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His manner had warmed with his words, and he lifted his head with
an involuntary gesture of eloquent resolve, his eyes flashing
splendid scorn for all things hypocritical and mean. Villiers
looked at him, feeling curiously moved and impressed by his
fervent earnestness.

"Well, I was right in one thing, at any rate, Alwyn"--he said
softly.. "you ARE changed,--there's not a doubt about it! But it
seems to me the change is distinctly for the better. It does my
heart good to hear you speak with such distinct and manly emphasis
on a subject, which, though it is one of the burning questions of
the day, is too often treated irreverently, or altogether
dismissed with a few sentences of languid banter or cheap sarcasm.

"As regards myself personally, I must say that a man without faith
in anything but himself, has always seemed to me exactly in
keeping with the description given of an atheist by Lady Ashburton
to Carlyle,--namely 'a person who robs himself, not only of
clothes, but of flesh as well, and walks about the world in his
bones.' And, oddly enough in spite of all the controversies going
on about Christianity, I have always really worshipped Christ in
my heart of hearts, . . and yet.. I CAN'T go to church! I seem to
lose the idea of Him altogether there: . . but".. and his frank
face took upon itself a dreamy light of deep feeling--"there are
times when, walking alone in the fields, or through a very quiet
grove of trees, or on the sea-shore, I begin to think of His
majestic life and death, and the immense, unfailing sympathy He
showed for every sort of human suffering, and then I can really
believe in him as Divine friend, comrade, Teacher, and King, and I
am scarcely able to decide which is the deepest emotion in my mind
toward Him--love, or reverence."

He paused,--Alwyn's eyes rested upon him with a quick,
comprehensive friendliness,--in one exchange of looks the two men
became mutually aware of the strong undercurrents of thought that
lay beneath each other's individual surface history, and that
perhaps had never been so clearly recognized before,--and a kind
of swift, speechless, satisfactory agreement between their two
separate natures seemed suddenly drawn up, ratified, and sealed in
a glance.

"I have often thought," continued Villiers more lightly, and
smiling as he spoke--"that we are all angels or devils,--angels in
our best moments, devils in our worst. If we could only keep the
best moments always uppermost! 'Ah, poor deluded human nature!' as
old Moxall says,--while in the same breath he contradicts himself
by asserting that human Reason is the only infallible means of
ascertaining anything! How it can be 'deluded' and 'infallible' at
the same time, I can't quite understand! But, Alwyn, you haven't
told me how you like the 'get-up' of your book?"

And he handed the volume in question to its author, who turned it
over with the most curious air of careless recognition--in his
fancy he again saw Zabastes writing each line of it down to Sah-
luma's dictation!

"It's very well printed"--he said at last,--"and very tastefully
bound. You have superintended the work con amore, Villiers, . . and
I am as obliged to you as friendship will let me be. You know what
that means?"

"It means no obligation at all"--declared Villiers gayly..
"because friends who are the least worthy the name take delight in
furthering each other's interests and have no need to be thanked
for doing what is particularly agreeable to them. You really like
the appearance of it, then? But you've got the sixth edition. This
is the first."

And he took up from a side-table a quaint small quarto, bound is a
very superb imitation of old embossed leather, which Alwyn,
beholding, was at once struck by the resemblance it bore to the
elaborate designs that had adorned the covers of the papyrus
volumes possessed by his Shadow-Self, Sahluma!

"This is very sumptuous!" he said with a dreamy smile--"It looks
quite antique!"

"Doesn't it!" exclaimed Villiers, delighted--"I had it copied from
a first edition of Petrarca which happens to be in my collection.
This specimen of 'Nourhalma' has become valuable and unique. It
was published at ten-and-six, and can't be got anywhere under five
or six guineas, if for that. Of course a copy of each edition has
been set aside for YOU."

Alwyn laid down the book with a gentle indifference.

"My dear fellow, I've had enough of 'Nourhalma,'" ... he said ...
"I'll keep a copy of the first edition, if only as a souvenir of
your good-will and energy in bringing it out so admirably--but for
the rest! ... the book belongs to me no more, but to the public,--
and so let the public do with it what they will!"

Villiers raised his eyebrows perplexedly.

"I believe, after all, Alwyn, you don't really care for your
fame!"

"Not in the least!" replied Alwyn, laughing. "Why should I?"

"You longed for it once as the utmost good!"

"True!--but there are other utmost goods, my friend, that I desire
more keenly."

"But are they attainable?"--queried Villiers. "Men, and specially
poets, often hanker after what is not possible to secure."

"Granted!" responded Alwyn cheerfully--"But I do not crave for the
impossible. I only seek to recover what I have lost."

"And that is?"

"What most men have lost, or are insanely doing their best to
lose"--said Alwyn meditatively.. "A grasp of things eternal,
through the veil of things temporal."

There was a short silence, during which Villiers eyed his friend
wistfully.

"What was that 'adventure' you spoke about in your letter from the
Monastery on the Pass of Dariel?" he asked after a while--"You
said you were on the search for a new sensation-did you experience
it?"

Alwyn smiled. "I certainly DID!"

"Did it arise from a contemplation of the site of the Ruins of
Babylon?"

"Not exactly. Babylon,--or rather the earth-mounds which are now
called Babylon,--had very little to do with it."

"Don't you want to tell me about it?" demanded Tilliers abruptly.

"Not just yet"--answered Alwyn, with good-humored frankness,--"Not
to-night, at any rate! But I WILL tell you, never fear! For the
present we've talked enough, . . don't you think bed suggests itself
as a fitting conclusion to our converse?"

Villiers laughed and acquiesced, and after pressing his friend to
partake of something in the way of supper, which refreshment was
declined, he preceded him to a small, pleasantly cosy room,--his
"guest-chamber" as he called it, but which was really almost
exclusively set apart for Alwyn's use alone, and was always in
readiness for him whenever he chose to occupy it. Turning on the
pretty electric lamp that lit the whole apartment with a soft and
shaded lustre, Villiers shook hands heartily with his old school-
fellow and favorite comrade, and bidding him a brief but cordial
good-night left him to repose.

As soon as he was alone Alwyn took out from his breast pocket a
small velvet letter-case, from which he gently drew forth a
slightly pressed but unfaded white flower. Setting this in a glass
of water he placed it near his bed, and watched it for a moment.
Delicately and gradually its pressed petals expanded, . . its golden
corolla brightened in hue, . . a subtle, sweet odor permeated the
air, . . and soon the angelic "immortelle" of the Field of Ardath
shone wondrously as a white star in the quiet room. And when the
lamp was extinguished and the poet slept, that strange, fair
blossom seemed to watch him like a soft, luminous eye in the
darkness,--a symbol of things divine and lasting,--a token of far
and brilliant worlds where even flowers cannot fade!

CHAPTER XXXIII.

REALISM.

At the end of about a week or so, it became very generally known
among the mystic "Upper Ten" of artistic and literary circles,
that Theos Alwyn, the famous author of "Nourhalma" was, to put it
fashionably, "in town." According to the classic phrasing of a
leading society journal, "Mr. Theos Alwyn, the poet, whom some of
our contemporaries erroneously reported as dead, has arrived in
London from his tour in the East. He is for the present a guest of
the Honorable Francis Villiers." The consequence of this and other
similar announcements was, that the postman seemed never to be
away from Villiers's door; and every time he came he was laden
with letters and cards of invitation, addressed, for the most
part, to Villiers himself, who, with something of dismay, saw his
study table getting gradually covered with accumulating piles of
society litter, such as is comprised in the various formal
notifications of dinners, dances, balls, soirees, "at homes," and
all the divers sorts of entertainment with which the English
"s'amusent moult tristement." Some of these invitations, less
ceremonious, were in form of pretty little notes from great
ladies, who entreated their "DEAR Mr. Villiers" to give them the
"EXTREME honor and pleasure" of his company at certain select and
extra brilliant receptions where Royalty itself would be
represented, adding, as an earnest postscript--"and DO bring the
LION, you know, your VERY interesting friend, Mr. Alwyn, with
you!"--A good many such billets-doux were addressed to Alwyn
personally, and as he opened and read them he was somewhat amused
to see how many who had formerly been mere bowing acquaintances
were now suddenly, almost magically, transformed into apparently
eager, admiring, and devoted friends.

"One would think these people really liked me for myself,"--he
said one morning, tossing aside a particularly gushing, pressing
note from a lady who was celebrated for the motley crowds she
managed to squeeze into her rooms, regardless of any one's comfort
or convenience,--"And yet, as the matter stands, they actually
know nothing of me. I might be a villain of the deepest dye, a
kickable cad, or a coarse ruffian, but so long as I have written a
'successful' book and am a 'somebody'--a literary 'notable'--what
matter my tastes, my morals, or my disposition! If this sort of
thing is Fame, all I can say is, that it savors of very detestable
vulgarity!"

"Of course it does!"--assented Villiers-"But what else do you
expect from modern society? ... What CAN you expect from a
community which is chiefly ruled by moneyed parvenus, BUT
vulgarity? If you go to this woman's place, for instance"--and he
glanced at the note Alwyn had thrown on the table,--"you will
share the honors of the evening with the famous man-milliner of
Bond Street, an 'artist' in gowns, the female upholsterer and
house decorator, likewise an 'artist,'--the ladies who 'compose'
sonnets in Regent Street, also 'artists,--' and chiefest among the
motley crowd, perhaps, the so-called new 'Apostle' of
aestheticism, a ponderous gentleman who says nothing and does
nothing, and who, by reason of his stupendous inertia and
taciturnity, is considered the greatest 'gun' of all! ... it's no
use YOUR going among such people,--in fact, no one who has any
reverence left in him for the TRUTH of Art CAN mix with those
whose profession of it is a mere trade and hypocritical sham. Such
dunderheads would see no artistic difference between Phidias and
the man of to-day who hews out and sets up a common marble mantel-
piece! I'm not a fellow to moan over the 'good old times,'--no,
not a bit of it, for those good old times had much in them that
was decidedly bad,--but I wish progress would not rob us
altogether of refinement."

"But society professes to be growing more and more cultured every
day," observed Alwyn.

"Oh, it PROFESSES! ... yes, that's just the mischief of it. Its
professions are not worth a groat. It PROFESSES to be one thing
while anybody with eyes can see that it actually is another! The
old style of aristocrat and gentleman is dying out,--the new style
is the horsey lord, the betting Duke, the coal-dealing Earl, the
stock-broking Viscount! Trade is a very excellent thing,--a very
necessary and important thing,--but its influence is distinctly
NOT refining. I have the greatest respect for my cheesemonger, for
instance (and he has an equal respect for me, since he has found
that I know the difference between real butter and butterine), but
all the same I don't want to see him in Parliament. I am arrogant
enough to believe that I, even I, having studied somewhat, know
more about the country's interest than he does. I view it by the
light of ancient and modern historical evidence,--he views it
according to the demand it makes on his cheese. We may both be
narrow and limited in judgment,--nevertheless, I think, with all
due modesty, that HIS judgment is likely to be more limited than
mine. But it's no good talking about it,--this dear old land is
given up to a sort of ignorant democracy, which only needs time to
become anarchy, . . and we haven't got a strong man among us who
dares speak out the truth of the inevitable disasters looming
above us all. And society is not only vulgar, but demoralized,--
moreover, what is worse is, that, aided by its preachers and
teachers, it is sinking into deeper depths of demoralization with
every passing month and year of time."

Alwyn leaned hack in his chair thoughtfully, a sorrowful
expression clouding his face.

"Surely things are not so bad as they seem, Villiers,"--he said
gently--"Are you not taking a pessimistic view of affairs?"

"Not at all!" and Villiers, warming with his subject, walked up
and down the room excitedly ... "Nor am I judging by the narrow
observation of any particular 'set' or circle. I look at the
expressive visible outcome of the whole,--the plainly manifest
signs of the threatening future. Of course there are ever so many
good people,--earnest people,--thinking people,--but they are a
mere handful compared to the overpowering millions opposed to
them, and whose motto is 'Evil, be thou my good.' Now you, for
instance, are full of splendid ideas, and lucid plans of check and
reform,--you are seized with a passionate desire to do something
great for the world, and you are ready to speak the truth
fearlessly on all occasions. But just think of the enormous task
it would be to stir to even half an inch of aspiring nobleness,
the frightful mass of corruption in London to-day! In all trades
and professions it is the same story,--everything is a question of
GAIN. To begin with, look at the Church, the 'Pillar of the
State!' There, all sorts of worthless, incompetent men are hastily
thrust into livings by wealthy patrons who care not a jot as to
whether they are morally or intellectually fit for their sacred
mission,--and a disgraceful universal muddle is the result. From
this muddle, which resembles a sort of stagnant pool, emerge the
strangest fungus-growths,--clergymen who take to acting a
'miracle-play,' ostensibly for the purposes of charity, but really
to gratify their own tastes and leanings toward the mummer's art,
--all the time utterly regardless of the effect their behavior is
likely to have on the minds of the unthinking populace, who are
led by the newspapers, and who read therein bantering inquiries as
to whether the Church is coquetting with the Stage? whether the
two are likely to become one? and whether Religion will in the
future occupy no more serious consideration than the Drama? What
is one to think, when one sees clerical notabilities seated in the
stalls of a theatre complacently looking on at the representation
of a 'society play' degrading in plot, repulsive in detail, and in
nearly every case having to do with a married woman who indulges
in a lover as a matter of course,--a play full of ambiguous side
hits and equivocal jests, which, if the men of the Church were
staunch to their vocation, they would be the first to condemn.
Why, I saw the other day, in a fairly reliable journal, that some
of these excellent 'divines' were going to start 'smoking
sermons'--a sort of imitation of smoking concerts, I suppose,
which are vile enough, in all conscience,--but to mix up religious
matters with the selfish 'smoke mania' is viler still. I say that
any clergyman who will allow men to smoke in his presence, while
he is preaching sacred doctrine, is a coarse cad, and ought to be
hounded out of the Church!"

He paused, his face flushing with vigorous, righteous wrath.
Alwyn's eyes grew dark with an infinite pain. His thoughts always
fled back to his Dream of Al-Kyris, with a tendency to draw
comparisons between the Past and the Present. The religion of that
long-buried city had been mere mummery and splendid outward show,
--what was the religion of London? He moved restlessly.

"How all the warnings of history repeat themselves!" he said
suddenly.. "An age of mockery, sham sentiment, and irreverence has
always preceded a downfall,--can it be possible that we are
already receiving hints of the downfall of England?"

"Aye, not only of England, but of a good many other nations
besides," said Villiers--"or if not actual downfall, change and
terrific upheaval. France and England particularly are the prey of
the Demon of Realism,--and all the writers who SHOULD use their
pens to inspire and elevate the people, assist in degrading them.
When their books are not obscene, they are blasphemous. Russia,
too, joins in the cry of Realism!--Realism! ... Let us have the
filth of the gutters, the scourgings of dustholes, the corruption
of graves, the odors of malaria, the howlings of drunkards, the
revellings of sensualists, . . the worst side of the world in its
vilest aspect, which is the only REAL aspect of those who are
voluntarily vile! Let us see to what a reeking depth of
unutterable shameless brutality man can fall if he chooses--not as
formerly, when it was shown to what glorious heights of noble
supremacy he could rise! For in this age, the heights are called
'transcendental folly'--and the reeking depths are called
Realism!"

"And yet what IS Realism really?" queried Alwyn.--"Does anybody
know? ... It is supposed to be the actuality of everyday
existence, without any touch of romance or pathos to soften its
frequently hideous Commonplace; but the fact is, the Commonplace
is not the Real. The highest flights of imagination in the human
being fail to grasp the Reality of the splendors everywhere
surrounding him,--and, viewed rightly, Realism would become
Romance and Romance Realism. We see a ragged woman in the streets
picking up scraps for her daily food, . . that is what we may call
realistic,--but we are not looking at the ACTUAL woman, after all!
We cannot see her Inner Self, or form any certain comprehension of
the possible romance or tragedy which that Inner Self HAS
experienced, or IS experiencing. We see the outer Appearance of
the woman, but what of that? ... The REALISM of the suffering
creature's hidden history lies beyond us,--so far beyond us that
it is called ROMANCE, because it seems so impossible to fathom or
understand."

"True, most absolutely true!" said Villiers emphatically--"But it
is a truth you will get very few to admit! ... Everything to-day
is in a state of substantiality and sham;--we have even sham
Realism, as well as sham sentiment, sham religion, sham art, sham
morality. We have a Parliament that sits and jabbers lengthy
platitudes that lead to nothing, while Army and Navy are slowly
slipping into a state of helpless desuetude, and the mutterings of
discontented millions are almost unregarded; the spectre of
Revolution, assuming somewhat of the shape in which it appalled
the French in 1789, is dimly approaching in the distance, . . even
our London County Council hears the far-off, faint shadow of a
very prosaic resemblance to the National Assembly of that era, . .
and our weak efforts to cure cureless grievances, and to deafen
our ears to crying evils, are very similar to the clumsy attempts
made by Louis XVI. and his partisans to botch up a terribly bad
business. Oh, the people, the people! ... They are unquestionably
the flesh, blood, bone, and sinew of the country,--and the English
people, say what sneerers will to the contrary, are a GOOD
people,--patient, plodding, forbearing, strong, and, on the whole,
most equable-tempered,--but their teachers teach them wrongly, and
confuse their brains instead of clearing them, and throw a weight
of Compulsory Education at their heads, without caring how they
may use it, or how such a blow from the clenched fist of Knowledge
may stupefy and bewilder them, . . and the consequence is that now,
were a strong man to arise, with a lucid brain, an eloquent power
of expressing truth, a great sympathy with his kind, and an
immense indifference to his own fate in the contest, he could lead
this vast, waiting, wandering, growling, hydra-headed London
wheresoever he would!"

"What an orator you are, Villiers!".. said Alwyn, with a half-
smile. "I never heard you come out so strongly before!"

"My dear fellow," replied Villiers, in a calmer tone--"it's enough
to make any man with warm blood in his veins FEEL! Everywhere
signs of weakness, cowardice, compromise, hesitation, vacillation,
incompetency, and everywhere, in thoughtful minds, the keen sense
of a Fate advancing like the giant in the seven-leagued boots, at
huge strides every day. The ponderous Law and the solid Police hem
us in on each side, as though the nation were a helpless infant,
toddling between two portly nurses,--we dare not denounce a
scoundrel and liar, but must needs put up with him, lest we should
be involved in an action for libel; and we dare not knock down a
vulgar bully, lest we should be given in charge for assault.
Hence, liars, and scoundrels, and vulgar bullies abound, and men
skulk and grin, and play the double-face, till they lose all
manfulness. Society sits smirking foolishly on the top of a
smouldering volcano,--and the chief Symbols of greatness among us,
Religion, Poesy, Art, are burning as feebly as tapers in the
catacombs, . . the Church resembles a drudge, who, tired of routine,
is gradually sinking into laziness and inertia, . . and the Press!
... ye gods! ... the Press!"

Here speech seemed to fail him,--he threw himself into a chair,
and, to relieve his mind, kicked away the advertisement sheet of
the morning's newspaper with so much angry vehemence that Alwyn
laughed outright.

"What ails you now, Villiers?" he demanded mirthfully.. "You are a
regular fire-eater--a would-be Crusader against a modern Saracen
host! Why are you choked with such seemingly unutterable wrath!
... what of the Press? ... it is at any rate free."

"Free!" cried Villiers, sitting bolt upright and shooting out the
word like a bullet from a gun,--"Free? ... the Press? It is the
veriest bound slave that was ever hampered by the chains of party
prejudice,--and the only attempt at freedom it ever makes in its
lower grades is an occasional outbreak into scurrility! And yet
think what a majestic power for good the true, REAL Liberty of the
Press might wield over the destinies of nations! Broadly viewed,
the Press should be the strong, practical, helping right hand of
civilization, dealing out equal justice, equal sympathy, equal
instruction,--it should be the fosterer of the arts and sciences,
--the everyday guide of the morals and culture of the people,--it
should not specially advocate any cause save Honor,--it should be
as far as possible the unanimous voice of the Nation. It SHOULD
be,--but what IS it? Look round and judge for yourself. Every
daily paper panders more or less to the lowest tastes of the mob,
--while if the higher sentiments of man are not actually sneered
at, they are made a subject for feeble surprise, or vapid 'gush.'
An act of heroic unselfishness meets with such a cackling chorus
of amazed, half-bantering approval from the leading-article
writers, that one is forced to accept the suggestion implied,--
namely that to BE heroic or unselfish is evidently an outbreak of
noble instinct that is entirely unexpected and remarkable,--nay,
even eccentric and inexplicable! The spirit of mockery pervades
everything,--and while the story of a murder is allowed to occupy
three and four columns of print, the account of some great
scientific discovery, or the report of some famous literary or
artistic achievement is squeezed into a few lukewarm and
unsatisfactory lines. I have seen a female paragraphist's idiotic
description of an actress's gown allowed to take more space in a
journal than the review of a first-class book! Moreover, if an
honest man, desirous of giving vent to an honest opinion on some
crying abuse of the day, were to set forth that opinion in letter
form and try to get it published in a leading and important
newspaper, the chances are ten to one that it would never he
inserted, unless he happened to know the editor, or one of the
staff, and perhaps not even then, because, mark you! his opinion
MUST be in accordance with the literary editor's opinion, or it
will be considered of no value to the world! Consider THAT
gigantic absurdity! ... consider, that when we read our newspapers
we are not learning the views of Europe on a certain point,--we
are absorbing the ideas of the EDITOR, to whom everything must be
submitted before insertion in the oracular columns we pin our
faith on! Thus it is that criticism,--literary criticism, at any
rate,--is a lost art,--YOU know that. A man must either be dead
(or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open
encouragement at all from the so-called 'crack' critics. And the
cliquey men are generally such stupendous bigots for their own
particular and restricted form of 'style.' Anything new they
hate,--anything daring they treat with ridicule. Some of them have
no hesitation in saying they prefer Matthew Arnold (remember he's
dead!) to Tennyson and Swinburne (as yet living).. while, as a
fact, if we are to go by the high standards of poetical art left
us by Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, Matthew Arnold is
about the very tamest, most unimaginative, bald bard that ever
kindled a lucifer match of verse and fancied it the fire of
Apollo! It's utterly impossible to get either a just or broad view
of literature out of cliques,--and the Press, like many of our
other 'magnificent' institutions, is working entirely on a wrong
system. But who is going to be wise, or strong, or diplomatic
enough to reform it? ... No one, at present,--and we shall jog
along, and read up the details of vice in our dailies and
weeklies, till we almost lose the savor of virtue, and till the
last degraded end comes of it all, and blatant young America
thrones herself on the shores of Britain and sends her eagle
screech of conquest echoing over Old World and New."