CHAPTER LXXII.
I turned back alone. The sun was reddening the summits of the distant
mountain-range, but dark clouds, that portended rain, were gathering
behind my way and deepening the shadows in many a chasm and hollow which
volcanic fires had wrought on the surface of uplands undulating like
diluvian billows fixed into stone in the midst of their stormy swell. I
wandered on and away from the beaten track, absorbed in thought. Could I
acknowledge in Julius Faber's conjectures any basis for logical
ratiocination; or were they not the ingenious fancies of that empirical
Philosophy of Sentiment by which the aged, in the decline of severer
faculties, sometimes assimilate their theories to the hazy romance of
youth? I can well conceive that the story I tell will be regarded by most
as a wild and fantastic fable; that by some it may be considered a vehicle
for guesses at various riddles of Nature, without or within us, which are
free to the license of romance, though forbidden to the caution of
science. But, I--I--know unmistakably my own identity, my own positive
place in a substantial universe. And beyond that knowledge, what do I
know? Yet had Faber no ground for his startling parallels between the
chimeras of superstition and the alternatives to faith volunteered by the
metaphysical speculations of knowledge? On the theorems of Condillac, I,
in common with numberless contemporaneous students (for, in my youth,
Condillac held sway in the schools, as now, driven forth from the schools,
his opinions float loose through the talk and the scribble of men of the
world, who perhaps never opened his page),--on the theorems of Condillac I
had built up a system of thought designed to immure the swathed form of
material philosophy from all rays and all sounds of a world not material,
as the walls of some blind mausoleum shut out, from the mummy within, the
whisper of winds and the gleaming of stars.
And did not those very theorems, when carried out to their strict and
completing results by the close reasonings of Hume, resolve my own living
identity, the one conscious indivisible me, into a bundle of memories
derived from the senses which had bubbled and duped my experience, and
reduce into a phantom, as spectral as that of the Luminous Shadow, the
whole solid frame of creation?
While pondering these questions, the storm whose forewarnings I had
neglected to heed burst forth with all the suddenness peculiar to the
Australian climes. The rains descended like the rushing of floods. In
the beds of watercourses, which, at noon, seemed dried up and exhausted,
the torrents began to swell and to rave; the gray crags around them were
animated into living waterfalls. I looked round, and the landscape was as
changed as a scene that replaces a scene on the player's stage. I was
aware that I had wandered far from my home, and I knew not what direction
I should take to regain it. Close at hand, and raised above the torrents
that now rushed in many a gully and tributary creek, around and before me,
the mouth of a deep cave, overgrown with bushes and creeping flowers
tossed wildly to and fro between the rain from above and the spray of
cascades below, offered a shelter from the storm. I entered,--scaring
innumerable flocks of bats striking against me, blinded by the glare of
the lightning that followed me into the cavern, and hastening to resettle
themselves on the pendants of stalactites, or the jagged buttresses of
primaeval wall.
From time to time the lightning darted into the gloom and lingered
amongst its shadows; and I saw, by the flash, that the floors on which I
stood were strewed with strange bones, some amongst them the fossilized
relics of races destroyed by the Deluge. The rain continued for more than
two hours with unabated violence; then it ceased almost as suddenly as it
had come on, and the lustrous moon of Australia burst from the clouds
shining bright as an English dawn, into the hollows of the cave. And then
simultaneously arose all the choral songs of the wilderness,--creatures
whose voices are heard at night,--the loud whir of the locusts, the
musical boom of the bullfrog, the cuckoo note of the morepork, and,
mournful amidst all those merrier sounds, the hoot of the owl, through the
wizard she-oaks and the pale green of the gum-trees.
I stepped forth into the open air and gazed, first instinctively on the
heavens, next, with more heedful eye, upon the earth. The nature of the
soil bore the evidence of volcanic fires long since extinguished. Just
before my feet, the rays fell full upon a bright yellow streak in the
block of quartz half imbedded in the soft moist soil. In the midst of all
the solemn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heart and
mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remote from
philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with no household
affections. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck the block with
the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried habitually about me, for the purpose
of marking the trees that I wished to clear from the waste of my broad
domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and left disburied its
glittering treasure. My first glance had not deceived me. I, vain seeker
after knowledge, had, at least, discovered gold. I took up the bright
metal--gold! I paused; I looked round; the land that just before had
seemed to me so worthless took the value of Ophir. Its features had
before been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and now my
memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled the rough map of my
possessions, the first careless ride round their boundaries. Yes, the
land on which I stood--for miles, to the spur of those farther
mountains--the land was mine, and, beneath its surface, there was gold! I
closed my eyes; for some moments visions of boundless wealth, and of the
royal power which such wealth could command, swept athwart my brain. But
my heart rapidly settled back to its real treasure. "What matters," I
sighed, "all this dross? Could Ophir itself buy back to my Lilian's smile
one ray of the light which gave 'glory to the grass and splendour to the
flower'?"
So muttering, I flung the gold into the torrent that raged below, and went
on through the moonlight, sorrowing silently,--only thankful for the
discovery that had quickened my reminiscence of the landmarks by which to
steer my way through the wilderness.
The night was half gone, for even when I had gained the familiar track
through the pastures, the swell of the many winding creeks that now
intersected the way obliged me often to retrace my steps; to find,
sometimes, the bridge of a felled tree which had been providently left
unremoved over the now foaming torrent, and, more than once, to swim
across the current, in which swimmers less strong or less practised would
have been dashed down the falls, where loose logs and torn trees went
clattering and whirling: for I was in danger of life. A band of the
savage natives were stealthily creeping on my track,--the natives in those
parts were not then so much awed by the white man as now. A boomerang[1]
had whirred by me, burying itself amongst the herbage close before my
feet. I had turned, sought to find and to face these dastardly foes; they
contrived to elude me. But when I moved on, my ear, sharpened by danger,
heard them moving, too, in my rear. Once only three hideous forms
suddenly faced me, springing up from a thicket, all tangled with
honeysuckles and creepers of blue and vermilion. I walked steadily up to
them. They halted a moment or so in suspense; but perhaps they were
scared by my stature or awed by my aspect; and the Unfamiliar, though
Human, had terror for them, as the Unfamiliar, although but a Shadow, had
had terror for me. They vanished, and as quickly as if they had crept
into the earth.
At length the air brought me the soft perfume of my well-known acacias,
and my house stood before me, amidst English flowers and English
fruit-trees, under the effulgent Australian moon. Just as I was opening
the little gate which gave access from the pastureland into the garden, a
figure in white rose up from under light, feathery boughs, and a hand was
laid on my arm. I started; but my surprise was changed into fear when I
saw the pale face and sweet eyes of Lilian.
"Heavens! you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, what is this?"
"Hush!" she whispered, clinging to me; "hush! do not tell: no one knows.
I missed you when the storm came on; I have missed you ever since. Others
went in search of you and came back. I could not sleep, but the rest are
sleeping, so I stole down to watch for you. Brother, brother, if any harm
chanced to you, even the angels could not comfort me; all would be dark,
dark! But you are safe, safe, safe!" And she clung to me yet closer.
"Ah, Lilian, Lilian, your vision in the hour I first beheld you was indeed
prophetic,--'each has need of the other.' Do you remember?"
"Softly, softly," she said, "let me think!" She stood quietly by my side,
looking up into the sky, with all its numberless stars, and its solitary
moon now sinking slow behind the verge of the forest. "It comes back to
me," she murmured softly,--"the Long ago,--the sweet Long ago!"
I held my breath to listen.
"There, there!" she resumed, pointing to the heavens; "do you see? You
are there, and my father, and--and--Oh! that terrible face, those serpent
eyes, the dead man's skull! Save me! save me!"
She bowed her head upon my bosom, and I led her gently back towards the
house. As we gained the door which she had left open, the starlight
shining across the shadowy gloom within, she lifted her face from my
breast, and cast a hurried fearful look round the shining garden, then
into the dim recess beyond the threshold.
"It is there--there!--the Shadow that lured me on, whispering that if I
followed it I should join my beloved. False, dreadful Shadow! it will
fade soon,--fade into the grinning horrible skull. Brother, brother,
where is my Allen? Is he dead--dead--or is it I who am dead to him?"
I could but clasp her again to my breast, and seek to mantle her shivering
form with my dripping garments, all the while my eyes--following the
direction which hers had taken--dwelt on the walls of the nook within the
threshold, half lost in darkness, half white in starlight. And there I,
too, beheld the haunting Luminous Shadow, the spectral effigies of the
mysterious being, whose very existence in the flesh was a riddle unsolved
by my reason. Distinctly I saw the Shadow, but its light was far paler,
its outline far more vague, than when I had beheld it before. I took
courage, as I felt Lilian's heart beating against my own. I advanced, I
crossed the threshold,--the Shadow was gone.
"There is no Shadow here,--no phantom to daunt thee, my life's life," said
I, bending over Lilian.
"It has touched me in passing; I feel it--cold, cold, cold!" she answered
faintly.
I bore her to her room, placed her on her bed, struck a light, watched
over her. At dawn there was a change in her face, and from that time
health gradually left her; strength slowly, slowly, yet to me perceptibly,
ebbed from her life away.
[1] A missile weapon peculiar to the Australian savages.
