by M. P. Shiel
between Pera proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom,both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left undershelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, withgold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used topatrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meantto reach the _Speranza_, she being then safely anchored some distance upthe Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the Tophanaquay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excitedthe thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from somereeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a squaremile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had notaccordingly advanced far over every sort of _debris_, when I found myeyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness:whereupon I said: 'I will turn back, cross the region of tombs andbarren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at theFoundoucli quay, and so reach the _Speranza_.'
Accordingly, I made my way out of the region of smoke, passed beyond thelimits of smouldering ruin and tomb, and soon entered a rich woodland,somewhat scorched at first, but soon green and flourishing as thejungle. This cooled and soothed me, and being in no hurry to reach theship, I was led on and on, in a somewhat north-western direction, Ifancy. Somewhere hereabouts, I thought, was the place they called 'TheSweet Waters,' and I went on with the vague notion of coming upon them,thinking to pass the day, till afternoon, in the forest. Here nature, inonly twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was nowthe wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brownshade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress,mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig. OnceI stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown andlost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked inboscage. With slow and listless foot I went, munching an almond or anolive, though I could swear that olives were not formerly indigenous toany soil so northern: yet here they are now, pretty plentiful, thoughelementary, so that modifications whose end I cannot see are certainlyproceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that daybeing immense beyond anything I ever heard of: and the thought, Iremember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into abird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should Ido? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time Ipenetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood wasbrilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here allmotionless. I seemed, as it were, to hear the vacant silence of theworld, and my foot treading on a twig, produced the report of pistols. Ipresently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, thathad a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilightenabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of atam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here andthere some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. Ihad stopped--_why_ I do not recollect--perhaps thinking that if I wasnot getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding myway out. And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruisinginsect trawled near my ear its lonely drone.
Suddenly, God knows, I started, I started.
I imagined--I dreamed--that I saw a pressure in a bed of moss andviolets, _recently made!_ And while I stood gloating upon thatimpossible thing, I imagined--I dreamed--the lunacy of it!--that I hearda laugh...! the laugh, my good God, of a human soul.
Or it seemed half a laugh, and half a sob: and it passed from me in onefleeting instant.
Laughs, and sobs, and idiot hallucinations, I had often heard before,feet walking, sounds behind me: and even as I had heard them, I hadknown that they were nothing. But brief as was this impression, it wasyet so thrillingly _real_, that my poor heart received, as it were, thevery shock of death, and I fell backward into a mass of moss, supportedon the right palm, while the left pressed my working bosom; and there,toiling to catch my breath, I lay still, all my soul focussed into myears. But now I could hear no sound, save only the vast and audible humof the silence of the universe.
There was, however, the foot-print. If my eye and ear should soconspire against me, that, I thought, was hard.
Still I lay, still, in that same pose, without a stir, sick anddry-mouthed, infirm and languishing, with dying breaths: but keen,keen--and malign.
I would wait, I said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though sowoefully sick and invalid: I would make no sound....
After some minutes I became conscious that my eyes were leering--leeringin one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a senseof direction proved to me that I must, _in truth_, have heard something!I strove--I managed--to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feeblyswaying there, not the terrors of death alone were in my breast, but theauthority of the monarch was on my brow.
I moved: I found the strength.
Slow step by slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to athread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and alongits winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my earscaught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, Iwas led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head.Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way,emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was faced, three yardsbefore me, by a wall of acacia-trees, prickly-pear and pichulas, betweenwhich and a forest beyond I spied a gleam of running water.
On hands and knees I crept toward the acacia-thicket, entered it alittle, and leaning far forward, peered. And there--at once--ten yardsto my right--I saw.
Singular to say, my agitation, instead of intensifying to the point ofapoplexy and death, now, at the actual sight, subsided to something verylike calmness. With malign and sullen eye askance I stood, and steadilyI watched her there.
* * * * *
She was on her knees, her palms lightly touching the ground, supportingher. At the edge of the streamlet she knelt, and she was looking with aspecies of startled shy astonishment at the reflexion of her face in thelimpid brown water. And I, with sullen eye askance regarded her a goodten minutes' space.
* * * * *
I believe that her momentary laugh and sob, which I had heard, was theresult of surprise at seeing her own image; and I firmly believe, fromthe expression of her face, that this was the first time that she hadseen it.
* * * * *
Never, I thought, as I stood moodily gazing, had I seen on the earth acreature so fair (though, analysing now at leisure, I can quite concludethat there was nothing at all remarkable about her good looks). Herhair, somewhat lighter than auburn, and frizzy, was a real garment toher nakedness, covering her below the hips, some strings of it falling,too, into the water: her eyes, a dark blue, were wide in a most sillyexpression of bewilderment. Even as I eyed and eyed her, she slowlyrose: and at once I saw in all her manner an air of unfamiliarity withthe world, as of one wholly at a loss what to do. Her pupils did notseem accustomed to light; and I could swear that that was the first dayin which she had seen a tree or a stream.
Her age appeared eighteen or twenty. I guessed that she was ofCircassian blood, or, at least, origin. Her skin was whitey-brown, orold ivory-white.
* * * * *
She stood up motionless, at a loss. She took a lock of her hair, anddrew it through her lips. There was some look in her eyes, which Icould plainly see now, somehow indicating wild hunger, though the woodwas full of food. After letting go her hair, she stood again fecklessand imbecile, with sideward-hung head, very pitiable to see I think now,though no faintest pity touched me then. It was clear that she did notat all know what to make of the look of things. Finally, she sat on amoss-bank, reached and took a musk-rose on her palm, and lookedhopelessly at it.
* * * * *
One minute after my first actual sight of her
my extravagance ofagitation, I say, died down to something like calm. The earth was mineby old right: I felt that: and this creature a mere slave upon whom,without heat or haste, I might perform my will: and for some time Istood, coolly enough considering what that will should be.
I had at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted withcoral, and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharpas a razor; the blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit waswhispering in my breast with calm persistence: 'Kill, kill--and eat.'
_Why_ I should have killed her I do not know. That question I now askmyself. It must be true, true that it is '_not good_' for man to bealone. There was a religious sect in the Past which called itself'Socialist': and with these must have been the truth, man being at hisbest and highest when most social, and at his worst and lowest whenisolated: for the Earth gets hold of all isolation, and draws it, andmakes it fierce, base, and materialistic, like sultans, aristocracies,and the like:
