She broke off abruptly, and stood suddenly still;—the Obelisk faced her. Cut sharp and dark against the brilliant sky the huge “Cleopatra’s Needle” towered solemnly aloft, its apex seeming to point directly at a cluster of stars above it. Something there was in its weird and frowning aspect, that appealed strangely to Zaroba’s wandering intelligence,—she gazed at it with eager, dilated eyes.
“To the memory of heroes!” she said whisperingly, with a slight proud gesture of her hand,—“To the glory of the Dead! Salutation to the great gods and crowned Kings! Salutation and witness to the world of what Hath Been! The river shall find a tongue—the shifting sands shall uphold the record, so that none shall forget the things that Were! For the things that Are, being weak, shall perish,—but the things that Were, being strong, shall endure for ever! Here, as God liveth, is the meeting-place; the palms are gone, but the Nile flows on, and the moon is the sunlight of lovers. Here will I wait for my belovëd,—he knows the appointed hour, ... he will not be long!”
She sat down, as close to the Obelisk as she could get, her face turned towards the river and the moonlight; and the clocks of the great city around her slowly tolled eleven. Her head dropped forward on her chest,—though after a few minutes she lifted her face with an anxious look—and,—“Did the child call me?” she said, and listened. Then she relapsed into her former sunken posture, ... once a strong shuddering shook her limbs as of intense cold in the warm June night, ... and then she was quite still ...
The hours passed on,—midnight came and went,—but she never stirred. She seemed to belong to the Obelisk and its attendant sphinxes,—so rigid was her figure, so weird in its outline, so solemn in its absolute immobility. ... And in that same attitude she was found later on towards morning, stone dead. There was no clue to her identity,—nothing about her that gave any hint as to her possible home or friends; her statuesque old face, grander than ever in the serene pallor of death, somewhat awed the two burly policemen who lifted her stark body and turned her features to the uncertain light of early dawn, but it told them no history save that of age and sorrow. So, in the sad chronicles entitled “Found Dead,” she was described as “a woman unknown, of foreign appearance and costume, seemingly of Eastern origin,”—and, after a day or two, being unrecognised and unclaimed, she was buried in the usual way common to all who perish without name and kindred in the dreary wilderness of a great city. Féraz, missing her on the morning after her disappearance, searched for her everywhere as well as he knew how,—but, as he seldom read the newspapers, and probably would not have recognised the brief account of her there if he had,—and as, moreover, he knew nothing about certain dreary buildings in London called mortuaries, where the bodies of the drowned, and murdered, and unidentified, lie for a little while awaiting recognition, he remained in complete and bewildered ignorance of her fate. He could not imagine what had become of her, and he almost began to believe that she must have taken ship back to her native land,—and that perhaps he might hear of her again some day. And truly, she had gone back to her native land,—in fancy;—and truly, it was also possible she might be met with again some day,—in another world than this. But in the meantime she had died,—as best befitted a servant of the old gods,—alone, and in uncomplaining silence.
XLII.
The hair’s-breadth balance of a Thought,—the wrong or right control of Will;—on these things hang the world, life, time, and all Eternity. Such slight threads!—imperceptible, ungraspable,—and yet withal strong,—strong enough to weave the everlasting web of good or evil, joy or woe. On some such poise, as fine, as subtly delicate, the whole majestic Universe swings round in its appointed course,—never a pin’s point awry, never halting in its work, never hesitating in the fulfilment of its laws, carrying out the Divine command with faithful exactitude and punctuality. It is strange,—mournfully strange,—that we never seem able to learn the grand lessons that are taught us by this unvarying routine of natural forces,—Submission, Obedience, Patience, Resignation, Hope. Preachers preach the doctrine,—teachers teach it,—Nature silently and gloriously manifests it hourly; but we,—we continue to shut our ears and eyes,—we prefer to retreat within ourselves,—our little incomplete ignorant selves,—thinking we shall be able to discover some way out of what has no egress, by the cunning arguments of our own finite intellectual faculties. We fail always;—we must fail. We are bound to find out sooner or later that we must bend our stubborn knees in the presence of the Positive Eternal. But till the poor brain gives way under the prolonged pressure and strain of close inquiry and analysis, so long will it persist in attempting to probe the Impenetrable,—so long will it audaciously attempt to lift the veil that hides the Beyond instead of resting content with what Nature teaches. “Wait”—she says—“Wait till you are mentally able to understand the Explanation. Wait till the Voice which is as a silver clarion, proclaims all truth, saying ‘Awake, Soul, for thy dream is past! Look now and see,—for thou art strong enough to bear the Light.’”
Alas! we will not wait,—hence our life in these latter days of analysis is a mere querulous complaint, instead of what it should be, a perpetual thanksgiving.
Four seasons have passed away since the “Soul of Lilith” was caught up into its native glory,—four seasons,—summer, autumn, winter and spring—and now it is summer again,—summer in the Isle of Cyprus, that once most sacred spot, dear to historic and poetic lore. Up among the low olive-crowned hills of Baffo or Paphos, there is more shade and coolness than in other parts of the island, and the retreat believed to have been the favourite haunt of Venus is still full of something like the mystical glamour that hallowed it of old. As the singer of “Love-Letters of a Violinist” writes:
“There is a glamour all about the bay
As if the nymphs of Greece had tarried here.