{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_7699/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_7699","id":"gutenberg_7699","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7699","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy","English fiction -- 19th century"],"text":"This eBook was produced by Andrew Heath\nand David Widger\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXIV.\n\nMy Work, my Philosophical Work-the ambitious hope of my intellectual\nlife--how eagerly I returned to it again!  Far away from my household\ngrief, far away from my haggard perplexities--neither a Lilian nor a\nMargrave there!\n\nAs I went over what I had before written, each link in its chain of\nreasoning seemed so serried, that to alter one were to derange all; and\nthe whole reasoning was so opposed to the possibility of the wonders I\nmyself had experienced, so hostile to the subtle hypotheses of a Faber, or\nthe childlike belief of an Amy, that I must have destroyed the entire work\nif I had admitted such contradictions to its design!\n\nBut the work was I myself!--I, in my solid, sober, healthful mind, before\nthe brain had been perplexed by a phantom.  Were phantoms to be allowed as\ntestimonies against science?  No; in returning to my Book, I returned to\nmy former Me!\n\nHow strange is that contradiction between our being as man and our being\nas Author!  Take any writer enamoured of a system: a thousand things may\nhappen to him every day which might shake his faith in that system; and\nwhile he moves about as mere man, his faith is shaken.  But when he\nsettles himself back into the phase of his being as author, the mere act\nof taking pen in hand and smoothing the paper before him restores his\nspeculations to their ancient mechanical train.  The system, the beloved\nsystem, reasserts its tyrannic sway, and he either ignores, or moulds into\nfresh proofs of his theory as author, all which, an hour before, had given\nhis theory the lie in his living perceptions as man.\n\nI adhered to my system,--I continued my work.  Here, in the barbarous\ndesert, was a link between me and the Cities of Europe.  All else might\nbreak down under me.  The love I had dreamed of was blotted out from the\nworld, and might never be restored; my heart might be lonely, my life be\nan exile's.  My reason might, at last, give way before the spectres which\nawed my senses, or the sorrow which stormed my heart.  But here at least\nwas a monument of my rational thoughtful Me,--of my individualized\nidentity in multiform creation.  And my mind, in the noon of its force,\nwould shed its light on the earth when my form was resolved to its\nelements.  Alas! in this very yearning for the Hereafter, though but the\nHereafter of a Name, could I see only the craving of Mind, and hear not\nthe whisper of Soul!\n\nThe avocation of a colonist, usually so active, had little interest for\nme.  This vast territorial lordship, in which, could I have endeared its\npossession by the hopes that animate a Founder, I should have felt all the\nzest and the pride of ownership, was but the run of a common to the\npassing emigrant, who would leave no son to inherit the tardy products of\nhis labour.  I was not goaded to industry by the stimulus of need.  I\ncould only be ruined if I risked all my capital in the attempt to improve.\nI lived, therefore, amongst my fertile pastures, as careless of culture as\nthe English occupant of the Highland moor, which he rents for the range of\nits solitudes.\n\nI knew, indeed, that if ever I became avaricious, I might swell my modest\naffluence into absolute wealth.  I had revisited the spot in which I had\ndiscovered the nugget of gold, and had found the precious metal in rich\nabundance just under the first coverings of the alluvial soil.  I\nconcealed my discovery from all.  I knew that, did I proclaim it, the\ncharm of my bush-life would be gone.  My fields would be infested by all\nthe wild adventurers who gather to gold as the vultures of prey round a\ncarcass; my servants would desert me, my very flocks would be\nshepherdless!\n\nMonths again rolled on months.  I had just approached the close of my\nbeloved Work, when it was again suspended, and by an anguish keener than\nall which I had previously known.\n\nLilian became alarmingly ill.  Her state of health, long gradually\ndeclining, had hitherto admitted checkered intervals of improvement, and\nexhibited no symptoms of actual danger.  But now she was seized with a\nkind of chronic fever, attended with absolute privation of sleep, an\naversion to even the lightest nourishment, and an acute nervous\nsusceptibility to all the outward impressions of which she had long seemed\nso unconscious; morbidly alive to the faintest sound, shrinking from the\nlight as from a torture.  Her previous impatience at my entrance into her\nroom became aggravated into vehement emotions, convulsive paroxysms of\ndistress; so that Faber banished me from her chamber, and, with a heart\nbleeding at every fibre, I submitted to the cruel sentence.\n\nFaber had taken up his abode in my house and brought Amy with him; one or\nthe other never left Lilian, night or day.  The great physician spoke\ndoubtfully of the case, but not despairingly.\n\n\"Remember,\" he said, \"that in spite of the want of sleep, the abstinence\nfrom food, the form has not wasted as it would do were this fever\ninevitably mortal.  It is upon that phenomenon I build a hope that I have\nnot been mistaken in the opinion I hazarded from the first.  We are now in\nthe midst of the critical struggle between life and reason; if she\npreserve the one, my conviction is that she will regain the other.  That\nseeming antipathy to yourself is a good omen.  You are inseparably\nassociated with her intellectual world; in proportion as she revives to\nit, must become vivid and powerful the reminiscences of the shock that\nannulled, for a time, that world to her.  So I welcome, rather than fear,\nthe over-susceptibility of the awakening senses to external sights and\nsounds.  A few days will decide if I am right.  In this climate the\nprogress of acute maladies is swift, but the recovery from them is yet\nmore startlingly rapid.  Wait, endure, be prepared to submit to the will\nof Heaven; but do not despond of its mercy.\"\n\nI rushed away from the consoler,--away into the thick of the forests, the\nheart of the solitude.  All around me, there, was joyous with life; the\nlocust sang amidst the herbage; the cranes gambolled on the banks of the\ncreek; the squirrel-like opossums frolicked on the feathery boughs.  \"And\nwhat,\" said I to myself,--\"what if that which seems so fabulous in the\ndistant being whose existence has bewitched my own, be substantially true?\nWhat if to some potent medicament Margrave owes his glorious vitality, his\nradiant youth?  Oh, that I had not so disdainfully turned away from his\nhinted solicitations--to what?--to nothing guiltier than lawful\nexperiment.  Had I been less devoted a bigot to this vain schoolcraft,\nwhich we call the Medical Art, and which, alone in this age of science,\nhas made no perceptible progress since the days of its earliest\nteachers--had I said, in the true humility of genuine knowledge, 'these\nalchemists were men of genius and thought; we owe to them nearly all the\ngrand hints of our chemical science,--is it likely that they would have\nbeen wholly drivellers and idiots in the one faith they clung to the\nmost?'--had I said that, I might now have no fear of losing my Lilian.\nWhy, after all, should there not be in Nature one primary essence, one\nmaster substance; in which is stored the specific nutriment of life?\"\n\nThus incoherently muttering to the woods what my pride of reason would not\nhave suffered me gravely to say to my fellow-men, I fatigued my tormented\nspirits into a gloomy calm, and mechanically retraced my steps at the\ndecline of day.  I seated myself at the door of my solitary log-hut, lean\ning my cheek upon my hand, and musing.  Wearily I looked up, roused by a\ndiscord of clattering hoofs and lumbering wheels on the hollow-sounding\ngrass-track.  A crazy groaning vehicle, drawn by four horses, emerged from\nthe copse of gum-trees,--fast, fast along the road, which no such pompous\nvehicle had traversed since that which had borne me--luxurious satrap for\nan early colonist--to my lodge in the wilderness.  What emigrant rich\nenough to squander in the hire of such an equipage more than its cost in\nEngland, could thus be entering on my waste domain?  An ominous thrill\nshot through me.\n\nThe driver--perhaps some broken-down son of luxury in the Old World, fit\nfor nothing in the New World but to ply, for hire, the task that might\nhave led to his ruin when plied in sport--stopped at the door of my hut,\nand called out, \"Friend, is not this the great Fenwick Section, and is not\nyonder long pile of building the Master's house?\"\n\nBefore I could answer I heard a faint voice, within the vehicle, speaking\nto the driver; the last nodded, descended from his seat, opened the\ncarriage-door, and offered his arm to a man, who, waving aside the\nproffered aid, descended slowly and feebly; paused a moment as if for\nbreath, and then, leaning on his staff, walked from the road, across the\nsward rank with luxuriant herbage, through the little gate in the new-set\nfragrant wattle-fence, wearily, languidly, halting often, till he stood\nfacing me, leaning both wan and emaciated hands upon his staff, and his\nmeagre form shrinking deep within the folds of a cloak lined thick with\ncostly sables.  His face was sharp, his complexion of a livid yellow, his\neyes shone out from their hollow orbits, unnaturally enlarged and fatally\nbright.  Thus, in ghastly contrast to his former splendour of youth and\nopulence of life, Margrave stood before me.\n\n\"I come to you,\" said Margrave, in accents hoarse and broken, \"from the\nshores of the East.  Give me shelter and rest.  I have that to say which\nwill more than repay you.\"\n\nWhatever, till that moment, my hate and my fear of this unexpected\nvisitant, hate would have been inhumanity, fear a meanness, conceived for\na creature so awfully stricken down.\n\nSilently, involuntarily, I led him into the house.  There he rested a few\nminutes, with closed eyes and painful gasps for breath.  Meanwhile, the\ndriver brought from the carriage a travelling-bag and a small wooden chest\nor coffer, strongly banded with iron clamps.  Margrave, looking up as the\nman drew near, exclaimed fiercely, \"Who told you to touch that chest?  How\ndare you?  Take it from that man, Fenwick!  Place it here,--here by my\nside!\"\n\nI took the chest from the driver, whose rising anger at being so\nimperiously rated in the land of democratic equality was appeased by the\ngold which Margrave lavishly flung to him.\n\n\"Take care of the poor gentleman, squire,\" he whispered to me, in the\nspontaneous impulse of gratitude, \"I fear he will not trouble you long.\nHe must be monstrous rich.  Arrived in a vessel hired all to himself, and\na train of outlandish attendants, whom he has left behind in the town\nyonder.  May I bait my horses in your stables?  They have come a long\nway.\"\n\nI pointed to the neighbouring stables, and the man nodded his thanks,\nremounted his box, and drove off.\n\nI returned to Margrave.  A faint smile came to his lips as I placed the\nchest beside him.\n\n\"Ay, ay,\" he muttered.  \"Safe! safe!  I shall soon be well again,--very\nsoon!  And now I can sleep in peace!\"\n\nI led him into an inner room, in which there was a bed.  He threw himself\non it with a loud sigh of relief.  Soon, half raising himself on his\nelbow, he exclaimed, \"The chest--bring it hither!  I need it always beside\nme!  There, there!  Now for a few hours of sleep; and then, if I can take\nfood, or some such restoring cordial as your skill may suggest, I shall be\nstrong enough to talk.  We will talk! we will talk!\"\n\nHis eyes closed heavily as his voice fell into a drowsy mutter: a moment\nmore and he was asleep.\n\nI watched beside him, in mingled wonder and compassion.  Looking into that\nface, so altered yet still so young, I could not sternly question what had\nbeen the evil of that mystic life, which seemed now oozing away through\nthe last sands in the hour-glass.  I placed my hand softly on his pulse:\nit scarcely beat.  I put my ear to his breast, and involuntarily sighed,\nas I distinguished in its fluttering heave that dull, dumb sound, in which\nthe heart seems knelling itself to the greedy grave!\n\nWas this, indeed, the potent magician whom I had so feared!--this the\nguide to the Rosicrucian's secret of life's renewal, in whom, but an hour\nor two ago, my fancies gulled my credulous trust!\n\nBut suddenly, even while thus chiding my wild superstitions, a fear, that\nto most would seem scarcely less superstitious, shot across me.  Could\nLilian be affected by the near neighbourhood of one to whose magnetic\ninfluence she had once been so strangely subjected?  I left Margrave still\nsleeping, closed and locked the door of the hut, went back to my dwelling,\nand met Amy at the threshold.  Her smile was so cheering that I felt at\nonce relieved.\n\n\"Hush!\" said the child, putting her finger to her lips, \"she is so quiet!\nI was coming in search of you, with a message from her.\"\n\n\"From Lilian to me--what! to me!\"\n\n\"Hush!  About an hour ago, she beckoned me to draw near to her, and then\nsaid, very softly: 'Tell Allen that light is coming back to me, and it all\nsettles on him--on him.  Tell him that I pray to be spared to walk by his\nside on earth, hand-in-hand to that heaven which is no dream, Amy.  Tell\nhim that,--no dream!'\"\n\nWhile the child spoke my tears gushed, and the strong hands in which I\nveiled my face quivered like the leaf of the aspen.  And when I could\ncommand my voice, I said plaintively,--\n\n\"May I not, then, see her?--only for a moment, and answer her message\nthough but by a look?\"\n\n\"No, no!\"\n\n\"No!  Where is Faber?\"\n\n\"Gone into the forest, in search of some herbs, but he gave me this note\nfor you.\"\n\nI wiped the blinding tears from my eyes, and read these lines:--\n\n\"I have, though with hesitation, permitted Amy to tell you the cheering\nwords, by which our beloved patient confirms my belief that reason is\ncoming back to her,--slowly, labouringly, but if she survive, for\npermanent restoration.  On no account attempt to precipitate or disturb\nthe work of nature.  As dangerous as a sudden glare of light to eyes long\nblind and newly regaining vision in the friendly and soothing dark would\nbe the agitation that your presence at this crisis would cause.  Confide\nin me.\"\n\nI remained brooding over these lines and over Lilian's message long and\nsilently, while Amy's soothing whispers stole into my ear, soft as the\nmurmurs of a rill heard in the gloom of forests.  Rousing myself at\nlength, my thoughts returned to Margrave.  Doubtless he would soon awake.\nI bade Amy bring me such slight nutriment as I thought best suited to his\nenfeebled state, telling her it was for a sick traveller, resting himself\nin my hut.  When Amy returned, I took from her the little basket with\nwhich she was charged, and having, meanwhile, made a careful selection\nfrom the contents of my medicine-chest, went back to the hut.  I had not\nlong resumed my place beside Margrave's pillow before he awoke.\n\n\"What o'clock is it?\" he asked, with an anxious voice.\n\n\"About seven.\"\n\n\"Not later?  That is well; my time is precious.\"\n\n\"Compose yourself, and eat.\"\n\nI placed the food before him, and he partook of it, though sparingly, and\nas if with effort.  He then dozed for a short time, again woke up, and\nimpatiently demanded the cordial, which I had prepared in the mean while.\nIts effect was greater and more immediate than I could have anticipated,\nproving, perhaps, how much of youth there was still left in his system,\nhowever undermined and ravaged by disease.  Colour came back to his cheek,\nhis voice grew perceptibly stronger.  And as I lighted the lamp on the\ntable near us--for it was growing dark--he gathered himself up, and spoke\nthus,--\n\n\"You remember that I once pressed on you certain experiments.  My object\nthen was to discover the materials from which is extracted the specific\nthat enables the organs of life to expel disease and regain vigour.  In\nthat hope I sought your intimacy,--an intimacy you gave, but withdrew.\"\n\n\"Dare you complain?  Who and what was the being from whose intimacy I\nshrank appalled?\"\n\n\"Ask what questions you please,\" cried Margrave, impatiently, \"later--if I\nhave strength left to answer them; but do not interrupt me, while I\nhusband my force to say what alone is important to me and to you.\nDisappointed in the hopes I had placed in you, I resolved to repair to\nParis,--that great furnace of all bold ideas.  I questioned learned\nformalists; I listened to audacious empirics.  The first, with all their\nboasted knowledge, were too timid to concede my premises; the second, with\nall their speculative daring, too knavish to let me trust to their\nconclusions.  I found but one man, a Sicilian, who comprehended the\nsecrets that are called occult, and had the courage to meet Nature and all\nher agencies face to face.  He believed, and sincerely, that he was\napproaching the grand result, at the very moment when he perished from\nwant of the common precautions which a tyro in chemistry would have taken.\nAt his death the gaudy city became hateful; all its pretended pleasures\nonly served to exhaust life the faster.  The true joys of youth are those\nof the wild bird and wild brute, in the healthful enjoyment of Nature.  In\ncities, youth is but old age with a varnish.  I fled to the East; I passed\nthrough the tents of the Arabs; I was guided--no matter by whom or by\nwhat--to the house of a Dervish, who had had for his teacher the most\nerudite master of secrets occult, whom I knew years ago at Aleppo---Why\nthat exclamation?\"\n\n\"Proceed.  What I have to say will come--later.\"\n\n\"From this Dervish I half forced and half purchased the secret I sought to\nobtain.  I now know from what peculiar substance the so-called elixir of\nlife is extracted; I know also the steps of the process through which that\ntask is accomplished.  You smile incredulously.  What is your doubt?\nState it while I rest for a moment.  My breath labours; give me more of\nthe cordial.\"\n\n\"Need I tell you my doubt?  You have, you say, at your command the elixir\nof life of which Cagliostro did not leave his disciples the recipe; and\nyou stretch out your hand for a vulgar cordial which any village chemist\ncould give you!\"\n\n\"I can explain this apparent contradiction.  The process by which the\nelixir is extracted from the material which hoards its essence is one that\nrequires a hardihood of courage which few possess.  This Dervish, who had\npassed through that process once, was deaf to all prayer, and unmoved by\nall bribes, to attempt it again.  He was poor; for the secret by which\nmetals may be transmuted is not, as the old alchemists seem to imply,\nidentical with that by which the elixir of life is extracted.  He had only\nbeen enabled to discover, in the niggard strata of the lands within range\nof his travel, a few scanty morsels of the glorious substance.  From these\nhe had extracted scarcely enough of the elixir to fill a third of that\nlittle glass which I have just drained.  He guarded every drop for\nhimself.  Who that holds healthful life as the one boon above all price\nto the living, would waste upon others what prolongs and recruits his own\nbeing?  Therefore, though he sold me his secret, he would not sell me his\ntreasure.\"\n\n\"Any quack may sell you the information how to make not only an elixir,\nbut a sun and a moon, and then scare you from the experiment by tales of\nthe danger of trying it!  How do you know that this essence which the\nDervish possessed was the elixir of life, since, it seems, you have not\ntried on yourself what effect its precious drops could produce?  Poor\nwretch, who once seemed to me so awfully potent! do you come to the\nAntipodes in search of a drug that only exists in the fables by which a\nchild is amused?\"\n\n\"The elixir of life is no fable,\" cried Margrave, with a kindling of eye,\na power of voice, a dilatation of form, that startled me in one just\nbefore so feeble.  \"That elixir was bright in my veins when we last met.\nFrom that golden draught of the life-spring of joy I took all that can\ngladden creation.  What sage would not have exchanged his wearisome\nknowledge for my lusty revels with Nature?  What monarch would not have\nbartered his crown, with its brain-ache of care, for the radiance that\ncircled my brows, flashing out from the light that was in me?  Oh again,\noh again! to enjoy the freedom of air with the bird, and the glow of the\nsun with the lizard; to sport through the blooms of the earth, Nature's\nplaymate and darling; to face, in the forest and desert, the pard and the\nlion,--Nature's bravest and fiercest,--her firstborn, the heir of her\nrealm, with the rest of her children for slaves!\"\n\nAs these words burst from his lips, there was a wild grandeur in the\naspect of this enigmatical being which I had never beheld in the former\ntime of his affluent, dazzling youth.  And, indeed, in his language, and\nin the thoughts it clothed, there was an earnestness, a concentration, a\ndirectness, a purpose, which had seemed wanting to his desultory talk in\nthe earlier days I expected that reaction of languor and exhaustion would\nfollow his vehement outbreak of passion, but, after a short pause, he went\non with steady accents.  His will was sustaining his strength.  He was\ndetermined to force his convictions on me, and the vitality, once so rich,\nrallied all its lingering forces to the aid of its intense desire.\n\n\"I tell you, then,\" he resumed, with deliberate calmness, \"that, years\nago, I tested in my own person that essence which is the sovereign\nmedicament.  In me, as you saw me at L----, you beheld the proof of its\nvirtues.  Feeble and ill as I am now, my state was incalculably more\nhopeless when formerly restored by the elixir.  He from whom I then took\nthe sublime restorative died without revealing the secret of its\ncomposition.  What I obtained was only just sufficient to recruit the lamp\nof my life, then dying down--and no drop was left for renewing the light\nwhich wastes its own rays in the air that it gilds.  Though the Dervish\nwould not sell me his treasure, he permitted me to see it.  The appearance\nand odour of this essence are strangely peculiar,--unmistakable by one who\nhas once beheld and partaken of it.  In short, I recognized in the hands\nof the Dervish the bright life-renewer, as I had borne it away from the\ncorpse of the Sage of Aleppo.\"\n\n\"Hold!  Are you then, in truth, the murderer of Haroun, and is your true\nname Louis Grayle?\"\n\n\"I am no murderer, and Louis Grayle did not leave me his name.  I again\nadjure you to postpone, for this night at least, the questions you wish to\naddress to me.\n\n\"Seeing that this obstinate pauper possessed that for which the pale\nowners of millions, at the first touch of palsy or gout, would consent to\nbe paupers, of course I coveted the possession of the essence even more\nthan the knowledge of the substance from which it is extracted.  I had no\ncoward fear of the experiment, which this timid driveller had not the\nnerve to renew.  But still the experiment might fail.  I must traverse\nland and sea to find the fit place for it, while, in the rags of the\nDervish, the unfailing result of the experiment was at hand.  The Dervish\nsuspected my design, he dreaded my power.  He fled on the very night in\nwhich I had meant to seize what he refused to sell me.  After all, I\nshould have done him no great wrong; for I should have left him wealth\nenough to transport himself to any soil in which the material for the\nelixir may be most abundant; and the desire of life would have given his\nshrinking nerves the courage to replenish its ravished store.  I had Arabs\nin my pay, who obeyed me as hounds their master.  I chased the fugitive.\nI came on his track, reached a house in a miserable village, in which, I\nwas told, he had entered but an hour before.  The day was declining, the\nlight in the room imperfect.  I saw in a corner what seemed to me the form\nof the Dervish,--stooped to seize it, and my hand closed on an asp.  The\nartful Dervish had so piled his rags that they took the shape of the form\nthey had clothed, and he had left, as a substitute for the giver of life,\nthe venomous reptile of death.\n\n\"The strength of my system enabled me to survive the effect of the poison;\nbut during the torpor that numbed me, my Arabs, alarmed, gave no chase to\nmy quarry.  At last, though enfeebled and languid, I was again on my\nhorse.  Again the pursuit, again the track!  I learned--but this time by a\nknowledge surer than man's--that the Dervish had taken his refuge in a\nhamlet that had sprung up over the site of a city once famed through\nAssyria.  The same voice that in formed me of his whereabouts warned me\nnot to pursue.  I rejected the warning.  In my eager impatience I sprang\non to the chase; in my fearless resolve I felt sure of the prey.  I\narrived at the hamlet wearied out, for my forces were no longer the same\nsince the bite of the asp.  The Dervish eluded me still; he had left the\nfloor, on which I sank exhausted, but a few minutes before my horse\nstopped at the door.  The carpet, on which he had rested, still lay on the\nground.  I dismissed the youngest and keenest of my troop in search of the\nfugitive.  Sure that this time he would not escape, my eyes closed in\nsleep.\n\n\"How long I slept I know not,--a long dream of solitude, fever, and\nanguish.  Was it the curse of the Dervish's car pet?  Was it a taint in\nthe walls of the house, or of the air, which broods sickly and rank over\nplaces where cities lie buried?  I know not; but the Pest of the East had\nseized me in slumber.  When my senses recovered I found myself alone,\nplundered of my arms, despoiled of such gold as I had carried about me.\nAll had deserted and left me, as the living leave the dead whom the Plague\nhas claimed for its own.  As soon as I could stand I crawled from the\nthreshold.  The moment my voice was heard, my face seen, the whole squalid\npopulace rose as on a wild beast,--a mad dog.  I was driven from the place\nwith imprecations and stones, as a miscreant whom the Plague had overtaken\nwhile plotting the death of a holy man.  Bruised and bleeding, but still\ndefying, I turned in wrath on that dastardly rabble; they slunk away from\nmy path.  I knew the land for miles around.  I had been in that land\nyears, long years ago.  I came at last to the road which the caravans take\non their way to Damascus.  There I was found, speechless and seemingly\nlifeless, by some European travellers.  Conveyed to Damascus, I languished\nfor weeks between life and death.  But for the virtue of that essence,\nwhich lingered yet in my veins, I could not have survived--even thus\nfeeble and shattered.  I need not say that I now abandoned all thought of\ndiscovering the Dervish.  I had at least his secret, if I had failed of\nthe paltry supply he had drawn from its uses.  Such appliances as he had\ntold me were needful are procured in the East with more ease than in\nEurope.  To sum up, I am here, instructed in all the knowledge, and\nsupplied with all the aids, which warrant me in saying, 'Do you care for\nnew life in its richest enjoyments, if not for yourself, for one whom you\nlove and would reprieve from the grave?  Then, share with me in a task\nthat a single night will accomplish, and ravish a prize by which the life\nthat you value the most will be saved from the dust and the worm, to live\non, ever young, ever blooming, when each infant, new-born while I speak,\nshall have passed to the grave.  Nay, where is the limit to life, while\nthe earth hides the substance by which life is renewed?\"\n\nI give as faithfully as I can recall them the words in which Margrave\naddressed me.  But who can guess by cold words transcribed, even were they\nartfully ranged by a master of language, the effect words produce when\nwarm from the breath of the speaker?  Ask one of an audience which some\norator held enthralled, why his words do not quicken a beat in the\nreader's pulse, and the answer of one who had listened will be, \"The words\ntook their charm from the voice and the eye, the aspect, the manner, the\nman!\"  So it was with the incomprehensible being before me.  Though his\nyouth was faded, though his beauty was dimmed, though my fancies clothed\nhim with memories of abhorrent dread, though my reason opposed his\naudacious beliefs and assumptions, still he charmed and spell-bound me;\nstill he was the mystical fascinator; still, if the legends of magic had\ntruth for their basis, he was the born magician,--as genius, in what\ncalling soever, is born with the gift to enchant and subdue us.\n\nConstraining myself to answer calmly, I said, \"You have told me your\nstory; you have defined the object of the experiment in which you ask me\nto aid.  You do right to bid me postpone my replies or my questions.  Seek\nto recruit by sleep the strength you have so sorely tasked.  To-morrow--\"\n\n\"To-morrow, ere night, you will decide whether the man whom out of all\nearth I have selected to aid me shall be the foe to condemn me to perish!\nI tell you plainly I need your aid, and your prompt aid.  Three days from\nthis, and all aid will be too late!\"\n\nI had already gained the door of the room, when he called to me to come\nback.\n\n\"You do not live in this but, but with your family yonder.  Do not tell\nthem that I am here; let no one but yourself see me as I now am.  Lock the\ndoor of the but when you quit it.  I should not close my eyes if I were\nnot secure from intruders.\"\n\n\"There is but one in my house, or in these parts, whom I would except from\nthe interdict you impose.  You are aware of your own imminent danger; the\nlife, which you believe the discovery of a Dervish will indefinitely\nprolong, seems to my eye of physician to hang on a thread.  I have already\nformed my own conjecture as to the nature of the disease that enfeebles\nyou.  But I would fain compare that conjecture with the weightier opinion\nof one whose experience and skill are superior to mine.  Permit me, then,\nwhen I return to you to-morrow, to bring with me the great physician to\nwhom I refer.  His name will not, perhaps, be unknown to you: I speak of\nJulius Faber.\"\n\n\"A physician of the schools!  I can guess well enough how learnedly he\nwould prate, and how little he could do.  But I will not object to his\nvisit, if it satisfies you that, since I should die under the hands of the\ndoctors, I may be permitted to indulge my own whim in placing my hopes in\na Dervish.  Yet stay.  You have, doubtless, spoken of me to this Julius\nFaber, your fellow-physician and friend?  Promise me, if you bring him\nhere, that you will not name me,--that you will not repeat to him the tale\nI have told you, or the hope which has led me to these shores.  What I\nhave told you, no matter whether, at this moment, you consider me the dupe\nof a chimera, is still under the seal of the confidence which a patient\nreposes in the physician he himself selects for his confidant.  I select\nyou, and not Julius Faber!\"\n\n\"Be it as you will,\" said I, after a moment's reflection.  \"The moment you\nmake yourself my patient, I am bound to consider what is best for you.\nAnd you may more respect, and profit by, an opinion based upon your purely\nphysical condition than by one in which you might suppose the advice was\ndirected rather to the disease of the mind than to that of the body.\"\n\n\"How amazed and indignant your brother-physician will be if he ever see me\na second time!  How learnedly he will prove that, according to all correct\nprinciples of science and nature, I ought to be dead!\"\n\nHe uttered this jest with a faint weary echo of his old merry, melodious\nlaugh, then turned his face to the wall; and so I left him to repose.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXV.\n\nI found Mrs. Ashleigh waiting for me in our usual sitting-room.  She was\nin tears.  She had begun to despond of Lilian's recovery, and she infected\nme with her own alarm.  However, I disguised my participation in her\nfears, soothed and sustained her as I best could, and persuaded her to\nretire to rest.  I saw Faber for a few minutes before I sought my own\nchamber.  He assured me that there was no perceptible change for the worse\nin Lilian's physical state since he had last seen me, and that her mind,\neven within the last few hours, had become decidedly more clear.  He\nthought that, within the next twenty-four hours, the reason would make a\nstrong and successful effort for complete recovery; but he declined to\nhazard more than a hope that the effort would not exhaust the enfeebled\npowers of the frame.  He himself was so in need of a few hours of rest\nthat I ceased to harass him with questions which he could not answer, and\nfears which he could not appease.  Before leaving him for the night, I\ntold him briefly that there was a traveller in my but smitten by a disease\nwhich seemed to me so grave that I would ask his opinion of the case, if\nhe could accompany me to the but the next morning.\n\nMy own thoughts that night were not such as would suffer me to sleep.\n\nBefore Margrave's melancholy state much of my former fear and abhorrence\nfaded away.  This being, so exceptional that fancy might well invest him\nwith preternatural attributes, was now reduced by human suffering to human\nsympathy and comprehension; yet his utter want of conscience was still as\napparent as in his day of joyous animal spirits.  With what hideous\ncandour he had related his perfidy and ingratitude to the man to whom, in\nhis belief, he owed an inestimable obligation, and with what insensibility\nto the signal retribution which in most natures would have awakened\nremorse!\n\nAnd by what dark hints and confessions did he seem to confirm the\nincredible memoir of Sir Philip Derval!  He owned that he had borne from\nthe corpse of Haroun the medicament to which he ascribed his recovery from\na state yet more hopeless than that under which he now laboured!  He had\nalluded, rapidly, obscurely, to some knowledge at his command \"surer than\nman's.\"  And now, even now the mere wreck of his former existence--by what\nstrange charm did he still control and confuse my reason?  And how was it\nthat I felt myself murmuring, again and again, \"But what, after all, if\nhis hope be no chimera, and if Nature do hide a secret by which I could\nsave the life of my beloved Lilian?\"\n\nAnd again and again, as that thought would force itself on me, I rose and\ncrept to Lilian's threshold, listening to catch the faintest sound of her\nbreathing.  All still, all dark!  In that sufferer recognized science\ndetects no mortal disease, yet dares not bid me rely on its amplest\nresources of skill to turn aside from her slumber the stealthy advance of\ndeath; while in yon log-hut one whose malady recognized science could not\ndoubt to be mortal has composed himself to sleep, confident of life!\nRecognized science?--recognized ignorance!  The science of to-day is the\nignorance of to-morrow!  Every year some bold guess lights up a truth to\nwhich, but the year before, the schoolmen of science were as blinded as\nmoles.\n\n\"What, then,\" my lips kept repeating,--\"what if Nature do hide a secret by\nwhich the life of my life can be saved?  What do we know of the secrets of\nNature?  What said Newton himself of his knowledge?  'I am like a child\npicking up pebbles and shells on the sand, while the great ocean of Truth\nlies all undiscovered around me!'  And did Newton himself, in the ripest\ngrowth of his matchless intellect, hold the creed of the alchemists in\nscorn?  Had he not given to one object of their research, in the\ntransmutation of metals, his days and his nights?  Is there proof that he\never convinced himself that the research was the dream, which we, who are\nnot Newtons, call it?[1]  And that other great sage, inferior only to\nNewton--the calculating doubt-weigher, Descartes--had he not believed in\nthe yet nobler hope of the alchemists,--believed in some occult nostrum or\nprocess by which human life could attain to the age of the Patriarchs?\"[2]\n\nIn thoughts like these the night wore away, the moonbeams that streamed\nthrough my window lighting up the spacious solitudes beyond,--mead and\ncreek, forest-land, mountaintop,--and the silence without broken by the\nwild cry of the night hawk and the sibilant melancholy dirge of the\nshining chrysococyx,[3]--bird that never sings but at night, and\nobstinately haunts the roofs of the sick and dying, ominous of woe and\ndeath.\n\nBut up sprang the sun, and, chasing these gloomy sounds, out burst the\nwonderful chorus of Australian groves, the great kingfisher opening the\njocund melodious babble with the glee of his social laugh.\n\nAnd now I heard Faber's step in Lilian's room,--heard through the door her\nsoft voice, though I could not distinguish the words.  It was not long\nbefore I saw the kind physician standing at the threshold of my chamber.\nHe pressed his finger to his lip, and made me a sign to follow him.  I\nobeyed, with noiseless tread and stifled breathing.  He awaited me in the\ngarden under the flowering acacias, passed his arm in mine, and drew me\ninto the open pasture-land.\n\n\"Compose yourself,\" he then said; \"I bring you tidings both of gladness\nand of fear.  Your Lilian's mind is restored: even the memories which had\nbeen swept away by the fever that followed her return to her home in L----\nare returning, though as yet indistinct.  She yearns to see you, to bless\nyou for all your noble devotion, your generous, greathearted love; but I\nforbid such interview now.  If, in a few hours, she become either\ndecidedly stronger or decidedly more enfeebled, you shall be summoned to\nher side.  Even if you are condemned to a loss for which the sole\nconsolation must be placed in the life hereafter, you shall have, at\nleast, the last mortal commune of soul with soul.  Courage! courage!  You\nare man!  Bear as man what you have so often bid other men submit to\nendure.\"\n\nI had flung myself on the ground,--writhing worm that had no home but on\nearth!  Man, indeed!  Man!  All, at that moment, I took from manhood was\nits acute sensibility to love and to anguish!\n\nBut after all such paroxysms of mortal pain, there comes a strange lull.\nThought itself halts, like the still hush of water between two descending\ntorrents.  I rose in a calm, which Faber might well mistake for fortitude.\n\n\"Well,\" I said quietly, \"fulfil your promise.  If Lilian is to pass away\nfrom me, I shall see her, at least, again; no wall, you tell me, between\nour minds; mind to mind once more,--once more!\"\n\n\"Allen,\" said Faber, mournfully and softly, \"why do you shun to repeat my\nwords--soul to soul?\"\n\n\"Ay, ay,--I understand.  Those words mean that you have resigned all hope\nthat Lilian's life will linger here, when her mind comes back in full\nconsciousness; I know well that last lightning flash and the darkness\nwhich swallows it up!\"\n\n\"You exaggerate my fears.  I have not resigned the hope that Lilian will\nsurvive the struggle through which she is passing, but it will be cruel to\ndeceive you--my hope is weaker than it was.\"\n\n\"Ay, ay.  Again, I understand!  Your science is in fault,--it desponds.\nIts last trust is in the wonderful resources of Nature, the vitality\nstored in the young!\"\n\n\"You have said,--those resources of Nature are wondrous.  The vitality of\nyouth is a fountain springing up from the deeps out of sight, when, a\nmoment before, we had measured the drops oozing out from the sands, and\nthought that the well was exhausted.\"\n\n\"Come with me,--come.  I told you of another sufferer yonder.  I want your\nopinion of his case.  But can you be spared a few minutes from Lilian's\nside?\"\n\n\"Yes; I left her asleep.  What is the case that perplexes your eye of\nphysician, which is usually keener than mine, despite all the length of my\npractice?\"\n\n\"The sufferer is young, his organization rare in its vigour.  He has gone\nthrough and survived assaults upon life that are commonly fatal.  His\nsystem has been poisoned by the fangs of a venomous asp, and shattered by\nthe blast of the plague.  These alone, I believe, would not suffice to\ndestroy him.  But he is one who has a strong dread of death; and while the\nheart was thus languid and feeble, it has been gnawed by emotions of hope\nor of fear.  I suspect that he is dying, not from the bite of the reptile,\nnot from the taint of the pestilence, but from the hope and the fear that\nhave overtasked the heart's functions.  Judge for yourself.\"\n\nWe were now at the door of the hut.  I unlocked it: we entered.  Margrave\nhad quitted his bed, and was pacing the room slowly.  His step was less\nfeeble, his countenance less haggard than on the previous evening.\n\nHe submitted himself to Faber's questioning with a quiet indifference, and\nevidently cared nothing for any opinion which the great physician might\nfound on his replies.\n\nWhen Faber had learned all he could, he said, with a grave smile: \"I see\nthat my advice will have little weight with you; such as it is, at least\nreflect on it.  The conclusions to which your host arrived in his view of\nyour case, and which he confided to me, are, in my humble judgment,\ncorrect.  I have no doubt that the great organ of the heart is involved in\nthe cause of your sufferings; but the heart is a noble and much-enduring\norgan.  I have known men in whom it has been more severely and\nunequivocally affected with disease than it is in you, live on for many\nyears, and ultimately die of some other disorder.  But then life was held,\nas yours must be held, upon one condition,--repose.  I enjoin you to\nabstain from all violent action, to shun all excitements that cause moral\ndisturbance.  You are young: would you live on, you must live as the old.\nMore than this,--it is my duty to warn you that your tenure on earth is\nvery precarious; you may attain to many years; you may be suddenly called\nhence tomorrow.  The best mode to regard this uncertainty with the calm in\nwhich is your only chance of long life, is so to arrange all your worldly\naffairs, and so to discipline all your human anxieties, as to feel always\nprepared for the summons that may come without warning.  For the rest,\nquit this climate as soon as you can,--it is the climate in which the\nblood courses too quickly for one who should shun all excitement.  Seek\nthe most equable atmosphere, choose the most tranquil pursuits; and\nFenwick himself, in his magnificent pride of stature and strength, may be\nnearer the grave than you are.\"\n\n\"Your opinion coincides with that I have just heard?\" asked Margrave,\nturning to me.\n\n\"In much--yes.\"\n\n\"It is more favourable than I should have supposed.  I am far from\ndisdaining the advice so kindly offered.  Permit me, in turn, two or three\nquestions, Dr. Faber.  Do you prescribe to me no drugs from your\npharmacopoeia?\"\n\n\"Drugs may palliate many sufferings incidental to organic disease, but\ndrugs cannot reach organic disease itself.\"\n\n\"Do you believe that, even where disease is plainly organic, Nature\nherself has no alternative and reparative powers, by which the organ\nassailed may recover itself?\"\n\n\"A few exceptional instances of such forces in Nature are upon record; but\nwe must go by general laws, and not by exceptions.\"\n\n\"Have you never known instances--do you not at this moment know one--in\nwhich a patient whose malady baffles the doctor's skill, imagines or\ndreams of a remedy?  Call it a whim if you please, learned sir; do you not\nlisten to the whim, and, in despair of your own prescriptions, comply with\nthose of the patient?\"\n\nFaber changed countenance, and even started.  Margrave watched him and\nlaughed.\n\n\"You grant that there are such cases, in which the patient gives the law\nto the physician.  Now, apply your experience to my case.  Suppose some\nstrange fancy had seized upon my imagination--that is the doctor's cant\nword for all phenomena which we call exceptional--some strange fancy that\nI had thought of a cure for this disease for which you have no drugs; and\nsuppose this fancy of mine to be so strong, so vivid, that to deny me its\ngratification would produce the very emotion from which you warn me as\nfatal,--storm the heart, that you would soothe to repose, by the passions\nof rage and despair,--would you, as my trusted physician, concede or deny\nme my whim?\"\n\n\"Can you ask?  I should grant it at once, if I had no reason to know that\nthe thing that you fancied was harmful.\"\n\n\"Good man and wise doctor!  I have no other question to ask.  I thank\nyou.\"\n\nFaber looked hard on the young, wan face, over which played a smile of\ntriumph and irony; then turned away with an expression of doubt and\ntrouble on his own noble countenance.  I followed him silently into the\nopen air.\n\n\"Who and what is this visitor of yours?\"  he asked abruptly.\n\n\"Who and what?  I cannot tell you.\"\n\nFaber remained some moments musing, and muttering slowly to himself, \"Tut!\nbut a chance coincidence,--a haphazard allusion to a fact which he could\nnot have known!\"\n\n\"Faber,\" said I, abruptly, \"can it be that Lilian is the patient in whose\nself-suggested remedies you confide more than in the various learning at\ncommand of your practised skill?\"\n\n\"I cannot deny it,\" replied Faber, reluctantly.  \"In the intervals of that\nsuspense from waking sense, which in her is not sleep, nor yet altogether\ncatalepsy, she has, for the last few days, stated accurately the precise\nmoment in which the trance--if I may so call it--would pass away, and\nprescribed for herself the remedies that should be then administered.  In\nevery instance, the remedies so self-prescribed, though certainly not\nthose which would have occurred to my mind, have proved efficacious.  Her\nrapid progress to reason I ascribe to the treatment she herself ordained\nin her trance, without remembrance of her own suggestions when she awoke.\nI had meant to defer communicating these phenomena in the idiosyncrasy of\nher case until our minds could more calmly inquire into the process by\nwhich ideas--not apparently derived, as your metaphysical school would\nderive all ideas, from preconceived experiences--will thus sometimes act\nlike an instinct on the human sufferer for self-preservation, as the bird\nis directed to the herb or the berry which heals or assuages its ailments.\nWe know how the mesmerists would account for this phenomenon of hygienic\nintrovision and clairvoyance.  But here, there is no mesmerizer, unless\nthe patient can be supposed to mesmerize herself.  Long, however, before\nmesmerism was heard of, medical history attests examples in which patients\nwho baffled the skill of the ablest physicians have fixed their fancies on\nsome remedy that physicians would call inoperative for good or for harm,\nand have recovered by the remedies thus singularly self-suggested.  And\nHippocrates himself, if I construe his meaning rightly, recognizes the\npowers for self-cure which the condition of trance will sometimes bestow\non the sufferer, 'where' (says the father of our art) 'the sight being\nclosed to the external, the soul more truthfully perceives the affections\nof the body.'  In short--I own it--in this instance, the skill of the\nphysician has been a compliant obedience to the instinct called forth in\nthe patient; and the hopes I have hitherto permitted myself to give you\nwere founded on my experience that her own hopes, conceived in trance, bad\nnever been fallacious or exaggerated.  The simples that I gathered for her\nyesterday she had described; they are not in our herbal.  But as they are\nsometimes used by the natives, I had the curiosity to analyze their\nchemical properties shortly after I came to the colony, and they seemed to\nme as innocent as lime-blossoms.  They are rare in this part of Australia,\nbut she told me where I should find them,--a remote spot, which she has\ncertainly never visited.  Last night, when you saw me disturbed, dejected,\nit was because, for the first time, the docility with which she had\nhitherto, in her waking state, obeyed her own injunctions in the state of\ntrance, forsook her.  She could not be induced to taste the decoction I\nhad made from the herbs; and if you found me this morning with weaker\nhopes than before, this is the real cause,--namely, that when I visited\nher at sunrise, she was not in sleep but in trance, and in that trance\nshe told me that she had nothing more to suggest or reveal; that on the\ncomplete restoration of her senses, which was at hand, the abnormal\nfaculties vouchsafed to trance would be withdrawn.  'As for my life,' she\nsaid quietly, as if unconscious of our temporary joy or woe in the term of\nits tenure here,--'as for my life, your aid is now idle; my own vision\nobscure; on my life a dark and cold shadow is resting.  I cannot foresee\nif it will pass away.  When I strive to look around, I see but my\nAllen--'\"\n\n\"And so,\" said I, mastering my emotions, \"in bidding me hope, you did not\nrely on your own resources of science, but on the whisper of Nature in the\nbrain of your patient?\"\n\n\"It is so.\"\n\nWe both remained silent some moments, and then, as he disappeared within\nmy house, I murmured,--\n\n\"And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, she sees only me!  Is\nthere some prophet-hint of Nature there also, directing me not to scorn\nthe secret which a wanderer, so suddenly dropped on my solitude, assures\nme that Nature will sometimes reveal to her seeker?  And oh! that dark\nwanderer--has Nature a marvel more weird than himself?\"\n\n[1] \"Besides the three great subjects of Newton's labours--the fluxional\ncalculus, physical astronomy, and optics--a very large portion of his\ntime, while resident in his college, was devoted to researches of which\nscarcely a trace remains.  Alchemy, which had fascinated so many eager and\nambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelming force.\nWhat theories he formed, what experiments he tried, in that laboratory\nwhere, it is said, the fire was scarcely extinguished for weeks together,\nwill never be known.  It is certain that no success attended his labours;\nand Newton was not a man--like Kepler--to detail to the world all the\nhopes and disappointments, all the crude and mystical fancies, which mixed\nthemselves up with his career of philosophy...  Many years later we find\nNewton in correspondence with Locke, with reference to a mysterious red\nearth by which Boyle, who was then recently dead, had asserted that he\ncould effect the grand desideratum of multiplying gold.  By this time,\nhowever, Newton's faith had become somewhat shaken by the unsatisfactory\ncommunications which he had himself received from Boyle on the subject of\nthe golden recipe, though he did not abandon the idea of giving the\nexperiment a further trial as soon as the weather should become suitable\nfor furnace experiments.\"--Quarterly Review, No. 220, pp. 125, 126.\n\n[2] Southey, in his \"Doctor,\" vol. vi. p. 2, reports the conversation of\nSir Kenelm Digby with Descartes, in which the great geometrician said,\n\"That as for rendering man immortal, it was what he could not venture to\npromise, but that he was very sure he could prolong his life to the\nstandard of the patriarchs.\"  And Southey adds, \"that St. Evremond, to\nwhom Digby repeated this, says that this opinion of Descartes was well\nknown both to his friends in Holland and in France.\"  By the stress\nSouthey lays on this hearsay evidence, it is clear that he was not\nacquainted with the works and biography of Descartes, or be would have\ngone to the fountain-head for authority on Descartes's opinions, namely,\nDescartes himself.  It is to be wished that Southey had done so, for no\none more than he would have appreciated the exquisitely candid and lovable\nnature of the illustrious Frenchman, and the sincerity with which he\ncherished in his heart whatever doctrine he conceived in his\nunderstanding.  Descartes, whose knowledge of anatomy was considerable,\nhad that passion for the art of medicine which is almost inseparable from\nthe pursuit of natural philosophy.  At the age of twenty-four he had\nsought (in Germany) to obtain initiation into the brotherhood of the\nRosicrucians, but unluckily could not discover any member of the society\nto introduce him.  \"He desired,\" says Cousin, \"to assure the health of\nman, diminish his ills, extend his existence.  He was terrified by the\nrapid and almost momentary passage of man upon earth.  He believed it was\nnot, perhaps, impossible to prolong its duration.\"  There is a hidden\nrecess of grandeur in this idea, and the means proposed by Descartes for\nthe execution of his project were not less grand.  In his \"Discourse on\nMethod,\" Descartes says, \"If it is possible to find some means to render\ngenerally men more wise and more able than they have been till now, it is,\nI believe, in medicine that those means must be sought...  I am sure that\nthere is no one, even in the medical profession, who will not avow that\nall which one knows of the medical art is almost nothing in comparison to\nthat which remains to learn, and that one could be exempted from an\ninfinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even, perhaps, from the\ndecrepitude of old age, if one had sufficient lore of their causes and of\nall the remedies which nature provides for them.  Therefore, having design\nto employ all my life in the research of a science so necessary, and\nhaving discovered a path which appears to me such that one ought\ninfallibly, in following, to find it, if one is not hindered prematurely\nby the brevity of life or by the defects of experience, I consider that\nthere is no better remedy against those two hindrances than to communicate\nfaithfully to the public the little I have found,\" etc.  (\"Discours de la\nMethode,\" vol. i. OEuvres de Descartes, Cousin's Edition.)  And again, in\nhis \"Correspondence\" (vol.  ix.  p. 341), he says: \"The conservation of\nhealth has been always the principal object of my studies, and I have no\ndoubt that there is a means of acquiring much knowledge touching medicine\nwhich, up to this time, is ignored.\"  He then refers to his meditated\nTreatise on Animals as only an entrance upon that knowledge.  But whatever\nsecrets Descartes may have thought to discover, they are not made known to\nthe public according to his promise.  And in a letter to M. Chanut,\nwritten in 1646 (four years before he died), he says ingenuously: \"I will\ntell you in confidence that the notion, such as it is, which I have\nendeavoured to acquire in physical philosophy, had greatly assisted me to\nestablish certain foundations for moral philosophy; and that I am more\neasily satisfied upon this point than I am on many others touching\nmedicine, to which I have, nevertheless, devoted much more time.  So\nthat\"--(adds the grand thinker, with a pathetic nobleness )--\"so that,\ninstead of finding the means to preserve life, I have found another good,\nmore easy and more sure, which is--not to fear death.\"\n\n[3] Chrysococyx lucidus,--namely, the bird popularly called the shining or\nbronzed cuckoo.  \"Its note is an exceedingly melancholy whistle, heard at\nnight, when it is very annoying to any sick or nervous person who may be\ninclined to sleep.  I have known many instances where the bird has been\nperched on a tree in the vicinity of the room of an invalid, uttering its\nmournful notes, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that it could\nbe dislodged from its position.\"--Dr. Bennett: Gatherings of a Naturalist\nin Australasia.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXVI.\n\nI strayed through the forest till noon, in debate with myself, and strove\nto shape my wild doubts into purpose, before I could nerve and compose\nmyself again to face Margrave alone.\n\nI re-entered the but.  To my surprise, Margrave was not in the room in\nwhich I had left him, nor in that which adjoined it.  I ascended the\nstairs to the kind of loft in which I had been accustomed to pursue my\nstudies, but in which I had not set foot since my alarm for Lilian had\nsuspended my labours.  There I saw Margrave quietly seated before the\nmanuscript of my Ambitious Work, which lay open on the rude table, just as\nI had left it, in the midst of its concluding summary.\n\n\"I have taken the license of former days, you see,\" said Margrave,\nsmiling, \"and have hit by chance on a passage I can understand without\neffort.  But why such a waste of argument to prove a fact so simple?  In\nman, as in brute, life once lost is lost forever; and that is why life is\nso precious to man.\"\n\nI took the book from his hand, and flung it aside in wrath.  His approval\nrevolted me more with my own theories than all the argumentative rebukes\nof Faber.\n\n\"And now,\" I said, sternly, \"the time has come for the explanation you\npromised.  Before I can aid you in any experiment that may serve to\nprolong your life, I must know how far that life has been a baleful and\ndestroying influence?\"\n\n\"I have some faint recollection of having saved your life from an imminent\ndanger, and if gratitude were the attribute of man, as it is of the dog, I\nshould claim your aid to serve mine as a right.  Ask me what you will.\nYou must have seen enough of me to know that I do not affect either the\nvirtues or vices of others.  I regard both with so supreme an\nindifference, that I believe I am vicious or virtuous unawares.  I know\nnot if I can explain what seems to have perplexed you, but if I cannot\nexplain I have no intention to lie.  Speak--I listen!  We have time enough\nnow before us.\"\n\nSo saying, he reclined back in the chair, stretching out his limbs\nwearily.  All round this spoilt darling of Material Nature were the aids\nand appliances of Intellectual Science,--books and telescopes and\ncrucibles, with the light of day coming through a small circular aperture\nin the boarded casement, as I had constructed the opening for my\nexperimental observation of the prismal rays.\n\nWhile I write, his image is as visible before my remembrance as if before\nthe actual eye,--beautiful even in its decay, awful even in its weakness,\nmysterious as is Nature herself amidst all the mechanism by which our\nfancied knowledge attempts to measure her laws and analyze her light.\n\nBut at that moment no such subtle reflections delayed my inquisitive eager\nmind from its immediate purpose,--who and what was this creature boasting\nof a secret through which I might rescue from death the life of her who\nwas my all upon the earth?\n\nI gathered rapidly and succinctly together all that I knew and all that I\nguessed of Margrave's existence and arts.  I commenced from my vision in\nthat mimic Golgotha of creatures inferior to man, close by the scene of\nman's most trivial and meaningless pastime.  I went on,--Derval's murder;\nthe missing contents of the casket; the apparition seen by the maniac\nassassin guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous haunting shadow; the\npositive charge in the murdered man's memoir connecting Margrave with\nLouis Grayle, and accusing him of the murder of Haroun; the night in the\nmoonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful influence on Lilian; the\nstruggle between me and himself in the house by the seashore,--the strange\nAll that is told in this Strange Story.\n\nBut warming as I spoke, and in a kind of fierce joy to be enabled thus to\nfree my own heart of the doubts that had burdened it, now that I was\nfairly face to face with the being by whom my reason had been so perplexed\nand my life so tortured.  I was restrained by none of the fears lest my\nown fancy deceived me, with which in his absence I had striven to reduce\nto natural causes the portents of terror and wonder.  I stated plainly,\ndirectly, the beliefs, the impressions which I had never dared even to\nmyself to own without seeking to explain them away.  And coming at last to\na close, I said: \"Such are the evidences that seem to me to justify\nabhorrence of the life that you ask me to aid in prolonging.  Your own\ntale of last night but confirms them.  And why to me--to me--do you come\nwith wild entreaties to lengthen the life that has blighted my own?  How\ndid you even learn the home in which I sought unavailing refuge?  How--as\nyour hint to Faber clearly revealed--were you aware that, in yon house,\nwhere the sorrow is veiled, where the groan is suppressed, where the\nfoot-tread falls ghostlike, there struggles now between life and death my\nheart's twin, my world's sunshine?  Ah! through my terror for her, is it a\ndemon that tells you how to bribe my abhorrence into submission, and\nsupple my reason into use to your ends?\"\n\nMargrave had listened to me throughout with a fixed attention, at times\nwith a bewildered stare, at times with exclamations of surprise, but not\nof denial.  And when I had done, he remained for some moments silent,\nseemingly stupefied, passing his hand repeatedly over his brow, in the\ngesture so familiar to him in former days.\n\nAt length he said quietly, without evincing any sign either of resentment\nor humiliation,--\n\n\"In much that you tell me I recognize myself; in much I am as lost in\namazement as you in wild doubt or fierce wrath.  Of the effect that you\nsay Philip Derval produced on me I have no recollection.  Of himself I\nhave only this,--that he was my foe, that he came to England intent on\nschemes to shorten my life or destroy its enjoyments.  All my faculties\ntend to self-preservation; there, they converge as rays in a focus; in\nthat focus they illume and--they burn.  I willed to destroy my intended\ndestroyer.  Did my will enforce itself on the agent to which it was\nguided?  Likely enough.  Be it so.  Would you blame me for slaying the\ntiger or serpent--not by the naked hand, but by weapons that arm it?  But\nwhat could tiger and serpent do more against me than the man who would rob\nme of life?  He had his arts for assault, I had mine for self-defence.  He\nwas to me as the tiger that creeps through the jungle, or the serpent\nuncoiling his folds for the spring.  Death to those whose life is\ndestruction to mine, be they serpent or tiger or man!  Derval perished.\nYes! the spot in which the maniac had buried the casket was revealed to\nme--no matter how; the contents of the casket passed into my hands.  I\ncoveted that possession because I believed that Derval had learned from\nHaroun of Aleppo the secret by which the elixir of life is prepared, and I\nsupposed that some stores of the essence would be found in his casket.  I\nwas deceived--not a drop!  What I there found I knew not how to use or\napply, nor did I care to learn.  What I sought was not there.  You see a\nluminous shadow of myself; it haunts, it accosts, it compels you.  Of\nthis I know nothing.  Was it the emanation of my intense will really\nproducing this spectre of myself, or was it the thing of your own\nimagination,--an imagination which my will impressed and subjugated?  I\nknow not.  At the hours when my shadow, real or supposed, was with you, my\nsenses would have been locked in sleep.  It is true, however, that I\nintensely desire to learn from races always near to man, but concealed\nfrom his every-day vision, the secret that I believed Philip Derval had\ncarried with him to the tomb; and from some cause or another I cannot now\nof myself alone, as I could years ago, subject those races to my\ncommand,--I must, in that, act through or with the mind of another.  It is\ntrue that I sought to impress upon your waking thoughts the images of the\ncircle, the powers of the wand, which, in your trance or sleep-walking,\nmade you the involuntary agent of my will.  I knew by a dream--for by\ndreams, more or less vivid, are the results of my waking will sometimes\ndivulged to myself--that the spell had been broken, the discovery I sought\nnot effected.  All my hopes were then transferred from yourself, the dull\nvotary of science, to the girl whom I charmed to my thraldom through her\nlove for you and through her dreams of a realm which the science of\nschools never enters.  In her, imagination was all pure and all potent;\nand tell me, O practical reasoner, if reason has ever advanced one step\ninto knowledge except through that imaginative faculty which is strongest\nin the wisdom of ignorance, and weakest in the ignorance of the wise.\nPonder this, and those marvels that perplex you will cease to be\nmarvellous.  I pass on to the riddle that puzzles you most.  By Philip\nDerval's account I am, in truth, Louis Grayle restored to youth by the\nelixir, and while yet infirm, decrepit, murdered Haroun,--a man of a frame\nas athletic as yours!  By accepting this notion you seem to yourself alone\nto unravel the mysteries you ascribe to my life and my powers.  O wise\nphilosopher!  O profound logician! you accept that notion, yet hold my\nbelief in the Dervish's tale a chimera!  I am Grayle made young by the\nelixir, and yet the elixir itself is a fable!\"\n\nHe paused and laughed, but the laugh was no longer even an echo of its\nformer merriment or playfulness,--a sinister and terrible laugh, mocking,\nthreatening, malignant.\n\nAgain he swept his hand over his brow, and resumed,--\n\n\"Is it not easier to so accomplished a sage as you to believe that the\nidlers of Paris have guessed the true solution of that problem, my place\non this earth?  May I not be the love-son of Louis Grayle?  And when\nHaroun refused the elixir to him, or he found that his frame was too far\nexhausted for even the elixir to repair organic lesions of structure in\nthe worn frame of old age, may he not have indulged the common illusion of\nfathers, and soothed his death-pangs with the thought that he should live\nagain in his son?  Haroun is found dead on his carpet--rumour said\nstrangled.  What proof of the truth of that rumour?  Might he not have\npassed away in a fit?  Will it lessen your perplexity if I state\nrecollections?  They are vague,--they often perplex myself; but so far\nfrom a wish to deceive you, my desire is to relate them so truthfully that\nyou may aid me to reduce them into more definite form.\"\n\nHis face now became very troubled, the tone of his voice very\nirresolute,--the face and the voice of a man who is either blundering his\nway through an intricate falsehood, or through obscure reminiscences.\n\n\"This Louis Grayle! this Louis Grayle!  I remember him well, as one\nremembers a nightmare.  Whenever I look back, before the illness of which\nI will presently speak, the image of Louis Grayle returns to me.  I see\nmyself with him in African wilds, commanding the fierce Abyssinians.  I\nsee myself with him in the fair Persian valley,-lofty, snow-covered\nmountains encircling the garden of roses.  I see myself with him in the\nhush of the golden noon, reclined by the spray of cool fountains,--now\nlistening to cymbals and lutes, now arguing with graybeards on secrets\nbequeathed by the Chaldees,--with him, with him in moonlit nights,\nstealing into the sepulchres of mythical kings.  I see myself with him in\nthe aisles of dark caverns, surrounded by awful shapes, which have no\nlikeness amongst the creatures of earth.  Louis Grayle!  Louis Grayle! all\nmy earlier memories go back to Louis Grayle!  All my arts and powers, all\nthat I have learned of the languages spoken in Europe, of the sciences\ntaught in her schools, I owe to Louis Grayle.  But am I one and the same\nwith him?  No--I am but a pale reflection of his giant intellect.  I have\nnot even a reflection of his childlike agonies of sorrow.  Louis Grayle!\nHe stands apart from me, as a rock from the tree that grows out from its\nchasms.  Yes, the gossip was right; I must be his son.\"\n\nHe leaned his face on both hands, rocking himself to and fro.  At length,\nwith a sigh, he resumed,--\n\n\"I remember, too, a long and oppressive illness, attended with racking\npains, a dismal journey in a wearisome litter, the light hand of the woman\nAyesha, so sad and so stately, smoothing my pillow or fanning my brows.  I\nremember the evening on which my nurse drew the folds of the litter aside,\nand said, 'See Aleppo! and the star of thy birth shining over its walls!'\n\n\"I remember a face inexpressibly solemn and mournful.  I remember the\nchill that the calm of its ominous eye sent through my veins,--the face of\nHaroun, the Sage of Aleppo.  I remember the vessel of crystal he bore in\nhis hand, and the blessed relief from my pains that a drop from the\nessence which flashed through the crystal bestowed!  And then--and then--I\nremember no more till the night on which Ayesha came to my couch and said,\n'Rise.'\n\n\"And I rose, leaning on her, supported by her.  We went through dim narrow\nstreets, faintly lit by wan stars, disturbing the prowl of the dogs, that\nslunk from the look of that woman.  We came to a solitary house, small and\nlow, and my nurse said, 'Wait.'\n\n\"She opened the door and went in; I seated myself on the threshold.  And\nafter a time she came out from the house, and led me, still leaning on\nher, into her chamber.\n\n\"A man lay, as in sleep, on the carpet, and beside him stood another man,\nwhom I recognized as Ayesha's special attendant,--an Indian.  'Haroun is\ndead,' said Ayesha.  'Search for that which will give thee new life.  Thou\nhast seen, and wilt know it, not I.'\n\n\"And I put my hand on the breast of Haroun--for the dead man was he--and\ndrew from it the vessel of crystal.\n\n\"Having done so, the frown of his marble brow appalled me.  I staggered\nback, and swooned away.\n\n\"I came to my senses, recovering and rejoicing, miles afar from the city,\nthe dawn red on its distant wall.  Ayesha had tended me; the elixir had\nalready restored me.\n\n\"My first thought, when full consciousness came back to me, rested on\nLouis Grayle, for he also had been at Aleppo; I was but one of his\nnumerous train.  He, too, was enfeebled and suffering; he had sought the\nknown skill of Haroun for himself as for me; and this woman loved and had\ntended him as she had loved and tended me.  And my nurse told me that he\nwas dead, and forbade me henceforth to breathe his name.\n\n\"We travelled on,--she and I, and the Indian her servant,--my strength\nstill renewed by the wondrous elixir.  No longer supported by her, what\ngazelle ever roved through its pasture with a bound more elastic than\nmine?\n\n\"We came to a town, and my nurse placed before me a mirror.  I did not\nrecognize myself.  In this town we rested, obscure, till the letter there\nreached me by which I learned that I was the offspring of love, and\nenriched by the care of a father recently dead.  Is it not clear that\nLouis Grayle was this father?\"\n\n\"If so, was the woman Ayesha your mother?\"\n\n\"The letter said that 'my mother had died in my infancy.'  Nevertheless,\nthe care with which Ayesha had tended me induced a suspicion that made me\nask her the very question you put.  She wept when I asked her, and said,\n'No, only my nurse.  And now I needed a nurse no more.' The day after I\nreceived the letter which announced an inheritance that allowed me to vie\nwith the nobles of Europe, this woman left me, and went back to her\ntribe.\"\n\n\"Have you never seen her since?\"\n\nMargrave hesitated a moment, and then answered, though with seeming\nreluctance, \"Yes, at Damascus.  Not many days after I was borne to that\ncity by the strangers who found me half-dead on their road, I woke one\nmorning to find her by my side.  And she said, 'In joy and in health you\ndid not need me.  I am needed now.\"'\n\n\"Did you then deprive yourself of one so devoted?  You have not made this\nlong voyage--from Egypt to Australia--alone,--you, to whom wealth gave no\nexcuse for privation?\"\n\n\"The woman came with me; and some chosen attendants.  I engaged to\nourselves the vessel we sailed in.\"\n\n\"Where have you left your companions?\"\n\n\"By this hour,\" answered Margrave, \"they are in reach of my summons; and\nwhen you and I have achieved the discovery--in the results of which we\nshall share--I will exact no more from your aid.  I trust all that rests\nfor my cure to my nurse and her swarthy attendants.  You will aid me now,\nas a matter of course; the physician whose counsel you needed to guide\nyour own skill enjoins you to obey my whim--if whim you still call it; you\nwill obey it, for on that whim rests your own sole hope of\nhappiness,--you, who can love--I love nothing but life.  Has my frank\nnarrative solved all the doubts that stood between you and me, in the\ngreat meeting-grounds of an interest in common?\"\n\n\"Solved all the doubts!  Your wild story but makes some the darker,\nleaving others untouched: the occult powers of which you boast, and some\nof which I have witnessed,--your very insight into my own household\nsorrows, into the interests I have, with yourself, in the truth of a faith\nso repugnant to reason--\"\n\n\"Pardon me,\" interrupted Margrave, with that slight curve of the lip which\nis half smile and half sneer, \"if, in my account of myself, I omitted what\nI cannot explain, and you cannot conceive: let me first ask how many of\nthe commonest actions of the commonest men are purely involuntary and\nwholly inexplicable.  When, for instance, you open your lips and utter a\nsentence, you have not the faintest idea beforehand what word will follow\nanother.  When you move a muscle can you tell me the thought that prompts\nto the movement?  And, wholly unable thus to account for your own simple\nsympathies between impulse and act, do you believe that there exists a man\nupon earth who can read all the riddles in the heart and brain of another?\nIs it not true that not one drop of water, one atom of matter, ever really\ntouches another?  Between each and each there is always a space, however\ninfinitesimally small.  How, then, could the world go on, if every man\nasked another to make his whole history and being as lucid as daylight\nbefore he would buy and sell with him?  All interchange and alliance rest\nbut on this,--an interest in common.  You and I have established that\ninterest: all else, all you ask more, is superfluous.  Could I answer\neach doubt you would raise, still, whether the answer should please or\nrevolt you, your reason would come back to the same starting-point,\n--namely, In one definite proposal have we two an interest in common?\"\n\nAnd again Margrave laughed, not in mirth, but in mockery.  The laugh and\nthe words that preceded it were not the laugh and the words of the young.\nCould it be possible that Louis Grayle had indeed revived to false youth\nin the person of Margrave, such might have been his laugh and such his\nwords.  The whole mind of Margrave seemed to have undergone change since I\nlast saw him; more rich in idea, more crafty even in candour, more\npowerful, more concentred.  As we see in our ordinary experience, that\nsome infirmity, threatening dissolution, brings forth more vividly the\nreminiscences of early years, when impressions were vigorously stamped, so\nI might have thought that as Margrave neared the tomb, the memories he had\nretained from his former existence, in a being more amply endowed, more\nformidably potent, struggled back to the brain; and the mind that had\nlived in Louis Grayle moved the lips of the dying Margrave.\n\n\"For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles your reason to assign\nor deny to me,\" resumed my terrible guest, \"I will say briefly but this:\nthey come from faculties stored within myself, and doubtless conduce to my\nself-preservation,--faculties more or less, perhaps (so Van Helmont\nasserts), given to all men, though dormant in most; vivid and active in me\nbecause in me self-preservation has been and yet is the strong\nmaster-passion, or instinct; and because I have been taught how to use and\ndirect such faculties by disciplined teachers,--some by Louis Grayle, the\nenchanter; some by my nurse, the singer of charmed songs.  But in much\nthat I will to have done, I know no more than yourself how the agency\nacts.  Enough for me to will what I wish, and sink calmly into slumber,\nsure that the will would work somehow its way.  But when I have willed to\nknow what, when known, should shape my own courses, I could see, without\naid from your pitiful telescopes, all objects howsoever far.  What wonder\nin that?  Have you no learned puzzle-brained metaphysicians who tell you\nthat space is but an idea, all this palpable universe an idea in the mind,\nand no more?  Why am I an enigma as dark as the Sibyls, and your\nmetaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?\"  Again the sardonic laugh.\n\"Enough: let what I have said obscure or enlighten your guesses, we come\nback to the same link of union, which binds man to man, bids States arise\nfrom the desert, and foeman embrace as brothers.  I need you and you need\nme; without your aid my life is doomed; without my secret the breath will\nhave gone from the lips of your Lilian before the sun of to-morrow is red\non the hill-tops.\"\n\n\"Fiend or juggler,\" I cried in rage, \"you shall not so enslave and\nenthrall me by this mystic farrago and jargon.  Make your fantastic\nexperiment on yourself if you will: trust to your arts and your powers.\nMy Lilian's life shall not hang on your fiat.  I trust it--to--\"\n\n\"To what--to man's skill?  Hear what the sage of the college shall tell\nyou, before I ask you again for your aid.  Do you trust to God's saving\nmercy?  Ah, of course you believe in a God?  Who, except a philosopher,\ncan reason a Maker away?  But that the Maker will alter His courses to\nhear you; that, whether or not you trust in Him, or in your doctor, it\nwill change by a hairbreadth the thing that must be--do you believe this,\nAllen Fenwick?\"\n\nAnd there sat this reader of hearts! a boy in his aspect, mocking me and\nthe graybeards of schools.\n\nI could listen no more; I turned to the door and fled down the stairs, and\nheard, as I fled, a low chant: feeble and faint, it was still the old\nbarbaric chant, by which the serpent is drawn from its hole by the\ncharmer.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXVII.\n\nTo those of my readers who may seek with Julius Faber to explore, through\nintelligible causes, solutions of the marvels I narrate, Margrave's\nconfession may serve to explain away much that my own superstitious\nbeliefs had obscured.  To them Margrave is evidently the son of Louis\nGrayle.  The elixir of life is reduced to some simple restorative, owing\nmuch of its effect to the faith of a credulous patient: youth is so soon\nrestored to its joy in the sun, with or without an elixir.  To them\nMargrave's arts of enchantment are reduced to those idiosyncrasies of\ntemperament on which the disciples of Mesmer build up their\ntheories,--exaggerated, in much, by my own superstitions; aided, in part,\nby such natural, purely physical magic as, explored by the ancient\npriest-crafts, is despised by the modern philosophies, and only remains\noccult because Science delights no more in the slides of the lantern which\nfascinated her childhood with simulated phantoms.  To them Margrave is,\nperhaps, an enthusiast, but, because an enthusiast, not less an impostor.\n\"L'Homme se pique,\" says Charron.  Man cogs the dice for himself ere he\nrattles the box for his dupes.  Was there ever successful impostor who did\nnot commence by a fraud on his own understanding?  Cradled in Orient\nFableland, what though Margrave believes in its legends; in a wand, an\nelixir; in sorcerers or Afrites?  That belief in itself makes him keen to\ndetect, and skilful to profit by, the latent but kindred credulities of\nothers.  In all illustrations of Duper and Duped through the records of\nsuperstition--from the guile of a Cromwell, a Mahomet, down to the cheats\nof a gypsy--professional visionaries are amongst the astutest observers.\nThe knowledge that Margrave had gained of my abode, of my affliction, or\nof the innermost thoughts in my mind, it surely demanded no preternatural\naids to acquire.  An Old Bailey attorney could have got at the one, and\nany quick student of human hearts have readily mastered the other.  In\nfine, Margrave, thus rationally criticised, is no other prodigy (save in\ndegree and concurrence of attributes simple, though not very common) than\nmay be found in each alley that harbours a fortune-teller who has just\nfaith enough in the stars or the cards to bubble himself while he swindles\nhis victims; earnest, indeed, in the self-conviction that he is really a\nseer, but reading the looks of his listeners, divining the thoughts that\ninduce them to listen, and acquiring by practice a startling ability to\njudge what the listeners will deem it most seer-like to read in the cards\nor divine from the stars.\n\n\nI leave this interpretation unassailed.  It is that which is the most\nprobable; it is clearly that which, in a case not my own, I should have\naccepted; and yet I revolved and dismissed it.  The moment we deal with\nthings beyond our comprehension, and in which our own senses are appealed\nto and baffled, we revolt from the Probable, as it seems to the senses of\nthose who have not experienced what we have.  And the same principle of\nWonder that led our philosophy up from inert ignorance into restless\nknowledge, now winding back into shadow land, reverses its rule by the\nway, and, at last, leaves us lost in the maze, our knowledge inert, and\nour ignorance restless.\n\nAnd putting aside all other reasons for hesitating to believe that\nMargrave was the son of Louis Grayle,--reasons which his own narrative\nmight suggest,--was it not strange that Sir Philip Derval, who had\ninstituted inquiries so minute, and reported them in his memoir with so\nfaithful a care, should not have discovered that a youth, attended by the\nsame woman who had attended Grayle, had disappeared from the town on the\nsame night as Grayle himself disappeared?  But Derval had related\ntruthfully, according to Margrave's account, the flight of Ayesha and her\nIndian servant, yet not alluded to the flight, not even to the existence\nof the boy, who must have been of no mean importance in the suite of Louis\nGrayle, if he were, indeed, the son whom Grayle had made his constant\ncompanion, and constituted his principal heir.  Not many minutes did I\ngive myself up to the cloud of reflections through which no sunbeam of\nlight forced its way.  One thought overmastered all; Margrave had\nthreatened death to my Lilian, and warned me of what I should learn from\nthe lips of Faber, \"the sage of the college.\"  I stood, shuddering, at the\ndoor of my home; I did not dare to enter.\n\n\"Allen,\" said a voice, in which my ear detected the unwonted tremulous\nfaltering, \"be firm,--be calm.  I keep my promise.  The hour is come in\nwhich you may again see the Lilian of old, mind to mind, soul to soul.\"\n\nFaber's hand took mine, and led me into the house.\n\n\"You do, then, fear that this interview will be too much for her\nstrength?\" said I, whisperingly.\n\n\"I cannot say; but she demands the interview, and I dare not refuse it.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXVIII.\n\nI left Faber on the stairs, and paused at the door of Lilian's room.  The\ndoor opened suddenly, noiselessly, and her mother came out with one hand\nbefore her face, and the other locked in Amy's, who was leading her as a\nchild leads the blind.  Mrs. Ashleigh looked up, as I touched her, with a\nvacant, dreary stare.  She was not weeping, as was her womanly wont in\nevery pettier grief, but Amy was.  No word was exchanged between us.  I\nentered, and closed the door; my eyes turned mechanically to the corner in\nwhich was placed the small virgin bed, with its curtains white as a\nshroud.  Lilian was not there.  I looked around, and saw her half reclined\non a couch near the window.  She was dressed, and with care.  Was not that\nher bridal robe?\n\n\"Allen!  Allen!\" she murmured.  \"Again, again my Allen--again, again your\nLilian!\"  And, striving in vain to rise, she stretched out her arms in the\nyearning of reunited love.  And as I knelt beside her, those arms closed\nround me for the first time in the frank, chaste, holy tenderness of a\nwife's embrace.\n\n\"Ah!\" she said, in her low voice (her voice, like Cordelia's, was ever\nlow), \"all has come back to me,--all that I owe to your protecting, noble,\ntrustful, guardian love!\"\n\n\"Hush! hush! the gratitude rests with me; it is so sweet to love, to\ntrust, to guard! my own, my beautiful--still my beautiful!  Suffering has\nnot dimmed the light of those dear eyes to me!  Put your lips to my\near.  Whisper but these words: 'I love you, and for your sake I wish to\nlive.'\"\n\n\"For your sake, I pray--with my whole weak human heart--I pray to live!\nListen.  Some day hereafter, if I am spared, under the purple blossoms of\nyonder waving trees I shall tell you all, as I see it now; all that\ndarkened or shone on me in my long dream, and before the dream closed\naround me, like a night in which cloud and star chase each other!  Some\nday hereafter, some quiet, sunlit, happy, happy day!  But now, all I would\nsay is this: Before that dreadful morning--\"  Here she paused, shuddered,\nand passionately burst forth, \"Allen, Allen! you did not believe that\nslanderous letter!  God bless you!  God bless you!  Great-hearted,\nhigh-souled--God bless you, my darling! my husband!  And He will!  Pray to\nHim humbly as I do, and He will bless you.\"  She stooped and kissed away\nmy tears; then she resumed, feebly, meekly, sorrowfully,--\n\n\"Before that morning I was not worthy of such a heart, such a love as\nyours.  No, no; hear me.  Not that a thought of love for another ever\ncrossed me!  Never, while conscious and reasoning, was I untrue to you,\neven in fancy.  But I was a child,--wayward as the child who pines for\nwhat earth cannot give, and covets the moon for a toy.  Heaven had been so\nkind to my lot on earth, and yet with my lot on earth I was secretly\ndiscontented.  When I felt that you loved me, and my heart told me that I\nloved again, I said to myself, 'Now the void that my soul finds on earth\nwill be filled.'  I longed for your coming, and yet when you went I\nmurmured, 'But is this the ideal of which I have dreamed?'  I asked for an\nimpossible sympathy.  Sympathy with what?  Nay, smile on me,\ndearest!--sympathy with what?  I could not have said.  Ah, Allen, then,\nthen, I was not worthy of you!  Infant that I was, I asked you to\nunderstand me: now I know that I am a woman, and my task is to study you.\nDo I make myself clear?  Do you forgive me?  I was not untrue to you; I\nwas untrue to my own duties in life.  I believed, in my vain conceit, that\na mortal's dim vision of heaven raised me above the earth; I did not\nperceive the truth that earth is a part of the same universe as heaven!\nNow, perhaps, in the awful affliction that darkened my reason, my soul has\nbeen made more clear.  As if to chastise but to teach me, my soul has been\npermitted to indulge its own presumptuous desire; it has wandered forth\nfrom the trammels of mortal duties and destinies; it comes back, alarmed\nby the dangers of its own rash and presumptuous escape from the tasks\nwhich it should desire upon earth to perform.  Allen, Allen, I am less\nunworthy of you now!  Perhaps in my darkness one rapid glimpse of the true\nworld of spirit has been vouchsafed to me.  If so, how unlike to the\nvisions my childhood indulged as divine!  Now, while I know still more\ndeeply that there is a world for the angels, I know, also, that the mortal\nmust pass through probation in the world of mortals.  Oh, may I pass\nthrough it with you, grieving in your griefs, rejoicing in your joy!\"\n\nHere language failed her.  Again the dear arms embraced me, and the dear\nface, eloquent with love, hid itself on my human breast.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXIX.\n\nThat interview is over!  Again I am banished from Lilian's room; the\nagitation, the joy of that meeting has overstrained her enfeebled nerves.\nConvulsive tremblings of the whole frame, accompanied with vehement sobs,\nsucceeded our brief interchange of sweet and bitter thoughts.  Faber, in\ntearing me from her side, imperiously and sternly warned me that the sole\nchance yet left of preserving her life was in the merciful suspense of the\nemotions that my presence excited.  He and Amy resumed their place in her\nchamber.  Even her mother shared my sentence of banishment.  So Mrs.\nAshleigh and I sat facing each other in the room below; over me a leaden\nstupor had fallen, and I heard, as a voice from afar or in a dream, the\nmother's murmured wailings,\n\n\"She will die! she will die!  Her eyes have the same heavenly look as my\nGilbert's on the day on which his closed forever.  Her very words are his\nlast words,--'Forgive me all my faults to you.' She will die! she will\ndie!\"\n\nHours thus passed away.  At length Faber entered the room; he spoke first\nto Mrs. Ashleigh,--meaningless soothings, familiar to the lips of all who\npass from the chamber of the dying to the presence of mourners, and know\nthat it is a falsehood to say \"hope,\" and a mockery as yet, to say,\n\"endure.\"\n\nBut he led her away to her own room, docile as a wearied child led to\nsleep, stayed with her some time, and then returned to me, pressing me to\nhis breast father-like.\n\n\"No hope! no hope!\" said I, recoiling from his embrace.  \"You are silent.\nSpeak! speak!  Let me know the worst.\"\n\n\"I have a hope, yet I scarcely dare to bid you share it; for it grows\nrather out of my heart as man than my experience as physician.  I cannot\nthink that her soul would be now so reconciled to earth, so fondly, so\nearnestly, cling to this mortal life, if it were about to be summoned\naway.  You know how commonly even the sufferers who have dreaded death the\nmost become calmly resigned to its coming, when death visibly reveals\nitself out from the shadows in which its shape has been guessed and not\nseen.  As it is a bad sign for life when the patient has lost all will to\nlive on, so there is hope while the patient, yet young and with no\nperceptible breach in the great centres of life (however violently their\nforts may be stormed), has still intense faith in recovery, perhaps drawn\n(who can say?) from the whispers conveyed from above to the soul.\n\n\"I cannot bring myself to think that all the uses for which a reason,\nalways so lovely even in its errors, has been restored, are yet fulfilled.\nIt seems to me as if your union, as yet so imperfect, has still for its\nend that holy life on earth by which two mortal beings strengthen each\nother for a sphere of existence to which this is the spiritual ladder.\nThrough yourself I have hope yet for her.  Gifted with powers that rank\nyou high in the manifold orders of man,--thoughtful, laborious, and brave;\nwith a heart that makes intellect vibrate to every fine touch of humanity;\nin error itself, conscientious; in delusion, still eager for truth; in\nanger, forgiving; in wrong, seeking how to repair; and, best of all,\nstrong in a love which the mean would have shrunk to defend from the fangs\nof the slanderer,--a love, raising passion itself out of the realm of the\nsenses, made sublime by the sorrows that tried its devotion,--with all\nthese noble proofs in yourself of a being not meant to end here, your life\nhas stopped short in its uses, your mind itself has been drifted, a bark\nwithout rudder or pilot, over seas without shore, under skies without\nstars.  And wherefore?  Because the mind you so haughtily vaunted has\nrefused its companion and teacher in Soul.\n\n\"And therefore, through you, I hope that she will be spared yet to live\non; she, in whom soul has been led dimly astray, by unheeding the checks\nand the definite goals which the mind is ordained to prescribe to its\nwanderings while here; the mind taking thoughts from the actual and\nvisible world, and the soul but vague glimpses and hints from the instinct\nof its ultimate heritage.  Each of you two seems to me as yet incomplete,\nand your destinies yet uncompleted.  Through the bonds of the heart,\nthrough the trials of time, ye have both to consummate your marriage.  I\ndo not--believe me--I do not say this in the fanciful wisdom of allegory\nand type, save that, wherever deeply examined, allegory and type run\nthrough all the most commonplace phases of outward and material life.  I\nhope, then, that she may yet be spared to you; hope it, not from my skill\nas physician, but my inward belief as a Christian.  To perfect your own\nbeing and end, 'Ye will need one another!'\"\n\nI started--the very words that Lilian had heard in her vision!\n\n\"But,\" resumed Faber, \"how can I presume to trace the numberless links of\neffect up to the First Cause, far off--oh; far off--out of the scope of my\nreason.  I leave that to philosophers, who would laugh my meek hope to\nscorn.  Possibly, probably, where I, whose calling has been but to save\nflesh from the worm, deem that the life of your Lilian is needed yet, to\ndevelop and train your own convictions of soul, Heaven in its wisdom may\nsee that her death would instruct you far more than her life.  I have\nsaid, Be prepared for either,--wisdom through joy, or wisdom through\ngrief.  Enough that, looking only through the mechanism by which this\nmoral world is impelled and improved, you know that cruelty is impossible\nto wisdom.  Even a man, or man's law, is never wise but when merciful.\nBut mercy has general conditions; and that which is mercy to the myriads\nmay seem hard to the one, and that which seems hard to the one in the pang\nof a moment may be mercy when viewed by the eye that looks on through\neternity.\"\n\nAnd from all this discourse--of which I now, at calm distance of time,\nrecall every word--my human, loving heart bore away for the moment but\nthis sentence, \"Ye will need one another;\" so that I cried out, \"Life,\nlife, life!  Is there no hope for her life?  Have you no hope as\nphysician?  I am a physician, too; I will see her.  I will judge.  I will\nnot be banished from my post.\"\n\n\"Judge, then, as physician, and let the responsibility rest with you.  At\nthis moment, all convulsion, all struggle, has ceased; the frame is at\nrest.  Look on her, and perhaps only the physician's eye could distinguish\nher state from death.  It is not sleep, it is not trance, it is not the\ndooming coma from which there is no awaking.  Shall I call it by the name\nreceived in our schools?  Is it the catalepsy in which life is suspended,\nbut consciousness acute?  She is motionless, rigid; it is but with a\nstrain of my own sense that I know that the breath still breathes, and the\nheart still beats.  But I am convinced that though she can neither speak,\nnor stir, nor give sign, she is fully, sensitively conscious of all that\npasses around her.  She is like those who have seen the very coffin\ncarried into their chamber, and been unable to cry out, 'Do not bury me\nalive!'  Judge then for yourself, with this intense consciousness and this\nimpotence to evince it, what might be the effect of your presence,--first\nan agony of despair, and then the complete extinction of life!\"\n\n\"I have known but one such case,--a mother whose heart was wrapped up in a\nsuffering infant.  She had lain for two days and two nights, still, as if\nin her shroud.  All save myself said, 'Life is gone.'  I said, 'Life still\nis there.' They brought in the infant, to try what effect its presence\nwould produce; then her lips moved, and the hands crossed upon her bosom\ntrembled.\"\n\n\"And the result?\" exclaimed Faber, eagerly.  \"If the result of your\nexperience sanction your presence, come; the sight of the babe rekindled\nlife?\"\n\n\"No; extinguished its last spark!  I will not enter Lilian's room.  I will\ngo away,--away from the house itself.  That acute consciousness!  I know\nit well!  She may even hear me move in the room below, hear me speak at\nthis moment.  Go back to her, go back!  But if hers be the state which I\nhave known in another, which may be yet more familiar to persons of far\nampler experience than mine, there is no immediate danger of death.  The\nstate will last through to-day, through to-night, perhaps for days to\ncome.  Is it so?\"\n\n\"I believe that for at least twelve hours there will be no change in her\nstate.  I believe also that if she recover from it, calm and refreshed, as\nfrom a sleep, the danger of death will have passed away.\"\n\n\"And for twelve hours my presence would be hurtful?\"\n\n\"Rather say fatal, if my diagnosis be right.\"\n\nI wrung my friend's hand, and we parted.\n\nOh, to lose her now!--now that her love and her reason had both returned,\neach more vivid than before!  Futile, indeed, might be Margrave's boasted\nsecret; but at least in that secret was hope.  In recognized science I saw\nonly despair.\n\nAnd at that thought all dread of this mysterious visitor vanished,--all\nanxiety to question more of his attributes or his history.  His life\nitself became to me dear and precious.  What if it should fail me in the\nsteps of the process, whatever that was, by which the life of my Lilian\nmight be saved!\n\nThe shades of evening were now closing in.  I remembered that I had left\nMargrave without even food for many hours.  I stole round to the back of\nthe house, filled a basket with elements more generous than those of the\nformer day; extracted fresh drugs from my stores, and, thus laden, hurried\nback to the hut.  I found Margrave in the room below, seated on his\nmysterious coffer, leaning his face on his hand.  When I entered, he\nlooked up, and said,--\n\n\"You have neglected me.  My strength is waning.  Give me more of the\ncordial, for we have work before us to-night, and I need support.\"\n\nHe took for granted my assent to his wild experiment; and he was right.\n\nI administered the cordial.  I placed food before him, and this time he\ndid not eat with repugnance.  I poured out wine, and he drank it\nsparingly, but with ready compliance, saying, \"In perfect health, I looked\nupon wine as poison; now it is like a foretaste of the glorious elixir.\"\n\nAfter he had thus recruited himself, he seemed to acquire an energy that\nstartlingly contrasted his languor the day before; the effort of breathing\nwas scarcely perceptible; the colour came back to his cheeks; his bended\nframe rose elastic and erect.\n\n\"If I understood you rightly,\" said I, \"the experiment you ask me to aid\ncan be accomplished in a single night?\"\n\n\"In a single night,--this night.\"\n\n\"Command me.  Why not begin at once?  What apparatus or chemical agencies\ndo you need?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Margrave, \"formerly, how I was misled!  Formerly, how my\nconjectures blundered!  I thought, when I asked you to give a month to the\nexperiment I wish to make, that I should need the subtlest skill of the\nchemist.  I then believed, with Van Helmont, that the principle of life is\na gas, and that the secret was but in the mode by which the gas might be\nrightly administered.  But now all that I need is contained in this\ncoffer, save one very simple material,--fuel sufficient for a steady fire\nfor six hours.  I see even that is at hand, piled up in your outhouse.\nAnd now for the substance itself,--to that you must guide me.\"\n\n\"Explain.\"\n\n\"Near this very spot is there not gold--in mines yet undiscovered?--and\ngold of the purest metal?\"\n\n\"There is.  What then?  Do you, with the alchemists, blend in one\ndiscovery gold and life?\"\n\n\"No.  But it is only where the chemistry of earth or of man produces gold,\nthat the substance from which the great pabulum of life is extracted by\nferment can be found.  Possibly, in the attempts at that transmutation of\nmetals, which I think your own great chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, allowed\nmight be possible, but held not to be worth the cost of the\nprocess,--possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains of this\nsubstance were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, with grains of\nthe metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature's stupendous\nlaboratory; and from such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps,\nhave been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to some feeble\ngraybeard,--granting, what rests on no proofs, that some of the alchemists\nreached an age rarely given to man.  But it is not in the miserly\ncrucible, it is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we must seek in\nprolific abundance Nature's grand principle,--life.  As the loadstone is\nrife with the magnetic virtue, as amber contains the electric, so in this\nsubstance, to which we yet want a name, is found the bright life-giving\nfluid.  In the old goldmines of Asia and Europe the substance exists, but\ncan rarely be met with.  The soil for its nutriment may there be well-nigh\nexhausted.  It is here, where Nature herself is all vital with youth, that\nthe nutriment of youth must be sought.  Near this spot is gold; guide me\nto it.\"\n\n\"You cannot come with me.  The place which I know as auriferous is some\nmiles distant, the way rugged.  You can not walk to it.  It is true I have\nhorses, but--\"\n\n\"Do you think I have come this distance and not foreseen and forestalled\nall that I want for my object?  Trouble your self not with conjectures how\nI can arrive at the place.  I have provided the means to arrive at and\nleave it.  My litter and its bearers are in reach of my call.  Give me\nyour arm to the rising ground, fifty yards from your door.\"\n\nI obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise.  I had made my resolve, and\nadmitted no thought that could shake it.  When we reached the summit of\nthe grassy hillock, which sloped from the road that led to the seaport,\nMargrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voice, in a key,\nnot loud, but shrill and slow and prolonged, half cry and half chant, like\nthe nighthawk's.  Through the air--so limpid and still, bringing near far\nobjects, far sounds--the voice pierced its way, artfully pausing, till\nwave after wave of the atmosphere bore and transmitted it on.\n\nIn a few minutes the call seemed re-echoed, so exactly, so cheerily, that\nfor the moment I thought that the note was the mimicry of the shy mocking\nLyre-Bird, which mimics so merrily all that it hears in its coverts, from\nthe whir of the locust to the howl of the wild dog.\n\n\"What king,\" said the mystical charmer, and as he spoke he carelessly\nrested his hand on my shoulder, so that I trembled to feel that this dread\nson of Nature, Godless and soulless, who had been--and, my heart\nwhispered, who still could be--my bane and mind-darkener, leaned upon me\nfor support, as the spoilt younger-born on his brother,--\"what king,\" said\nthis cynical mocker, with his beautiful boyish face,--\"what king in your\ncivilized Europe has the sway of a chief of the East?  What link is so\nstrong between mortal and mortal, as that between lord and slave?  I\ntransport yon poor fools from the land of their birth; they preserve here\ntheir old habits,--obedience and awe.  They would wait till they starved\nin the solitude,--wait to hearken and answer my call.  And I, who thus\nrule them, or charm them--I use and despise them.  They know that, and yet\nserve me!  Between you and me, my philosopher, there is but one thing\nworth living for,--life for oneself.\"\n\nIs it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, in my solemn\ncompleteness of man?  Perhaps, in great capitals, young men of pleasure\nwill answer, \"It is youth; and we think what he says!\"  Young friends, I\ndo not believe you.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXX.\n\nAlong the grass-track I saw now, under the moon, just risen, a strange\nprocession, never seen before in Australian pastures.  It moved on,\nnoiselessly but quickly.  We descended the hillock, and met it on the\nway,--a sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar Eastern garments;\ntwo other servitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans and\nsilver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this sombre equipage.\nPerhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through my\nmind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he said, with a hollow, bitter\nlaugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once melodious mirth,--\n\n\"A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too, will have\nthe tastes of a pacha.\"\n\nI made no answer.  I had ceased to care who and what was my tempter.  To\nme his whole being was resolved into one problem: Had he a secret by which\ndeath could be turned from Lilian?\n\nBut now, as the litter halted, from the long dark shadow which it cast\nupon the turf the figure of a woman emerged and stood before us.  The\noutlines of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black mantle, and\nthe features of her face were hidden by a black veil, except only the\ndark, bright, solemn eyes.  Her stature was lofty, her bearing majestic,\nwhether in movement or repose.\n\nMargrave accosted her in some language unknown to me.  She replied in what\nseemed to me the same tongue.  The tones of her voice were sweet, but\ninexpressibly mournful.  The words that they uttered appeared intended to\nwarn, or deprecate, or dissuade; but they called to Margrave's brow a\nlowering frown, and drew from his lips a burst of unmistakable anger.  The\nwoman rejoined, in the same melancholy music of voice.  And Margrave then,\nleaning his arm upon her shoulder, as he had leaned it on mine, drew her\naway from the group into a neighbouring copse of the flowering\neucalypti,--mystic trees, never changing the hues of their pale-green\nleaves, ever shifting the tints of their ash-gray, shedding bark.  For\nsome moments I gazed on the two human forms, dimly seen by the glinting\nmoonlight through the gaps in the foliage.  Then turning away my eyes, I\nsaw, standing close at my side, a man whom I had not noticed before.  His\nfootstep, as it stole to me, had fallen on the sward without sound.  His\ndress, though Oriental, differed from that of his companions, both in\nshape and colour; fitting close to the breast, leaving the arms bare to\nthe elbow, and of a uniform ghastly white, as are the cerements of the\ngrave.  His visage was even darker than those of the Syrians or Arabs\nbehind him, and his features were those of a bird of prey,--the beak of\nthe eagle, but the eye of the vulture.  His cheeks were hollow; the arms,\ncrossed on his breast, were long and fleshless.  Yet in that skeleton form\nthere was a something which conveyed the idea of a serpent's suppleness\nand strength; and as the hungry, watchful eyes met my own startled gaze, I\nrecoiled impulsively with that inward warning of danger which is conveyed\nto man, as to inferior animals, in the very aspect of the creatures that\nsting or devour.  At my movement the man inclined his head in the\nsubmissive Eastern salutation, and spoke in his foreign tongue, softly,\nhumbly, fawningly, to judge by his tone and his gesture.\n\nI moved yet farther away from him with loathing, and now the human thought\nflashed upon me: was I, in truth, exposed to no danger in trusting myself\nto the mercy of the weird and remorseless master of those hirelings from\nthe East,--seven men in number, two at least of them formidably armed, and\ndocile as bloodhounds to the hunter, who has only to show them their\nprey?  But fear of man like myself is not my weakness; where fear found\nits way to my heart, it was through the doubts or the fancies in which man\nlike myself disappeared in the attributes, dark and unknown, which we give\nto a fiend or a spectre.  And, perhaps, if I could have paused to analyze\nmy own sensations, the very presence of this escort-creatures of flesh and\nblood-lessened the dread of my incomprehensible tempter.  Rather, a\nhundred times, front and defy those seven Eastern slaves--I, haughty son\nof the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds--than\nhave seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless\nShadow!  Besides: Lilian!  Lilian! for one chance of saving her life,\nhowever wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not\na foot from the march of an army.\n\nThus reassured and thus resolved, I advanced, with a smile of disdain, to\nmeet Margrave and his veiled companion, as they now came from the moonlit\ncopse.\n\n\"Well,\" I said to him, with an irony that unconsciously mimicked his own,\n\"have you taken advice with your nurse?  I assume that the dark form by\nyour side is that of Ayesha.\"\n\nThe woman looked at me from her sable veil, with her steadfast solemn\neyes, and said, in English, though with a foreign accent: \"The nurse born\nin Asia is but wise through her love; the pale son of Europe is wise\nthrough his art.  The nurse says, 'Forbear!'  Do you say, 'Adventure'?\"\n\n\"Peace!\" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot on the ground.  \"I take no\ncounsel from either; it is for me to resolve, for you to obey, and for him\nto aid.  Night is come, and we waste it; move on.\"\n\nThe woman made no reply, nor did I.  He took my arm and walked back to the\nhut.  The barbaric escort followed.  When we reached the door of the\nbuilding, Margrave said a few words to the woman and to the\nlitter-bearers.  They entered the but with us.  Margrave pointed out to\nthe woman his coffer, to the men the fuel stowed in the outhouse.  Both\nwere borne away and placed within the litter.  Meanwhile, I took from the\ntable, on which it was carelessly thrown, the light hatchet that I\nhabitually carried with me in my rambles.\n\n\"Do you think that you need that idle weapon?\" said Margrave.  \"Do you\nfear the good faith of my swarthy attendants?\"\n\n\"Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever the gold from the\nquartz in which we may find it embedded, or to clear, as this shovel,\nwhich will also be needed, from the slight soil above it, the ore that the\nmine in the mountain flings forth, as the sea casts its waifs on the\nsands.\"\n\n\"Give me your hand, fellow-labourer!\" said Margrave, joyfully.  \"Ah, there\nis no faltering terror in this pulse!  I was not mistaken in the Man.\nWhat rests, but the Place and the Hour?  I shall live!  I shall live!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXI.\n\nMargrave now entered the litter, and the Veiled Woman drew the black\ncurtains round him.  I walked on, as the guide, some yards in advance.\nThe air was still, heavy, and parched with the breath of the Australasian\nsirocco.\n\nWe passed through the meadow-lands, studded with slumbering flocks; we\nfollowed the branch of the creek, which was linked to its source in the\nmountains by many a trickling waterfall; we threaded the gloom of stunted,\nmisshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark which makes one of the\nsigns of the strata that nourish gold; and at length the moon, now in all\nher pomp of light, mid-heaven amongst her subject stars, gleamed through\nthe fissures of the cave, on whose floor lay the relics of antediluvian\nraces, and rested in one flood of silvery splendour upon the hollows of\nthe extinct volcano, with tufts of dank herbage, and wide spaces of paler\nsward, covering the gold below,--Gold, the dumb symbol of organized\nMatter's great mystery, storing in itself, according as Mind, the informer\nof Matter, can distinguish its uses, evil and good, bane and blessing.\n\nHitherto the Veiled Woman had remained in the rear, with the white-robed,\nskeleton-like image that had crept to my side unawares with its noiseless\nstep.  Thus in each winding turn of the difficult path at which the convoy\nfollowing behind me came into sight, I had seen, first, the two\ngayly-dressed, armed men, next the black bier-like litter, and last the\nBlack-veiled Woman and the White-robed Skeleton.\n\nBut now, as I halted on the tableland, backed by the mountain and fronting\nthe valley, the woman left her companion, passed by the litter and the\narmed men, and paused by my side, at the mouth of the moonlit cavern.\n\nThere for a moment she stood, silent, the procession below mounting upward\nlaboriously and slow; then she turned to me, and her veil was withdrawn.\n\nThe face on which I gazed was wondrously beautiful, and severely awful.\nThere was neither youth nor age, but beauty, mature and majestic as that\nof a marble Demeter.\n\n\"Do you believe in that which you seek?\" she asked, in her foreign,\nmelodious, melancholy accents.\n\n\"I have no belief,\" was my answer.  \"True science has none.  True science\nquestions all things, takes nothing upon credit.  It knows but three\nstates of the mind,--Denial, Conviction, and that vast interval between\nthe two, which is not belief, but suspense of judgment.\"\n\nThe woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a crag\nabove that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had first\ndiscovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the clouds had\ngiven the rushing life of the cataract; but which now, in the drought and\nthe hush of the skies, was but a dead pile of stones.\n\nThe litter now ascended the height: its bearers halted; a lean hand tore\nthe curtains aside, and Margrave descended, leaning, this time, not on the\nBlack-veiled Woman, but on the White-robed Skeleton.\n\nThere, as he stood, the moon shone full on his wasted form; on his face,\nresolute, cheerful, and proud, despite its hollowed outlines and sicklied\nhues.  He raised his head, spoke in the language unknown to me, and the\narmed men and the litter-bearers grouped round him, bending low, their\neyes fixed on the ground.  The Veiled Woman rose slowly and came to his\nside, motioning away, with a mute sign, the ghastly form on which he\nleaned, and passing round him silently, instead, her own sustaining arm.\nMargrave spoke again a few sentences, of which I could not even guess the\nmeaning.  When he had concluded, the armed men and the litter-bearers came\nnearer to his feet, knelt down, and kissed his hand.  They then rose, and\ntook from the bier-like vehicle the coffer and the fuel.  This done, they\nlifted again the litter, and again, preceded by the armed men, the\nprocession descended down the sloping hillside, down into the valley\nbelow.\n\nMargrave now whispered, for some moments, into the ear of the hideous\ncreature who had made way for the Veiled Woman.  The grim skeleton bowed\nhis head submissively, and strode noiselessly away through the long\ngrasses,--the slender stems, trampled under his stealthy feet, relifting\nthemselves, as after a passing wind.  And thus he, too, sank out of sight\ndown into the valley below.  On the tableland of the hill remained only we\nthree,--Margrave, myself, and the Veiled Woman.\n\nShe had reseated herself apart, on the gray crag above the dried torrent.\nHe stood at the entrance of the cavern, round the sides of which clustered\nparasital plants, with flowers of all colours, some amongst them opening\ntheir petals and exhaling their fragrance only in the hours of night; so\nthat, as his form filled up the jaws of the dull arch, obscuring the\nmoonbeam that strove to pierce the shadows that slept within, it stood\nnow--wan and blighted--as I had seen it first, radiant and joyous,\nliterally \"framed in blooms.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXII.\n\n\"So,\" said Margrave, turning to me, \"under the soil that spreads around us\nlies the gold which to you and to me is at this moment of no value, except\nas a guide to its twin-born,--the regenerator of life!\"\n\n\"You have not yet described to me the nature of the substance which we are\nto explore, nor of the process by which the virtues you impute to it are\nto be extracted.\"\n\n\"Let us first find the gold, and instead of describing the life-amber, so\nlet me call it, I will point it out to your own eyes.  As to the process,\nyour share in it is so simple, that you will ask me why I seek aid from a\nchemist.  The life-amber, when found, has but to be subjected to heat and\nfermentation for six hours; it will be placed, in a small caldron which\nthat coffer contains, over the fire which that fuel will feed.  To give\neffect to the process, certain alkalies and other ingredients are\nrequired; but these are prepared, and mine is the task to commingle them.\nFrom your science as chemist I need and ask nought.  In you I have sought\nonly the aid of a man.\"\n\n\"If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all?  Why not confide in those\nswarthy attendants, who doubtless are slaves to your orders?\"\n\n\"Confide in slaves! when the first task enjoined to them would be to\ndiscover, and refrain from purloining gold!  Seven such unscrupulous\nknaves, or even one such, and I, thus defenceless and feeble!  Such is not\nthe work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves.  But that is the\nleast of the reasons which exclude them from my choice, and fix my choice\nof assistant on you.  Do you forget what I told you of the danger which\nthe Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt him a second time\nto brave?\"\n\n\"I remember now; those words had passed away from my mind.\"\n\n\"And because they had passed away from your mind, I chose you for my\ncomrade.  I need a man by whom danger is scorned.\"\n\n\"But in the process of which you tell me I see no possible danger unless\nthe ingredients you mix in your caldron have poisonous fumes.\"\n\n\"It is not that.  The ingredients I use are not poisons.\"\n\n\"What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern slaves?  But, if so,\nwhy lead them to these solitudes; and, if so, why not bid me be armed?\"\n\n\"The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait for my summons where\ntheir eyes cannot see what we do.  The danger is of a kind in which the\nboldest son of the East would be more craven, perhaps, than the daintiest\nSybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a panther and laugh at a ghost.\nIn the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure into that realm of\nnature which is closed to philosophy and open to magic, there are races in\nthe magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in the world of a drop.  For\nthe tribes of the drop, science has its microscope.  Of the host of yon\nazure Infinite magic gains sight, and through them gains command over\nfluid conductors that link all the parts of creation.  Of these races,\nsome are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and some dreadly\nhostile.  In all the regular and prescribed conditions of mortal being,\nthis magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air.  But\nwhen a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by which man plies the\nclockwork that measures his hours, and stops when its chain reaches the\nend of its coil, strives to pass over those boundaries at which philosophy\nsays, 'Knowledge ends,'--then he is like all other travellers in regions\nunknown; he must propitiate or brave the tribes that are hostile,--must\ndepend for his life on the tribes that are friendly.  Though your science\ndiscredits the alchemist's dogmas, your learning informs you that all\nalchemists were not ignorant impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove\nthem to have been the nearest allies to your practical knowledge, ever\nhint in their mystical works at the reality of that realm which is open to\nmagic,--ever hint that some means less familiar than furnace and bellows\nare essential to him who explores the elixir of life.  He who once quaffs\nthat elixir, obtains in his very veins the bright fluid by which he\ntransmits the force of his will to agencies dormant in nature, to giants\nunseen in the space.  And here, as he passes the boundary which divides\nhis allotted and normal mortality from the regions and races that magic\nalone can explore, so, here, he breaks down the safeguard between himself\nand the tribes that are hostile.  Is it not ever thus between man and man?\nLet a race the most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a\nriver or mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if it\npass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace.  But if\nambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross the river, with design\nto subdue and enslave the population they boldly invade, then all the\ninvaded arise in wrath and defiance,--the neighbours are changed into\nfoes.  And therefore this process--by which a simple though rare material\nof nature is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life which brings,\nwith its glorious resistance to Time, desires and faculties to subject to\nits service beings that dwell in the earth and the air and the deep--has\never been one of the same peril which an invader must brave when he\ncrosses the bounds of his nation.  By this key alone you unlock all the\ncells of the alchemist's lore; by this alone understand how a labour,\nwhich a chemist's crudest apprentice could perform, has baffled the giant\nfathers of all your dwarfed children of science.  Nature, that stores this\npriceless boon, seems to shrink from conceding it to man; the invisible\ntribes that abhor him, oppose themselves to the gain that might give them\na master.  The duller of those who were the life-seekers of old would have\ntold you how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope\nat the very point of fruition,--some doltish mistake, some improvident\noversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or\na flaw in the bellows, or a pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by\nfalling asleep by the furnace.  The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to\nmake themselves visible where they can frustrate the bungler, as they mock\nat his toils from their ambush.  But the mightier adventurers, equally\nfoiled in despite of their patience and skill, would have said, 'Not with\nus rests the fault; we neglected no caution, we failed from no oversight.\nBut out from the caldron dread faces arose, and the spectres or demons\ndismayed and baffled us.' Such, then, is the danger which seems so\nappalling to a son of the East, as it seemed to a sees in the dark age of\nEurope.  But we can deride all its threats, you and I.  For myself, I own\nfrankly I take all the safety that the charms and resources of magic\nbestow.  You, for your safety, have the cultured and disciplined reason\nwhich reduces all fantasies to nervous impressions; and I rely on the\ncourage of one who has questioned, unquailing, the Luminous Shadow, and\nwrested from the hand of the magician himself the wand which concentred\nthe wonders of will!\"\n\nTo this strange and long discourse I listened without interruption, and\nnow quietly answered,--\n\n\"I do not merit the trust you affect in my courage; but I am now on my\nguard against the cheats of the fancy, and the fumes of a vapour can\nscarcely bewilder the brain in the open air of this mountain-land.  I\nbelieve in no races like those which you tell me lie viewless in space, as\ndo gases.  I believe not in magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its\nterrors.  For the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage,--the\ncourage that comes from despair.  I submit to your guidance, whatever it\nbe, as a sufferer whom colleges doom to the grave submits to the quack who\nsays, 'Take my specific and live!'  My life is nought in itself; my life\nlives in another.  You and I are both brave from despair; you would turn\ndeath from yourself, I would turn death from one I love more than myself.\nBoth know how little aid we can win from the colleges, and both,\ntherefore, turn to the promises most audaciously cheering.  Dervish or\nmagician, alchemist or phantom, what care you and I?  And if they fail us,\nwhat then?  They cannot fail us more than the colleges do!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXIII.\n\nThe gold has been gained with an easy labour.  I knew where to seek for\nit, whether under the turf or in the bed of the creek.  But Margrave's\neyes, hungrily gazing round every spot from which the ore was disburied,\ncould not detect the substance of which he alone knew the outward\nappearance.  I had begun to believe that, even in the description given to\nhim of this material, he had been credulously duped, and that no such\nmaterial existed, when, coming back from the bed of the watercourse, I saw\na faint yellow gleam amidst the roots of a giant parasite plant, the\nleaves and blossoms of which climbed up the sides of the cave with its\nantediluvian relics.  The gleam was the gleam of gold, and on removing the\nloose earth round the roots of the plant, we came on--No, I will not, I\ndare not, describe it.  The gold-digger would cast it aside, the\nnaturalist would pause not to heed it; and did I describe it, and\nchemistry deign to subject it to analysis, could chemistry alone detach or\ndiscover its boasted virtues?\n\nIts particles, indeed, are very minute, not seeming readily to crystallize\nwith each other; each in itself of uniform shape and size, spherical as\nthe egg which contains the germ of life, and small as the egg from which\nthe life of an insect may quicken.\n\nBut Margrave's keen eye caught sight of the atoms upcast by the light of\nthe moon.  He exclaimed to me, \"Found!  I shall live!\"  And then, as he\ngathered up the grains with tremulous hands, he called out to the Veiled\nWoman, hitherto still seated motionless on the crag.  At his word she rose\nand went to the place bard by, where the fuel was piled, busying herself\nthere.  I had no leisure to heed her.  I continued my search in the soft\nand yielding soil that time and the decay of vegetable life had\naccumulated over the Pre-Adamite strata on which the arch of the cave\nrested its mighty keystone.\n\n\nWhen we had collected of these particles about thrice as much as a man\nmight hold in his hand, we seemed to have exhausted their bed.  We\ncontinued still to find gold, but no more of the delicate substance, to\nwhich, in our sight, gold was as dross.\n\n\"Enough,\" then said Margrave, reluctantly desisting.  \"What we have gained\nalready will suffice for a life thrice as long as legend attributes to\nHaroun.  I shall live,--I shall live through the centuries.\"\n\n\"Forget not that I claim my share.\"\n\n\"Your share--yours!  True--your half of my life!  It is true.\"  He paused\nwith a low, ironical, malignant laugh; and then added, as he rose and\nturned away, \"But the work is yet to be done.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXIV.\n\nWhile we had thus laboured and found, Ayesha had placed the fuel where the\nmoonlight fell fullest on the sward of the tableland,--a part of it\nalready piled as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close at\nhand; and by the pile she had placed the coffer.  And there she stood, her\narms folded under her mantle, her dark image seeming darker still as the\nmoonlight whitened all the ground from which the image rose motionless.\nMargrave opened his coffer, the Veiled Woman did not aid him, and I\nwatched in silence, while he as silently made his weird and wizard-like\npreparations.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXV.\n\nOn the ground a wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently\nwith sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a\npale lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it,\nburning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring,\nlike that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, we call the \"Fairy's\nRing,\" but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent light.  On\nthe ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid\nfrom the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod.  The light emitted by\nthe lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that which circled round the\nring.\n\nWithin the circumference, and immediately round the woodpile, Margrave\ntraced certain geometrical figures, in which--not without a shudder, that\nI overcame at once by a strong effort of will in murmuring to myself the\nname of \"Lilian\"--I recognized the interlaced triangles which my own hand,\nin the spell enforced on a sleep-walker, had described on the floor of the\nwizard's pavilion.  The figures were traced, like the circle, in flame,\nand at the point of each triangle (four in number) was placed a lamp,\nbrilliant as those on the ring.  This task performed, the caldron, based\non an iron tripod, was placed on the wood-pile.  And then the woman,\nbefore inactive and unheeding, slowly advanced, knelt by the pile, and\nlighted it.  The dry wood crackled and the flame burst forth, licking the\nrims of the caldron with tongues of fire.\n\nMargrave flung into the caldron the particles we had collected, poured\nover them first a liquid, colourless as water, from the largest of the\nvessels drawn from his coffer, and then, more sparingly, drops from small\ncrystal phials, like the phials I had seen in the hand of Philip Derval.\n\nHaving surmounted my first impulse of awe, I watched these proceedings,\ncurious yet disdainful, as one who watches the mummeries of an enchanter\non the stage.\n\n\"If,\" thought I, \"these are but artful devices to inebriate and fool my\nown imagination, my imagination is on its guard, and reason shall not,\nthis time, sleep at her post!\"\n\n\"And now,\" said Margrave, \"I consign to you the easy task by which you are\nto merit your share of the elixir.  It is my task to feed and replenish\nthe caldron; it is Ayesha's to heed the fire, which must not for a moment\nrelax in its measured and steady heat.  Your task is the lightest of all\nit is but to renew from this vessel the fluid that burns in the lamps, and\non the ring.  Observe, the contents of the vessel must be thriftily\nhusbanded; there is enough, but not more than enough, to sustain the light\nin the lamps, on the lines traced round the caldron, and on the farther\nring, for six hours.  The compounds dissolved in this fluid are\nscarce,--only obtainable in the East, and even in the East months might\nhave passed before I could have increased my supply.\n\n\"I had no months to waste.  Replenish, then, the light only when it begins\nto flicker or fade.  Take heed, above all, that no part of the outer\nring--no, not an inch--and no lamp of the twelve, that are to its zodiac\nlike stars, fade for one moment in darkness.\"\n\nI took the crystal vessel from his hand.\n\n\"The vessel is small,\" said I, \"and what is yet left of its contents is\nbut scanty; whether its drops suffice to replenish the lights I cannot\nguess,--I can but obey your instructions.  But, more important by far than\nthe light to the lamps and the circle, which in Asia or Africa might scare\naway the wild beasts unknown to this land--more important than light to a\nlamp, is the strength to your frame, weak magician!  What will support you\nthrough six weary hours of night-watch?\"\n\n\"Hope,\" answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling style.  \"Hope!\nI shall live,--I shall live through the centuries!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXVI.\n\nOne hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear in the\nsullen sultry air.  The materials within began to seethe, and their\ncolour, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose hue; from time\nto time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after she had done so\nreseating herself close by the pyre, with her head bowed over her knees,\nand her face hid under her veil.\n\nThe lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now began to\npale.  I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal vessel.  As yet\nnothing strange startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the\ncircle,--nothing audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel-like\nclick of the locusts, and, farther still, in the forest, the howl of the\nwild dogs, that never bark; nothing visible, but the trees and the\nmountain-range girding the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of\nthe cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the gleam of dry\nbones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom.\n\nThe second hour passed like the first.  I had taken my stand by the side\nof Margrave, watching with him the process at work in the caldron, when I\nfelt the ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet, and, looking up, it\nseemed as if all the plains beyond the circle were heaving like the swell\nof the sea, and as if in the air itself there was a perceptible tremor.\n\nI placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and whispered, \"To me earth and\nair seem to vibrate.  Do they seem to vibrate to you?\"\n\n\"I know not, I care not,\" he answered impetuously.  \"The essence is\nbursting the shell that confined it.  Here are my air and my earth!\nTrouble me not.  Look to the circle! feed the lamps if they fail.\"\n\nI passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked towards a place in the ring in\nwhich the flame was waning dim; and I whispered to her the same question\nwhich I had whispered to Margrave.  She looked slowly around, and\nanswered, \"So is it before the Invisible make themselves visible!  Did I\nnot bid him forbear?\"  Her head again drooped on her breast, and her watch\nwas again fixed on the fire.\n\nI advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish the light where it\nwaned.  As I did so, on my arm, which stretched somewhat beyond the line\nof the ring, I felt a shock like that of electricity.  The arm fell to my\nside numbed and nerveless, and from my hand dropped, but within the ring,\nthe vessel that contained the fluid.  Recovering my surprise or my stun,\nhastily with the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some of the scanty\nliquid was already spilled on the sward; and I saw with a thrill of\ndismay, that contrasted indeed the tranquil indifference with which I had\nfirst undertaken my charge, how small a supply was now left.\n\nI went back to Margrave, and told him of the shock, and of its consequence\nin the waste of the liquid.\n\n\"Beware,\" said he, \"that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of the foot,\npass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be thus unhappily stinted,\nreserve all that is left for the protecting circle and the twelve outer\nlamps!  See how the Grand Work advances! how the hues in the caldron are\nglowing blood-red through the film on the surface!\"\n\nAnd now four hours of the six were gone; my arm had gradually recovered\nits strength.  Neither the ring nor the lamps had again required\nreplenishing; perhaps their light was exhausted less quickly, as it was no\nlonger to be exposed to the rays of the intense Australian moon.  Clouds\nhad gathered over the sky, and though the moon gleamed at times in the\ngaps that they left in blue air, her beam was more hazy and dulled.  The\nlocusts no longer were heard in the grass, nor the howl of the dogs in the\nforest.  Out of the circle, the stillness was profound.\n\nAnd about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast Eye!  It drew\nnearer and nearer, seeming to move from the ground at the height of some\nlofty giant.  Its gaze riveted mine; my blood curdled in the blaze from\nits angry ball; and now as it advanced larger and larger, other Eyes, as\nif of giants in its train, grew out from the space in its rear; numbers on\nnumbers, like the spearheads of some Eastern army, seen afar by pale\nwarders of battlements doomed to the dust.  My voice long refused an\nutterance to my awe; at length it burst forth shrill and loud,--\n\n\"Look! look!  Those terrible Eyes!  Legions on legions!  And hark! that\ntramp of numberless feet; they are not seen, but the hollows of earth echo\nthe sound of their march!\"\n\nMargrave, more than ever intent on the caldron, in which, from time to\ntime, he kept dropping powders or essences drawn forth from his coffer,\nlooked up, defyingly, fiercely.\n\n\"Ye come,\" he said, in a low mutter, his once mighty voice sounding hollow\nand labouring, but fearless and firm,--\"ye come,--not to conquer, vain\nrebels!--ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tomb where my\nspell had raised up the ghost of your first human master, the Chaldee!\nEarth and air have their armies still faithful to me, and still I remember\nthe war-song that summons them up to confront you!  Ayesha!  Ayesha!\nrecall the wild troth that we pledged amongst roses; recall the dread bond\nby which we united our sway over hosts that yet own thee as queen, though\nmy sceptre is broken, my diadem reft from my brows!\"\n\nThe Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration.  Her veil now was withdrawn, and\nthe blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself flushed, as with the\nrosy bloom of youth, the grand beauty of her softened face.  It was seen,\ndetached as it were, from her dark-mantled form; seen through the mist of\nthe vapours which rose from the caldron, framing it round like the clouds.\nthat are yieldingly pierced by the light of the evening star.\n\nThrough the haze of the vapour came her voice, more musical, more\nplaintive than I had heard it before, but far softer, more tender; still\nin her foreign tongue; the words unknown to me, and yet their sense,\nperhaps, made intelligible by the love, which has one common language and\none common look to all who have loved,--the love unmistakably heard in the\nloving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face.\n\nA moment or so more, and she had come round from the opposite side of the\nfire-pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed it quietly,\nsolemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her crest rose erect; it\nwas the lioness protecting her young.  She stretched forth her arm from\nthe black mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bent over the\ncaldron,--stretched it towards the haunted and hollow-sounding space\nbeyond, in the gesture of one whose right hand has the sway of the\nsceptre.  And then her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant, not\nloud, yet far-reaching; so thrilling, so sweet, and yet so solemn, that I\ncould at once comprehend how legend united of old the spell of enchantment\nwith the power of song.  All that I recalled of the effects which, in the\nformer time, Margrave's strange chants had produced on the ear that they\nravished and the thoughts they confused, was but as the wild bird's\nimitative carol, compared to the depth and the art and the soul of the\nsinger, whose voice seemed endowed with a charm to enthrall all the tribes\nof creation, though the language it used for that charm might to them, as\nto me, be unknown.  As the song ceased, I heard, from behind, sounds like\nthose I had heard in the spaces before me,--the tramp of invisible feet,\nthe whir of invisible wings, as if armies were marching to aid against\narmies in march to destroy.\n\n\"Look not in front nor around,\" said Ayesha.  \"Look, like him, on the\ncaldron below.  The circle and the lamps are yet bright; I will tell you\nwhen the light again fails.\"\n\nI dropped my eyes on the caldron.\n\n\"See,\" whispered Margrave, \"the sparkles at last begin to arise, and the\nrose-hues to deepen,--signs that we near the last process.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXVII.\n\nThe fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said to me, \"Lo! the circle is\nfading; the lamps grow dim.  Look now without fear on the space beyond;\nthe eyes that appalled thee are again lost in air, as lightnings that\nfleet back into cloud.\"\n\nI looked up, and the spectres had vanished.  The sky was tinged with\nsulphurous hues, the red and the black intermixed.  I replenished the\nlamps and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully; but when I came to the\nsixth lamp, not a drop in the vessel that fed them was left.  In a vague\ndismay, I now looked round the half of the wide circle in rear of the two\nbended figures intent on the caldron.  All along that disk the light was\nalready broken, here and there flickering up, here and there dying down;\nthe six lamps in that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly, as\nstars shrinking fast from the dawn of day.  But it was not the fading\nshine in that half of the magical ring which daunted my eye and quickened\nwith terror the pulse of my heart; the Bushland beyond was on fire.  From\nthe background of the forest rose the flame and the smoke,--the smoke,\nthere, still half smothering the flame.  But along the width of the\ngrasses and herbage, between the verge of the forest and the bed of the\nwater-creek just below the raised platform from which I beheld the dread\nconflagration, the fire was advancing,--wave upon wave, clear and red\nagainst the columns of rock behind,--as the rush of a flood through the\nmists of some Alp crowned with lightnings.\n\nRoused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen by the\nmind I had steeled against far rarer portents of Nature, I cared no more\nfor the lamps and the circle.  Hurrying back to Ayesha, I exclaimed:  \"The\nphantoms have gone from the spaces in front; but what incantation or spell\ncan arrest the red march of the foe, speeding on in the rear!  While we\ngazed on the caldron of life, behind us, unheeded, behold the Destroyer!\"\n\nAyesha looked, and made no reply; but, as by involuntary instinct, bowed\nher majestic head, then rearing it erect, placed herself yet more\nimmediately before the wasted form of the young magician (he still bending\nover the caldron, and hearing me not in the absorption and hope of his\nwatch),--placed herself before him, as the bird whose first care is her\nfledgling.\n\nAs we two there stood, fronting the deluge of fire, we heard Margrave\nbehind us, murmuring low, \"See the bubbles of light, how they sparkle and\ndance!  I shall live, I shall live!\"  And his words scarcely died in our\nears before, crash upon crash, came the fall of the age-long trees in the\nforest; and nearer, all near us, through the blazing grasses, the hiss of\nthe serpents, the scream of-the birds, and the bellow and tramp of the\nherds plunging wild through the billowy red of their pastures.\n\nAyesha now wound her arms around Margrave, and wrenched him, reluctant and\nstruggling, from his watch over the seething caldron.  In rebuke; of his\nangry exclamations, she pointed to the march of the fire, spoke in\nsorrowful tones a few words in her own language, and then, appealing to me\nin English, said,--\n\n\"I tell him that here the Spirits who oppose us have summoned a foe that\nis deaf to my voice, and--\"\n\n\"And,\" exclaimed Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort, but with the\nswell of a voice which drowned all the discords of terror and of agony\nsent forth from the Phlegethon burning below,--\"and this witch, whom I\ntrusted, is a vile slave and impostor, more desiring my death than my\nlife.  She thinks that in life I should scorn and forsake her, that in\ndeath I should die in her arms!  Sorceress, avaunt!  Art thou useless and\npowerless now when I need thee most?  Go!  Let the world be one funeral\npyre!  What to me is the world?  My world is my life!  Thou knowest that\nmy last hope is here,--that all the strength left me this night will die\ndown, like the lamps in the circle, unless the elixir restore it.  Bold\nfriend, spurn that sorceress away.  Hours yet ere those flames can assail\nus!  A few minutes more, and life to your Lilian and me!\"\n\nThus having said, Margrave turned from us, and cast into the caldron the\nlast essence yet left in his empty coffer.  Ayesha silently drew her black\nveil over her face; and turned, with the being she loved, from the terror\nhe scorned, to share in the hope that he cherished.\n\nThus left alone, with my reason disenthralled, disenchanted, I surveyed\nmore calmly the extent of the actual peril with which we were threatened,\nand the peril seemed less, so surveyed.\n\nIt is true all the Bush-land behind, almost up to the bed of the creek,\nwas on fire; but the grasses, through which the flame spread so rapidly,\nceased at the opposite marge of the creek.  Watery pools were still, at\nintervals, left in the bed of the creek, shining tremulous, like waves of\nfire, in the glare reflected from the burning land; and even where the\nwater failed, the stony course of the exhausted rivulet was a barrier\nagainst the march of the conflagration.  Thus, unless the wind, now still,\nshould rise, and waft some sparks to the parched combustible herbage\nimmediately around us, we were saved from the fire, and our work might yet\nbe achieved.\n\nI whispered to Ayesha the conclusion to which I came.  \"Thinkest thou,\"\nshe answered, without raising her mournful head, \"that the Agencies of\nNature are the movements of chance?  The Spirits I invoked to his aid are\nleagued with the hosts that assail.  A mightier than I am has doomed him!\"\n\nScarcely had she uttered these words before Margrave exclaimed, \"Behold\nhow the Rose of the alchemist's dream enlarges its blooms from the folds\nof its petals!  I shall live, I shall live!\"\n\nI looked, and the liquid which glowed in the caldron had now taken a\nsplendour that mocked all comparisons borrowed from the lustre of gems.\nIn its prevalent colour it had, indeed, the dazzle and flash of the ruby;\nbut out from the mass of the molten red, broke coruscations of all prismal\nhues, shooting, shifting, in a play that made the wavelets them selves\nseem living things, sensible of their joy.  No longer was there scum or\nfilm upon the surface; only ever and anon a light rosy vapour floating\nup, and quick lost in the haggard, heavy, sulphurous air, hot with the\nconflagration rushing towards us from behind.  And these coruscations\nformed, on the surface of the molten ruby, literally the shape of a Rose,\nits leaves made distinct in their outlines by sparks of emerald and\ndiamond and sapphire.\n\nEven while gazing on this animated liquid lustre, a buoyant delight seemed\ninfused into my senses; all terrors conceived before were annulled; the\nphantoms, whose armies had filled the wide spaces in front, were\nforgotten; the crash of the forest behind was unheard.  In the reflection\nof that glory, Margrave's wan cheek seemed already restored to the\nradiance it wore when I saw it first in the framework of blooms.\n\nAs I gazed, thus enchanted, a cold hand touched my own.\n\n\"Hush!\"  whispered Ayesha, from the black veil, against which the rays of\nthe caldron fell blunt, and absorbed into Dark.  \"Behind us, the light of\nthe circle is extinct, but there we are guarded from all save the brutal\nand soulless destroyers.  But before!--but before !--see, two of the lamps\nhave died out!--see the blank of the gap in the ring Guard that\nbreach,--there the demons will enter.\"\n\n\"Not a drop is there left in his vessel by which to replenish the lamps on\nthe ring.\"\n\n\"Advance, then; thou hast still the light of the soul, and the demons may\nrecoil before a soul that is dauntless and guiltless.  If not, Three are\nlost!--as it is, One is doomed.\"\n\nThus adjured, silently, involuntarily, I passed from the Veiled Woman's\nside, over the sere lines on the turf which had been traced by the\ntriangles of light long since extinguished, and towards the verge of the\ncircle.  As I advanced, overhead rushed a dark cloud of wings,--birds\ndislodged from the forest on fire, and screaming, in dissonant terror, as\nthey flew towards the farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissed and\nglided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and glancing\nthrough the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating by me,\nbright-eyed and hissing, all made innocuous by fear,--even the terrible\nDeath-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of the circle,\ndid not turn to bite, but crept harmless away.  I halted at the gap\nbetween the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into the\ncrystal vessel.  Were there, indeed, no lingering drops yet left, if but\nto recruit the lamps for some priceless minutes more?  As I thus stood,\nright into the gap between the two dead lamps strode a gigantic Foot.  All\nthe rest of the form was unseen; only, as volume after volume of smoke\npoured on from the burning land behind, it seemed as if one great column\nof vapour, eddying round, settled itself aloft from the circle, and that\nout from that column strode the giant Foot.  And, as strode the Foot, so\nwith it came, like the sound of its tread, a roll of muttered thunder.\n\nI recoiled, with a cry that rang loud through the lurid air.\n\n\"Courage!\" said the voice of Ayesha.  \"Trembling soul, yield not an inch\nto the demon!\"\n\nAt the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of the Veiled Woman's\nvoice, my will seemed to take a force more sublime than its own.  I folded\nmy arms on my breast, and stood as if rooted to the spot, confronting the\ncolumn of smoke and the stride of the giant Foot.  And the Foot halted,\nmute.\n\nAgain, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard a voice,--it was\nMargrave's.\n\n\"The last hour expires, the work is accomplished!  Come! come!  Aid me to\ntake the caldron from the fire; and quick!--or a drop may be wasted in\nvapour--the Elixir of Life from the caldron!\"\n\nAt that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced.\n\nAnd at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from behind, I was stricken down.\nOver me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampling hoofs and glancing\nhorns.  The herds, in their flight from the burning pastures, had rushed\nover the bed of the watercourse, scaled the slopes of the banks.  Snorting\nand bellowing, they plunged their blind way to the mountains.  One cry\nalone, more wild than their own savage blare, pierced the reek through\nwhich the Brute Hurricane swept.  At that cry of wrath and despair I\nstruggled to rise, again dashed to earth by the hoofs and the horns.  But\nwas it the dream-like deceit of my reeling senses, or did I see that giant\nFoot stride past through the close-serried ranks of the maddening herds?\nDid I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar of animal terror, the\nroll of low thunder which followed the stride of that Foot?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXVIII.\n\nWhen my sense had recovered its shock, and my eyes looked dizzily round,\nthe charge of the beasts had swept by; and of all the wild tribes which\nhad invaded the magical circle, the only lingerer was the brown\nDeath-adder, coiled close by the spot where my head had rested.  Beside\nthe extinguished lamps which the hoofs had confusedly scattered, the\nfire, arrested by the watercourse, had consumed the grasses that fed it,\nand there the plains stretched, black and desert as the Phlegroean Field\nof the Poet's Hell.  But the fire still raged in the forest beyond,--white\nflames, soaring up from the trunks of the tallest trees, and forming,\nthrough the sullen dark of the smoke-reek, innumerable pillars of fire,\nlike the halls in the City of fiends.\n\nGathering myself up, I turned my eyes from the terrible pomp of the lurid\nforest, and looked fearfully down on the hoof-trampled sward for my two\ncompanions.\n\nI saw the dark image of Ayesha still seated, still bending, as I had seen\nit last.  I saw a pale hand feebly grasping the rim of the magical\ncaldron, which lay, hurled down from its tripod by the rush of the beasts,\nyards away from the dim fading embers of the scattered wood-pyre.  I saw\nthe faint writhings of a frail wasted frame, over which the Veiled Woman\nwas bending.  I saw, as I moved with bruised limbs to the place, close by\nthe lips of the dying magician, the flash of the ruby-like essence spilled\non the sward, and, meteor-like, sparkling up from the torn tufts of\nherbage.\n\nI now reached Margrave's side.  Bending over him as the Veiled Woman bent,\nand as I sought gently to raise him, he turned his face, fiercely\nfaltering out, \"Touch me not, rob me not!  You share with me!  Never!\nnever!  These glorious drops are all mine!  Die all else!  I will live!  I\nwill live!\"  Writhing himself from my pitying arms, he plunged his face\namidst the beautiful, playful flame of the essence, as if to lap the\nelixir with lips scorched away from its intolerable burning.  Suddenly,\nwith a low shriek, he fell back, his face upturned to mine, and on that\nface unmistakably reigned Death!\n\nThen Ayesha tenderly, silently, drew the young head to her lap, and it\nvanished from my sight behind her black veil.\n\nI knelt beside her, murmuring some trite words of comfort; but she heeded\nme not, rocking herself to and fro as the mother who cradles a child to\nsleep.  Soon the fast-flickering sparkles of the lost elixir died out on\nthe grass; and with their last sportive diamond-like tremble of light, up,\nin all the suddenness of Australian day, rose the sun, lifting himself\nroyally above the mountain-tops, and fronting the meaner blaze of the\nforest as a young king fronts his rebels.  And as there, where the\nbush-fires had ravaged, all was a desert, so there, where their fury had\nnot spread, all was a garden.  Afar, at the foot of the mountains, the\nfugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking back to the pools,\nrenewed the strange grace of their gambols; and the great kingfisher,\nwhose laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome\nthe morn,--which in Europe is night,--alighted bold on the roof of the\ncavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races, extinct\nbefore--so helpless through instincts, so royal through Soul--rose Man!\n\nBut there, on the ground where the dazzling elixir had wasted its\nvirtues,--there the herbage already had a freshness of verdure which, amid\nthe duller sward round it, was like an oasis of green in a desert.  And\nthere wild-flowers, whose chill hues the eye would have scarcely\ndistinguished the day before, now glittered forth in blooms of unfamiliar\nbeauty.  Towards that spot were attracted myriads of happy insects, whose\nhum of intense joy was musically loud.  But the form of the life-seeking\nsorcerer lay rigid and stark; blind to the bloom of the wild-flowers, deaf\nto the glee of the insects,--one hand still resting heavily on the rim of\nthe emptied caldron, and the face still hid behind the Black Veil.  What!\nthe wondrous elixir, sought with such hope and well-nigh achieved through\nsuch dread, fleeting back to the earth from which its material was drawn,\nto give bloom, indeed,--but to herbs: joy indeed,--but to insects!\n\nAnd now, in the flash of the sun, slowly wound up the slopes that led to\nthe circle the same barbaric procession which had sunk into the valley\nunder the ray of the moon.  The armed men came first, stalwart and tall,\ntheir vests brave with crimson and golden lace, their weapons gayly\ngleaming with holiday silver.  After them, the Black Litter.  As they came\nto the place, Ayesha, not raising her head, spoke to them in her own\nEastern tongue.  A wail was her answer.  The armed men bounded forward,\nand the bearers left the litter.\n\nAll gathered round the dead form with the face concealed under the black\nveil; all knelt, and all wept.  Far in the distance, at the foot of the\nblue mountains, a crowd of the savage natives had risen up as if from the\nearth; they stood motionless, leaning on their clubs and spears, and\nlooking towards the spot on which we were,--strangely thus brought into\nthe landscape, as if they too, the wild dwellers on the verge which\nHumanity guards from the Brute, were among the mourners for the mysterious\nChild of mysterious Nature!  And still, in the herbage, hummed the small\ninsects, and still, from the cavern, laughed the great kingfisher.  I said\nto Ayesha, \"Farewell! your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the\nliving.  You are now with your own people, they may console you; say if I\ncan assist.\"\n\n\"There is no consolation for me!  What mourner can be consoled if the dead\ndie forever?  Nothing for him is left but a grave; that grave shall be in\nthe land where the song of Ayesha first lulled him to sleep.  Thou assist\nMe,--thou, the wise man of Europe!  From me ask assistance.  What road\nwilt thou take to thy home?\"\n\n\"There is but one road known to me through the maze of the solitude,--that\nwhich we took to this upland.\"\n\n\"On that road Death lurks, and awaits thee!  Blind dupe, couldst thou\nthink that if the grand secret of life had been won, he whose head rests\non my lap would have yielded thee one petty drop of the essence which had\nfilched from his store of life but a moment?  Me, who so loved and so\ncherished him,--me he would have doomed to the pitiless cord of my\nservant, the Strangler, if my death could have lengthened a hair-breadth\nthe span of his being.  But what matters to me his crime or his madness?\nI loved him!  I loved him!\"\n\nShe bowed her veiled head lower and lower; perhaps, under the veil, her\nlips kissed the lips of the dead.  Then she said whisperingly,--\n\n\"Juma the Strangler, whose word never failed to his master, whose prey\nnever slipped from his snare, waits thy step on the road to thy home!  But\nthy death cannot now profit the dead, the beloved.  And thou hast had pity\nfor him who took but thine aid to design thy destruction.  His life is\nlost, thine is saved.\"\n\nShe spoke no more in the tongue that I could interpret.  She spoke, in the\nlanguage unknown, a few murmured words to her swarthy attendants; then the\narmed men, still weeping, rose, and made a dumb sign to me to go with\nthem.  I understood by the sign that Ayesha had told them to guard me on\nmy way; but she gave no reply to my parting thanks.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXXXIX.\n\nI descended into the valley; the armed men followed.  The path, on that\nside of the watercourse not reached by the flames, wound through meadows\nstill green, or amidst groves still unscathed.  As a turning in the way\nbrought in front of my sight the place I had left behind, I beheld the\nblack litter creeping down the descent, with its curtains closed, and the\nVeiled Woman walking by its side.  But soon the funeral procession was\nlost to my eyes, and the thoughts that it roused were erased.  The waves\nin man's brain are like those of the sea, rushing on, rushing over the\nwrecks of the vessels that rode on their surface, to sink, after storm, in\ntheir deeps.  One thought cast forth into the future now mastered all in\nthe past: \"Was Lilian living still?\"  Absorbed in the gloom of that\nthought, hurried on by the goad that my heart, in its tortured impatience,\ngave to my footstep, I outstripped the slow stride of the armed men, and,\nmidway between the place I had left and the home which I sped to, came,\nfar in advance of my guards, into the thicket in which the bushmen had\nstarted up in my path on the night that Lilian had watched for my coming.\nThe earth at my feet was rife with creeping plants and many-coloured\nflowers, the sky overhead was half-hid by motionless pines.  Suddenly,\nwhether crawling out from the herbage, or dropping down from the trees, by\nmy side stood the white-robed and skeleton form,--Ayesha's attendant, the\nStrangler.\n\nI sprang from him shuddering, then halted and faced him.  The hideous\ncreature crept towards me, cringing and fawning, making signs of humble\ngood-will and servile obeisance.  Again I recoiled,--wrathfully,\nloathingly; turned my face homeward, and fled on.  I thought I had baffled\nhis chase, when, just at the mouth of the thicket, he dropped from a bough\nin my path close behind me.  Before I could turn, some dark muffling\nsubstance fell between my sight and the sun, and I felt a fierce strain at\nmy throat.  But the words of Ayesha had warned me; with one rapid hand I\nseized the noose before it could tighten too closely, with the other I\ntore the bandage away from my eyes, and, wheeling round on the dastardly\nfoe, struck him down with one spurn of my foot.  His hand, as he fell,\nrelaxed its hold on the noose; I freed my throat from the knot, and sprang\nfrom the copse into the broad sunlit plain.  I saw no more of the armed\nmen or the Strangler.  Panting and breathless, I paused at last before the\nfence, fragrant with blossoms, that divided my home from the solitude.\n\nThe windows of Lilian's room were darkened; all within the house seemed\nstill.\n\nDarkened and silenced Home! with the light and sounds of the jocund day\nall around it.  Was there yet hope in the Universe for me?  All to which I\nhad trusted Hope had broken down!  The anchors I had forged for her hold\nin the beds of the ocean, her stay from the drifts of the storm, had\nsnapped like the reeds which pierce the side that leans on the barb of\ntheir points, and confides in the strength of their stems.  No hope in the\nbaffled resources of recognized knowledge!  No hope in the daring\nadventures of Mind into regions unknown; vain alike the calm lore of the\npractised physician, and the magical arts of the fated Enchanter!  I had\nfled from the commonplace teachings of Nature, to explore in her\nShadow-land marvels at variance with reason.  Made brave by the grandeur\nof love, I had opposed without quailing the stride of the Demon, and by\nhope, when fruition seemed nearest, had been trodden into dust by the\nhoofs of the beast!  And yet, all the while, I had scorned, as a dream\nmore wild than the word of a sorcerer, the hope that the old man and the\nchild, the wise and the ignorant, took from their souls as inborn.  Man\nand fiend had alike failed a mind, not ignoble, not skilless, not abjectly\ncraven; alike failed a heart not feeble and selfish, not dead to the\nhero's devotion, willing to shed every drop of its blood for a something\nmore dear than an animal's life for itself!  What remained--what remained\nfor man's hope?--man's mind and man's heart thus exhausting their all with\nno other result but despair!  What remained but the mystery of mysteries,\nso clear to the sunrise of childhood, the sunset of age, only dimmed by\nthe clouds which collect round the noon of our manhood?  Where yet was\nHope found?  In the soul; in its every-day impulse to supplicate comfort\nand light, from the Giver of soul, wherever the heart is afflicted, the\nmind is obscured.\n\nThen the words of Ayesha rushed over me: \"What mourner can be consoled, if\nthe Dead die forever?\"  Through every pulse of my frame throbbed that\ndread question.  All Nature around seemed to murmur it.  And suddenly, as\nby a flash from heaven, the grand truth in Faber's grand reasoning shone\non me, and lighted up all, within and without.  Alan alone, of all earthly\ncreatures, asks, \"Can the Dead die forever?\" and the instinct that urges\nthe question is God's answer to man!  No instinct is given in vain.\n\nAnd born with the instinct of soul is the instinct that leads the soul\nfrom the seen to the unseen, from time to eternity, from the torrent that\nfoams towards the Ocean of Death, to the source of its stream, far aloft\nfrom the Ocean.\n\n\"Know thyself,\" said the Pythian of old.  \"That precept descended from\nHeaven.\"  Know thyself!  Is that maxim wise?  If so, know thy soul.  But\nnever yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but what he\nacknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer.  In my awe, in my rapture,\nall my thoughts seemed enlarged and illumined and exalted.  I prayed,--all\nmy soul seemed one prayer.  All my past, with its pride and presumption\nand folly, grew distinct as the form of a penitent, kneeling for pardon\nbefore setting forth on the pilgrimage vowed to a shrine.  And, sure now,\nin the deeps of a soul first revealed to myself, that the Dead do not die\nforever, my human love soared beyond its brief trial of terror and sorrow.\nDaring not to ask from Heaven's wisdom that Lilian, for my sake, might not\nyet pass away from the earth, I prayed that my soul might be fitted to\nbear with submission whatever my Maker might ordain.  And if surviving\nher--without whom no beam from yon material sun could ever warm into joy a\nmorrow in human life--so to guide my steps that they might rejoin her at\nlast, and, in rejoining, regain forever!\n\nHow trivial now became the weird riddle that, a little while before, had\nbeen clothed in so solemn an awe!  What mattered it to the vast interests\ninvolved in the clear recognition of Soul and Hereafter, whether or not my\nbodily sense, for a moment, obscured the face of the Nature I should one\nday behold as a spirit?  Doubtless the sights and the sounds which had\nhaunted the last gloomy night, the calm reason of Faber would strip of\ntheir magical seemings; the Eyes in the space and the Foot in the circle\nmight be those of no terrible Demons, but of the wild's savage children\nwhom I had seen, halting, curious and mute, in the light of the morning.\nThe tremor of the ground (if not, as heretofore, explicable by the\nillusory impression of my own treacherous senses) might be but the natural\neffect of elements struggling yet under a soil unmistakably charred by\nvolcanoes.  The luminous atoms dissolved in the caldron might as little be\nfraught with a vital elixir as are the splendours of naphtha or phosphor.\nAs it was, the weird rite had no magic result.  The magician was not rent\nlimb from limb by the fiends.  By causes as natural as ever extinguished\nlife's spark in the frail lamp of clay, he had died out of sight--under\nthe black veil.\n\nWhat mattered henceforth to Faith, in its far grander questions and\nanswers, whether Reason, in Faber, or Fancy, in me, supplied the more\nprobable guess at a hieroglyph which, if construed aright, was but a word\nof small mark in the mystical language of Nature?  If all the arts of\nenchantment recorded by Fable were attested by facts which Sages were\nforced to acknowledge, Sages would sooner or later find some cause for\nsuch portents--not supernatural.  But what Sage, without cause\nsupernatural, both without and within him, can guess at the wonders he\nviews in the growth of a blade of grass, or the tints on an insect's wing?\nWhatever art Man can achieve in his progress through time, Man's reason,\nin time, can suffice to explain.  But the wonders of God?  These belong to\nthe Infinite; and these, O Immortal! will but develop new wonder on\nwonder, though thy sight be a spirit's, and thy leisure to track and to\nsolve an eternity.\n\nAs I raised my face from my clasped hands, my eyes fell full upon a form\nstanding in the open doorway.  There, where on the night in which Lilian's\nlong struggle for reason and life had begun, the Luminous Shadow had been\nbeheld in the doubtful light of a dying moon and a yet hazy dawn; there,\non the threshold, gathering round her bright locks the aureole of the\nglorious sun, stood Amy, the blessed child!  And as I gazed, drawing\nnearer and nearer to the silenced house, and that Image of Peace on its\nthreshold, I felt that Hope met me at the door,--Hope in the child's\nsteadfast eyes, Hope in the child's welcoming smile!\n\n\"I was at watch for you,\" whispered Amy.  \"All is well.\"\n\n\"She lives still--she lives!  Thank God! thank God!\"\n\n\"She lives,--she will recover!\" said another voice, as my head sunk on\nFaber's shoulder.  \"For some hours in the night her sleep was disturbed,\nconvulsed.  I feared, then, the worst.  Suddenly, just before the dawn,\nshe called out aloud, still in sleep,--\n\n\"'The cold and dark shadow has passed away from me and from Allen,--passed\naway from us both forever!'\n\n\"And from that moment the fever left her; the breathing became soft, the\npulse steady, and the colour stole gradually back to her cheek.  The\ncrisis is past.  Nature's benign Disposer has permitted Nature to restore\nyour life's gentle partner, heart to heart, mind to mind--\"\n\n\"And soul to soul,\" I cried, in my solemn joy.  \"Above as below, soul to\nsoul!\"  Then, at a sign from Faber, the child took me by the hand and led\nme up the stairs into Lilian's room.\n\nAgain those clear arms closed around me in wife-like and holy love, and\nthose true lips kissed away my tears,--even as now, at the distance of\nyears from that happy morn, while I write the last words of this Strange\nStory, the same faithful arms close around me, the same tender lips kiss\naway my tears.\n\nTHE END.","title":"A Strange Story \u2014 Volume 08","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":29549}