusion, when the woman beloved seems not a woman,^never of earth, never shaped of the same gross substance forming man, — ^but a creature apart, unique, born of some finer, subtler, pearlier life? In her the lover no longer beholds the real : she has become to him so wonderful that he cannot guard his secret, — that he must speak of her so as to betray him- self, — that he feels anger when questioned friends declare their inability to see those mar- 14 KARMA vels which he discerns in her. And then, with this exquisite delirium of the senses, mysterious above aught else in the all-circling mystery of life; — with this wondrous bewitchment, sung of since song found voice, yet ever uninter- pretable save as the working magic of that Will wherefrom, as ether-dartings from a sun- burning, are souls thrilled out; — with the astonishment of woman's charm thus made divine, — the miracle of her grace and purity of being, — there comes to the lover a cruel sense of his own unworthiness. . . . What are you, O man ! poisoned with passions and knowledge of evil, that you should think to mingle the lucid stream of her life with the turbid current of your own? Were it less than sacrilege to dream of it? All limpid and fleckless the azure of her thought: would you make it gray? — darken it? — call into it the cloudings that scathe with fire? . . . What are you, that she should make you her chosen of all men, — ac- cept her fate from you? . . . What are you, that she should ever caress you, — suffer you to touch her, to learn her thought, to seek the in- KARMA 15 finite in her eyes, to know the sweet warm soft shock of her kiss ? Yet the illusion of her in those hours of deli- cious madness when all the veins burn with thirst of sacrifice for her sake ; — the illusion of her during all the tense, fiery, magnetic draw- ing of your life to hers with insensate longing to absorb it utterly and be therein impossibly absorbed, — to blend with it, to die for it: that illusion, however seeming-celestial, is less beau- tiful, infinitely less admirable, than the com- plex reality of her worth, — if she be indeed of the finer, rarer type of womanhood, — if she be indeed one of those marvelously-specialized human flowers that bloom only in the higher zones of aspirational being, — even at the verge of God's snow-line. . . . Have you ever thought what she truly is, — this perfumed chalice-blossom stored with all sweetness of humanity ?^have you ever dreamed what she is worth? . . . For all the myriads of the ages have wrought to the making of her. ^ons of strug- 16 KARMA gle and blood and tears are the price of her. And in that she is good, — because of the soul- sweetness of her, — is she not the utmost yet- possible expression of divinity working through man? . . . Think you what her sweet- ness means, — the free beauty of her mind, — the tenderness of her, — the sensitive exquisite- ness of her being! It signifies so much more than she . . . ! It means the whole history of love striving against hate, aspiration against pain, truth against ignorance, sympathy against pitilessness. She, — the soul of her! — is the ripened passion-flower of the triumph. All the heroisms, the martjrrdoms, the immola- tions of self, — all strong soarings of will through fire and blood to God since humanity began, — conspired to kindle the flame of her higher life. And yet, perhaps, she is willing to be yours! Viewlessly your being has become slowly interorbed with hers; — each life is secretly seeking union with the other through inter- weaving of wishes unconfessed. Within her KARMA 17 charming head are thoughts and dreams and beliefs about you. Something shadowy, — an emanation of you, an illusion, — ^has entered into that limpid life, and tinted all its thinking, as clearest water is tinted by one touch of eosin, and flushes through with rose-color of dawn. Her blood has learned of you in the blind sweet pink chambers of her life, — quickens its throb- bing at the echo of your step, at the sound of your voice . . . even at the remembrance of your face. In sleep she speaks to you, — ^to your Eidolon, — to the shadow of you apotheo- sized by the wondrous mirroring of her girl's- love. Her wishes are of you; her plans are shapen for you : some thought you uttered has been utilized in that secret splendid architec- ture of faith being builded within her dainty brain. Was it real enough, strong enough, flawless enough to serve for so holy a use? — or was it sleazy and false, — ready to yield at the first unlooked-for pressure, and bring down with its breaking all the charming gracious fabric innocently confided to its support? — *'Have I the generous skill to make her 18 KARMA happy? . . . Have I the methods of wealth to keep want far from her? . . . Have I the force to wrestle with the world for her, — and win? . . . Am I strong enough to protect her from all harm? . . . Shall I be able to provide for her and for her children in all things, should death come suddenly to take me away?" . . . Are these all the honest questions that you ask yourself? And having asked, and found the power to cry out Yes to every asking, do you think you have asked enough? ... Nay! such questions are babble to other questions which selfishness or ignorance may have prevented you from asking, but which it remains your duty to demand : your duty to her, — your duty to the future, — your duty to mankind, — your duty to the Supreme Father of all life and love. . . . For what purpose was she formed? . . . Surely to be loved. . . . But for what purpose loved? Ah! never for yours alone! Only for the divine purpose came she into being, — this Love-Kindler, — foam-born out of KARMA 19 life's sea-bitterness under the lashing of all the Winds of pain. And through her, as through each so-far-perfeeted form, the eternal Will is striving to bring souls out of Night into the splendor of that time when the veil between divine and human shall have been taken away. In her beauty is the resurrection of the fair- est past; — in her youth, the perfection of the present; — in her girl-dreams, the promise of the To-Be. . . . Million lives have been con- sumed that hers should be made admirable; countless minds have planned and toiled and agonized that thought might reach a higher and purer power in her delicate brain; — count- less hearts have been burned out by suffering that hers might pulse for joy; — ^innumerable eyes have lost their light that hers might be filled with witchery; — innumerable lips have prayed for life that hers might be kissed. . . . And can you dare to love her without ghostly fear? — without one thought of all the hopes, strivings, sacrifices, sufferings which created her? — without terror of your weird responsi- bility to the past and its dead pains, — to all 20 KARMA those vanished who labored that she might see the light? Numberless they may have been; yet how unspeakably vaster the multitude of possibilities involved by her single slender ex- istence! Not to the sacrificial past alone are you responsible, but to the mysterious To- Come also and much more, — and to that Un- knowable likewise, working within and beyond all time, — that Will which is Goodness. . . . Through her young heart throbs rosily the whole God-Future: its love, its faith, its hope are seeking there to quicken, — all flower-wise folded up in the bud of her exquisite life. . . . Ill . . . She did not appear surprised when he uttered his wish: she only became a little seri- ous, — and met his gaze without one sign of shy- ness, as she made answer: — — "I do not yet know. ... I am not sure you love me." — "Oh, could you but try me! — what would I not do! . . ." Placid as sculpture her face remained, while KARMA 21 her fine silky-shadowed eyes observed, as with a curious doubting sympathy, — the passionate eagerness of his look. — "But I do not approve of those words," she said. "If I thought you meant all that is in them, I might not like you." — "Why?" he queried, in surprise. — "Because there are so many things one should not do for anybody. . . . Would you do what you suspected or knew to be wrong for the purpose of pleasing me?" He was afraid to answer at once; — ^but she read his thought in the quick hot blush that fol- lowed it, — and the blush pleased her more than his words. — "I do not really know," she resumed, after a moment's silence, — ^moving, as she spoke, to pluck a flower from the neighboring hedge, — "I do not know yet whether I ought to allow myself to like you." . . . Her expression of doubt made him happy, — suddenly, wildly happy. His heart filled full almost to breaking with the delight of her words : yet he could imagine nothing to 22 KARMA say or do. He feared this strange girl, — feared her as much as he loved her. . . . For fully a minute she played with the flower in silence, — and that minute seemed to him very long. The flower photographed itself upon his brain with a vividness that remained undimin- ished to the day of his death. It was a purple asrer. . • • — "Let me tell you," — she continued at last, looking straight into his eyes with her clear keen sky-gray frankness, — "let me tell you what to do. . . . Go home now : then, — as soon as you feel able to do it properly, — write out for me a short history of your life; — just write down everything you feel you would not like me to know. Write it, — and send it. . . ." — "And then?" he asked, as she paused a little. — "And then I shall tell you whether I will marry you," — she finished, resolutely. . . . "Now, good-by!" — "But," he persisted, clinging almost des- perately to the slender hand extended, — "y^^ will believe me . . . ?" KARMA 23 — -"How believe you? ... If I did not think I could believe you," she answered, surprised into sternness, and at once withdrawing her hand, — "I should already have told you very plainly. No!" — "Only that I love you," he explained. She only smiled, and repeated, — — "Good-by!" IV . . . ^'Write out for me a short history of your life; . . . write down everything you feel you would not like me to know, . . Z"* So easy a task it seemed that he hurried homeward filled with the impulse to do it at once, — wondering at the length of the way in his impatience to begin. . . . ''Then I shall tell you whether I will marry you, . . ," Some- thing joyous filled his whole being with light- ness and force, — the elixir of hope! He thought of the duty imposed on him as almost pleasurable, — without knowing why. . . . Per- haps because in reviewing our own faults we are wont to compassionate ourselves as victims 24 KARMA of circumstances, and to betray our weaknesses to a friend is therefore to invite the consola- tion of sympathy with our own self-pity. . . , But this eagerness was of the moment only, — the moment of nervous reaction succeeding suspense, before he had yet time to think. In a little while it passed away under the influ- ence of a growing conviction that the under- taking was serious enough to decide his whole life. A single phrase might lose him incom- parably more than he had gained, — ^might even condemn him irrevocably. And the indulgent manner of her own words recurred to him as a gentle caution against impulsiveness: — ^^As soon as you feel able to do it properly/' And ere reaching home he had ceased to feel at all confident. Unexpectedly, — one after another, — there had recurred to him certain in- cidents of his career as a young man which could not be written down with ease. The sim- ple recollection of them came with a little sharp shock : a young man's follies, of course, but fol- lies that could not be recorded without ex- treme care of expression. . . . KARMA 25 • • • 'Everything you feel you would not like me to know, . . /^ Surely she could not have understood the full possible significance of her command! Neither could she suppose, unless most strangely innocent, that men were good like women! . . . But what if she could and did suppose it? In that event, the faint- est reference to certain passages of his life must cause her cruel surprise. . . . "Every- thing you feel you would not like me to know, . . /'' All or nothing! And he found himself almost startled by this first definite comprehension of the duty to be performed, — the problems to be solved, — the delicate subtile severity of that moral test he had so lightly welcomed as a relief from love's incertitude. To make a rough draft of all that ought to be written, and then amend, refine, compress, correct, and recopy, — had first appeared to him the readiest way of obeying her wishes. But 26 KARMA subsequent reflection led him to believe that such a method involved temptation to vanity of style, conceit of phrase, — general insincerity of expression. With his freshly-acquired right to the hope of winning her, there began to stir and expand within him a sense of gratitude un- speakable to the giver, and a new courage of trustfulness likewise, which momentarily con- quered his doubts. No : it would be more loyal to write down each fact as it came to memory, — simply, bravely, candidly, — and send her the original record in its plain spontaneous sin- cerity. . . . For a little while he felt himself exalted with zeal of frankness, — with high re- solve to master his sensitiveness, — to overrule any secret wish to appear better than he was. . . . But after having remained more than an hour at his desk, he found this second cour- age of purpose also fail him. The record of his childhood and early youth, — even the de- tailed narrative of his first struggle in the world of adult effort, with a heart still fresh, timid, loving, — bewildered by the great stir- ring about and beyond it, like some cage-born KARMA 27 creature loosed in a wood, — all this had not been difficult to write. There was nothing in it that he could not feel willing she should know. But thereafter the course of his duty seemed fraught with peril; and all his former doubts and fears came thronging back to haunt him. It was not going to prove so easy to make as he had for one foolish moment presumed to believe, — this confession of sins! . . . And the dismay of difficulties unforeseen, — the fear of making known to her, even by inti- mation, matters which he had so often re- counted to friends without a thought of shame, — began to excite within him an unfamiliar indefinable feeling of moral bewilderment. How strangely, how violently such incidents shifted their color when brought, even by fancy, into the atmosphere of luminous, pas- sionless purity which enveloped her! Could it be possible that he had never before looked at them save in artificial light, — under the de- lusive glare of some factitious morality? . . . "Everything you feel you would not like me to know, . . " Yet why falter? 28 KARMA Surely the sweet command itself implied the promise of all possible pardon! . . . And, after all, the only feasible way of obeying it would be that which he had thought of at the outset, — to set everything down bluntly, and then reshape the whole, — ameliorate the form. . . . But even thus the task exacted more painful thinking than he had been able to fore- see. So many impressions had become blurred or effaced in his remembrance! — there were links missing between incidents; — there were memories of acts without recollection of prece- dents and impulses, — without record of those cu'cumstances which alone could mitigate their aspect of perversity. . . . Yes, it was true that he did not wish to appear any better than he was ; — ^but, in her eyes, at least, he dare not suffer himself to seem worse. . . . Slowly and carefully — in the pauses of his nervous pacing up and down the room for hours, — he elabo- rated another page ... a page and a half, of letter-paper. Then he read over all that he had written. His face burned at the mere thought of those KARMA 29 lines being seen by her. "Never !" he cried out aloud to himself, — "never could I send her that!" ... It would have to be modified — to- tally modified in some way. Yet to change it enough, — without insincerity, — without posi- tive untruthfulness, — seemed almost impossi- ble. And this was what he had thought him- self able to do immediately! . . . Could she have divined that it would not be easy to do, when she had said, — so slowly and distinctly in that soft penetrating voice of hers, — ^^As soon as you feel able"? ... . . . Darkness found him still at his desk; and the task did not seem to him even fairly begun: all its difficulties appeared to multiply and to make more and more confusion in his mind the longer he thought about them. He lighted his lamp, and worked on, hour after hour, — struggling with the stony hardness of statements which no skill of honest verbal chemistry could soften, — ^trying to remodel sentences already rewritten a score of times. ... It was long past midnight when he rose 30 KARMA from his desk overweary, and resigned his writ- ing to seek repose, — utterly astounded at the result of this strange obligation to testify against himself in the secret high court of honor, — to estimate the moral value of his life by the simple measure of one sweet girl's idea of goodness. . . . VI He laid himself down to rest; but the cool peace of sleep would not come: his thought, heated to pain by all the emotions of the day, still burned on, — flaming and smouldering by turns. Sometimes he saw her eyes, her smile — fancied he could hear her voice; — then his unfinished manuscript seemed always to rise up magnified between them, — like a great white written curtain wavering soundlessly, with ominous distortions of meaning in every undulation. Then he would try to review all that he had penned, only to remember involun- tary errors or to detect insincerities compelled by the vain effort to make some compromise between absolute frankness and positive de- KARMA 31 ceit, — until his thought would drift back, un- directed by any purpose, into the past. But always, sooner or later, he would find himself sharply recalled as by a sudden fear to the remembrance of the present, — of her, — of her last words, — and the white nightmare of his unfinished confession. . . . Repeatedly he strove to quell this men- tal agitation, to win back internal calm by rea- soning with that once more self -asserting con- science, now recognizably aggressive, which had been so long dumb that he believed it ap- peased when it was only sullen, — reduced to silence by some false and subtile casuistry, but never conciliated. He sought to find excuses, apologies, explanations for his faults, — mar- shaling in memory all mitigating circum- stances of each yielding to guilty impulse, — endeavoring to convince himself of the insig- nificance of an act by optimistic judgment of its consequences. Inexperience was so blind; — ^youth could delude so cruelly ! . . . And yet were not many men, — ^men like him, — ^made wiser and better by their early follies, stronger 32 KARMA by their weaknesses ? — souls tempered into self- mastery through error and regret, as steel through fire and water? . . . Was he not of these? Might she not so absolve him, — suffer him to love her? Dare he not hope that she would pardon him all that he could fully for- give himself? — and surely there was nothing he could not forgive himself . . . except — — Except . . . / Ah! there he had been more than weak, more than foolish, worse than selfish ! . . .In that instance at least, conscience had confuted all argument, — scorned all con- solation. It was not an error : it was crime, — unmistakable wickedness. No studied elimina- tion of details could make it otherwise appear in that which he had to write. He had known that fault so well for what it was that he had trained his mind never to dwell upon it, — dis- ciplined his recollection to avoid it. . . . And with the burning memory of it, there suddenly revived other kindred remembrances of shame and pain: things before forgotten, because of his long effort to efface from the mental chart of his life, a whole zone of years. But now. KARMA 33 every marking thus obliterated, — all the reefs and shoals and drifting wrecks of old storm- spaces, — ^had risen into visibility again. . . «> Never, never could he tell her of these ! . . . Then he must lose her, — lose her irrevocably! And losing her, what could life be worth to him? To lose her would be to lose himself, — his higher self, — all the nobility of that new being into which his love for her had lifted him up. True it was that she had ever seemed placed by her loftier nature beyond his reach ; — that he had entered into the pure repose about her, feeling as an intruder, — ^as one hav- ing wandered unbidden with raiment blood- besprinkled into some seraphic peace, and trembling for the moment of banishment, yet with unhallowed feet held fast by strangest spell of bliss. . . . And nevertheless was she not all in all his complement, — flight to his shadowing, snow to his fire, strength to his weakness? — a nature evolved with marvelous appositeness for union with his own? Not that he could presume to deem himself thus worthy. 34 KARMA but that she might render him so much more worthy by loving him! ... To lose her? . , . All that his aspiration had ever imaged of ideal human goodness, all that his heart had ever hungered for, responded to her own dear name ! — nay! before her he found himself dazzled as by divinity, so transcendently were all his dreams surpassed. . . . To lose her? He alone, out of the thousands destined to seek in vain, — the myriads deluded by hope of win- ning the Woman never to be known, — ^he only had been fated to find his ideal. Had he then found her only to lose her forever? — ^'Everything you feel you would not like me to know" . . . Did she — could she — sus- pect there were incidents of his life which he dared not write? Had she simply decided to checkmate his wooing by forcing him to accept a sort of moral chess-game of which she had foreseen every possible move from the begin- ning? . . . The pitiable suspicion perished in a moment ; but there sprang up at once in the place of it his first impulse to positive insincer- I KARMA 35 ity. Could he not deceive her? — ^might he not dissemble ? Over and over again he asked him- self the question, — justifying and condemn- ing his weakness by turns; and each time her words flashed back to him: — ^^ Would you do what you thought or felt to be wrong to please me?'' . . . "Yes, I would!" he once passion- ately cried out in answer; and then felt him- self blush again in the dark for the cowardice of the acknowledgment. . . . But even though he would, he knew that he could not. Even were he to write a lie, he could not meet her and maintain it, with her eyes upon his face: they had uttermost power over him — power as of life and death, — those fine gray sweet mes- meric eyes! . . . Then what was he to do ? Confess him- self a criminal by praying her to forego the test after having begged her to prove him? . . . Ask her — ask Truth's own Soul ! — ^to take him to herself with that black falsehood in his life? . . . Write her all, — and die? . . . Write nothing, and disappear forever from the world to which she belonged? , . . 36 KARMA VII Yet why this intensifying dread, — like the presage of a great pain? . . . Why had he al- ways feared that slight girl even while loving her? — feared her unreasoningly, like a super- natural being, — ^measuring his every thought in the strange restraint of her presence? . . . How imperfect his love, if perfect love casteth out fear! Imperfect by so much as his own nature was imperfect; but he had loved less perfectly with never a thought of fear. . . . By what occult power could she make him thus afraid? Perhaps it was less her simple beauty, her totally artless grace, which made her un- like all other women, than the quiet settled con- sciousness of this secret force. Assuredly those fine gray eyes were never lowered before living gaze : she seemed as one who might look God in the face. . . . Men would qualify such sense of power as hers, "strength of character" ; — but the vague ^term signified nothing beyond the recognition of the power as a fact. Was KAHMA 37 the fact itself uninterpretable? — a mystery like the mystery of life? VIII , . . But imperceptibly, all self-questioning weakened and ceased. Weariness began to flood his thought, — like some gray silent ris- ing tide, spreading and drowning. Ideas slowly floated up, half-formed, — soft and cold. . . . Then darkness, — and a light in the darkness that illumined her, — and the sense of some strange interior unknown to him. He saw her in that filmy light, imponderably poised, with ghostliest grace made visible through some white vapor of veils ; — the gloss- iness of her arms uplifted for the braiding of her hair, seeming the radiance of some sub- stance impossible, — ^like luminous ivory. And this soft light that orbed and bathed her, held some odorous charm, — thin souls of flowers, — faint, faint perfume of dream-blossoms. And he knew that she was robing for her wedding with him. He stood beside her: the soft spheral light 38 KARMA touched him.* . . . All around them was a great pleasant whispering, — the whispering of many friends assembled. He looked into the penumbra beyond her, and saw smiling faces that he knew. Some were of the dead; but it seemed right they should be there. Would they smile thus — would they whisper so kindly ■ — if they knew , . J And there arose within him a weird interior urging to tell all; — and that knowledge of self- unworthiness which had haunted him in other hours, suddenly returned upon him with the enormity of a nightmare, — irresistible, appall- ing, — like a sense of infinite crime. Then he knew that he must tell her all. And he began to speak — to confess to her each hidden blemish of his life, — passionately watching her face, — feeling for her power to forgive, — fearfully seeking to learn if her pure hate of evil might exceed the measure of her sound sweet human love. . . . Yet now she seemed not human : all transfigured she had be- come! And those white shapes enfolding her were surely never bridal veils, but vapory KARMA 39 wings that rose above her golden head, and swept down curving to her feet. . . . Angel! — but with a woman's heart! . . . For she only smiled at his words, at his fears, with compassionate lovingness, — with tenderness as of maternal indulgence for the follies of a child. . . . Ah! but all his follies had not been trivial; — there were others she never could forgive. . . . But still she listened, — smiling as one hear- ing nothing new, with sympathy of strange foreknowledge, — all the while with supplest slender arms uplifted, weaving her marvelous hair. And he knew that all those there assembled heard his every syllable ; — yet he could not but speak on, — charging himself with crimes he had never wrought, — calumniating his life, even as victims of inquisitorial torture shrieked out self -accusation of impossible sins. But al- ways, always she laughed forgiveness, — ^and those in the circling shadow likewise; — and he heard them commending him, — commending 40 KARMA his sacrifice, his sincerity, his love of her: in- finitely indulgent for him. Yet the more they praised him, the greater became his fear of making one last avowal, — of uttering that which was the simple truth. For a weird doubt seized upon him, — a doubt of their meaning; and with the growing of it, all seemed to treacherously change. . . . And the faces of the dead were sinister; — the mur- muring hushed : even she no longer smiled. . . . He would have whispered it to her alone; but ever as he sought to lower his voice, more piercing it seemed to sound, — cutting through the stillness with frightful audibihty, like the sibilation of a possessing spirit. . . . And then, in mad despair, ceasing to hope for se- crecy, he uttered it recklessly, — vociferated it, — reiterated it, — crashed it into their hearing with the violence of a blasphemy. '• :• '• • • All vanished! — there was only darkness about him, the darkness of real night. . . . Still trembling with the terror of his dream he KARMA 41 heard his own heart beat, and some slow dis- tant steeple-bell strike out the hour of four. IX Not through that restless night alone, but through many nights succeeding to weariest days of self-questioning and self-recording, conscience unrelentingly revenged every past repudiation of its counsel. Day after day, he would tear up a certain page and begin it afresh, but each time only to hear that vin- dictive inner voice make protest, — deny his right to any palliating word. And when everything else had been written, the inex- orable Censor still maintained, still refused to attenuate, the self -proscription penned upon that page. Neither by finest analysis of mo- tives and circumstances converging to the fault, nor by any possible deduction out of consequences, could the blackness of the fact be diminished: the great blot of it, spreading either way, strangely discolored the whole. . . . Without that page his manuscript could offer at the very worst only a record of follies 42 KARMA hurtful to none so much as to himself; — ^with it, — read through the smirch of it, — no other error avowed could seem innocuous enough to demand her absolution. And the days wheeled away, filing off by weeks; — and a new anxiety began to shape for him. The mere prolongation of his silence was betraying him. Already she might have divined his moral cowardice, and decided against him. Before this imminent menace of what he feared most, he found himself finally terrified to a resolve, — as one leaps into flood from fire. He turned one morning to his man- uscript for the decisive time, re-read once more the ever-scored page, feverishly copied it, folded it up with the rest, enveloped and ad- dressed the whole; and then, feeling the inevi- table danger of another moment's hesitation, he hurried out and dropped the manuscript into the nearest letter-box. Then he became appalled at what he had done. . . . Seldom does the whole potential KARMA 43 meaning of a doubtful act consent to reveal itself while the act is yet only contemplated; and that sudden expansion of significance which it assumes immediately upon accomplish- ment, may form the most painful astonishment of a lifetime. • . . Oh! the subtle protean treachery of words on paper! — words that, only spoken, seemed so harmless; — that once embodied and coiled in writing, change nature and develop teeth to gnaw the brain that gave them visible form! The viewless fluttering spoken word is thrice plead for : by the tone which is the heart of it, and its best excuse for being, — by the look which accompanies it, — ^by the circumstance which evokes it. But incarnate it with a single quivering dash of the pen, — and lo! the soul- less, voiceless, gelid impersonality of a reptile. Still, you are so far conscious only of its chill- ing ugliness ; — you do not know its dumb cru- elty: it is feigning innocuousness because its life is yet at your mercy, — ^because it has not ceased to be your slave. The price of its manu- mission is a postage-stamp. Release it, and it 44 KARMA will writhe through all your soul to tear and to envenom. Then you will be powerless to pre- vail against it: freedom will have given it the invulnerability of air ! . , . And words that might have been spared in sentences that should have been reconsid- ered, — with what multiformity of ghastliness they now swarmed back to madden him, — bit- ing into memory! How had he failed to dis- cern their whole evil capability, — to under- stand, while it was not yet too late, their sin- ister power of shifting color according to po- sition, according even to the eye that looked upon them? Under what hue would they re- veal themselves to her? . . . And not one could now, or ever again, be changed. He had flung his missive into the machinery of gov- ernment; and already, doubtless, by steam and iron, it was being whirled to its destination ! Yes ! — there was still a forlorn hope ! What if he should telegraph to have the manuscript returned unopened? . . . But, again, — ^what would she infer from such a message? ... A KARMA 45 new confusion of doubts and fears and desper- ate conflicting impulses followed. But the dread of her inference yielded at last to the vividly terrible menace of lines that he had written, — ever becoming more frightfully vis- ible in remembrance, — visions that left him soul-steeped in a fire-agony of shame! . . • He rushed out into the street, — hurried to the telegraph-office. As he entered it, he glanced almost instinctively at the mockingly placid face of the clock, — and started, with a sensa- tion at his heart as of falling in dreams. . . . Time often passes with a rapidity that seems malevolent when the emotions are in turmoil. ... It was too late to telegraph. The envel- ope had already, in all likelihood, been opened by her own hands! XI It was done, — forever done! . . . He had cast the die of his own fate. And the absolute conviction of his further helplessness restored him to comparative calm, — subdued that pas- sion of emotional pain which it had seemed to 46 KARMA him that he could endure no longer and live. . . . Could she forgive him? Might she not be merciful? Might she not have some such in- tuition of the nature of human weakness as would impel her to hold him pardonable in view of the contrition he had so earnestly ex- pressed? And might he not place some hope in her strange capacity of independent judg- ment, — of estimating character and action by standards wholly at variance with common opinion? Perhaps. . . . But in her sublime indiffer- ence to conventional beliefs, there was always manifest a moral confidence steady as the steel of a surgeon. . . . And there came to him the first vague perception of why he feared her, — of what he feared in her: a penetrative dynamic moral power that he felt without comprehend- ing. . . . The idea of that power applied to the analysis of his confession, brought down his heart again. There were three — only three fearful things she might do: simply condemn hrm by her si- KARMA 47 lence ; write him her refusal ; or summon him to hear from her own hps that all was over. And the last possibility seemed the most to be dread- ed. Why? . . . Was it because of an intui- tion that he might hear something more terri- ble than her "No"? . . . He remembered strange hours of his life when the reality of an occurrence feared had proven infinitely more painful than the imagining, — though fancy had been forewarned and strained to prepare him for the very worst. The imagined worst had never been the worst: there were fathom- less abysses of worse behind it. And the simple word, "Come," — solitary and imperative, — in a note received two days later, suddenly thickened and darkened within him this indefinite fear of an unimaginable worse. So feels the prisoner, long waiting for his doom, — when the hammering has ceased to echo in the night, — and the iron doors grate open to gray dawn, — and the Mask says, "Come!" 48 KARMA XII • . • As he opened the door of the apart- ment in which they had been wont to meet, and the faint famihar fragrance that seemed a part of her life, smote softly to his brain, — he saw her there, already risen, as one who knew his footstep, to take from some locked drawer an envelope he instantly recognized. The mere deliberate swift manner of the act prepared him, before he could see her face, for the ab- sence of the sweet smile with which she had always greeted him. She neither asked him to be seated, nor approached to offer him her hand, but walked directly to the hearth where a bright wood fire was leaping. — "Do you wish me to burn this?" she asked, with the missive in her hand, and her eyes flash- ing to his face. Her voice had the ring of steel ! — "Yes," he responded, almost in a whisper. . . . Only one moment he saw her eyes, — for he turned away his own; but that single strong glance seemed to flame cold into his life KARMA 49 like some divine lightning, — incinerating the uttermost atom of his hope, — consuming the last thin wrapping of his pride, like a garment of straw. For the first time he knew himself spiritually stripped before a human gaze; — and with that knowledge outvanished in shame all the weakness of his passion, — all the sense- hunger that is love's superstition. He stood before her as before God, — ^morally naked as a soul in painted dreams of the Judgment Day. . . . She tossed the written paper to the fire, and watched it light up with a little flapping sound ; while he stood by, — fearing what her next word might be. As the flame sank, an air-current wafted and whirled the weightless ash up out of sight. ... A moment passed, and it came crumbling down again, by flakes, that fluttered back like moths into the blaze. — "You say the woman is dead?" she ques- tioned at last, in a very quiet voice, — still look- ing in the fire. 50 KARMA He knew at once to which page of his con- fession she referred, and made answer: — — "It is almost five years since she died." —"And the child?" —"The boy is well." — "And . . . your . . . friend?" She ut- tered the words with a slow, strange emphasis, — as of resolve to master some repulsion. — "He is still there, — in the same place." Then turning to him suddenly, she ex- claimed, — with a change of tone cold and keen as a knife : — — "And when you wrote me that, you had really forced yourself to believe I might con- done the infamy of it! . . ." He attempted no response, — so terribly he felt himself judged. He turned his face away. — "Assuredly you had some such hope," she resumed; — "otherwise you could not have sent me that paper. . . . Then by what moral standard did you measure me? — was it by your own? . . . Certainly your imagination must have placed me somewhere below the level of honest humanity, — ^below the common moral I KARMA 51 watermark! . . . Conceive yourself judged by the world — I mean the real world, — the world that works and suffers ; the great moral mass of truthful, simple, earnest people mak- ing human society! Would you dare to ask their judgment of your sin? Try to imagine the result ; — for by even so easy a test you can immediately make some estimate of the char- acter of what you confessed to me, — as a proof of your affection! ..." Under the scorn of her speech he writhed without reply. And kindled by it, as fire by a lens of ice, there began to burn within him a sense of shame to which all his previous pain was nothingness, — an anguish so incomparable that he wondered at his power to live. . . . For there are moments of weirdest agony pos- sible in the history of natures that have not learned the highest lesson of existence, — strange lightning-glimpses of self-ability to suffer, — astonishments of moral perception suddenly expanded beyond all limit precon- ceived, — ^like immense awakenings from some old dreaming, some state of soul-sleep long mis- 52 KARMA taken for truth of life. ... So sometimes, to unripened generous hearts, flash the first fear- ful certitudes of an ethical law stronger than doubt or dogma, — the supreme morality at once within and without all creeds, beyond and above all skepticisms. He was of those for whom its revelation comes never save through pain, — as certain tardy fruits are sweetened by frost; — she was of those born into goodness, inheriting truth as a divine instinct. And by that instinct she knew him as it had not been given him to know himself. ... — "You think nie cruel," she resumed, after a brief silence. "Oh, no! — I am not cruel; I am not unjust. I have made allowances. I wished you to come and see me because in every line of your avowal I found evidence that you did not know the meaning of what you wrote, — that even your shame was merely in- stinctive, — that you had no manly sense of the exceptional nature of your sin. And I do not intend to leave you in the belief that so deadly a wrong can be dismissed, — least of all by yourself, — as a mere folly, something to be i| KARMA 53 thought about as little as possible. For the intrinsic vileness of it is in no manner dimin- ished, either by your cheap remorse or by your incapacity to understand it except as a painful error. My friend, there are errors which na- ture's God never fails to punish as crimes. Sometimes the criminal may escape the pen- alty; but some one else must bear it. Much that is classed as sin by the different codes of different creeds, may not be sin at all. But transcendent sin, — sin that remains sin forever in all human concepts of right and wrong, — sin that is a denial of all the social wisdom gained by human experience; — for such sin there is no pardon, but atonement only. And that sin is yours; and God will surely exact an expia- tion." — "Is it not enough to lose you?" he sobbed, — turning at last his gaze, all fevered by de- spair, to seek her face. — "By no means!" she answered, with terri- ble composure. "That is no expiation! But what may prove at best a partial expiation, I now demand of you. I demand it in God's 54 KARMA name. I demand it in your own behalf. I demand it also as my right . . . My right! — mine! — for you have wronged me also by the consequences of that crime, O my friend! — and you owe me the reparation ; and I demand it of you — yes ! — to the last drop of the dregs of the bitterness of it! . . ." Her merciless calm had passed: she now spoke with passion, — and the force of her pas- sion appalled him. Never before had he seen her face flushed by anger. — "You will go, my friend, to that man whom you wronged, — that man who still lives and loves under the delusion of your undying lie, — and you will tell him frankly, plainly, without resen^e, what you have dared to con- fess to me. You will ask him for that child, that you may devote yourself to your own duty; and you will also ask how you may best make some reparation. Place your fortune, your abilities, your life, at that man's disposal. Even should he wish to kill you, you will have no right to resist. But I would rather, — a thousand times rather you should find death at KARMA 55 his hands, than to know that the man I might have loved could perpetrate so black a crime, and lack the moral courage to make expiation. . . . Oh ! do not let me feel I have been totally deceived in you! — prove to me that you are only a criminal, and not a coward, — that you are only weak, not utterly base. . . . But do not flatter yourself with the belief that you have anything to gain : — I am not asking a fa- vor; — I am simply demanding a right." For one moment he remained stunned by her sentence as by a thunder-bolt surpassing all possible expectation: the next, he blanched to the whiteness of a dead man. She saw him pale, — as though shocked by the sudden vision of a great peril, — and watched him fearfully, wondering, doubting. Would he refuse to right himself in her eyes, — in God's eyes? — must she despise him utterly? But no! — ^his color came back with a strong flush that made her heart leap. — "I will do it," he made answer, in a voice of quiet resolve. - — "Then go!" she said, with no change of 56 KARMA tone. Her face betrayed no gladness. ... A moment more, and he had passed from her presence, — and she had not suffered herself to touch his vainly outstretched hand. XIII And a year passed. . . . She knew he had kept his word, — ^knew he had obeyed her in all things. None of her secret fears had been realized. He had totally changed his manner of life, — was living, self- exiled, in a distant city with his boy. He had written often to her, — pleading passionate let- ters which were never answered. Was it that she doubted him still? — or only that she doubt- ed her own heart? He could not guess the truth. He feared and hoped and waited ; — and season followed season. fThen one day she received a letter from him, bearing a post-mark that startled her, because it revealed him so near, — a letter praying only to be allowed to see her, while passing through the suburb where she lived. Another morning brought him the surprise KARMA 57 of her reply. He kissed her name below the happy words: ^'You may/' XIV ... "I have brought him to you," he said; — "I thought you might wish it. . . ." She did not seem to hear, — so intently was she looking at the boy, whose black soft eyes, beautiful as a fawn's, returned all timidly her clear, gray gaze. And from those shy dark orbs there seemed to look out upon her the soul of a dead woman, and a dead woman's plead- ing, and a dead woman's pain, — and the beauty and the frailty and the sorrow that had been, — until her own soul, luminous and pure and strong, made silent answer: — ''Be never fear- ful, O thou poor lost one! — only by excess of love thy sin was : rest thou in thy peace !" . . . And something of heaven's own light, like a soft- ness of summer skies, made all divine her smile, as she knelt to put her arms about the boy and kiss him, — so that he wondered at the sweetness of her. And the father, wondering more, hid his 58 KARMA face as he sat there, and sobbing remained, un- til he knew her light hand upon his head, caress- ing him also, and heard her voice thrill to him with tenderness incomprehensible : — — "Suffering is strength, my beloved! — suf- fering is knowledge, illumination, the flame that purifies! Suffer and be strong. Never can you 'be happy: the evil you have wrought must always bring its pain. But that pain, dearest, I will help you to bear, — and the burden that is atonement I will aid you to en- dure; — I will shield your weakness;— I will love your boy. ..." For the first time their lips touched. . . . She had become again the Angel of his dream. A GHOST PERHAPS the man who never wanders away from the place of his birth may pass all his life without knowing ghosts ; but the nomad is more than likely to make their acquaintance. I refer to the civilized nomad, whose wanderings are not prompted by hope of gain, nor determined by pleasure, but sim- ply compelled by certain necessities of his be- ing, — the man whose inner secret nature is totally at variance with the stable conditions of a society to which he belongs only by accident. However intellectually trained, he must al- ways remain the slave of singular impulses which have no rational source, and which will often amaze him no less by their mastering power than by their continuous savage oppo- sition to his every material interest. . . . These may, perhaps, be traced back to some 59 60 KARMA ancestral habit, — be explained by self-evident hereditary tendencies. Or perhaps they may not, — in which event the victim can only sur- mise himself the Imago of some pre-existent larval aspiration — the full development of de- sires long dormant in a chain of more limited lives. . . . Assuredly the nomadic impulses differ in every member of the class, — take infinite va- riety from individual sensitiveness to environ- ment : the line of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for another; — no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same. Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human nature is diversified. Never since consciousness of time began were two beings born who pos- sessed exactly the same quality of voice, the same precise degree of nervous impressibility, or, — ^in brief, the same combination of those viewless force-storing molecules which shape and poise themselves in sentient substance. Vain, therefore, all striving to particularize the curious psychology of such existences: at the A GHOST 61 very utmost it is possible only to describe such impulses and perceptions of nomadism as lie within the very small range of one's own ob- servation. And whatever in these be strictly personal can have little interest or value except in so far as it holds something in common with the great general experience of restless lives. To such experience may belong, I think, one ultimate result of all those irrational partings, — self -wreckings, — sudden isolations, — abrupt severances from all attachment, which form the history of the nomad . . . the knowledge that a strange silence is ever deepening and ex- panding about one's life, and that in that si- lence there are ghosts. II • . . Oh! the first vague charm, the first sunny illusion of some fair city, — when vistas of unknown streets all seem leading to the re- alization of a hope you dare not even whisper ; — when even the shadows look beautiful, and strange facades appear to smile good omen through light of gold! And those first win- 62 KARMA ning relations with men, while you are still a stranger, and only the better and the brighter side of their nature is turned to you! . . . All is yet a delightful, luminous indefiniteness — sensation of streets and of men, — like some beautifully tinted photograph slightly out of focus. . . . Then the slow solid sharpening of details all about you, — thrusting through illusion and dis- pelling it, — growing keener and harder day by day, through long dull seasons, while your feet learn to remember all asperities of pavements, and your eyes all physiognomy of buildings and of persons, — failures of masonry, — fur- rowed lines of pain. Thereafter only the ach- ing of monotony intolerable, — and the hatred of sameness grown dismal, — and dread of the merciless, inevitable, daily and hourly repe- tition of things; — while those impulses of un- rest, which are Nature's urgings through that ancestral experience which lives in each one of us, — outcries of sea and peak and sky to man, — ever make wilder appeal. . . . Strong friend- ships may have been formed; but there finally A GHOST 63 comes a day when even these can give no con- solation for the pain of monotony, — and you feel that in order to live you must decide, — regardless of result, — to shake forever from your feet the familiar dust of that place. . • . And, nevertheless, in the hour of departure you feel a pang. As train or steamer bears you away from the city and its myriad asso- ciations, the old illusive impression will quiver back about you for a moment, — not as if to mock the expectation of the past, but softly, touchingly, as if pleading to you to stay; and such a sadness, such a tenderness may come to you, as one knows after reconciliation with a friend misapprehended and unjustly judged. . . . But you will never more see those streets, — except in dreams. Through sleep only they will open again be- fore you, — steeped in the illusive vagueness of the first long-past day, — peopled only by friends outreaching to you. Soundlessly you will tread those shadowy pavements many times, — to knock in thought, perhaps, at doors which the dead will open to you. . . . But with 64 KARMA the passing of years all becomes dim — so dim that even asleep you know 'tis only a ghost- city, with streets going to nowhere. And fi- nally whatever is left of it becomes confused and blended with cloudy memories of other cities, — one endless bewilderment of filmy architec- ture in which nothing is distinctly recognizable, though the whole gives the sensation of hav- ing been seen before . . . ever so long ago. Meantime, in the coure of wanderings more or less aimless, there has slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted, — so fre- quently does a certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This, however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definite- ness : with each return its visibility seems to in- crease. . . . And the suspicion that you may be haunted gradually develops into a certainty. Ill You are haunted, — whether your way lie through the brown gloom of London winter, or the azure splendor of an equatorial day, — A GHOST 65 whether your steps be tracked in snows, or in the burning black sand of a tropic beach, — whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern pines, or under spidery umbrages of pahn: — you are haunted ever and everywhere by a certain gentle presence. There is noth- ing fearsome in this haunting . . . the gentlest face . . . the kindliest voice — oddly familiar and distinct, though feeble as the hum of a kj\z\^» • • • But it tantalizes, — this haunting, — ^like those sudden surprises of sensation within us, though seemingly not of us, which some dreamers have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances, — recollections of pre-existence. . . . Vainly you ask yourself: — ** Whose voice? — ^whose face?" It is neither young nor old, the Face: it has a vapory indefinableness that leaves it a riddle; — its diaphaneity reveals no particu- lar tint; — perhaps you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its expres- sion is always gracious, passionless, smiling — like the smiling of unknown friends in dreams, with infinite indulgence for any folly, even a 66 KAKMA dream- folly. . . . Except in that you cannot permanently banish it, the presence offers no positive resistance to your will: it accepts each caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with angelic patience. It is never criti- cal,— never makes plaint even by a look, — never proves irksome: yet you cannot ignore it, because of a certain queer power it pos- sesses to make something stir and quiver in your heart, — like an old vague sweet regret, — something buried alive which will not die. . . . And so often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain, — that you fi- nally find yourself making supplication to the Presenlce, — addressing to it questions which it will never answer directly, but only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking, — ^words enigmatic, which make mys- terious agitation in old forsaken fields of mem- ory . . . even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the grasses whisper- ing about nothing. But you will question on, untiringly, through the nights and days of years : — I A GHOST 67 — "Who are you? — what are you? — ^what is this weird relation that you bear to me? All you say to me I feel that I have heard before — but where? — but when? By what name am I to call you, — since you will answer to none that I remember? Surely you do not live: yet I know the sleeping-places of all my dead, — and yours I do not know ! Neither are you any dream; — for dreams distort and change; and you, you are ever the same. Nor are you any hallucination; for all my senses are still vivid and strong. . . . This only I know beyond doubt, — that you are of the Past: you belong to memory — ^but to the memory of what dead suns? ..." Then, some day or night, unexpectedly, there comes to you at least, — with a soft swift tin- gling shock as of fingers invisible, — the knowl- edge that the Face is not the memory of any one face, but a multiple image formed of the traits of many dear faces, — superimposed by remembrance, and interblended by affection into one ghostly personality, — infinitely sym- 68 KARMA pathetic, phantasmally beautiful: a Composite of recollections! And the Voice is the echo of no one voice, but the echoing of many voices, molten into a single utterance, — a single im- possible tone, — thin through remoteness of time, but inexpressibly caressing. IV Thou most gentle Composite! — thou name- less and exquisite Unreality, thrilled into sem- blance of being from out the sum of all lost sympathies! — thou Ghost of all dear vanished things . . . with thy vain appeal of eyes that looked for my coming, — and vague faint plead- ing of voices against oblivion, — and thin elec- tric touch of buried hands, . . . must thou pass away forever with my passing, — even as the Shadow that I cast, O thou Shadowing of Souls? . . . I am not sure. . . . For there comes to me this dream, — that if aught in human life hold power to pass — like a swerved sunray through interstellar spaces, — into the infinite mystery r . . to send one sweet strong vibration through A GHOST 69 immemorial Time . . . might not some lu- minous future be peopled with such as thou? . . . And in so far as that which makes for us the subtlest charm of being can lend one choral note to the Symphony of the Unknowable Pur- pose, — in so much might there not endure also to greet thee, another Composite One, — em- bodying, indeed, the comeliness of many lives, yet keeping likewise some visible memory of all that may have been gracious in this thy friend . . • ? THE FIRST MUEZZIN "BILAL" If all that worship Thee to-day- Should suddenly be swept away. And not a Muezzin left to cry Through the silence of the sky, — "God is Great!" — there still would be Clouds of witnesses for Thee, On the land and in the sea. . . , Aye! and if these, too, were fled. And the earth itself were dead, Greater would remain on high; — For all the planets in the sky, — Suns that burn till day has flown. Stars that are with night restored, — Are Thy dervishes, O Lord, Wheeling round Thy golden Throne! — Edwin Arnold. THE Traveler slumbering for the first time within the walls of an Oriental city, and in the vicinity of a minaret, can scarcely fail to be impressed by the solemn 70 THE FIRST MUEZZIN 71 beauty of the Mohammedan Call to Prayer. If he have worthily prepared himself, by the study of books and of languages, for the ex- perience of Eastern travel, he will probably have learned by heart the words of the sacred summons, and will recognize their syllables in the sonorous chant of the Muezzin, — while the rose-colored light of an Egyptian or Syrian dawn expands its flush to the stars. Four times more will he hear that voice ere morning again illuminates the east: — under the white blaze of noon; at the sunset hour, when the west is fervid with incandescent gold and ver- milion; in the long after-glow of orange and emerald fires; and, still later, when a million astral lamps have been lighted in the vast and violet dome of God's everlasting mosque. Per- haps the last time he may distinguish, in the termination of the chant, words new and mys- terious to his ear; and should he question his dragoman, — as did Gerard de Nerval* — ^re- garding their meaning, he would doubtless ob- * Le premier fois que j'entendis la voix lente et sereine du muezzin, au coucher du Soleil, je me sentis pris d'une indicible 72 KARMA tain a similar interpretation: — "O ye that are about to sleep, commend your souls to Him who never sleeps!" Sublime exhortation! — re- calling the words of that Throne-verse which jewelsmiths of the Orient engrave upon agates and upon rubies, — ''Drowsiness cometh not to Hirrij nor sleep/' And if the interpreter should know something of the hagiology of Islam, he might further relate that the first Muezzin, the first singer of the Adzdn, was the sainted servant of Mahomet, — even that Bilali- bin-Rabah whose tomb is yet pointed out to travelers at Damascus. Now Bilal was an African black, an Abys- sinian, — famed for his fortitude as a confessor, for his zeal in the faith of the Prophet, and for the marvelous melody of his voice, whose echoes have been caught up and prolonged and multiplied by all the muezzins of Islam, through the passing of more than twelve hun- dred years. Bilal sang before the idea of the melancholie, — "Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" demandai-je au drogman. —"La Allah ila Allah! ... II n'y a d'autre Dieu que Dieu!" — "Je connais cette formule; mais ensuite?" — "O vous qui allez dormir, recommendez vos ames a Celui qui ne dort jamais!" — Voyage en Orient "Le Drogman Abdullah." THE FIRST MUEZZIN 73 first minaret had been conceived, — before blind men were selected to chant the Adzan, lest from the great height of the muezzin towers others might gaze upon the level roofs of the city, and behold sights forbidden to Moslem eyes. To- day innumerable minarets point to heaven: even the oases of the Sahara have their muez- zin-towers,^ — sometimes built in ignorance of the plumb-line, and so contorted that they seem to writhe, — like those at Ouargla which Victor Largeau saw in 1877. And the words chanted by all the muezzins of the Moslem world, — whether from the barbaric brick structures which rise above "The Tombs of the Desert," or from the fairy minarets of the exquisite mosque at Agra, — are the words first sung by the mighty voice of Bilal. Even at the present day many special quali- fications are required of him who would sing the Adzan: he must be learned in the Koran: his name must be without reproach; his voice must be clear, suave and sonorous, his diction precise and pure. But in earlier ages of Islam, while the traditional memory of BilaFs voice 74 KARMA was strong in the minds of the faithful, extra- ordinary vocal powers may have been required of those appointed to the office of muezzin. Moslih-Eddin Sadi, the far-famed Persian poet, relates in his Gulistan more than one singular anecdote illustrating the ideas of his day in regard to the selection of muezzins and Koran-readers. . . . "Some one, in the Mosque of Sand jar," — he tells us, — "used to make the Call to prayer with good intent, yet with a voice repugnant to all that heard it. And the Chief of the mosque was a just emir, whose every action was good. Accordingly he sought to avoid giving a wound to the heart of that man. He spake to him thus, saying: *0 sir! there are old muezzins attached unto this temple, to each one of whom is allotted a salary of five dinars, and verily I will give thee ten dinars to betake thyself to another place.' The man agreed thereunto and went his way. But after a certain time he returned to the emir, and said to him: *0 my lord I truly thou hast done me an injustice by in- ducing me to leave this monastery for ten ii THE FIRST MUEZZIN 75 dinars! At the place to which I went they have offered me twenty dinars to go elsewhere, — and I refuse!' Then the emir smiled and made answer: 'Take heed thou accept them not; for they will surely agree to pay thee even so much as fifty dinars!'" — Chap. IV; Upon the Advantage of Silence, Not less amusingly significant is the anec- dote which follows in the same portion of the book, — anecdote which will be more fully ap- preciated, doubtless, when we state that the old Arabian manner of reading the Koran ranks perhaps first among all preserved styles of re- ligious cantillation : — "A man who had a dis- agreeable voice was reading the Koran aloud. A sensible man, passing by, asked of the reader: 'What is thy salary?' He answered: 'Nothing.' Then demanded the other, — 'Wherefore dost thou take so much pains?' The man responded: 'I read for the love of God.' Then said the other: 'O, for the love of God, do not read!' " Son of an Abyssinian slave-girl, Bilal began life as a slave. 76 KARMA Little seems to be known of his earlier years. He was very dark, — *Svith negro-features and bushy hair," Sir William Muir tells us, upon the authority of Arabian writers ; he was also very tall, and gaunt as a camel; — not comely to look upon, but vigorous and sinewy. Among the slaves of Mecca the first preaching of Mahomet took deep effect: — to the hearts of those strangers and bondsmen in a strange land of bondage, the idea of a Universal Father must have been a balm of consolation. Bilal would seem to have been the first convert of his race, inasmuch as the Prophet was wont to speak of him as "the first-fruits of Abyssinia." Perhaps the young slave had obtained from his dark mother such rude notions of that Chris- tianity implanted in Abyssinia during the fourth century, as might have prepared his mind to accept the monotheism of Islam. But when the period of persecution com- menced, it was upon those converted slaves that the wrath of the idolatrous Koreish fell most heavily. Among the Arabs it had been, from time immemorial, a chivalric duty to protect THE FIRST MUEZZIN 77 one's own kindred at the risk even of life ; and the shedding of Arab blood by Arab hands in time of peace never failed to provoke such re- prisals as often entailed a long war of ven- detta. By reason of this salutary social law, Mahomet and his free Arab converts felt them- selves comparatively secure from dangerous violence; but the unprotected slaves who had embraced the new faith were cruelly beaten, often menaced with death, and tortured by naked exposure to the blistering sun. Under such suffering, to which the torments of hun- ger and thirst were superadded, — ^the tempta- tions of cool water and palatable food and shady rest proved too much for the courage of the victims : one by one they uttered, with their lips at least, the prescribed malediction upon their Prophet, and the idolatrous oath by Lat and Ozza. Afterwards, many of them wept bitterly for their recantation. But Mahomet gave ample consolation to the poor renegades ; and for their sake that special exemption for reluctant apostasy was provided in the Koran: — ''Whosoever denieth GOD after that he hath 78 KARMA believed, — excepting him who is forcibly COMPELLED THERETO, HIS HEART REMAINING STEADFAST IN THE FAITH — ofi such resteth the wrath of God/'— Sura XVI, 108. Bilal alone never apostatized : the agony ,of blows, the fiery pains of thirst, the long expo- sure to the sun upon the scorching gravel of the Valley of Mecca, — all failed to bend his iron will ; and to the demands of his persecutors he invariably answered, — AhadI Ahad: "One, one only God!" This episode of his confessor- ship has been chosen by the Poet Farid Uddin Attar as the text of a pious admonition con- tained in the superb invocation of the Mantic Uttair: — "Bilal received upon his feeble body many blows with clubs of wood and thongs of leather : his blood flowed in abundance beneath the strokes, — yet never did he cease to cry out, *God is one, — God is the only God!' " It happened one day, while the poor Abys- sinian was being thus tormented, that a small, lithe, slightly built man, with handsome aqui- line features and a singularly high forehead, suddenly appeared among the spectators of THE FIRST MUEZZIN 79 Bilal's fortitude and suffering. This slender little man was the merchant Abdallah, son of Othman Abu Cahafa, — but better known to students of Moslem history as Abu Bekr, fa- mous as the bosom friend of the Prophet, his comrade in the Fight, and his companion in that famous cavern over whose entrance fond tradition avers that spiders wove a miraculous veil of webs to hide the fugitives, — Abu Bekr, also called Al Siddich, "the True," "father of the virgin," — father of Mahomet's future wife Ayesha, and destined to succeed him in the Khalifate. Already he had expended the greater part of a fortune of forty thousand dir- hems in purchasing the freedom of slaves per- secuted because of their conversion to Islam. These were mostly women or weaklings. "O my son!" Abu Cahafa was wont to say to him, — "I see that thou freest weak women; but if thou wert to free strong men, they would stand by thee, and repel harm from thee." "Nay, father!" would Abu Bekr reply; — "I desire only those things which are of God!" And the Traditionists record that by reason of this 80 KARMA pious squandering of his wealth, Al Siddick at last found himself reduced to wear a coarse garment of goat's hair, "pinned together at his breast with a wooden skewer." Abu Bekr did not long remain a silent wit- ness of Bilal's resolution: he negotiated upon the spot for the purchase of the slave, and suc- ceeded in obtaining him from his owners — "Umayyah-b-Khalaf and Ubayy-b-Khalaf" — for a cloak and ten pieces of money. Little did any of the spectators of that bargaining imag- ine the day would ever come when Umayyah and his son might vainly beg mercy from the slave to whom they had shown no mercy. Ten years later, after the furious battle of Bedr, it was Bilal's turn; his keen eye singled out his former owners from among the multitude of Koreishite prisoners ; and it was his grim satis- faction to have them slain before his face, — for the faith of Islam did not enjoin the re- turning of good for evil. Now Bilal was the first really valuable slave redeemed by Abu Bekr, who immediately after the purchase had set him free, "for the love of I THE FIRST MUEZZIN 81 God." Bilal was a powerful man; the feeble- ness spoken of by the Persian poet must only be understood as referring to the weakness of human nature by contrast with spiritual strength. Calumniators were not slow to de- clare that the Abyssinian had been bought free for purely selfish motives ; a report apt to find credence in a community where the devout merchant had long been known as a shrewd speculator and a hard bargainer. Mahomet wrathfuUy rebuked this malicious gossip; and it is traditional that his reproof is embodied in the Ninetieth-and-second Sura of the Koran, entitled the night, — comprising that part of its text from the opening line, ^'By the Night when it covereth/^ to the close of the words, ''Verily, your endeavor is different!" • • • Thus it happened that Bilal obtained his manumission, to become the devoted servant of Mahomet, and to perform a great part in the expanding history of Islam. There is a legend that, after the Flight of the Prophet, he and others of the faithful temporarily re- 82 KARMA maining in Mecca, were again persecuted by the Koreish; but this account is totally dis- credited by the best modern authorities upon the history of Mohammedanism. We next hear of Bilal at Medina, in the character of The First Muezzin. II During the infancy of Mohammedanism, when the faithful ones dwelt in the immediate vicinity of their prophet's home, the Adzdn was unknown : — the simpler cry : To public prayer! being easily heard by all. It was not until after the building of the first mosque at Me- dina, and after Mahomet had changed the KiblUj, — or the direction toward which the wor- shipers turned their faces — from Jerusalem to Mecca and its Kaaba, that the Adzan was established. But Jerusalem retains a large place in the JNIoslem legend and remains dear to Moslem faith; — for hath it not been re- corded in the Traditions that among the i;,^reater signs of the Last Hour, shall be the oming of "Jesus the son of INIary" to Jeru- THE FIRST MUEZZIN 83 salem even at the moment of morning prayer, when the Mosque of Omar will be lighted by the shining of His face, and He shall take the place of the awe-stricken Imam, and shall con- found all those that call themselves Christians by uttering in mighty tones the great confes- sion of Islam: — Aschaduan na Mohammed rasoul Allah! The idea of the Adzan was obtained in a most singular way. After the building of that Mosque of Mahomet, which, despite the hum- bleness of its material, really formed the model for Saracenic architecture, it soon became evi- dent that the old manner of summoning the congregation to worship was unsuited to the new conditions, and utterly devoid of that so- lemnity which ought to characterize all public performance of religious duty. At first the Prophet bethought him to have a trumpet made; but having removed the Kibla from Jerusalem he could ill persuade himself to adopt an instrument used by the Jews in cer- tain ceremonial observances. Then he thought uf having a bell rung at certain regular hours ; 84 KARMA but there was no one in Medina capable of making such a bell as he desired, and he had almost fixed his choice upon a wooden gong, when it came to pass that a certain citizen of Medina dreamed a strange dream. It seemed to him that he beheld, passing through the moonlit street before his dwelling, a stranger uncommonly tall, clad in green rai- ment, and carrying in his hand a large and beautiful bell. And it seemed to the sleeper also, that, having approached the tall stranger, he asked: "Wilt thou sell me thy bell?" — and that the tall man smilingly returned: "Tell me for what purpose thou seekest to buy it." "Verily," answered the dreamer in his dream, — "it is for our Lord Mahomet that I wish to obtain it, that he may therewith summon the faithful to prayer." "Nay!" said the stranger, seeming to grow taller as he spake, — "I will teach thee a better way than that! Let a crier cry aloud, even thus. . . ." And in a voice so deep, so won- derful, — so superhumanly sonorous, so super- naturally sweet that a great and holy fear THE FIRST MUEZZIN 85 came upon the listener, he chanted the Adzdn of Islam, — even as it is chanted to-day, from the western coast of Africa to the eastern boun- dary of Hindostan: — ''God is Great! ''God is Great! "I bear witness there is no other God but God! "I bear witness that Mahomet is the Prophet of God! "Come unto Prayer! "Come unto Salvation! "God is Great! "There is no other God but God!" . . . Awakening with the vibrant melody of that marvelous voice still in his ears, the good Moslem hastened to the Prophet with the story of his dream. Mahomet received him as one bearing a revelation from heaven; and, re- membering the uncommon vocal powers of his devoted Bilal, bade the Abyssinian to sound the Call to Prayer, even as the words thereof had been revealed to the dreamer. It was yet 86 KARMA deep night: ere dawn the First Muezzin had learned the duties of his new office, and at the earhest blush of day, the slumberers of Medina were aroused by the far-echoing and magnifi- cent voice of the Abyssinian, chanting the Adzan from the summit of a lofty dwelling hard by the Mosque. . . . Does not the open- ing chapter in the history of the graceful Min- aret — that architectural feature to which, above all others, the picturesqueness of Moslem cities is most largely due, — rightly begin with Bilal's ascent to the starlit housetop in Medina, twelve hundred years ago ? And during all those centuries Islam has known no day in which the cry of the Muezzin has not gone up to God. Still the chanting of the Adzan times the passing of the hours for the populations of innumerable cities ;* and it is among the Traditions that it shall also signal the approach of the last hour, the end of * It is rarely indeed that such an irregularity occurs as might have been suggested in the beautiful lines of Sadi: "The Muezzin has lifted up his voice before the time: he knoweth not how much of the night is passed ! . . . Ask thou of mine eyes how long the night, — for sleep hath not visited mine eye-lids even for one brief moment." — ^ 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive -^w*" •^^NJ&^^o ^u>^c,^- c-^^ '^^m^^\ ^^>^^ ^r^^^X* ^^^"^ - 'oK