The Romance of Golden Star ...

G >> George Chetwynd Griffith >> The Romance of Golden Star ...

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I had talked with Golden Star, seeking to teach her the lesson that my
dear instructress of the new time had taught me, and had awakened half
mad with the perplexities of my divided love--the love of the past that
was dead and of the present that was alive. I had seen my sister-bride
come forth out of her tomb to greet me, clothed in her bridal robes,
with the dust of the grave in her hair and on her face. I had clasped
her in my longing arms and kissed the dust from her lips, and while I
yet held her in my embrace her form had grown cold and stiff again.
Then, in the agony of my sorrow, I had strained her to my breast, and,
under the pressure of my arms, she had crumbled in my grasp and fallen,
a little heap of grey bones and dusty garments, at my feet.

Once more I had awakened with my gasping cry of horror still sounding in
my ears, and then, not daring to seek sleep again, I had risen and gone
out to watch for the rest of the night before her grave under the rock.
There they found me when they came from the camp at daybreak. I went
back with them, and our hasty morning meal was eaten and drunk almost in
silence, for we were all too busy with our thoughts to have leisure for
conversation, and my friends, knowing how much that day's work must mean
to me, respected my unspoken feelings, and left me to the silent company
of my own hopes and fears.

Breakfast over, we took our lanterns and tools and went to the rock,
followed by Tupac and two of my men carrying the coffin-like case in
which Golden Star's body was to be laid. Under the rock was a long heap
of loose stones which the professor had wisely piled up in front of the
upright courses of masonry through which he had broken into my
resting-place. He scanned them eagerly to see if they had been
disturbed since his visit, and told us that they had not. Then I bade
Tupac and the men clear them away, which they speedily did, laying bare
the courses of stone behind them, still standing as the professor had
re-built them after taking out my body.

A few minutes' more work opened a passage large enough for a man to walk
in, stooping. As if by a common instinct they all stepped aside and
looked at me. I saw what they meant, and, turning the light of my
lantern into the entrance, I walked back, a living man, into the grave
where I had lain dead while ten generations of men had lived and died. I
saw the place where I had lain, for a few mouldering scraps and shreds
of cloth and furs still lay where my bed had been. Then I flashed my
lantern round the walls of the cavern, and on the side along which my
own couch had been spread by Anda-Huillac and his brother priests I
found what they had told me to seek while I was preparing to fulfil the
oath that I had sworn with Golden Star.

It was a wedge of stone fitted in to a crevice in the wall and left
rough and jagged at its outer end, so that one who did not know its true
purpose would have taken it to be nothing more than a natural projection
in the rough side of the cavern.

With a mallet that I had brought with me I struck the end of the wedge
softly above and below until it was loosened in its socket. Then,
standing to one side, I struck it harder. It dropped from its place, and
the same instant a part of the cavern wall swayed outwards and fell with
a rumbling crash across the floor.

For a moment I stood breathless and motionless on the threshold of
Golden Star's grave. Then, with trembling hands, I turned the light of
my lantern into the inner chamber, and as the dust that the falling
stone had raised fell slowly back to the ground I saw through the
particles dancing in the lantern rays the dim outline of a human form
lying on a couch of skins.

Still, not daring to set a foot within that sacred place, I stood in the
doorway and let the light fall full upon the figure. A glance showed me
that so far all was well. No profaning hand had disturbed the peace and
sanctity of her long slumber. She lay there as perfect in form and
feature as she had lain beside me that night in the little chamber in
the Sanctuary of the Sun.

Then I thought of Joyful Star. Hers should be the first eyes after mine
to look upon that dead loveliness. So I turned and went out to where
they were all standing round the outer entrance, and, taking no notice
of the others, replying nothing to their half-whispered questions, I
went to Ruth and, holding out my hand for her, said,--

'Come, Joyful Star, and see the sister that the Lord of Life made long
ago in the image that you now wear.'

She said nothing, but, with a look of wondering question, put her hand
into mine and I turned to lead her to the entrance.

Djama, with a sudden exclamation, took a step forward as though he would
stop her, but Francis Hartness put his hand on his shoulder, saying,--

'I think you had better let them go alone. There is no fear for your
sister with all of us here so near; and if what Vilcaroya says is true,
why should she not see her first?'

Djama drew back, though with no very good grace, and I went into the
inner chamber, helping Ruth over the fallen stones. Then I flashed my
light on Golden Star's face and said,--

'Did I not tell you truly that the Lord of Life made her in the same
image as yours?'

I heard her utter a little gasping cry of wonder, and then I saw her
slip forward on to her knees beside Golden Star's pillow, and as the
light fell upon the two faces--the living and the dead--the likeness
between them was so perfect, save for the golden gleam of Joyful Star's
hair and the lustrous blackness of the tresses that framed my dead
love's face, that they seemed to me as sisters, one watching over the
slumbers of the other.

'It is more than wonderful, and it is surely more than chance!' said
Joyful Star, in a tone that was almost a whisper, and turning towards me
her white face and the eyes into which the loving tears of pity were
already springing. 'Why did you not tell me of this before, Vilcaroya?'

'Because,' I said, 'the arts of the priests might not have done for her
what they did for me, and I might have found here that which your eyes
should never have looked upon. But now--is she not beautiful, even as
you are?'

The bright blood came swiftly back into her cheeks as I said this, and,
without answering me she stooped, and with gentle hands put back the
tresses from Golden Star's forehead, and, bending over her, laid her
warm, sweet lips on the cold, smooth brow that I had last seen crowned
with the marriage-garland in our bridal chamber in the Sanctuary.

CHAPTER V

HOW DJAMA DID HIS WORK

I can tell you but little of what followed the taking of the body of
Golden Star back to the hacienda, for neither I nor any of the others,
save only Djama himself, witnessed the secret mysteries of his strange
and fearful art. I could tell you of their wonder when, after I had
bidden Tupac bring the case into the cavern and he and I and Joyful Star
had gently and reverently raised her from her couch and laid her in it,
we carried her out into the daylight. How they stood around the open
case and looked, half in wonder and half in fear, from her dead, cold
face to the living likeness that was bending over it. How they praised
her beauty and marvelled at the forgotten arts that had preserved so
perfect a likeness of life in one who for more than three centuries and
a half had neither drawn breath nor known a thrill of feeling.

I could tell you, too, with what loving and anxious care that precious
burden was borne over plain and valley and mountain in a litter that we
had brought with us for the purpose, and how at last we laid her in all
her calm, unconscious loveliness on the great table which stood in the
middle of the chamber in which Djama was to do his work. But here my
story must cease for the time, for Djama made it an unalterable
condition that he should do the work that only he could do in absolute
solitude. Only thus, he said, would he, or could he, perform the task
upon whose issue the completion of Golden Star's life on earth, if it
was ever to be completed, depended.

He told us plainly that a single interruption should be fatal to her and
all our hopes. He would not even permit his sister to enter the room
until he should call for her. I was bitterly loath to yield--to leave
her who had been so dear to me powerless and unconscious in the hands of
a man whom I had already learned to hate, although not only did I owe my
own new life to him, but on him alone rested all my hopes of seeing
Golden Star once more restored to life and health, and the beauty that
had been peerless ages before Joyful Star had reached the perfection of
her young womanhood.

How did I know what unholy arts he might use to rekindle the
long-quenched life-flame in that fair shape of hers? How could I do
more than guess vaguely and fearfully at the awful mysteries that might
be enacted in the silence and solitude of that fast-closed chamber in
which, day and night, he would remain alone with her, the living with
the dead, like the potter with his clay, until it should please him to
use the dreadful power that was his, and call her back from death to
life, perhaps--and oh! how horrible the thought was to me!--to be the
slave of the man who, by his unearthly art, had made himself the master
of her new life.

Yet, think of it, brood over it as I would, there was no help for it.
He, and he alone, could exert the power that would loose the bonds of
death in which she lay enchained. Unless he had his will she would
remain as she was, perhaps until the Last Day came, and the Lord of Life
called all his children, living and dead, back to the Mansions of the
Sun; and so we yielded, since there was nothing else to be done.

On the evening of the day that we returned to the hacienda, he busied
himself making the last preparations for his work. Then he came out of
the room and locked the door, and, after eating his dinner almost in
silence, went to bed, taking the key with him, and telling us that on no
account must he be awakened. All that night and the next day and the
next night we neither saw nor heard anything of him; but on the morning
of the second day, the door of his bedroom was open and his bed was
empty, but the door of the room in which Golden Star lay was still fast
shut and locked.

How the time passed I cannot tell you. Joyful Star, seemingly more
self-possessed than any of us, took up her household duties, and went
about them with a quick, quiet industry that surprised and shamed us.
But we three men wandered about aimlessly, now alone and now together,
communing with our own thoughts or talking with each other always of the
same thing--of what was going on in that chamber, where, as we knew from
the faint sounds that every now and then came through the closed door,
the master of the arts of life and death was performing his awful task.

The first day and night came and went, then the second, and still the
door remained closed, and Djama gave no sign. But the professor sought
to comfort me and soothe our impatience by telling me how long the same
work had lasted before I was recalled to life. I had sought also to
distract my thoughts by talking with him and Francis Hartness of all
that was to be done for the deliverance of my people, and the
realisation of my dreams of empire when Djama's task should be over.

But it was useless, for fear and suspense kept my mind bound as though
with invisible chains, and, do what I would, my thoughts went back and
back again to dwell upon the unknown secrets of that closed and silent
room. Then I tried to draw Joyful Star into conversation about the
thoughts which I knew were filling both our hearts; but though she
listened to me she would say nothing herself, and I soon saw that with
her the subject was forbidden, and the work not to be talked of till, in
success or failure, it was ended.

For the first two nights no sleep came to my eyes, but the third night
my weariness was too much for me, and scarcely had my aching head fallen
on the pillow than slumber, filled with broken dreams and visions of
things unutterably horrible, came upon me. In the midst of one of
them--I know not what it was, save that no human words could paint the
horror of it--I woke up with a cold, damp hand upon my shoulder, and
heard Djama's voice, hoarse and trembling, saying to me,--

'Get up and dress, Vilcaroya; I have something for you to see and to
hear. Make haste, for there is not much time to be lost.'

I looked up, and saw him standing by my bed with a light in his hand,
ghastly pale, and staring at me with black, burning eyes, which seemed,
as they looked into mine, to take my will a prisoner, and draw my very
soul towards him.

'What is it?' I said, in the broken words of one just roused from sleep.
'Is it over--have you succeeded? Is she alive? Have you come to take me
to her?'

'The work is not done yet,' he said. 'I have come for you to see it
finished. Make haste, I tell you, if you want to see what you have been
waiting so long for.'

I needed no second bidding. I sprang out of bed, and dressed myself with
swift, though trembling, hands. Then I thrust my feet into a pair of
soft slippers, such as Djama himself wore, and then I followed him from
the room out on to the balcony that was built round the house over the
inner courtyard. We went down into the court and into the dining-room,
and through that down a long, narrow passage out of which opened the
room that had held all our hope and fear and wonder for so long.

He unlocked the door, and motioned to me to go in. He followed me, and
locked the door behind us. I looked about the room, which was dimly lit
by two shaded lamps. The table on which we had laid Golden Star was
empty. Many strangely-shaped things, that I knew not the use of were
scattered about. The air was hot and moist, and filled with a faint,
sweet odour. At the opposite end from the door, which was covered by a
screen, I saw in one corner a bath--from which white, steamy fumes were
rising--and in the other stood a little, narrow, curtained bed, such as
I had first awakened in.

Djama caught me by the arm, and half led, half dragged me to the
bedside. Then with his other hand he parted the curtains and pointed to
the pillow. I felt his burning eyes fixed upon me as I looked and saw
the sweet fair face of Golden Star lying in the midst of her dusky
tresses, which lay spread out on the pillow, cleansed from the dust of
the grave, and soft and shimmering as silk.

I started forward, and, with my face close to hers, scanned every
feature, and listened, but in vain, for the soft sound of her breathing.
Her skin was clear and moist; I could see the thin, blue veins in her
eyelids, and the moisture on her lips. I laid my hand gently on her
cheek. It was soft and smooth, but still cold as death.

Then a fierce, unreasoning anger came into my heart. I sprang back and
seized Djama by the shoulders, and, looking with fierce, hot eyes into
his, I whispered hoarsely,--

'Have you brought me here to mock me? She is not alive--she is but a
fair image of death. Tell me that you have failed and I will strangle
you, liar and cheat that you are!'

He looked back steadily into my eyes and smiled, and said, in a voice
that had not the slightest tremor of fear,--

'If I fail you may strangle me, and welcome; but I have not failed yet,
Vilcaroya. It is for _you_ to say now whether Golden Star is to awake or
not.'

'What do you mean?' I said, letting go my grip on his shoulders, and
recoiling a pace from him.

'You shall hear what I mean,' he said. 'But you must hear patiently and
quietly, and think well on what I say, for in your answer to what I ask
you will also answer the question whether Golden Star is to awake to
life and health, or to be put back in that case yonder and buried, to
rot away into corruption like any other corpse.'

'Say on, I am listening,' I said. My lips were dry, and the grip of a
deadly fear seemed to be clutching at my heart and draining the last
drop of blood from it.

'Listen well, then,' he said. He paused for a moment as though to
collect his thoughts, and make words ready to express them. Then he went
on. 'You see, I have undone the work that your priests did three hundred
and sixty years ago. Your Golden Star is now neither dead nor alive. She
is lying on the narrow borderland that divides life from death, and for
an hour from the time I left this room she will remain there--if I
choose. At the end of that time she will pass beyond the border, and no
earthly power, not even mine, could call her back. But at any time
before the hour has expired I can complete the work that I have begun. I
can bring the breath back to her body; I can set the blood flowing
through her veins. You shall see her eyes open and her lips smile, and
you shall hear her speak to you as though she had only awakened out of
sleep. This I can do, and I will, if you will do what I am going to ask
you.'

'What is it?' I whispered. 'Tell me quickly that I may know. You are
master here. I can only listen and obey.'

He smiled as I said this, a smile that it was not good for an honest man
to look upon, and went on, speaking now rapidly and earnestly,--

'When I did this work for you, I did it as a student and a man of
science, who was making the greatest experiment of his life. I believed
that I had solved one, at least, of the secrets of life and death. I
watched and noted every change that came over you. I marked every
symptom and measured every step of your return from death into life, but
I did all this as a student inquiring into the mysteries of Nature, as
an observer watching the working out of a great problem, and with no
more feeling than if I had been dissecting a corpse. But this time it
has been different. I began this work with the cold and passionless
deliberation of one who toils only to learn and to succeed. But
afterwards--come here and look at her, and you will understand me
better. She is a woman, and she is beautiful, and here, for two days and
two nights, she has lain under my hands and my eyes. I have given her
beauty back to her, and if that beauty is to live it must be mine. Do
you understand me, Vilcaroya?'

What could I say, what could I do to answer this man whom I hated, and
yet who held the power of life and death for Golden Star in his hands?
The vague fear that had smitten me when he began to speak had taken its
worst shape now. I looked at him with hate and horror staring out of my
eyes. Again and again I tried to speak, but my lips only moved and
trembled without making any word. But he read my thoughts, and smiled
that evil smile of his again and said, in a low voice which seemed to
have the echo of a laugh in it,--

'I see you hate me, as I have often thought you did, and that is why I
have brought you here to tell you this. That is why I would not complete
my work till you had sworn, as you yet shall do if you would see Golden
Star alive again, that what I have brought back out of the grave shall
be mine and mine only.'

These last words of his let loose my anger and unchained my tongue. I
gripped him by the arm, and in a whisper that had a strange hissing
sound, I said,--

'But that is _not_ all! What do you think your life would be worth if
you left her to die? Have you forgotten what I said to you in the cave
beneath the Rodadero? Do you not know that this very night I could have
you carried, gagged and bound, over the mountains and back to the grave
that we took Golden Star out of? Do you not know that I could lay you
there with food and drink beside you that you could not touch, and a
lamp whose light would show them to you, and then wall up the entrance
again, and leave you there to think of your fate till you went mad and
died of hunger and thirst? Do you not know that I could chain you to a
rock and light a fire about you, and watch you burn limb by limb till
you shrieked your life out in lingering agony? Would this be better than
going back to your own land loaded with treasure that would make you
richer than you have ever dreamed of being? Now, _I_ have spoken, and it
is for you to answer me.'

Before I had done speaking he had taken a chair and seated himself
astride it, with his arms resting on the back and his chin on his arms,
and was looking at me with white, set face, and steady, dark, shining
eyes. When I had finished there was a little silence between us, and
then he spoke, and the first time I ever felt fear in either of my lives
was when I heard those cold, cruel, carefully-measured words of his,--

'That is well said, Vilcaroya. I am glad you have spoken plainly, for
now we understand each other; but I don't think you quite realise the
difference between your power and mine. You have, or think you have, the
brute force, the strength of numbers, and the slavish devotion of your
people on your side, and you threaten to use that power to put me to a
lingering and torturing death unless I withdraw my demands and do as you
wish me. In that, however, you are quite wrong. I am as much the master
of my own life as I was once of yours, and still am of Golden Star's.
Without moving hand or foot I could kill myself as I sit here before
you, so your threats of torture are nothing more than empty words. It is
only a matter of simple life or death. If I live, Golden Star will live.
If I die, she will never draw the breath of life--but what I have said,
I have said. She shall only live as my promised wife, bound to me by the
most sacred oath that you can swear. You cannot consummate your own
marriage with her, because in the modern world that is impossible. You
are refusing simply because, for some reason or other, you dislike me
personally, but I don't propose that that shall stand in my way. As for
your treasures, their value has utterly changed for me. A week ago, I
frankly confess that I would have sold my soul, if I thought I had one,
for them. Now, without her, they would only make the world a golden
mockery to me, for I tell you, Vilcaroya, that I, who have never loved
living woman yet, love that beautiful shape of inanimate flesh as that
old sculptor we have told you of loved his statue. Every hour that I
have been alone in this room with her this strange love of mine has
grown. First it was only scientific curiosity, then physical admiration,
then something else. I don't know what it is, for it is beyond the reach
of my analysis, but I know enough of it to call it love, and I tell you
it is such love as only a man of my nature and pursuits is capable of.
Unsatisfied, it would consume me and kill me, and I would rather die
quickly than slowly. Now--once more--shall Golden Star and I live or
die?'

How was I to answer such a speech as this? I heard him in silence to the
end, my eyes held fast by his, and my spirit sinking as though beaten
down by the pitiless force of those cold words of his. And in the
meantime a great truth had been dawning in my mind. Force had ceased to
rule in this new world, and intellect had taken its throne. I was the
inferior of this man, whose trained mind was the heir of the generations
that had toiled and fought while I had slept. I was little better than a
savage before him, and I knew it, and he knew it, and, bitter as the
thought was to me, yet it was only the truth. I was conquered, and a new
gleam in his eyes told me that he had read my thoughts before I had
spoken them.

Then, while I stood hesitating before him, his white, hard-set face
softened, and his lips melted into a smile that was almost as sweet as a
woman's. It was that that saved me, for it reminded me of Ruth, and the
recollection of her told me that I loved even as Djama did. The very
thought of her put new blood into my heart. The words of yielding and
submission died unuttered on my lips. I raised my head, which I had
bowed down in dejection, and looked at him steadily again. Then I said
slowly, and in the voice of a man who does not speak twice,--

'I have thought, and I will speak for the last time. I will swear by the
sacred glory of the Lord of Light that Golden Star shall be yours, upon
two conditions.'

'Conditions!' said he, bringing his dark brows down till they made a
straight black line over his eyes. 'What are they?'

[Illustration: The dagger-point dropped till it was within an inch of
Golden Star's breast.

_To face page 119._]

'These,' I said. 'You love and I love. First, then, you must win the
love of Golden Star, and, secondly, you must give me your sister, Joyful
Star, if I can win her love.'

'My sister Ruth to _you_! Is that your earnest, Vilcaroya, or are you
only trying my patience?'

The bitter, coldly-spoken words cut into my soul as the lash of a whip
cuts into the flesh. I could have slain him as he sat there sneering at
me, but it was a time for words, not deeds; and so, mastering my anger
as best I could, I took two swift strides to Golden Star's bedside, and,
snatching my dagger out of the sheath of the belt which I had put on
when I had dressed, I turned and faced him, and said,--

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