“Let us see it come once more,” said Leo; “we shall never look upon its like again in this world.”
It seemed but idle curiosity, yet somehow I shared it, and so we waited till, turning slowly upon its own axis, the burning cloud had flamed and thundered by; and I remember wondering for how many tens of thousands of years this phenomenon had recurred in the bowels of the earth, and for how many more thousands it would continue to recur. I wondered also if any mortal eyes would ever again mark its passage, or any mortal ears be thrilled and fascinated by the swelling volume of its majestic sound. I do not think so; I believe that we are the last human beings who will ever see that unearthly sight. Presently it had gone, and we too turned to go.
But before we went each of us took Job’s cold hand and shook it. It seemed a ghastly ceremony, but it was the only means in our power of showing our respect to the faithful dead and of celebrating his obsequies. The heap beneath the white garment we did not uncover. We had no wish to look upon that terrible sight again. But we went to the pile of rippling hair that had fallen from her in the agony of the hideous change which was worse than a thousand natural deaths, and each of us drew from it a shining lock. These locks we still have, the sole memento that is left to us of Ayesha as we knew her in the fulness of her grace and glory. Leo pressed the perfumed hair to his lips.
“She called to me not to forget her,” he said hoarsely; “and swore that we should meet again. By Heaven! I never will forget her. Here I swear that, if we live to escape from this, I will not for all my days have aught to do with any other living woman, and that wherever I go I will wait for her as faithfully as she waited for me.”
“Yes,” I thought to myself, “if she comes back as beautiful as we knew her. But supposing she came back like that!”*
And then we went. We went, and left those two in the presence of the secret well and fount of Life, but gathered to the cold company of Death. How lonely they looked as they lay there, and how ill assorted! That little heap had been for two thousand years the wisest, loveliest, proudest creature—I can hardly call her woman—in the whole universe. She was wicked, too, in her way; but, alas! such is the frailty of the human heart, her wickedness had not detracted from her charm. Indeed, I am by no means certain that it did not add to it. After all it was of a grand order; there was nothing mean or small about Ayesha.
And poor Job! His presentiment had come true, and there was an end of him. Well, he has a strange burial-place—no Norfolk hind ever had a stranger, or ever will; and it is something to lie in the same sepulchre with the poor remains of the imperial She.
We looked our last upon them and the indescribable rosy glow in which they lay; then with hearts far too heavy for words we left them, and crept thence broken-down men—so broken down that we renounced the chance of practically immortal life, because all that made life valuable had gone from us, and we knew even then, that to prolong our days indefinitely would only be to prolong our sufferings. For we felt—yes, both of us—that having once looked Ayesha in the eyes, we could not forget her for ever and ever while memory and identity remained. We both loved her now and for all time; she was stamped and carven on our hearts, and no other woman or interest could ever raze that splendid die.
And I—there lies the sting—I had and have no right to think thus of her. As she told me, I was nothing to her, and never shall be through the unfathomed depth of Time, unless, indeed, conditions alter, and a day comes at last when two men may love one woman, and all three be happy in the fact. It is the only hope of my broken-heartedness, and a somewhat faint one. Beyond it I have nothing. I have paid down this heavy price, all that I am worth here and hereafter, and that is my sole reward. With Leo it is different, and often and often I bitterly envy him his happy lot, for if She was right, and her wisdom and knowledge did not fail her at the last, which, arguing from the precedent of her own case, I think most unlikely, he has some future to look forward to. But I have none, and yet—mark the folly and the feebleness of the human heart, and let him who is weak learn wisdom from it—yet I would not have it otherwise. I mean that I am content to give what I have given and must always give, and to take in payment those crumbs that fall from my mistress’s table: the memory of a few kind words, the hope one day in the far undreamed future of a sweet smile or two of recognition, a little gentle friendship, and a little show of thanks for my devotion to her—and Leo.
If this does not constitute true love, I do not know what does, and all I have to say is, that it is a very bad state of mind for a man on the wrong side of middle age to fall into.
*What a terrifying reflection it is, by the way, that nearly all our deep love for women who are not our kindred depends—at any rate, in the first instance—upon their personal appearance. If we lost them, and found them again dreadful to look on, though otherwise they were the very same, should we still love them?—L. H. H.
XXVII
WE LEAP
We passed through the caves without trouble, but when we came to the slope of the inverted cone two obstacles stared us in the face. The first of these was the laborious nature of the ascent, and the next the extreme difficulty of finding our way. Indeed, had it not been for the mental notes that I had fortunately taken of the forms of various rocks, I am sure that we never should have managed it at all, but have wandered about in the dreadful womb of the volcano—for I suppose it must once have been something of the sort—until we died of exhaustion and despair. As it was we went wrong several times, and once nearly fell into a huge crack or crevasse. It was terrible work creeping about in the dense gloom and awful stillness from boulder to boulder, and examining them by the feeble light of the lamps to see if I could recognise their shapes. We rarely spoke; our hearts were too heavy for speech. We simply stumbled along in a dogged fashion, falling sometimes and cutting ourselves. The fact was that our spirits were utterly crushed, and we did not greatly care what happened to us. Only we felt bound to try to save our lives whilst we could, and indeed a natural instinct prompted us to it. So we blundered on for some three or four hours, I should think—I cannot tell exactly how long, for we had no watch left that would go. During the last two hours we were completely lost, and I began to fear we had wandered into the funnel of some subsidiary cone, when at length I suddenly recognised a very large rock which we had seen shortly after we began our descent. It is a marvel that I should have known it; indeed, we had already passed it going at right angles to the proper path, when something about it struck me, and I turned back and examined it in an idle sort of way, and, as it happened, this accident proved our salvation.
After this we gained the rocky natural stair without much difficulty, and in due course found ourselves again in the little chamber where the benighted Noot had lived and died.
But now a fresh terror confronted us. It will be remembered that owing to Job’s fear and awkwardness the board upon which we walked from the huge spur to the rocking-stone had been whirled off into the tremendous gulf below.
How were we to cross without the plank?
There was only one answer—we must try and jump it, or else perish where we were. The distance in itself was not so very great, between eleven and twelve feet I should think, and I have seen Leo jump over twenty when he was a young fellow at college; but then, think of the conditions! Two weary, worn-out men, one of them on the wrong side of forty, a rocking-stone to take off from, a trembling point of rock some few feet across to land upon, and a bottomless gulf to be cleared in a raging gale! It was bad enough, God knows; but when I pointed out these things to Leo, he put the whole matter in a nutshell by replying that, merciless as the choice was, we must choose between the certainty of a lingering death in the chamber and the risk of a swift one in the air.
There was no gainsaying this argument, but it was clear that we could not attempt to leap in the dark; the only thing to do was to wait for the ray of light which pierced through the gulf at sunset. How near to or how far from sunset we might be nei
ther of us had the faintest notion; all we did know was, that when at last the light came it would not endure for more than two minutes at the outside, so that we must be prepared to meet it. Accordingly, we made up our minds to creep on to the top of the rocking-stone and lie there in readiness. We were the more easily reconciled to this course by the fact that our lamps were once more nearly exhausted—indeed, one had gone out bodily, and the other was jumping up and down as the flame of a lamp does when the oil is done. So, by the aid of its dying light, we hastened to crawl out of the little chamber and clamber up the side of the great stone.
At this moment the lamp expired.
The change in our situation was sufficiently remarkable. Below, in the little chamber, we had only heard the roaring of the gale overhead—here, lying face downwards on the swinging stone, we were exposed to its full force and fury, as the great draught drew first from this direction and then from that, howling against the mighty precipice and through the rocky cliffs like ten thousand despairing souls. We lay there hour after hour in terror and misery of mind so deep that I will not attempt to describe them, and listened to the wild storm-voices of that Tartarus, while, set to the deep undertone of the spur opposite, whereon the wind hummed as through some awful harp, they called to each other from precipice to precipice. No nightmare dreamed by man, no dark invention of the romancer, can ever equal the living horror of that place, and the weird crying of those voices of the night, as we clung like shipwrecked mariners to a raft, and tossed on the black, unfathomed wilderness of air. Fortunately the temperature was not a low one; indeed, the wind was warm, or we should have perished. So we clung and listened, and while we were stretched out upon the rock a thing chanced which was so curious and suggestive in itself, though doubtless a mere coincidence, that it added to, rather than lightened, the burden on our nerves.
It will be remembered that when Ayesha was standing on the spur, before we crossed to the stone, the wind tore her cloak from her, and whirled it away into the darkness of the gulf, we could not see whither. Well—I hardly like to tell the story; it is so strange—as we lay there upon the rocking-stone, this very cloak came floating out of black space, like a memory from the dead, and fell on Leo—so that it covered him almost from head to foot. At first we could not imagine what it was, but soon discovered by its texture, and then, for the first time, poor Leo gave way, and I heard him sobbing there upon the stone. No doubt the cloak had been caught upon some pinnacle of the cliff, and thence was blown hither by a chance gust; at the least, it was a most curious and touching incident.
Shortly after this, suddenly, without the slightest previous warning, the red knife of light appeared stabbing the darkness through and through—struck the swaying stone on which we were, and rested its lurid point upon the spur opposite.
“Now for it,” said Leo; “now or never.”
We rose and stretched ourselves, looking first at the cloud-wreaths stained the colour of blood by that scarlet ray as they tore through the sickening depths beneath, then at the empty space between the swaying stone and the quivering rock, and, in our hearts, despaired, preparing for death. Surely we could not clear it—desperate though we were.
“Who is to go first?” said I.
“Do you, old fellow,” answered Leo. “I will sit upon the other side of the stone to steady it. You must take as much run as you can, and jump high; and may God have mercy on us!”
I acquiesced with a nod, and then I did a thing I had never done since Leo was a little boy. I turned and put my arm round him, and kissed him on the forehead. It sounds rather French, but I was taking my last farewell of a man whom I could not have loved more if he had been my own son twice over.
“Good-bye, my boy,” I said; “I hope we shall meet again, wherever it is that we go to.”
The fact was I did not expect to live another two minutes.
Next I retreated to the far side of the rock, and waited till one of the chopping gusts of wind got behind me; then I ran the length of the huge stone, some three or four and thirty feet, and sprang wildly into the dizzy air. Oh! the sickening terrors which I felt as I launched myself at that little point of rock, and the horrible sense of despair which shot through my brain as I realised that I had jumped short! But so it was; my feet never touched the point, they went down into space, only my hands and body came in contact with it. I gripped at it with a yell, but one hand slipped, and I swung right round, holding by the other, so that now I faced the stone from which I had sprung. In agony I clutched with my left hand, and this time managed to grasp a knob of rock, and there I hung in the fierce red light, with thousands of feet of empty air beneath me. My hands were holding to either side of the under part of the spur, so that its point was touching my head. Therefore, even had I found the strength, I could not have pulled myself up. The most that I could do would be to hang for about a minute, and then drop down, down into the bottomless pit. If any man can imagine a more hideous position, let him speak! All I know is that the torture of that half-minute nearly turned my brain.
I heard Leo give a cry, and then suddenly I saw him in mid air springing up and out like a chamois. It was a splendid leap that he took under the influence of his terror and despair. Clearing the horrible gulf as though it were nothing, and landing well on to the rocky point, he threw himself upon his face, to avoid pitching off into the depths. I felt the spur above me shake beneath the shock of his impact, and as it shook I saw the huge rocking-stone, that had been violently depressed by him as he sprang, fly back when relieved of his weight till, for the first time during all these centuries, it swung beyond its balance, falling with a most awful crash right into the rocky chamber which had once served the philosopher Noot for a hermitage, and, I have no doubt, for ever sealing the passage that leads to the Place of Life with some hundreds of tons of rock.
All this happened in a second, and, curiously enough, notwithstanding my terrible plight, I noted it, involuntarily as it were. I even remember thinking that no human being would go down that dread path again.
Next instant I felt Leo seize me by the right wrist with both hands. By lying flat on the point of rock he could just reach me.
“You must let go and swing yourself free,” he said in a calm and collected voice, “and then I will try and pull you up, or we will both fall together. Are you ready?”
By way of answer I loosed the rock, first with my left hand, and then with the right, and, as a consequence, swayed out clear of the overshadowing point, my weight hanging upon Leo’s arms. It was a dreadful moment. He was a very powerful man, I knew, but would his strength be equal to lifting me up till I could get a hold on the top of the spur, when owing to his position he had so little purchase?
27.1 “I swung to and fro.”
For a few seconds I swung to and fro, while he gathered himself for the effort, and then I heard his sinews cracking above me, and felt myself lifted up as though I were a little child, till I hooked my left arm round the rock, and my body was supported by it. The rest was easy; in two or three more seconds I was up, and we lay panting side by side, trembling like leaves, with the cold perspiration of terror pouring from our skins.
Then, as before, the light went out like a lamp.
For some half-hour we rested thus without speaking a word, but at length we began to creep along the great spur as best we might in the dense gloom. As we drew towards the face of the cliff, from which the spur sprang out like a spike from a wall, the light increased, however, though only very little, for it was night overhead. After this the gusts of wind lessened, and we made better progress, and at last reached the mouth of the first cave or tunnel. But now a fresh trouble awaited us: our oil was gone, and the lamps, no doubt, were crushed to powder beneath the fallen rocking-stone. We were even without a drop of water to stay our thirst, for we had drunk the last in the chamber of Noot. How were we to see to make our way through this boulder-strewn cavern?
Clearly all that we could do was to trust to our sense of
touch, and attempt the passage in the dark; so in we crept, fearing that if we delayed to do so our exhaustion would overcome us, and we should probably lie down and die where we were.
Oh, the horrors of that last tunnel! The place was strewn with rocks, and we fell over them and knocked ourselves up against them till we were bleeding from a score of wounds. Our only guide was the side of the cave, which we kept touching, and so bewildered did we grow in the darkness that thrice we were seized with the terrifying thought that we had turned, and were travelling the wrong way. On we went, feebly, and still more feebly, for hour after hour, stopping every few minutes to rest, for our strength was spent. Once we fell asleep, and, I think, must have slept for some hours, for, when we woke, our limbs were quite stiff, and the blood from our blows and scratches had caked, and was hard and dry upon the skin. Then we dragged ourselves on again, till at last, when despair was entering into our hearts, we saw the light of day once more, and found ourselves outside the tunnel in the rocky fold or lane that, it will be remembered, led into it from the outer surface of the cliff.
It was early morning—that we could tell by the feel of the sweet air and the look of the blessed sky, which we had never hoped to see again. We entered the tunnel, so near as we knew, an hour after sunset, so it followed that it had taken us the entire night to crawl through this dreadful place.
“One more effort, Leo,” I gasped, “and we shall reach the slope where Billali is, if he has not gone. Come, don’t give way,” for he had cast himself upon his face. He rose, and, leaning on each other, we scrambled down that fifty feet or so of cliff—I have not the least notion how. I only remember that we found ourselves lying in a heap at the bottom, and then once more began to crawl along upon our hands and knees towards the grove where She had told Billali to wait her return, for we could not walk another foot. We had not gone forty yards in this fashion when suddenly one of the mutes emerged from some trees on our left, through which, I presume, he had been taking a morning stroll, and ran to us to see what strange animals we were. He stared, and stared, then held up his hands in horror, and nearly fell to the ground. Next, he started as fast as he could go for the grove, which was some two hundred yards away. Small wonder that he was horrified at our appearance, for we must have been a shocking sight. To begin with, Leo, his golden curls turned to a snowy white, his clothes nearly rent from his body, his worn face, and his hands a mass of bruises, cuts, and blood-encrusted filth, was a sufficiently alarming spectacle, as he painfully dragged himself along the ground, and I have no doubt that I was little better to look on. I know that two days afterwards, when I inspected my face in some water, I scarcely recognised myself. I have never been famous for beauty, but there was something besides ugliness stamped upon my features that I have not lost to this day, something resembling that wild look with which a startled person awakes from deep sleep. And really it is not to be wondered at. What I do wonder at is that we escaped at all with our reason.