Читать книгу The Mysteries of Florence - George Lippard - Страница 11

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He stood upon a lonely isle. His feet were tortured by the sensation of burning, he looked beneath in wonder, and discovered that he stood upon a rock of fire.

He looked around—he beheld an ocean of fire; as far as eye could see, nothing met his vision but the waves of crimson flame, undulating to and fro, with a gentle, yet solemn motion.

Had the waves arisen around him, in giant billows, or swept above in mountains of liquid flame, the dreamer would have rejoiced, his spirit would have joined in the tumult, his soul become the incarnation of the storm.

But that strange calmness of the waves, that quiet undulation, awed him, chilled him to the heart. He looked again over the shoreless sea, and saw with straining eyes a sight of woe—unutterable woe.

From the surface of every wave, from the waves breaking in spiral flames at his feet—afar and near, on every side—from the surface of every wave was thrust a discolored face, with burning eyes, that gleamed with a strange life, while the lips were colorless, the cheeks livid, and the brow green with decay. As the Dreamer looked, low, faint murmurs, unutterable sighs and sobs, broke on the air, and a hollow whisper, more like the echo of a thought than a sound, came to his ear—THESE ARE THE FACES OF THE DAMNED—every face you see, is the face of a Lost-soul—THESE ARE THE FACES OF THE DAMNED.

Aldarin turned from side to side with a horror he had never felt before. All around seemed turning to fire, fire in every shape and form, fire intangible and fire incarnate. Above, no sky with Sun of Glory gave light to that ocean of flame, with the faces of the damned, thrust from every billow. A roof of brass, vast and awful, and magnificent, arched over the waves of fire; it was heated to a burning heat, and the eye of Aldarin seemed turning to flame, as he looked upon the brazen sky.

The horizon of this fearful sky, was concealed by great clouds, rolling slowly on, and on, and on, over the waves of fire, far, far, from the isle where stood Aldarin.

And while the hollow murmur broke over the scene, and the whispering of subdued voices, and the sobs of soft voiced women, shrieking that unutterable wail, Aldarin felt the very air burn into his flesh hotter, and more torturing than the air of the simoon, he felt the rock beneath him turning molted fire, his feet were crumbling into fragments, while agony and intense pain, quivered along his veins, and the flame lapped up his blood. He burned, and yet—he burned not.

The air penetrated into his flesh, entered the pores, burning along his veins; he felt the fire at his very heart; he drank in the flame with every breath, and yet—he burned not.

No sooner did his feet crumble with the agonizing influence of the fire, than another portion of his frame, seemed renewing its life, his heart became young, and his brain flowed with healthy blood.

Again his feet renewed their flesh, and then, with a hollow voice, he shrieked, mingling in that unutterable wail of the damned, “I burn, I burn, my heart is on fire, my brain is turned to flame, and yet I am not consumed.”

A sudden change in the shape of the islet on which he stood, attracted his attention. At first wide and extensive in form, it was now narrow and contracted. Every moment it grew smaller, and yet smaller, and the waves of fire came rolling wave after wave over its surface. Aldarin started with a new and strange horror. Terrible it was to stand on the rock of fire, his feet consuming, his brain on fire, his heart a flame; air, sky and ocean, all burning into his very soul, terrible, most terrible, but those hollow murmurs, those fearful whispers of the damned came breaking on his ear, speaking of mysteries, yet more terrible, in the Vast Beyond.

The wretched man clung to the rock. Oh! God, how fearful was the first touch of the waves of molten flame; how the liquid fire ate into his flesh and corrupted his blood, as the spiral flames cresting, each wave came hissing and curling round his limbs!

The waves rose higher and higher; the bodies of the lost, offensive with decay, the loathsome, and worm-eaten came floating around Aldarin. He raised his hands, he pushed the ghastly carcasses aside, but still they came floating on, and on, throwing their crumbling arms around his neck and fixing their livid lips upon his burning cheek, in the kiss of the damned.

They hailed him—brother—with a hollow welcome, and as innumerable voices whispered forth the sound of awful welcome, Aldarin missed his footing on the rock, he felt his form changing with decay, he raised his hands in the effort to keep on the surface of the waves, and saw his fingers with the flesh dropping from the bones; he floated on the surface of the boundless sea, he became one of the damned.

Forever and forever lost.

They were floating on and on, the boundless legion of the lost, and with them floated Aldarin.

A strange distant sound burst on the ear, he heard it grow louder and louder, now it was like the roaring of a mighty ocean, now it was like the hissing of a thousand furnaces.

Floating on the waves of fire, crowded by legion of the lost, Aldarin turned with a feeling of intense awe, and murmured the question—“What means yon sound of terror—yon murmur of fear?”

“We are floating on and on, toward the Cataract of Hell—” was the hoarse murmur of the living corse floating by his side, and a million tongues, speaking from livid lips returned the echo—“On and on toward the Cataract of Hell!”

Aldarin was carried on without the power of resistance, with no object to stay his career, on and on, every moment nearing the fearful Cataract, whose omnipresent thunder now deafened his ears, and fell upon his very brain, like the awful echo of an unrelenting Judgment.

Then came a pause of strange unconsciousness, from which Aldarin presently awoke; and opening his eyes, gazed around.

He hung on the verge of a rock, a rock of melting bitumen, that burned his hands to masses of crisped and blackened flesh as he hung. The rock flung its projecting form over a gulf, to which the cataracts of earth might compare, as the rivulet to the vast ocean.

It seemed to Aldarin as though the universe, with all the boundless fields of space, was comprised in the sweep of that awful cataract with its rocks of bitumen and red-hot ore extending for miles and miles innumerable, on either side, with the waves of fire—each wave bearing its awful burden of a damned soul—surging and foaming over the edge of the precipice, while a hissing and crackling sound, like the noise of ten thousand forests, ravaged by flame, startled the very air of hell, and mingled with the shrieks of the ******.

Aldarin looked below.

God of Heaven, what a sight! A gulf, like the space occupied by a thousand worlds—deep, vast, immense, and yet perceptible to the eye—sunk beneath him, with its surface of fiery waves, all convulsed and foaming with innumerable whirlpools, all crimsoned by bubbles of flame, each whirlpool swallowing the millions of the lost, each bubble bearing on its surface the face of a soul, damned and damned forever. Forever and forever.

And as the lost were borne on by the waves and swallowed by the whirlpools, they raised their hands and cast their burning eyes to the brazen sky, and shrieked, with low and muttering voices, the eternal death-wail of the lost.

Over the cataract, shrieking and wailing, were precipitated the millions and ten thousand millions of living-dead; each one swelling that unutterable murmur as he fell, each soul yelling with a more intense horror as it sank into night and all around, innumerable echoes bursting from the rocks or bitumen and melting ore breaking from the very air gave back the shriek, the wail and murmur of the lost. Forever and forever lost.

And over this scene, awful and vast, towered a figure of ebony darkness; his blackened brow concealed in the clouds, his extended arms grasping the infinitude of the cataract, while his feet rested upon islands of bitumen far in the gulf below.

The eyes of the figure were fixed upon Aldarin, as he clung with the nervous grasp of despair, to the rock of melting bitumen, and their gaze curdled his heated blood.

Every moment he was losing his grasp, sliding and sliding from the rock, now his feet were loosened and hung dangling over the gulf.

There was no hope for him, he must fall—fall, and fall forever.

At this moment, when his burning hands clung to the rock, when his feet were dangling in the air, when his blood-shot eyes, protruding from their sockets, glared ghastily above, a new wonder attracted the gaze of Aldarin.

A stairway, built of white marble, wide, roomy, and secure, seemed to spring from the very rock to which he clung, and winding up from the cataract, encircled by white and rainbow-hued clouds, was lost in the distance, far, far above.

Aldarin beheld two figures slowly descending the stairway from the distance—the figure of a warrior and the form of a dark-eyed woman.

As they drew near and nearer, he felt a strange feeling of awe gathering round his heart.

He knew the figures, he knew them well.

Her face of beauty wore a smile, her dark eyes were brilliant as ever, brilliant as when first he wooed and won her in the wilds of Palestine. Yet there was blood upon her vestments near the heart; and his lip was spotted with one drop of thick red blood.

It was most fearful to see them thus calmly approach; it was most terrible to recognize every line of their features, every part of their vestments.

“This,” muttered Aldarin, “this indeed, is Hell.—And yet he must call for aid, and call to the warrior and the woman. How the thought writhed like a serpent round his very heart!”

He was sliding from the rock, slowly, yet certainly sliding. Another moment and he would plunge below. There was but one hope. He might, by a desperate effort, drag his carcass along the pointed rock: by a single extension of his arm, his hand would grasp the lowest step of the stairway.

He prepared himself for the effort, his feet hung dangling below, it is true, and his body was gradually slipping, but he gathered all the strength of his living corse for that single effort.

Slowly he passed his hand along the rock of bitumen, clutching the red-hot masses of ore in the action, and with his heart all aflame, he supported his trembling carcass with the other hand, and passed the extended hand yet farther along the rock.

It wanted but a single inch, a little inch, and his hand would grasp the marble of the stairway. And, yet that inch he could not compass with the hand so nervously outstretched, all his strength had been expended in the effort, and there he hung trembling on the verge of the abyss, when had he but the additional vigor of a mere child, he might grasp the stairway—he might be saved.

Another and a desperate effort! His fingers touched the carved marble-work of the stair-way, but his strength was gone—he could not hold it in his grasp.

With an eye of horrible intensity he looked above him, ere he made the last effort. The figures stood before him on the second step of the stairway. The woman, beautiful and bright-eyed, smiled, and the stern warrior shared her smile.

“Thou, thou wilt save me Ilmerine—my wife, my love, thou wilt—drag—drag—my hand to thee, and I can reach the staircase.”

She stooped, the beautiful woman, she reached forth a fair and lily hand, she grasped the blackened fingers of Aldarin.

“Thanks, beautiful Ilmerine. I have wronged thee, but—the SECRET—a little nearer—drag—drag my hand—a moment—and I will grasp the staircase—I will be saved.”

She placed his fingers round a projecting ornament of the staircase, his grasp was tight and desperate.

“Ascend!” she cried in a sweet and soft-toned voice.

“Julian—oh, Julian—grasp this hand—aid me, oh Julian my brother!”

The figure of the Warrior slowly stooped and seized the other hand, and drawing it towards the staircase, wound the fingers round another piece of the carved work of the staircase.

“Ascend, Aldarin, brother of mine, ascend!” cried his deep toned and awful voice.

“Ascend, brother of mine, I would, but my strength fails—seize me, by the body, and drag me from this rock of terror—oh, seize me.”

The Warrior seized Aldarin by the shoulder, and dragged him slowly along the rock, but the flesh he clenched, crumbled in his grasp. Aldarin again trembled over the verge of the abyss—the blow of a single straw, might suffice to hurl him into the world below.

“Julian my brother. Ilmerine my wife, save me—oh, save me!”

The woman, dark-haired and beautiful, stooped, she slowly unwound the fingers of Aldarin from the ornament of the staircase. And as she unwound finger after finger, she looked upon his horror-stricken face and smiled, and pointed to the red-wound near her heart. He returned her smile with a ghastly grimace, he looked to the Warrior, and tightened the grasp of his other hand.

“Thou Julian, wilt save me—thou wilt not unwind my fingers, thou wilt hurl this beautiful demon aside.”

“Aldarin my brother!” said the Figure in a voice of awe, as kneeling on the lowest step of the staircase, he cast the glance of his full and burning eyes upon the livid visage of Aldarin, while for a moment he wound the folds of his robe yet closer around his warrior-form.—“Aldarin, my brother, I will save thee.”

He smiled—Aldarin returned his smile.

“Reach me thy hand, Julian, thy hand, or I perish.”

The Warrior slowly reached forth his hand, from beneath the folds of his cloak, he held it before the face of Aldarin, and the eyes of the doomed man saw that the fingers clenched a Goblet of Gold, that shone and glimmered thro’ the air, like a beacon-fire of hell.

“Oh—Fiend—the Death-bowl!”

As these words shrieked from Aldarin’s livid lips, he drew back from the maddening sight, with horror, he missed his hold, he slid from the rock—HE FELL.

A thousand fires burned before his eyes, ten thousand horrid sounds fell on his very brain, serpents loathsome and noxious crawled thro’ his hair, all around, above and beneath was fire, waves of flame eating into his soul, sky of brass, burning his eyes from their sockets, all was fire and horror and death, and—still he fell.

And a hoarse hollow voice, rising above the murmurs of the damned, spoke forth the words—“Forever and Forever—” and all hell gave back the echo—“Ever, Ever, Ever!”

Still he fell! The whirlpool sucked him within its circles of flame, around and around he dashed, with the bodies of the living dead floating over him, with ghastly faces, upturned to his vision, with foul arms, clenching him in a loathsome embrace, around and around he dashed, joining in the low, deep murmur of the damned, and his heart gave back the murmur. This, This, is hell!

Suddenly all was dark. Aldarin heard no sound, no murmur of the lost. All was dark, all was still. He touched his brow, and was amazed to find it untortured by flame. Yet big beaded drops of sweat stood from his forehead, his frame was chilled, a feeling of unutterable AWE was upon him, he feared to stir. He had been dreaming. His dream was past, his consciousness gradually returned, he found himself reclining among the foul remnants of decay, amid the carcasses of the dead.

He drooped his head low on his bosom, his face rested on his knees, his arms were folded across his eyes, and there in that lone chamber, while the silent hours of the night wore on, with his own weird soul, communed Aldarin the Fratricide.