Book 2 — XXIII THE SILVER SKY

Never, in all the days of Babylon, had there been an evening more fair than this. At sunset the burning day melted and flowed away, down the western sky, in a flood of liquid gold. A faint breath of air came over the river from across the distant Tigris, out of the cool hills of Elam, the conqueror's land. On the river-bank rose the palm-trees, casting their shadows into the softly slipping water; and the turf beneath them was all strewn with sunset gold. To the north lay Babylon, huge and black and silent, her dying thousands shut away behind the vastly towering walls. To the west and south stretched great irrigated fields of ripening grain, in the midst of which were many shadufs, with their patient buffaloes at the interminable work of drawing water from the clay wells. Still farther back were the crumbling brick huts of the tillers of the soil. On the edge of the river two long-legged cranes stood quietly meditating. Overhead a flock of pelicans wound their slow way southward towards the marshes where they dwelt. From the far distance was heard the loud cry of the bittern. Otherwise the land was silent—wrapped in evening prayer.

Along the river-bank, under the shadowy palms, with the golden light glowing about her, walked Istar, musing gently upon many things. Voices from the infinite addressed her. The iron was leaving her soul. Her mind was transfused with quietude. She ceased to notice or to feel the aching of her bruised body. She was holding communion with deeper things, and she moved with her head bent forward and her eyes upon the ground. Presently she paused at the brink of the river—the fair, well-flowing river, that held in its pure depths the body of the storm-eyed, her beloved. Its flashing waters encompassed her with glory. Her mortal eyes grew blind with light. Presently, out of the glowing depth, there came to her, as once before, a voice—but now a voice most familiar, most dear to her ears, most longed-for since its silence. Belshazzar spoke from the beyond, in the words that Allaraine had written on the temple wall, and that had appeared to her again from the river, on the night of death:

"Hast thou found man's relation to God? The silver sky waits for thy soul."

And now in the heart of the woman was no bitterness, no rebellion, only knowledge of the truth. And, answering the question of the Lord, spoken in the voice of her dead, she whispered, softly:

"Man and man, as man and God, are bound by those ties of eternal love that made the covenant of Creation. Consciously or unconsciously, all living things must live with this as their law, for they are God's children, God's brothers, God Himself sent forth to wander for a while in time, but in the end returning to their eternal source, which is God.

"All the sin, all the sorrow of the world, I have known, have suffered. Yet no loss nor grief can take away the great joy of love, its purity, its perfection.

"I acknowledge the wisdom of the All-Father displayed in His creation. Let Him do with me as He will."

As she ceased to speak a blinding, silver stillness wrapped her about and held her immovable. From its depths in the far-off heavens there came to her ears sounds such as she had known in the long-ago: the song of the infinite, the infinite, unceasing chorus, the wind-choir that sings the Creator's hymn.

Still she could see the green fields and the water, and the ferny palms above her head. Still she beheld the broad river running full of pink and molten gold. Still the breath of the evening wind came to her lips. The world was all about her; but she was no longer of it all.

High over her head, in the unclouded sky, a vast web of shimmering silver was spreading out and out, like a broad, firmly woven veil. It scintillated with dazzling light into Istar's upraised and half-blind eyes, yet it struck them with no pain. It was the silver sky of Babylonish dreams opening above her, while the celestial voices sang ever more softly, but ever more beautifully, the pure, swaying harmonies of the great hymn of freedom. God's presence lived in the beauty of the earthly evening scarcely less than in the splendor of that heavenly one. In the midst of the scene of supernatural wonder, Istar sank to her knees, and there remained transfixed before the miracle that came to be enacted before her.

From out of the silver-spun cloud two figures, at first merely dense, opaque bodies of mist, began to descend from the heights, growing gradually more and more distinct in form as they came, leaving behind them a silver trail that moved and swayed, fine and threadlike, in the air, above them. As they approached her, Istar, in her ecstasy, quickly recognized them both; the one, his floating locks of deepest auburn star-crowned, his trailing garments of changing blue, carrying in his hand the sunset lyre, was Allaraine, the archetype of song. The second was more spiritual still, a storm-eyed being with thick, black locks uncrowned, clothed in misty white, girdled in silver, bearing in his hand a palm-branch of the same shimmering white metal, his face, hands, and feet showing transparently pure, while in his back, upon the left side, was a mark of brilliant light, glowing with ruby fire, and resembling a hallowed wound—the releasing dagger-stroke that had freed Belshazzar from Babylon—Belshazzar, beloved of the woman to whom he came again.

Slowly, slowly, to that infinite, sweet chorus, these two descended till their celestial feet touched earth, and Istar, with joyful greeting, rose up and went to meet them. As she held forth both maimed, mortal hands, the eyes of Allaraine glowed with sorrow, but Belshazzar's face was alight with the fulness of great joy.

"We come to thee, O woman honored of God; and thou shalt choose between us.

"I, Allaraine, thy brother, would lead thee back among thy fellows in thy great purification to the perfection of rest, of insensibility to all creation except God and His word."

"Istar, beloved, through suffering a soul, an immortal soul, hath been born in thee; and thou mayst come forth now to rest a little on the long pilgrimage that will lead thee finally back into the God whence all souls are sprung."

"Choose, Istar. Choose."

Istar turned her eyes to Allaraine and looked upon him long and earnestly, and her face grew radiant. Then, most slowly, she moved her gaze till it met with that of the great storm-orbs of Belshazzar. And in that look the worn-out body dropped from off her soul, which, clothed in garments of translucent light, began its ascent between the two messengers that had come for her. They passed, all three, above the shadowy turf, above the line of waving palms, above the glowing river which ran its threadlike course from distant Karchemish into the sunset gulf; above, finally, the towering black walls of the Great City, and so into the clouds of the silver sky, to which no mortal eye may follow them.

Through this last hour and the period of her transfiguration, Charmides, still standing at the edge of the grove of palms, had watched the figure of Istar upon the river-bank. Rejoicing in the great beauty of the evening, he waited peacefully, believing her wrapped in prayer. Nothing saw he of the celestial world that had opened to her, nothing knew of the heavenly messengers that had come. But when her body fell back upon the earth, he, thinking that she had fainted from exhaustion, ran quickly to the spot where his eyes had last beheld her. When he came to the place there was nothing there—no trace of the plague-marked form of her that had dwelt in the temple of Istar in the Great City. Long he searched there alone in the evening, till, out of the far, blue space a voice, the voice of the woman he had so worshipped, spoke to him:

"Thou faithful and true, seek for me no more; for that of me which was not is not now. But my spirit shalt thou know to be watching near thee always. Behold, I am returned unto our Father."

So, knowing all things dumbly in his heart, the young Greek obeyed her voice, and, turning slowly away, went forth from the grove of palms, and returned that night alone to his young wife in Babylon.

THE END

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