We know, however, that the Priestess of Bahaism and the beardless, long-haired Dervish have many a conversation together: in the train, in the Hotel, in the parks and groves of Damascus, they tap their hearts and minds, and drink of each other’s wine of thought and fancy.
“I first mistook you for a Mohammedan,” she said to him once; and he assured her that she was not mistaken.
“Then, you are not a Christian?”
“I am a Christian, too.”
And he relates of the Baha when he was on trial in Rhodes. “Of what religion are you,” asks the Judge. “I am neither a Camel-driver nor a Carpenter,” replies the Baha, alluding thereby to Mohammad and Christ. “If you ask me the same question,” Khalid continues—“but I see you are uncomfortable.” And he takes up the cushion which had fallen behind the divan, and places it under her arm. He then lights a cigarette and holds it up to her inquiringly. Yes? He, therefore, lights another for himself, and continues. “If you ask me the same question that was asked the Baha, I would not hesitate in saying that I am both a Camel-driver and Carpenter. I might also be a Bahaist in a certain sense. I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes; and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it. Indeed, every religion is good and true, if it serves the high purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times. The Bedouins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the noblest and most generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, though he be an enemy, and he eats and drinks and sleeps with them under the same root, in the assurance of Allah. If a religion makes a savage so good, so kind, it has well served its purpose. As for me, I admire the grand passion in both the Camel-driver and the Carpenter: the barbaric grandeur, the magnanimity and fidelity of the Arab as well as the sublime spirituality, the divine beauty, of the Nazarene, I deeply reverence. And in one sense, the one is the complement of the other: the two combined are my ideal of a Divinity.”
And now we descend from the chariot of the empyrean where we are riding with gods and apostles, and enter into one drawn by mortal coursers. We go out for a drive, and alight from the carriage in the poplar grove, to meander in its shades, along its streams. But digressing from one path into another, we enter unaware the eternal vista of love. There, on a boulder washed by the murmuring current, in the shade of the silver-tufted poplars, Khalid and Mrs. Gotfry sit down for a rest.
“Everything in life must always resolve itself into love,” said Khalid, as he stood on the rock holding out his hand to his friend. “Love is the divine solvent. Love is the splendour of God.”
Mrs. Gotfry paused at the last words. She was startled by this image. Love, the splendour of God? Why, the Bab, the Baha, is the splendour of God. Baha mean splendour. The Baha, therefore, is love. Love is the new religion. It is the old religion, the eternal religion, the only religion. How came he by this, this young Syrian? Would he rival the Baha? Rise above him? They are of kindred races—their ancestors, too, may be mine. Love the splendour of God—God the splendour of Love. Have I been all along fooling myself? Did I not know my own heart?
These, and more such, passed through Mrs. Gotfry’s mind, as shuttles through a loom, while Khalid was helping her up to her seat on the boulder, which is washed by the murmuring current.
“If life were such a rock under our feet,” said he, pressing his lips upon her hand, “the divine currents around it will melt it, soon or late, into love.”
They light cigarettes. A fresh breeze is blowing from the city. It is following them with the perfume of its gardens. The falling leaves are whispering in the grove to the swaying boughs. The narcissus is nodding to the myrtle across the way. And the bulbuls are pouring their golden splendour of song. Khalid speaks.
“Beauty either detains, repels, or enchants. The first is purely external, linear; the second is an imitation of the first, its artistic artificial ideal, so to speak; and the third”—He is silent. His eyes, gazing into hers, take up the cue.
Mrs. Gotfry turns from him exhausted. She looks into the water.
“See the rose-beds in the stream; see the lovely pebbles dancing around them.”
“I can see everything in your eyes, which are like limpid lakes shaded with weeping-willows. I can even hear bulbuls singing in your brows.—Turn not from me your eyes. They reflect the pearls of your soul and the flowers of your body, even as those crystal waters reflect the pebbles and rose-beds beneath.”
“Did you not say that love is the splendour of God?”
“Yes.”
“Then, why look for it in my eyes?”
“And why look for it in the heart of the heavens, in the depths of the sea—in the infinities of everything that is beautiful and terrible—in the breath of that little flower, in the song of the bulbul, in the whispers of your silken lashes, in—”
“Shut your eyes, Khalid; be more spiritual.”
“With my eyes open I see but one face; with my eyes closed I see a million faces: they are all yours. And they are loving, and sweet, and
