Читать книгу For the Blood Is the Life - Francis Marion Crawford - Страница 22

Table of Contents

It was a warm evening in the latter part of May. Augustus had said nothing of the result of the experiments he had been making during the past weeks, intending to surprise the three ladies by showing them the astounding results of his work all at once. The party sat at dinner in the vaulted hall and talked upon indifferent subjects.

"You seem to be revolutionising this part of the world, Augustus," said Diana. "I was walking on the rocks this afternoon with Gwendoline and it seemed as though you were preparing an immense show of fireworks."

"Nothing to speak of," answered her brother; "I will show you after dinner."

"You have not succeeded in getting those people to dinner whom we were talking about the other day, have you? " asked Gwendoline. " I thought the fireworks might be in their honour."

"No, I am afraid they won't come for my asking. Perhaps if they got a word from you, my dear — "

"What oppressive weather!" remarked Lady Brenda. "I am sure there is going to be a thunderstorm."

"I think so too," said Gwendoline. "I always feel the thunder before it comes. Is not it very warm for May? We might almost go out after dinner."

"By all means, let us go out," assented Augustus. "I have something to show you. It is singularly oppressive, as you say — and yet the weather seems fine enough."

"Did it never strike you that your experiments might have an effect on the weather?" asked Diana.

"If one could find a means to affect the weather," Augustus replied, "one might produce rain and drought at will. No — I do not believe it has gone as far as that. If the currents I have produced were being discharged through the air their action might make some very slight local change. But they are not. Just now they are running off into accumulators like water into a cistern."

"I hope it is not you," said Gwendoline, "but there is certainly a very strange feeling in the air — very strange indeed. I never felt anything like it before."

Bimbam just then entered the room and whispered something to Mrs. Chard, bending low with the respectful air of a trained elephant.

"It is very odd," said Gwendoline. "Tell him to send something else. Just fancy," she continued, turning to the others, " Celestin has sent word that the ice-cream won't freeze—he says 'he is at the despair but that congeals not.' It is very provoking— the first time I have ordered it."

"Don't look at me like that," said Augustus, laughing, "it is not my fault."

"I believe it is," said Gwendoline, making a little face and then laughing too.

"Do you seriously suspect me of having put Nature's nose out of joint?" asked her husband.

"Never mind, dear! It is not the least matter," said Lady Brenda to her daughter. " Those things will happen sometimes, you know. Celestin will turn the ice-cream into something else, of course. Dear me! I feel as though the room were full of people — it is very warm."

"Open that window," said Augustus to Bimbam, the butler. The servant obeyed and a gust of hot air blew in, almost stifling in its oppressiveness, but the stars shone brightly in the dark and there seemed to be no clouds in the sky. The party sat in silence for some time, going through the form of eating, but the sultry weight in the atmosphere increased with every minute until it seemed as though the simoon of the desert had broken into the dining-room.

"I cannot stand this a moment longer," said Gwendoline, rising to her feet. "I cannot breathe."

"Let us go out," said Augustus. "I will amuse you with my new fireworks. It must be cooler outside."

The three ladies left the table, and Augustus sent for a lantern. He meant the surprise to be complete, produced by a turn of his fingers, in the twinkling of an eye. Bearing the lantern in his hand he left the house with his three companions and began to ascend a short steep path which led to the stone hut where he had centralised his apparatus. .

"It is weird — almost ghastly," said Diana in a low voice.

"One feels afraid to speak," answered Gwendoline.

"Does not it sometimes feel like this when there is to be an earthquake ? " asked Lady Brenda.

"Exactly like this," said Augustus, reassuringly.

"Good gracious! You don't think there is going to be one ? "

"No, I never heard of an earthquake on this peninsula. There will very probably be one in Naples to-night. Take care — the stones are loose. Here we are. Now take a good look. I want you to stand here — so — facing the sea and turning a little towards the castle. Don't move or turn your eyes away — it will be very curious. You are not afraid? I must go inside the hut to do it."

Augustus entered the low door, carrying his lantern with him, and leaving the three ladies outside in the dark. He went straight to the commutator and having assured himself that the connections were properly made he laid his hand on the switch.

"Ready," he called aloud. " Look where I told you — now!"

The key turned under his fingers and almost at the same instant a cry of surprise and delight broke from the little party outside. Augustus went out and joined them, and gazed on the wonderful effects of his discovery.

The rocks and the shore were as bright as day. High on the castle burned a beacon which must have been visible thirty miles away at sea; from every point of rock a little sun shed a broad circle of daylight, and from deep fissures and crevices straight, broad shafts of light beamed upwards to the dark sky like radiant ladders to heaven. The frightened quail, at that season just settling on the southern shore after their flight from Africa, flew whirring up towards the lights, uttering their peculiar short cry. White gulls shot from the rocks and sped in huge circles like gigantic flakes of snow whirling down to the dark, placid water. The rocks threw weird and unimagined shadows under the light which had never shone on them before. The four spectators of the wonderful scene looked out, and held their breath, and then looked at each other.

"How did you do it, Augustus ? " asked Gwendoline.

"I suppose they are electric lights," said Diana, "but the effect is like magic."

"Perfectly wonderful! " exclaimed Lady Brenda. " I never saw anything like it. There is some real practical use in this sort of thing."

"You did not seem to think there was much use in my glass bowl oracle the other day," remarked Augustus.

"No — that was ridiculous," answered his motherin-law.

"It was the same thing on a smaller scale. I was only teasing you — it was an experiment with electricity; it was not an oracle at all."

"How could you make fun of me in that way ? " asked Lady Brenda, half hurt, half laughing.

"Only to see what you would say," replied Augustus. "Come, let us take a walk among the lights and see the effect from different places."

"It is hotter out of doors than it was at dinner," said Lady Brenda. " It is like a sirocco in August — it burns one's skin."

It was quite true; as they moved along the narrow paths, puffs of burning air blew from the rocks on all sides, unexpectedly, and so violently that it seemed as though the party were struck by clouds of hot whirling feathers. The wind seemed palpable and thick. One would almost have said that the gusts cast shadows in the brilliant light of the countless lamps. At the same time, in the dark distance above the illumination, the stars were dimmed and went out one by one. Then as the four persons emerged upon a little platform of rock from which they could view the wild scene, the blasts of scorching wind suddenly ceased and the air settled down upon them like a thick warm blanket. They panted for breath, and by a common impulse they all sat down upon the blocks of stone to rest.

An indescribable awe seized upon them all, like the creeping shadow of an event to come. Gwendoline sat by her husband's side and laid her hand upon his clasped fingers. Lady Brenda chose the place where the light was brightest, while Diana, sitting a little apart, leaned her cheek upon her hand and stared out into the strange mixture of daylight and darkness, half startled by a feeling of weird horror, half delighted by the delicious sense of confused reality and dreamy illusion which her brother had conjured up.

The four sat there for nearly a quarter of an hour without exchanging a word. There are times when the most loquacious being alive must be silent; moments when the unwonted consciousness of the limitless unknown lies heavily upon the little body of our poor knowledge, as the weight of some huge beast that stretches its vast bulk across a tiny trail of toiling ants. The ants are too small to be all crushed by anything so big and rough, but they lie paralysed and helpless till it pleases the giant to relieve them of his burden and let them move again. The mind sticks like a fly in a pot of honey when transported to an atmosphere not its own, and seems to struggle with an element in which its consciousness is redoubled while its activity is destroyed. No one of the four could have given a reason for the silence, nor can any one find explanations for such things without assuming a theory which one half of the world considers absurd and the other half believes to be dangerous. The fact that for thousands of years man has been trying experiments with a view to finding out something about himself, and that his efforts have uniformly resulted in failure, has not made him more lenient to beliefs which he dislikes, nor more willing to admit his own well-demonstrated ignorance. He still explains as accident that which he knows not how to explain by law, and rocks himself to sleep in the security of self-deceived vanity, until he is roused from his slumber to tremble at those terrors which his fatuous self-satisfaction has so deservedly incurred. Science, what follies are committed in thy name! What blind faith is placed in thy feeble utterances, which might more worthily be fixed on higher and truer things!

Silently the four sat together and looked down upon the scene, breathing with difficulty in the hot thick air. The wind had entirely ceased and the silence was so profound as to be almost terrifying. Then, suddenly and without the smallest warning, a fearful crash of thunder burst above their heads and struck the rocks, and echoed back in horrible reverberation, peal upon peal, rolling to the distance, as though the great earth had struck upon a mountain in the smooth grooves that guide her course, and, jolting heavily, were grinding the mass to pieces beneath her resistless weight. Then all was silent again.

Even Augustus started slightly from his reverie, and the ladies sprang to their feet. There was something in the suddenness of the explosion that struck them all as unnatural and horrible.

"Let us go home — I am sure it is going to rain," said Lady Brenda, but her voice sounded hollow and weird.

"Look at the lights!" exclaimed Gwendoline. " What is that moving round them ? "

"I don't know," answered Augustus. "It is very extraordinary."

"It is beautiful," said Diana, her eyes fixed on the strange phenomenon.

As they looked, faint clouds of rosy haze moved between them and the lamps, pausing suddenly and then shooting on like wild figures with streaming drapery of impalpable fineness, tinged with unearthly hues, that left a luminous track in the dark air between. And the figures, or clouds, multiplied till there were myriads of rosy streamers, chasing each other like fire-flies in a wood, intertwining and mingling and shooting away again, but rising higher and higher still, as they soared and leaped into a broad arch through the night sky, emitting a radiance of their own; and the rose colour deepened to red, and the red to purple, and again from time to time a great golden flash flew higher than the rest and trembled in the perfection of a faultless curve and fell again into the night beyond.

Then again the thunder crashed and pealed and echoed as though a Supreme Power were shaking the mountains like pebbles in the hollow of a bowl, and the hot wind puffed like the fierce blast of a furnace from the face of the bare rocks.

The four stood close together, pale and trembling. The ground shook beneath their feet as though it would give way and dissolve in the convulsion of the elements. The far-springing arches of streaming light blazed higher and higher, and struck wide circles in the black air, eclipsing in their matchless radiance the bright lamps below, and piercing the sky with scimitars and spears of light, symmetrical, terrible, and glorious, leaping from a sea of rosy and golden flame which thickened and surged about the castle and down to the shore, hiding everything in its fiery waves.

A blinding white flash, an explosion as of a thousand cannon bursting together — the four fell back against the face of the cliff, half stunned, unconscious with horror and fear. The thunderbolt had struck the rocks not fifty yards below them and in the din of the elements they could hear the great masses of stone bounding down the precipice to plunge into the sea below.

Augustus was no coward, neither were the three women of the timid kind who tremble in ordinary danger. But it was clear that to stay where they were was death, certain and sudden.

"Unless I can reach the hut, we are lost," said Chard.

"Go," said Gwendoline, firmly. "We will wait here." But as she spoke a third peal of thunder broke with deafening crash upon the hills above.

"I cannot leave you here," said Augustus. "You will be safe on the other side of the cliff upon the sandy shore — if anywhere."

And so, under the awful light of the wild streamers, amidst the howling of the dry and scorching wind and the pealing of the thunder, the four began their descent, not knowing at what step they should meet death nor which of them should reach the shore alive. And when they were on the sand Augustus left them and fled up the height again through the very midst of the flaming air, where -indeed there was no heat to burn, but such whirlpools of hot wind as made him stagger in his race; and ever and again the dreadful thunder cracked and burst and roared, so that his senses reeled and, but for the loved ones below, he must have lost all consciousness and fallen a victim to the convulsion of the elements he had roused. For he knew that it was his work now, as he sprang up the rocks towards the hut; he had roused the mainsprings of nature and disturbed her rest so that he doubted whether any effort of his could lull the storm. The hut itself was in a blaze of purple and rosy light; but he rushed boldly in and groped for his instruments in the luminous hot mist. He could not find it, and his heart sank, but he searched still and at last felt the cold enamelled key of the switch beneath his hand. In convulsive triumph he grasped the lever and gathering his senses of remembrance by an effort, he turned it half round.

At first there was no change. His heart beat fast with terror, as he stood holding the tiny thing by which he hoped to direct and subdue such mighty forces. But gradually the colour faded from the room, the mist disappeared and the light of the lantern which he had left there an hour before shone out quietly and illuminated the scene. He took it and then he went to the door. All was changed. The sea of flame had disappeared, leaving but a phosphorescent suggestion of light behind. In the sky above the wild streamers flashed convulsively and died away, one after another. The lamps were extinguished, and in the clear sky the stars shone brightly. But far to the south-east a soft light was in the sky, and as he looked he saw that the moon was rising. The low and distant rumblings of the thunder grew fainter and ceased. Augustus began his descent, reflecting on the awful peril from which he had escaped.

As he reached the shore the scene was inexpressibly beautiful. The May moon, but a day past the full, rose softly over the low range of the Basilicata. The placid sea lapped the dusky shingle and caught the reflection of the moonbeams as one might toss handfuls of diamonds upon a mantle of dark velvet.

The three women stood together on the shore, their lithe and graceful figures just outlined in the moonlight. All was peace and calm, the storm was ended, and Nature, like a tired child, drooped and slept, soothed by the lullaby of the rippling moonlit sea.

"It is all over," said Augustus, quietly. But he took his wife in his arms and kissed her.

As they all turned together they were aware of a man in grey clothes who sat upon a worn boulder at the water's edge, his head supported in his hand, gazing to seaward.