A DREAM.
Under the shade of a large tree-fern a man is lying asleep.
Around the wilderness spreads in rolling undulation, open here for the
most part, though dotted with clumps of bush and trees, which seem to
have become detached from the dark line of forest. This, on the one
hand, stretches away into endless blue; on the other a broad expanse of
water--apparently a fine river, actually a chain of lagoons--with
reed-fringed banks; and here and there a low spit, where red flamingoes
roost lazily on one leg. Beyond this again lies an unbroken line of
forest.
The man is arrayed in the simple costume of the wilderness--a calico
shirt, and moleskin trousers protected by leather leggings. A
broad-brimmed hat lies under his head, to which, indeed, it serves as
sole pillow. He is heavily armed. The right hand still grips an Express
rifle in mute suggestion of one accustomed to slumber in the midst of
peril. A revolver in a holster rests beside him, and in his leathern
belt is a strong sheath knife. Now and again he moves in his sleep, and
at such times his unarmed hand seems instinctively to seek out something
which is concealed from view, possibly something which is suspended
round his neck by that light but strong chain. Thus hour after hour
rolls over him, as he slumbers on in the burning equatorial heat.
The sleeper turns again uneasily, and as he does so his hand again seeks
the steel chain just visible through his open shirt, and, instinctively
working down it, closes over that which is secured thereto; then, as
though the effect is lulling, once more he is still again, slumbering
easily, peacefully.
The sun's rays, slanting now, dart in beneath the scanty shade of the
tree-fern, and as they burn upon the dark face, bronzed and hardened by
climate and toil, the sleeper's lips are moving, and a peculiarly soft
and wistful expression seems to rest upon the firm features. Then his
eyes open wide. For a moment he lies, staring up at the green fronds
which afford shade no longer, then starts up into a sitting posture. And
simultaneous with the movement here and there a faint circular ripple
widens on the slimy surface of the lagoon, as each of those dark specks,
representing the snout of a basking crocodile, vanishes.
Laurence Stanninghame's outward aspect has undergone some change since
last we beheld it, now more than two years ago. The expression of the
dark, firm face, burned and bronzed by an equatorial sun, heavily
bearded too, has become hard and ruthless, and there is a quick
alertness in the penetrating glance of the clear eyes which tells of an
ever-present familiarity with peril. Even the movement of sitting up, of
suddenly awakening from sleep, yet being wide awake in a moment,
contains unconsciously more than a suggestion of this.
A rapid, careful look on all sides. Nothing is stirring in the sultry,
penetrating heat; the palmetto thatch of clustering huts away beyond the
opposite bank might contain no life for all of it they show. Hardly a
bird twittering in the reeds but does so half heartedly. The man's face
softens again, taking on the expression it wore while he slept.
While he slept! Why could he not have slept on forever, he thought, his
whole being athrill with the memory revived by his dreams? For his
dreams had been sweet--wildly, entrancingly sweet. Seldom, indeed, were
such vouchsafed to him; but when they were their effect would last,
would last vividly. He would treasure up their recollection, would go
back upon it.
Now, slumbering there in the torrid heat, by the reed-fringed,
crocodile-haunted lagoon, his dreams had wafted him into a more than
Paradise. Eyes, starry with a radiant love-light, had laughed into his;
around his neck the twining of arms, and the soft, caressing touch of
soothing hands upon his life-weary head; the whisper of love-tones,
deep, burning, tremulous, into his ear. And from this he had awakened,
had awakened to the reality--to the weird and depressing surroundings of
human life in its most cruel and debased form; to the recollection of
scenes of recurring and hideous peril, of pitiless atrocity, which
seemed to render the burning, brassy glare even as the glare of hell;
and to the consciousness of similar scenes now immediately impending.
Yet the remembrance of that sleeping vision shut him in, surrounded him
as with a very halo, sweet, fragrant, enthralling, rolling around his
soul as a cloud of intoxicating ether.
Upon a temperament such as that of Laurence Stanninghame the life of the
past two years was bound to tell. The hot African glow, the adventurous
life, with peril continually for a fellow-traveller, a familiarity with
weird and shocking deeds, an utter indifference to human suffering and
human life, had strangely affected his inner self. Callous to the woes
of others, yet high strung to a degree, his nature at this time
presented a stage of complexity which was utterly baffling. That
mesmeric property to which Hazon had alluded more than once as one of
the effects of the interior was upon him too. It seemed as though he had
somehow passed into another world, so dulled was all recollection of his
former life, all desire to recall it. Yet one memory remained undimmed.
"Lilith, my soul!" he murmured, his eyes wandering over the brassy,
glaring expanse of water and dried-up reed-bed, as though to annihilate
space and distance. "Lilith, my life! It is time I looked once more upon
that dear face which rendered my dreams so sweet."
His hand, still clasping something within his breast, was drawn forth,
that which hung by the steel chain still inclosed within it. A small,
flat metal box it was, oblong in shape, and shutting so tightly that at
first glance it was hard to see where it opened at all. But open it did,
for now he is holding what it contains--holding it lovingly, almost
reverently, in the palm of his hand. It is a little case, green velvet
worked with flowers, and in the center, spreading fantastically in
spidery pattern in dark maroon, is a monogram--Lilith's. And in like
manner is this same monogram inlaid upon the lid.
Two tiny portraits it contains when opened--photographic portraits,
small, yet clear and delicate as miniatures. Lilith's eyes gaze forth,
seeming to shine from the inanimate cardboard as though with the
love-light of gladness; Lilith's beautiful form, erect in characteristic
attitude, the head slightly thrown back, the sweet lips compressed, just
a touch of sadness in their serenity, as though dwelling upon the
recollection of that last parting; even the soft curling waves of hair,
rippling back from the temples, are lifelike in the clearness of the
portrait.
The strong, sweet dream-wave still enclouding his brain, Laurence stands
gazing upon these, and his heart is as though enwrapped with a dull
tightening pain.
"Sorceress! and does the spell still enthral me here?" he murmurs,
"here, and after all this time. Have you forgotten me? Perhaps. No, that
cannot be and yet--Time! Time dulls everything. Time brings changes.
Perhaps even the memory of me is waning, is becoming dulled."
But the softening love-light in the pictured eyes seems to contradict
the conjecture. Here, in the hot brassy glare of the far wilderness, in
the haunts of bloodshed and wrong, that sweet, pure image seems clothed
as with a divinity to his hungry gaze.
"Others can see you in life; others can hear the music of your voice, my
beloved; others can look into the light of those eyes, can melt to the
radiance of your smile, while I--only the image is mine, the tiny oblong
of hard inanimate cardboard," he murmurs, in a tone that is half
weariful, half passionate. "And now for the words!"
A slip of folded paper occupies the side of the little tin box. This he
extracts and unfolds with a touch that is almost reverent, and, as his
eyes wander over the writing, his every faculty of soul and mind and
being is concentrated in rapt love upon each word. For not every day
will he suffer his eyes to rest upon them, lest too great familiarity
with them should dull them with a mechanical nature when seen so often.
They are kept for rare occasions, and now, his waking thoughts sweet
with the influence of the recent dream, he reckons just such an
occasion.
The history of the box, the portraits, the letter, was a strange one.
After that last parting, as Laurence was wending his way in the
darkness, he became aware that his breast pocket contained something
which was not there before. He drew it forth. It was small, flat, hard,
oblong. By the light of successive vestas he proceeded to investigate,
and there, in the flickering glow, Lilith's sweet eyes gazed out at him
from the cardboard, daintily framed within the work of her fingers, even
as here in the burning glare of the equatorial sun; and there, too,
within the box, lay a folded slip of paper covered with her
handwriting--her last words to him, drawing out, perpetuating the echo
of her last spoken ones. With a thrill of love and pain, he had stood
there in the darkness until his last vesta had burned out, and then the
letter was not half read, but from that moment the box and its contents
had rested upon his heart day and night--through scenes of blood and of
woe, through every conceivable phase of hardship and starvation and
peril--had rested there as a charm, or amulet, which should shield him
from harm. And as such, indeed, its donor had intended it.
And now his eyes, wandering over the paper, as though devouring every
word, are nearing the end:
"Does this come as a surprise, my darling--a very sweet surprise? [it
ran.] I mean it to be that. 'Is it for good or for ill, this love of
ours?' you have said. Surely for good. Keep, then, this image of me, my
beloved. Never part with it, day or night, and may it ever, by the very
strength of my love for you, be as a talisman--a 'charm'--to stand
between you and all peril, as you say the mental image of me has already
done; how, I cannot see, but it is enough for me that you say so. And
the consciousness that I should have been the means of averting evil
from you is sweet, unutterably so. May it continue, and strengthen me as
it will mysteriously shield you, while we are far apart. My Laurence! my
ideal!--yes, you are that; the very moment my eyes first met the firm
full gaze of yours I recognized it. I knew what you were, and my heart
went out to you."
The blood surged hotly, in a dark flush, beneath Laurence Stanninghame's
bronzed face, as he pictured the full force and passion of those parting
utterances murmured into his ear instead of confided only to cold,
inanimate paper; then the demon of cynicism ingrained within him came
uppermost with hateful and haunting suggestions:
"She is safe? Yes. But those words were penned more than two years ago.
More than two years ago! That is a long time for one in the full glow of
her glorious youth. More than two years ago! And in the joy and delight
of living, what charm has the memory--the daily fading memory--of the
absent for such as she? Think of it, oh, fool, not yet free from the
shackles of the last illusion! Think of circumstances, of surroundings,
of temperament, above all, of such a temperament as hers! Is your mature
knowledge of life to go for nothing that you are so easily fooled? Ha,
Ha!"
Thus laughed the demon voice in mocking gibe. But he--no, he would not
listen; he would stifle it. Those words were the outcome of one
love--the love of a lifetime, and nothing less.
Suddenly, with multifold splash, and a great winnowing of wings, a
flight of cranes and egrets arose from the bank some little distance
farther down. Dark forms were moving among the reeds. All the instincts
of a constant familiarity with peril alert within him, Laurence had in a
moment replaced the case and its contents. His Express was grasped in
readiness as he peered forth eagerly from his place of concealment. He
was the crafty, ruthless slaver once more.
Then the expression, stealthy, resolute, which his discovery had evoked,
faded, giving way to one of half-interested curiosity, as he saw that
the potential enemies--more or less redoubtable assailants--were merely
a few small boys, wandering along the reed-fringed bank, jabbering
light-heartedly as they strolled.
Suddenly there was a splash, a smothered cry, and a loud burst of shrill
laughter. The sooty imps were dancing and capering with glee, gazing at
and chaffing one of their number who had fallen from the bank--high and
perpendicular there--into the water among the reeds. But almost as
suddenly the cachinations turned to a sharp yell of terror and warning.
The reeds swayed in a quivering line of undulation, as though something
were moving through them--something swift and mighty and terrible--and
so it was. The black boy, who could swim like a fish, had thrown himself
clear of the reeds, deeming his chances better in the open water, but
after him, its long grisly snout and cruel beady eyes flush with the
surface, glided a large crocodile.
Half instinctively the unseen spectator put up his piece, then dropped
it again. He might shoot the reptile, but what then? All their plans
would be upset--the villages would be alarmed, and his own life greatly
jeopardized. Too steep a price by far to pay, to save one wretched
little black imp from being devoured by a crocodile, he told himself.
The road to wealth did not lie that way; and the cruel sneer that
drooped his lips as he lowered his weapon was not good to behold, as he
stood up to witness the end of this impromptu hunt, whose quarry was
human.
The boys on the bank were shouting and screaming, partly for help,
partly in the hope of scaring the hideous saurian. That wily reptile,
however, heeded them not one atom. His great jaws opened and closed with
a snap--but not on the crunch of human flesh, not on the crackle of
human bones. The wretched little native, with incredible dexterity, had
swerved and dived, just eluding the hungry jaws by no more than a hair's
breadth. But to what avail?
For the smooth surface of the lagoon was now rippling into long
furrow-like waves. Dark objects were gliding through the water with
noiseless rapidity, converging on the point where the human quarry had
now risen to breathe. More of the dreadful reptiles, with which the
lagoons were swarming, had found out there was prey, and were bearing
down to obtain their share. From his concealment, Laurence could see it
all--the glistening of the hideous snouts, the round woolly head and
staring, terror-stricken eyeballs of the miserable little victim. Then,
with a wild, piercing, soul-curdling shriek, the latter disappeared, and
there arose to the surface a boil of foam, bubbling upon the slimy water
in a bright red stain. Below, in the depths, the crocodiles were rending
asunder their unexpected prey.
"The moral of that episode," said the concealed spectator to himself, as
he turned away, "is that little boys should not play too near the bank.
No, there is yet another--the incredibly short space of time in which
the refined and civilized being can turn into a stony-hearted demon; and
the causes which accomplish such transmogrification are twain--the
parting with all his illusions, and the parting with all his cash."
These ruminations were cut short in a manner that was violent, not to
say alarming. Two spears whizzed past him with a vicious, angry hiss,
one burying itself deep in the stem of the tree-fern just behind him,
the other flying into empty space, but grazing his ear by very few
inches indeed. Then, in the wild, barking, hoarse-throated yell,
blood-curdling in its note of hate and fury, Laurence Stanninghame
realized that he was in a tight place--a very tight place.