CHAPTER LXXXVI.
One hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear in the
sullen sultry air. The materials within began to seethe, and their
colour, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose hue; from time
to time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after she had done so
reseating herself close by the pyre, with her head bowed over her knees,
and her face hid under her veil.
The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now began to
pale. I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal vessel. As yet
nothing strange startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the
circle,--nothing audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel-like
click of the locusts, and, farther still, in the forest, the howl of the
wild dogs, that never bark; nothing visible, but the trees and the
mountain-range girding the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of
the cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the gleam of dry
bones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom.
The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand by the side
of Margrave, watching with him the process at work in the caldron, when I
felt the ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet, and, looking up, it
seemed as if all the plains beyond the circle were heaving like the swell
of the sea, and as if in the air itself there was a perceptible tremor.
I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and whispered, "To me earth and
air seem to vibrate. Do they seem to vibrate to you?"
"I know not, I care not," he answered impetuously. "The essence is
bursting the shell that confined it. Here are my air and my earth!
Trouble me not. Look to the circle! feed the lamps if they fail."
I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked towards a place in the ring in
which the flame was waning dim; and I whispered to her the same question
which I had whispered to Margrave. She looked slowly around, and
answered, "So is it before the Invisible make themselves visible! Did I
not bid him forbear?" Her head again drooped on her breast, and her watch
was again fixed on the fire.
I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish the light where it
waned. As I did so, on my arm, which stretched somewhat beyond the line
of the ring, I felt a shock like that of electricity. The arm fell to my
side numbed and nerveless, and from my hand dropped, but within the ring,
the vessel that contained the fluid. Recovering my surprise or my stun,
hastily with the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some of the scanty
liquid was already spilled on the sward; and I saw with a thrill of
dismay, that contrasted indeed the tranquil indifference with which I had
first undertaken my charge, how small a supply was now left.
I went back to Margrave, and told him of the shock, and of its consequence
in the waste of the liquid.
"Beware," said he, "that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of the foot,
pass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be thus unhappily stinted,
reserve all that is left for the protecting circle and the twelve outer
lamps! See how the Grand Work advances! how the hues in the caldron are
glowing blood-red through the film on the surface!"
And now four hours of the six were gone; my arm had gradually recovered
its strength. Neither the ring nor the lamps had again required
replenishing; perhaps their light was exhausted less quickly, as it was no
longer to be exposed to the rays of the intense Australian moon. Clouds
had gathered over the sky, and though the moon gleamed at times in the
gaps that they left in blue air, her beam was more hazy and dulled. The
locusts no longer were heard in the grass, nor the howl of the dogs in the
forest. Out of the circle, the stillness was profound.
And about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast Eye! It drew
nearer and nearer, seeming to move from the ground at the height of some
lofty giant. Its gaze riveted mine; my blood curdled in the blaze from
its angry ball; and now as it advanced larger and larger, other Eyes, as
if of giants in its train, grew out from the space in its rear; numbers on
numbers, like the spearheads of some Eastern army, seen afar by pale
warders of battlements doomed to the dust. My voice long refused an
utterance to my awe; at length it burst forth shrill and loud,--
"Look! look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on legions! And hark! that
tramp of numberless feet; they are not seen, but the hollows of earth echo
the sound of their march!"
Margrave, more than ever intent on the caldron, in which, from time to
time, he kept dropping powders or essences drawn forth from his coffer,
looked up, defyingly, fiercely.
"Ye come," he said, in a low mutter, his once mighty voice sounding hollow
and labouring, but fearless and firm,--"ye come,--not to conquer, vain
rebels!--ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tomb where my
spell had raised up the ghost of your first human master, the Chaldee!
Earth and air have their armies still faithful to me, and still I remember
the war-song that summons them up to confront you! Ayesha! Ayesha!
recall the wild troth that we pledged amongst roses; recall the dread bond
by which we united our sway over hosts that yet own thee as queen, though
my sceptre is broken, my diadem reft from my brows!"
The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration. Her veil now was withdrawn, and
the blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself flushed, as with the
rosy bloom of youth, the grand beauty of her softened face. It was seen,
detached as it were, from her dark-mantled form; seen through the mist of
the vapours which rose from the caldron, framing it round like the clouds.
that are yieldingly pierced by the light of the evening star.
Through the haze of the vapour came her voice, more musical, more
plaintive than I had heard it before, but far softer, more tender; still
in her foreign tongue; the words unknown to me, and yet their sense,
perhaps, made intelligible by the love, which has one common language and
one common look to all who have loved,--the love unmistakably heard in the
loving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face.
A moment or so more, and she had come round from the opposite side of the
fire-pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed it quietly,
solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her crest rose erect; it
was the lioness protecting her young. She stretched forth her arm from
the black mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bent over the
caldron,--stretched it towards the haunted and hollow-sounding space
beyond, in the gesture of one whose right hand has the sway of the
sceptre. And then her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant, not
loud, yet far-reaching; so thrilling, so sweet, and yet so solemn, that I
could at once comprehend how legend united of old the spell of enchantment
with the power of song. All that I recalled of the effects which, in the
former time, Margrave's strange chants had produced on the ear that they
ravished and the thoughts they confused, was but as the wild bird's
imitative carol, compared to the depth and the art and the soul of the
singer, whose voice seemed endowed with a charm to enthrall all the tribes
of creation, though the language it used for that charm might to them, as
to me, be unknown. As the song ceased, I heard, from behind, sounds like
those I had heard in the spaces before me,--the tramp of invisible feet,
the whir of invisible wings, as if armies were marching to aid against
armies in march to destroy.
"Look not in front nor around," said Ayesha. "Look, like him, on the
caldron below. The circle and the lamps are yet bright; I will tell you
when the light again fails."
I dropped my eyes on the caldron.
"See," whispered Margrave, "the sparkles at last begin to arise, and the
rose-hues to deepen,--signs that we near the last process."
