"Courage!" said the voice of Ayesha. "Trembling soul, yield not an
inch to the demon!"
At the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of the Veiled
Woman's voice, my will seemed to take a force more sublime than its
own. I folded my arms on my breast, and stood as if rooted to the
spot, confronting the column of smoke and the stride of the giant
Foot. And the Foot halted, mute.
Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard a voice--it
was Margrave's.
"The last hour expires--the work is accomplished! Come! come! Aid
me to take the caldron from the fire; and, quick!--or a drop may be
wasted in vapor--the Elixir of Life from the caldron!"
At that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced.
And at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from behind, I was stricken
down. Over me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampling hoofs and
glancing horns. The herds, in their flight from the burning
pastures, had rushed over the bed of the water course, scaled the
slopes of the banks. Snorting and bellowing, they plunged their
blind way to the mountains. One cry alone, more wild than their
own savage blare, pierced the reek through which the Brute
Hurricane swept. At that cry of wrath and despair I struggled to
rise, again dashed to earth by the hoofs and the horns. But was it
the dreamlike deceit of my reeling senses, or did I see that giant
Foot stride past through the close-serried ranks of the maddening
herds? Did I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar of animal
terror, the roll of low thunder which followed the stride of that
Foot?
X
When my sense had recovered its shock, and my eyes looked dizzily
round, the charge of the beasts had swept by; and of all the wild
tribes which had invaded the magical circle, the only lingerer was
the brown Death-adder, coiled close by the spot where my head had
rested. Beside the extinguished lamps which the hoofs had
confusedly scattered, the fire, arrested by the water course, had
consumed the grasses that fed it, and there the plains stretched
black and desert as the Phlegraean Field of the Poet's Hell. But
the fire still raged in the forest beyond--white flames, soaring up
from the trunks of the tallest trees, and forming, through the
sullen dark of the smoke reck, innumerable pillars of fire, like
the halls in the city of fiends.
Gathering myself up, I turned my eyes from the terrible pomp of the
lurid forest, and looked fearfully down on the hoof-trampled sward
for my two companions.
I saw the dark image of Ayesha still seated, still bending, as I
had seen it last. I saw a pale hand feebly grasping the rim of the
magical caldron, which lay, hurled down from its tripod by the rush
of the beasts, yards away from the dim, fading embers of the
scattered wood pyre. I saw the faint writhings of a frail, wasted
frame, over which the Veiled Woman was bending. I saw, as I moved
with bruised limbs to the place, close by the lips of the dying
magician, the flash of the rubylike essence spilled on the sward,
and, meteor-like, sparkling up from the torn tufts of herbage.
I now reached Margrave's side. Bending over him as the Veiled
Woman bent, and as I sought gently to raise him, he turned his
face, fiercely faltering out, "Touch me not, rob me not! YOU share
with me! Never, never! These glorious drops are all mine! Die
all else! I will live, I will live!" Writhing himself from my
pitying arms, he plunged his face amidst the beautiful, playful
flame of the essence, as if to lap the elixir with lips scorched
away from its intolerable burning. Suddenly, with a low shriek, he
fell back, his face upturned to mine, and on that face unmistakably
reigned Death.
Then Ayesha tenderly, silently, drew the young head to her lap, and
it vanished from my sight behind her black veil.
I knelt beside her, murmuring some trite words of comfort; but she
heeded me not, rocking herself to and fro as the mother who cradles
a child to sleep. Soon the fast-flickering sparkles of the lost
elixir died out on the grass; and with their last sportive diamond-
like tremble of light, up, in all the suddenness of Australian day,
rose the sun, lifting himself royally above the mountain tops, and
fronting the meaner blaze of the forest as a young king fronts his
rebels. And as there, where the bush fires had ravaged, all was a
desert, so there, where their fury had not spread, all was a
garden. Afar, at the foot of the mountains, the fugitive herds
were grazing; the cranes, flocking back to the pools, renewed the
strange grace of their gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose
laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome
the morn--which in Europe is night--alighted bold on the roof of
the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races,
extinct before--so helpless through instincts, so royal through
Soul--rose MAN!
But there, on the ground where the dazzling elixir had wasted its
virtues--there the herbage already had a freshness of verdure
which, amid the duller sward round it, was like an oasis of green
in a desert. And, there, wild flowers, whose chill hues the eye
would have scarcely distinguished the day before, now glittered
forth in blooms of unfamiliar beauty. Toward that spot were
attracted myriads of happy insects, whose hum of intense joy was
musically loud. But the form of the life-seeking sorcerer lay
rigid and stark; blind to the bloom of the wild flowers, deaf to
the glee of the insects--one hand still resting heavily on the rim
of the emptied caldron, and the face still hid behind the Black
Veil. What! the wondrous elixir, sought with such hope and well-
nigh achieved through such dread, fleeting back to the earth from
which its material was drawn to give bloom, indeed--but to herbs;
joy indeed--but to insects!
And now, in the flash of the sun, slowly wound up the slopes that
led to the circle, the same barbaric procession which had sunk into
the valley under the ray of the moon. The armed men came first,
stalwart and tall, their vests brave with crimson and golden lace,
their weapons gayly gleaming with holiday silver. After them, the
Black Litter. As they came to the place, Ayesha, not raising her
head, spoke to them in her own Eastern tongue. A wail was her
answer. The armed men bounded forward, and the bearers left the
litter.
All gathered round the dead form with the face concealed under the
Black Veil; all knelt, and all wept. Far in the distance, at the
foot of the blue mountains, a crowd of the savage natives had risen
up as if from the earth; they stood motionless leaning on their
clubs and spears, and looking toward the spot on which we were--
strangely thus brought into the landscape, as if they too, the wild
dwellers on the verge which Humanity guards from the Brute, were
among the mourners for the mysterious Child of mysterious Nature!
And still, in the herbage, hummed the small insects, and still,
from the cavern, laughed the great kingfisher. I said to Ayesha,
"Farewell! your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the living.
You are now with your own people, they may console you--say if I
can assist."
"There is no consolation for me! What mourner can be consoled if
the dead die forever? Nothing for him is left but a grave; that
grave shall be in the land where the song of Ayesha first lulled
him to sleep. Thou assist ME--thou, the wise man of Europe! From
me ask assistance. What road wilt thou take to thy home?"
"There is but one road known to me through the maze of the
solitude--that which we took to this upland."
"On that road Death lurks, and awaits thee! Blind dupe, couldst
thou think that if the grand secret of life had been won, he whose
head rests on my lap would have yielded thee one petty drop of the
essence which had filched from his store of life but a moment? Me,
who so loved and so cherished him--me he would have doomed to the
pitiless cord of my servant, the Strangler, if my death could have
lengthened a hairbreadth the span of his being. But what matters
to me his crime or his madness? I loved him, I loved him!"
She bowed her veiled head lower and lower; perhaps under the veil
her lips kissed the lips of the dead. Then she said whisperingly:
"Juma the Strangler, whose word never failed to his master, whose
prey never slipped from his snare, waits thy step on the road to
thy home! But thy death cannot now profit the dead, the beloved.
And thou hast had pity for him who took but thine aid to design thy
destruction. His life is lost, thine is saved!"
She spoke no more in the tongue that I could interpret. She spoke,
in the language unknown, a few murmured words to her swarthy
attendants; then the armed men, still weeping, rose, and made a
dumb sign to me to go with them. I understood by the sign that
Ayesha had told them to guard me on my way; but she gave no reply
to my parting thanks.