The Silver Chalice Read Online Free PDF Page A

the result that it glowed in an unnatural splendor. Delighted with the success of his experiment, Basil had said to his mother, “No king in the world has a ring on his finger to equal this one.”
    But the gift did not arouse in Ignatius the pleasure and gratification the two donors had anticipated. He looked at it so long in silence that Basil raised his own eyes from the ring to see what the matter could be. He discovered then that the face of the merchant was drawn and gray and that his neck, which had been as round and firm as a column of stone, had a flaccid look to it.
    “Are you ill?” he asked with sudden anxiety.
    “Blind! Blind!” said the merchant bitterly, as though speaking to himself. “I have been stupid, my son. I have wanted you to give all your time to making beautiful things like this, thinking that in due course I would teach you what you will need to know when you take my place. But will there be time? Here I am, with a pain like a hot iron in my side and the fear of death on me. And what do you know of the care of the groves, of the sailing of ships, of the accounts? I have been deliberately blind! And now perhaps it is too late.”
    Two days afterward he was dead. The white marble house fell into silence. No sound rose from the slave quarters; no one moved in the halls. A cautious hand had turned off the water which ran in the pipes, and so even the light ripple of the fountains ceased to be heard. The porters locked all the doors and stood guard in the shadows within. When Basil went to view his father’s body, the scuffing of his felt heels echoed in the empty rooms as though a ghost were at large.
    He approached the bier with a sense of dread. With his last breath Ignatius had issued a command against embalming. He did not want his brains drawn out through his nostrils, he had said; he had foundthem good brains and he wanted them left where they belonged inside his skull because he might have need of them in the strange land to which he was bound. In accordance with his wish, his body had been washed and scented with spices from the Far East and then bound in waxed cerements with such care that each finger and toe was wrapped separately.
    Every care had been taken for the good of his soul. A tall candle had been lighted at the head of the bier and burned with a clear and steady flame. Salt had been sprinkled on the cerements in the hope of deceiving any evil spirits that might be lurking about, for salt was a concern solely of the living. A clenched fist was capable of fending off demons, and so the tightly wrapped fingers had been bent together.
    Basil had become devoted to his father with the passing of the years. The sight of the white features above the close windings of the neck brought tears of pity into his eyes; pity for himself, in reality, because he had lost so kind a parent and so good a friend. The great merchant had looked vital and coarse in life, but death was lending dignity to his blunt features. It was as though he had captured for himself a moment of the beauty his race had done so much to create in the world.
    Basil crept back through the ghostly stillness of the house to his own room, where he gave way to unrestrained grief. Persis found him there, having walked from her own extensive suite without any assistance. This was an unusual performance for her, the invalidism that she had so indolently practiced having finally become real. Basil, looking at her through eyes partly blinded with tears, noticed that she was very thin.
    “My son,” she said in a voice which contained a pleading note, “you are right to grieve for him. He was a good man, a kind husband and father. But, Basil, spare some of your compassion for me.”
    The youth raised his head and was surprised to find on her face an expression she had never worn before. He read there uncertainty and even fear. What surprised him was that the fear was of him.
    “My gentle mother!” he protested. “You must know