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ALEISTER CROWLEYThe Stoneof Cybelefrom Golden TwigsGolden Twigs are Aleister Crowley's largely unpublished short storiesbased upon Frazer's Golden Bough. This wonderful tale is the first ofthe series which will appear in future issues. Any resemblance toactual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.--H.B.ICROWNED WITH IVY upon a turreted fillet of gold that bound her wine-dark hair, the girl Cotys fixed her violet eyes upon the restless sea,that heaved with slow and oily prescience of storm. On the horizon allwas deep orange; above, the clouds were uniform in blue-blackdarkness, pregnant with water and with thunder.Cotys was tall and straight and slender, a young arrow from a rainbow;for there was in her something utterly remote from the life of theworld. Her robe was of fine silk, sap-green with purple reflections;and on it, in dull gold, were broidered lions. The colour meltedimperceptibly into her skin; for that too was like the ivy itself,flushing into amethyst, and paling into amber. In her eyes the lightof the whole night of heaven burned in majesty; there were pride, andsubtle joy, and the anguish of an infinite longing, wrought to asingle gem of inscrutable Will. But in that Will one read no hope, noteven desire.The autumnal day suited her nature; she loved to dream deciduousthings.She stood upon the edge of the tall cliff, her slim fingers loving thewind that poured between them. But her thoughts were far beyond thehorizon; they saw a field hospital on the veldt, and a man dying. Shehad come out from the great lonely house of Polpenning, that crownedthe black headland, to realize her loss. The words of her father'slast letter were sobbing in her brain. On the oak table of therefectory she had left the large official envelope, with the formalnotification of Colonel Flack's death, the letters of sympathy fromthe General and other of his fellow officers, her father's letter, anda key.``The surgeon tells me I have few hours to live,'' he had written.``Dennes has everything in order; you will have about ?3000 a year;?10000 cash to Claude, for Marcia's sake; the rest in trust forRegulus. You are 24; I have made you sole executrix. I know you worthyof all trust. You have been everything to me since your mother died.``I also give you charge of more than money. The key enclosed unlocksa safe hidden beneath the big table in my library in the Paris house.There is the heirloom of the world. You know we are of the Flacci;Horace himself was of our kin. One of us, C. Valerius, at the sack ofRome by Genseric, took the sacred stone of Cybele from the temple ofVictory on the Mons Palatinus. Never till now has our race failed ofan adult male heir. The stone goes to Regulus when he is 21. And nowfarewell; I am glad I died fighting.''The General's letter added to her pride; at the critical moment of theday, Colonel Flack had led his hussars in a mad charge againstintrenched positions. It had succeeded, broken the enemy's centre andtheir commander's nerve at the same moment; it had won the field. TheVictoria Cross had been pinned to that gallant breast before itbreathed its last.The storm broke heavily; Cotys was recalled to herself by heavy dropson her bare head; she turned and walked to the house. Here she changedher dress for black; as she came down into the hall she found herbetrothed, the Hon. and Rev. Joseph Randolph Fortescue, a stalwartclergyman of thirty years of age. He took her in his arms in silence;her dress told him that she knew already what he had come to break toher. He honoured her for her steel strength, the Roman spirit yetalive and vigorous. She did not even show him the General's letter;she handed him her father's only. When he gave it back, she simplysaid, ``I must go to Eton and see Regulus, to London and transact whatis necessary with Dennes, then to Paris to take charge there. I shallbe back in a month or six weeks.'' The clergyman began to talk oftheir wedding; the idea had been to wait for Colonel Flack's return,which had been expected, with the happy turn of the campaign, inanother six months' time. Fortescue reminded the girl that she wasyoung and an orphan; a husband seemed obviously expedient. She askedhim to defer the discussion until her return from Paris. Presently thevicar took his leave; he kissed her several times farewell, for shewas going to start very early in the morning, and Fortescue, who livedten miles away, had an early celebration. As he went, he wondered inhimself a little. She is marvellous, he thought, the beauty of Springitself, the dignity and distinction and reserve of the idealchat?laine of a great house; but--is she capable of passion? She hadaccepted him at once, yielded spontaneously to his first masterfulcaress; and yet--and yet--it seemed but a duty perfectly fulfilled. Hethought of Tennyson's line--``Icily perfect, faultily faultless,splendidly null''--and then he smiled; she was one of those women--thebest kind, that awaken only on marriage. They flower late, then oncefor all, a crimson bloom of glory, herald of the fairest fruit of whathe called ``God's orchard.''IICLAUDE DE CRILLON was making tea for Cotys in his studio, which stoodon the very brink of Montmartre. From the window one saw clear overParis, from N?tre Dame to the Trocad?ro. Marcia, Colonel Flack'ssister, had married for love into a noble French family of onlymoderate means. The result had been unfortunate; love soon cooled,even before the birth of Claude, and a quarrel had only been avertedby the death of the husband. It was said that at a somewhat wild partyhe had backed himself to swim the Seine on the first horse he couldpick up in a fiacre. Anyhow, he had been drowned. Marcia died whenClaude, now 28, was ten years old. The boy had been brought up byColonel Flack, sent to Winchester and Oxford, but they had never goton well together. Claude was not really deformed, but he gave thatimpression; his head was large, his face abominably ugly in a savagesurly fashion, his body squat, and his limbs too long and strong toharmonize with them. At school and college he had done only theminimum work necessary to pass examinations; he toiled incessantly atsculpture, and when his muscles wearied he read the classics. He couldread and speak Latin and Greek more easily than English, and refusedto take classics for his examination on the ground that the Universitywas totally ignorant of the subject. He played no games; he would notrow; and he avoided the other men. His only friend at Magdalen was ablind boy, named Hughes, son of a Cabinet minister, whose firstpleasure was the flute. De Crillon called him Marsyas, and bade himplay while he sculpted. On the lad's side his joy was great to run hisfingers over Claude's modellings; he made a master critic.Cotys had not been encouraged to see much of Claude; she rememberedhim only from one Commemoration Week, when she had certainly succumbedto his extraordinary power and fascination. He knew exactly what allthe other people did not know; and his ignorance of what they did knowwas almost equally enchanting.So it was with very pleasant anticipations that she went to see him onan errand that could not fail to please--the announcement of a veryunexpected legacy of ?10000 to eke out the two or three hundreds ayear that his parents had left him.Claude was sitting on a divan covered with grey fur, his legs crossedunder him; Cotys sat opposite in an enormous arm chair of grey velvet.Everything in the studio was grey; the floor, the walls, the hangings,the very plaster casts had been toned down to harmony.Only at the end of the room was a great gate of bronze, Claude's ownwork, a dark trellis covered with green vines that bore bunches ofgrapes in purple patina. Cotys, knowing his taste for classics,recounted her investigations in her father's library.The stone of Cybele, she said, was jet black, rather like a sugar-loafin shape, set in a plain stand of gold with the words AVE MATER DEORUMdeeply chased. ``Cotys,'' said Claude, ``I want you to give me yourmost serious attention. You are now the representative of the eldestbranch of the Flacci--I should have the stone if Regulus dies or failsof heirs, which he won't, so never mind that--but on you at thismoment hangs the responsibility of the family honour. I know that thatis more to you than anything on earth.'' Cotys nodded gravely.``Now,'' continued Claude, more seriously still, ``I believe thechance is come for you to do something which has not been thought offor fifteen centuries--to achieve the end for which our race has beenpreserved in honour for so long,'' The girl was surprised, but deeplyimpressed; Claude's eyes sank into hers, and conquered them.``I will tell you something about that stone,'' said he ``which youknow, but which you do not know you know. Come over here!''He led her to a bust of grey marble, put her hand upon the head. Shestared, uncomprehending. ``Nothing happens?'' ``Nothing.'' ``Well,this is what happened yesterday. You told me that you took the stonein your hands, and carried it to the light to read the inscription.''``Yes.'' ``Well, you never told me that you put down the stone becauseit became hot.'' She flushed violently. ``I'd absolutely forgotten;but it's true. How--oh how did you know?'' ``I know more than that.For an instant you went giddy; perhaps you even heard or sawsomething.'' ``I had a stupid fancy.'' ``Its a long shot; but perhapsyou saw a valley dark with tr... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]