JACK, seated in a corner of the silver bench, kept his eyes upon the column of blue vapor that rose upward from the smoldering fire in the font. But his mind was filled with somber thoughts of Miriam, and he was only superficially conscious either of the incantation or of Zarga. Of Miriam’s faith he had no doubts; but as little could he question that Torpeon had by some means contrived to convey her to his stronghold. He could not think that Zarga would willfully mislead him upon that point, though he had indignantly rejected her suggestion that Miriam had consented to it; the idea that the Saturnian maiden was herself infatuated with him could not find entrance into his straight-forward mind; his own simple loyalty kept him from suspecting others. What the incantation might reveal was a matter of conjecture, but he did not so much as allow himself to imagine that it would present Miriam in any other light than as the soul of love and faith.
The music swept out in penetrating waves, the notes vibrating insistently upon the ear with a sweet but almost intolerable monotony; but the monotony gradually became a source of fascination. It seemed to enter into his blood and control the pulsations of his heart; it had the effect of a seductive but suffocating perfume, against the influence of which one might struggle at first, but at last found an exotic delight in yielding. It soothed the outward senses, but wrought a strange excitement within. Zarga had resumed her mystic dance, and now he followed her movements with dreamy intentness; she had ceased to be a distinct personality to him, but was a part of the general scene, and represented in movement what the rest imparted by color, form and sound. Her body and limbs, exquisite in their supple eloquence, swayed and shifted like the waving of slender fronds in tropic gardens, or the rhythm of fairy surf lapsing on coral beaches. She seemed far away, yet thrillingly near; and her face, as it was recurrently turned toward him in the turnings of the dance, had the spell of beauty alternately revealed and withdrawn into the magic shadows of memory. He felt the gaze of her dark eyes more poignantly in its absence than when turned upon him.
Once more the dancer halted suddenly, with arms uplifted, and the music sang its insistent song no more. There came a volley of staccato sounds, as of a startled nightingale, and the column of vapor was agitated and broken into revolving wreaths. These twisted themselves together, forming huge figures vaguely outlined, lit by fitful gleams from the embers in the font. Zarga turned and ran swiftly toward Jack, crouching, and pressing her fingers against her temples. “It is coming—it is coming!” she cried; “put your strength round me—let me come inside your arm! I am afraid of what I’ve done!”
Jack, disconcerted, drew himself erect on the bench; but the vaporous forms now shaping themselves above the font so commanded his attention that he hardly noticed how Zarga nestled against him, warm, panting, and tremulous, like a bird seeking refuge; how her head lay on his breast, and the flexible fingers of her hand touched his face and wound themselves in his hair. His arm was about her, and from an involuntary protecting impulse he patted her shoulder; but he was absorbed in the scene before him.
The smoke-figures, condensing, appeared no longer gigantic, but assumed the stature of life. Two human apparitions were together, a man and a woman. More than their sex could not at first be determined; they sat facing each other in a deep alcove, disclosed by a semblance of draperies that hung on either side. The coloring of life, faint in the beginning, gained depth, as if an artist were adding to his gray outline more vivid touches from his palette. The living picture acquired each moment greater definition; from point to point the outlines and contours settled into certainty; and Jack’s lips grew dry as he recognized more and more unmistakably the proportions and movements of the woman he loved. For the other figure he had as yet no eyes, but he knew it could represent no other than Torpeon. His beloved, and his enemy, seated there face to face and hands in hands!
“It is false!” a voice spoke thus in the remote recesses of his soul; “a false profanation of what is sacred!” But the terrible persuasiveness of the vision overwhelmed him. The testimony of the sight, fallacious though it so constantly be, dominates the nobler assurances of the spirit; and the very struggle against the illusion causes it to take on outlines more convincing. Miriam’s face was latest to be revealed. The look it wore was the look of love in its passion; and it was lavished not on him, but on another!
Torpeon had taken both her hands in his, and was speaking with imperious urgency. Unconsciously, Jack strained Zarga’s hand in his, and his heart beat tumultuously against hers. Miriam’s eyelids fell as Torpeon pressed his appeal; her deep bosom rose and subsided in irregular breathings; by an effort, she partly turned herself away; but it was the last struggle of resistance, and her lover would not be denied. Slowly she faced him again and lifted her eyes to him; Jack ground his teeth as he saw that look. Her body relaxed and was inclined toward the pleader, with the loveliness of yielding in her smile. With a proud gesture his arms went around her, and he drew her to him; his bearded mouth met her parted lips. Jack sank back in his seat with a groan. Clouds drifted in before the picture, and it faded out and was gone. The vapors melted away, and the black font’s embers dulled into grayness. Zarga, her arms round Jack, had drawn herself up, so that her smooth cheek rested on his, and her breath touched his lips.
“Noblest and dearest,” she whispered, “I would have saved you from this grief and shame; but her wickedness must be seen to be believed. It is better to know than to doubt; she is not worth your grieving; she was never worthy of you; she would have betrayed you, whether for Torpeon, or another. But if you will see what love is, forget her, and look at me!”
Jack’s brain slowly awoke to the meaning of these words, as if he returned from a long and dreary journey. “What has happened to the world!” he muttered.
He raised himself deliberately, like a man who regains consciousness after a swoon. He took her wrists in his hands, and detached her arms from their embrace. He held her off and looked at her, sadly and searchingly.
“It is all illusion,” he said; “this and the other!”
“There is no illusion in my love!” answered the girl, in a deep murmur. “I loved you from the first moment. Had her love held true, I would had died and kept silence. But she betrayed you and I have shown you the secret that is myself! Yes, look at me! Am I not beautiful? What happiness is there that I cannot give you? Take me—know me—love me! In this world there are a thousand joys that are not dreamed of on your earth! And our years are not few, like yours, nor can age dull and enfeeble us. My power is great; I will lead you through endless delights, blooming one after another, like roses from one stem of love. Or if you long for daring deeds, mighty works, or strange adventures, fame and worship, I can launch you on such a career as no tales of heroes tell! You are made for the highest things; do not let yourself sink down before the treason of one woman! Let us live and love together, and we need not wait for death to show us immortality, for our every moment shall be immortal!”
“I know nothing of all this,” he said, in heavy tones. “What you think of me is all amiss. I’m a very ordinary creature. I love Miriam, and she loves me—that is the whole of my world and my life. We can have only one sorrow—to be separated from each other; and we want no other happiness than to be together. These visions that we have been seeing—they oppressed me for a moment; but they are gone, and they are nothing. Love is once and for all; after that, there can be no changing or choosing. It has taken what I am and given it to Miriam, and what she is, is in me. I could as soon become another man, as love another woman; I can see that you are beautiful, Zarga; but beauty is nothing to me, except as Miriam’s beauty is a part of Miriam; and I love it as a part of her. And what are endless delights? For her and me there is only one delight—our love—and that is endless; we want no other. Works, adventures, fame? My love makes me a man; and no other adventure or achievement compares with that. Miriam’s safety and happiness are my work and adventure; and for that I am here. Don’t imagine such an insanity as that you can love me, or I, you! If you will be my friend, set me on my way to save Miriam from the trouble that has befallen her; neither you nor I are foolish enough to be deceived by a smoke-wreath, no matter what images some magic-lantern may throw on it!”
Zarga faced him with clenched hands and burning eyes. “I tell you once more, she does not love you; she does not even love Torpeon; she yields to him only because he has made her believe that he can make her queen of all the planets. Her heart is as cold as a burned-out cinder; will you, with your heart of molten gold, waste yourself on her?”
A frown began to gather on Jack’s brow.
“You must not say these things,” he told her, sternly. “They are not true, and I don’t think you yourself believe them. I’ve been here too long; I will stay no longer. If you will help me to find Miriam, I will be very grateful; if not, let us part now!”
“No; you and I will never part,” she replied, in a changed voice. “I have offered you myself, and I will never let you go forth to boast of it, or to find another woman. I have brought you to the center of this rock; none but I knows how to enter it, and none can pass out from it but by my leave. Here you shall stay until you die; and I will stay with you. You say I cannot love you; I love you, and hate you, enough for that! When the end of the world comes, and the graves are rent asunder, they will find our bones here, intertwined like lovers. Let Miriam make what she can of that!”
“You have not the power to do what you say,” answered Jack. She stood between him and the entrance to the hall; he put her aside with his arms, and went forward.
But before he had advanced three paces, darkness sudden and absolute descended upon the cavern. It was like no other darkness; it was as if he had been all at once closed about by some black substance that molded itself to him like the matrix to which it holds. All sense of direction was lost; it even seemed as if he knew no longer which was below and which was above. There were whisperings in his ears; soft, mocking laughter, the padding of naked feet, long soughings of drafts through unseen crevices. He attempted to go on in the way he had started; but a few steps, carefully taken and measured, brought him up against the solid wall of the crystal rock. He set out to circumvent the chamber, remembering its circular form, and keeping one hand in touch with the wall; but after journeying for a thousand paces, more than enough to account for more than ten times the circumference of the chamber, he had arrived at nothing; there had been no interruption in the adamantine smoothness; for aught he could tell, indeed, he might have passed into some passage leading yet deeper into the heart of the butte. Again he tried to cross from one side to the other, in the hope of finding the black font, from which he might take a fresh departure; but after many minutes, with every precaution not to deviate from a straight line, he had come to no end; he might have been traveling across an empty and lightless desert. The sounds which he had at first heard had now died away, and an appalling silence had descended, like another darkness; and yet, dogging his footsteps, close behind him, invisible and inaudible, but felt something following him relentlessly; something hostile and formless. What was it? Starvation? Madness? Death? Once he wheeled suddenly and leaped with outstretched arms to grasp it. Nothing!
At length he ceased his futile efforts and stood still, with folded arms. He gathered up the forces of his will, and quieted the throbbing of his heart, which had become vehement and irregular. There was no escape; he would face that fact and accept it. Famine and death; but there should not be madness! The light of the body was gone; but the light of the mind should endure. No fear, or longing, or despair should banish from his thoughts the image of Miriam and his faith in their love. He had bought these at a great price, and he would never give them up. This was the end of his great adventure; he would meet it with the constancy of a true man.
Hark! A sound like the rising of a mighty wind; a rending and shuddering as of the throes of earthquake! The cavern rocked; the foundations of the mountain were shaken. A flicker of light divided the blackness, and at the same moment soft arms were thrown round him, and a bosom, palpitating with terror, pressed against his own. Zarga’s bosom, and her arms!
Before he could free himself, she uttered a wild cry and staggered back, pressing her hands over her heart. She stared at him in amazement and dismay; was that blood upon her fingers? The sapphire talisman still hung round Jack’s neck, and it sparkled vividly, sending forth rays like keen arrows.
Zarga sank down, and huddled with her face upon the floor. The butte was split in twain from summit to foundation, and tumbled in awful ruin to right and left. In the ragged jaws of the cleft stood the snow white figure of Lamara.