CHAPTER LXXX.
Along the grass-track I saw now, under the moon, just risen, a strange
procession, never seen before in Australian pastures. It moved on,
noiselessly but quickly. We descended the hillock, and met it on the
way,--a sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar Eastern garments;
two other servitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans and
silver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this sombre equipage.
Perhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through my
mind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he said, with a hollow, bitter
laugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once melodious mirth,--
"A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too, will have
the tastes of a pacha."
I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was my tempter. To
me his whole being was resolved into one problem: Had he a secret by which
death could be turned from Lilian?
But now, as the litter halted, from the long dark shadow which it cast
upon the turf the figure of a woman emerged and stood before us. The
outlines of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black mantle, and
the features of her face were hidden by a black veil, except only the
dark, bright, solemn eyes. Her stature was lofty, her bearing majestic,
whether in movement or repose.
Margrave accosted her in some language unknown to me. She replied in what
seemed to me the same tongue. The tones of her voice were sweet, but
inexpressibly mournful. The words that they uttered appeared intended to
warn, or deprecate, or dissuade; but they called to Margrave's brow a
lowering frown, and drew from his lips a burst of unmistakable anger. The
woman rejoined, in the same melancholy music of voice. And Margrave then,
leaning his arm upon her shoulder, as he had leaned it on mine, drew her
away from the group into a neighbouring copse of the flowering
eucalypti,--mystic trees, never changing the hues of their pale-green
leaves, ever shifting the tints of their ash-gray, shedding bark. For
some moments I gazed on the two human forms, dimly seen by the glinting
moonlight through the gaps in the foliage. Then turning away my eyes, I
saw, standing close at my side, a man whom I had not noticed before. His
footstep, as it stole to me, had fallen on the sward without sound. His
dress, though Oriental, differed from that of his companions, both in
shape and colour; fitting close to the breast, leaving the arms bare to
the elbow, and of a uniform ghastly white, as are the cerements of the
grave. His visage was even darker than those of the Syrians or Arabs
behind him, and his features were those of a bird of prey,--the beak of
the eagle, but the eye of the vulture. His cheeks were hollow; the arms,
crossed on his breast, were long and fleshless. Yet in that skeleton form
there was a something which conveyed the idea of a serpent's suppleness
and strength; and as the hungry, watchful eyes met my own startled gaze, I
recoiled impulsively with that inward warning of danger which is conveyed
to man, as to inferior animals, in the very aspect of the creatures that
sting or devour. At my movement the man inclined his head in the
submissive Eastern salutation, and spoke in his foreign tongue, softly,
humbly, fawningly, to judge by his tone and his gesture.
I moved yet farther away from him with loathing, and now the human thought
flashed upon me: was I, in truth, exposed to no danger in trusting myself
to the mercy of the weird and remorseless master of those hirelings from
the East,--seven men in number, two at least of them formidably armed, and
docile as bloodhounds to the hunter, who has only to show them their
prey? But fear of man like myself is not my weakness; where fear found
its way to my heart, it was through the doubts or the fancies in which man
like myself disappeared in the attributes, dark and unknown, which we give
to a fiend or a spectre. And, perhaps, if I could have paused to analyze
my own sensations, the very presence of this escort-creatures of flesh and
blood-lessened the dread of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a
hundred times, front and defy those seven Eastern slaves--I, haughty son
of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds--than
have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless
Shadow! Besides: Lilian! Lilian! for one chance of saving her life,
however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not
a foot from the march of an army.
Thus reassured and thus resolved, I advanced, with a smile of disdain, to
meet Margrave and his veiled companion, as they now came from the moonlit
copse.
"Well," I said to him, with an irony that unconsciously mimicked his own,
"have you taken advice with your nurse? I assume that the dark form by
your side is that of Ayesha."
The woman looked at me from her sable veil, with her steadfast solemn
eyes, and said, in English, though with a foreign accent: "The nurse born
in Asia is but wise through her love; the pale son of Europe is wise
through his art. The nurse says, 'Forbear!' Do you say, 'Adventure'?"
"Peace!" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot on the ground. "I take no
counsel from either; it is for me to resolve, for you to obey, and for him
to aid. Night is come, and we waste it; move on."
The woman made no reply, nor did I. He took my arm and walked back to the
hut. The barbaric escort followed. When we reached the door of the
building, Margrave said a few words to the woman and to the
litter-bearers. They entered the but with us. Margrave pointed out to
the woman his coffer, to the men the fuel stowed in the outhouse. Both
were borne away and placed within the litter. Meanwhile, I took from the
table, on which it was carelessly thrown, the light hatchet that I
habitually carried with me in my rambles.
"Do you think that you need that idle weapon?" said Margrave. "Do you
fear the good faith of my swarthy attendants?"
"Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever the gold from the
quartz in which we may find it embedded, or to clear, as this shovel,
which will also be needed, from the slight soil above it, the ore that the
mine in the mountain flings forth, as the sea casts its waifs on the
sands."
"Give me your hand, fellow-labourer!" said Margrave, joyfully. "Ah, there
is no faltering terror in this pulse! I was not mistaken in the Man.
What rests, but the Place and the Hour? I shall live! I shall live!"
