THE DECADENT
II.
HIS," said Eveleth, languidly, turning his head in the valley of silken pillows until he could see the long figure of Aurelian drooping in the Mexican hammock across the big room through the dim strata of blue smoke that, in the silence, lay almost motionless, swirled now and then into subtle curlings and windings as some drowsy smoker breathed more white vapour into the slowly moving and rising tide,—"This is the[Pg 10] peace of the land of Proserpina, the faultless content of perfect possession. Philistinism is not without honour, for behold! it has conceived and brought forth—the Decadence."
said Aurelian, softly. "It is only a dream after all, even a dream of the land of endless afternoon. There is lotos mingled with the tobacco, but we wake easily."
A deeper voice came from a motionless figure prone on a tiger skin before the crumbling fire. "Opium and Burgundy are not faultless substitutes for the true lotos after all, but—they do very well—for the time."
Murmurs of inarticulate assent rose and faded in the opium-heavy air, and then the smoke grew still again. Now and then a bit of wood fell in the fireplace. Aurelian's narghileh gurgled and sighed in slow cadence. These things were only a modulation of the silence.
The room was vast and dim, seemingly without bounds, save on that side where the violet flames of a drift-wood fire flickered quiveringly, making a centre, a concentration of dull light; for the rest, a mysterious wilderness of rugs and divans, Indian chairs and hammocks, where silent figures lay darkly, each a primal cause of one of the many thin streams of smoke that curled heavily upward;—smoke from[Pg 11] strange and curious pipes from Lahore and Gualior; small sensitive pipes from Japan; here and there the short thick stems of opium-pipes, and by the motionless Mexican hammock a splendid and wonderful hookah with writhing stem. As the thin flames of the dying fire flashed into some sudden brightness, they revealed details unseen in the general gloom,—a vast and precious missal gorgeous with scarlet and gold and purple illumination, open, on a carved oak lectern, spoil of some Spanish monastery; the golden gloom of a Giovanni Bellini reft from its home in Venice, and as yet unransomed; the glint of twisted and gilded glass in an ebony cabinet; great folios and quartos in ancient bindings of vellum and ivory and old calf-skin, heavily tooled with gold, and with silver and jewelled medallions and clasps, stacked in heaps in careless indifference; the flash and sparkle of a cabinet of gems, the red splendour of old lacquer; the green mystery of wrought jade. And everywhere a heavy atmosphere that lay on the chest like a strange yet desirable dream; the warm, sick odour of tobacco and opium, striving with the perfume of sandal-wood, and of roses that drooped and fluttered in pieces in the hot air.
Around a brazier of green bronze, on the floor, before the fire, lay the three men who were gently breathing in the bland opium, their dark figures radiating from the queer brazier wrought of two ugly dragons chasing each other around a great globe of[Pg 12] Japanese chrystal, the firelight gleaming on the tall glasses of champagne where the little column of gold bubbles rose steadily. The fire fell together, and a leaping flame cast a fitful light on heavy tapestry curtains wrought with the story of the loves of Cupid and Psyche. Its two halves parted slowly, and a flush of red light fell through as, in the midst, appeared a dark figure with closed eyes, swaying softly as it leaned forward, and, while the curtains closed, fell with a long sweep gently toward the brazier,—not as men fall, but as a snake with its head lifted high might advance slidingly, and as it came, droop lower and lower until it rested prone on the uncrushed flowers. So Enderby, heavy with the suave sleep of haschish, came among the smokers and dropped motionless in the midst of the cushions. The movement set a tall glass quivering until it fell to one side, and the yellow wine sank slowly into the silky fur of a leopard skin.
Aurelian lifted his hand to a gold cord that hung over the hammock.
