Part 52 (1/2)
CHAPTER Lx.x.xIV.
While we had thus laboured and found, Ayesha had placed the fuel where the moonlight fell fullest on the sward of the tableland,--a part of it already piled as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close at hand; and by the pile she had placed the coffer. And there she stood, her arms folded under her mantle, her dark image seeming darker still as the moonlight whitened all the ground from which the image rose motionless. Margrave opened his coffer, the Veiled Woman did not aid him, and I watched in silence, while he as silently made his weird and wizard-like preparations.
CHAPTER Lx.x.xV.
On the ground a wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, we call the ”Fairy's Ring,” but yet more visible because marked in phosph.o.r.escent light. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that which circled round the ring.
Within the circ.u.mference, and immediately round the woodpile, Margrave traced certain geometrical figures, in which--not without a shudder, that I overcame at once by a strong effort of will in murmuring to myself the name of ”Lilian”--I recognized the interlaced triangles which my own hand, in the spell enforced on a sleep-walker, had described on the floor of the wizard's pavilion. The figures were traced, like the circle, in flame, and at the point of each triangle (four in number) was placed a lamp, brilliant as those on the ring. This task performed, the caldron, based on an iron tripod, was placed on the wood-pile. And then the woman, before inactive and unheeding, slowly advanced, knelt by the pile, and lighted it. The dry wood crackled and the flame burst forth, licking the rims of the caldron with tongues of fire.
Margrave flung into the caldron the particles we had collected, poured over them first a liquid, colourless as water, from the largest of the vessels drawn from his coffer, and then, more sparingly, drops from small crystal phials, like the phials I had seen in the hand of Philip Derval.
Having surmounted my first impulse of awe, I watched these proceedings, curious yet disdainful, as one who watches the mummeries of an enchanter on the stage.
”If,” thought I, ”these are but artful devices to inebriate and fool my own imagination, my imagination is on its guard, and reason shall not, this time, sleep at her post!”
”And now,” said Margrave, ”I consign to you the easy task by which you are to merit your share of the elixir. It is my task to feed and replenish the caldron; it is Ayesha's to heed the fire, which must not for a moment relax in its measured and steady heat. Your task is the lightest of all it is but to renew from this vessel the fluid that burns in the lamps, and on the ring. Observe, the contents of the vessel must be thriftily husbanded; there is enough, but not more than enough, to sustain the light in the lamps, on the lines traced round the caldron, and on the farther ring, for six hours. The compounds dissolved in this fluid are scarce,--only obtainable in the East, and even in the East months might have pa.s.sed before I could have increased my supply.
”I had no months to waste. Replenish, then, the light only when it begins to flicker or fade. Take heed, above all, that no part of the outer ring--no, not an inch--and no lamp of the twelve, that are to its zodiac like stars, fade for one moment in darkness.”
I took the crystal vessel from his hand.
”The vessel is small,” said I, ”and what is yet left of its contents is but scanty; whether its drops suffice to replenish the lights I cannot guess,--I can but obey your instructions. But, more important by far than the light to the lamps and the circle, which in Asia or Africa might scare away the wild beasts unknown to this land--more important than light to a lamp, is the strength to your frame, weak magician! What will support you through six weary hours of night-watch?”
”Hope,” answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling style. ”Hope!
I shall live,--I shall live through the centuries!”
CHAPTER Lx.x.xVI.
One hour pa.s.sed away; the f.a.gots 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l that confined it. Here are my air and my earth!
Trouble me not. Look to the circle! feed the lamps if they fail.”
I pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.s 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!”