Julian Hawthorne

“ I feel Miriam returning! Kamaiakan, have you betrayed me at the last?”
“No, no, princess, I have done nothing,” said he, in a voice scarcely audible. “But, with death, the strength of my will goes from me, and I can no longer keep you in this world. The spirit of Miriam claims her rightful body, and you must struggle against her alone. The gods will not be defied: it is the law!”
His voice sank away into nothing, and his beard drooped upon his breast.
“He’s dying, sure enough, poor old chap,” said Freeman. ”

“ But you, princess, must vanish: though the shock was but slight, some one might be awakened; and were you to be discovered, our plans might go wrong.”
“Must I depart so soon?” said Semitzin, regretfully. “The earth is beautiful, Kamaiakan: the smell of the flowers is sweet, and the stars in the sky are bright. To feel myself alive, to breathe, to walk, to see, are sweet. Perhaps I have no other conscious life than this. I would like to remain as I am: I would like to see the sun shine, and to hear the birds sing, and to see the men and women who live in this age. ”

“ I—as you know, Kamaiakan—was never wedded; the fate of our people, and my early end, kept that from me. But the thought of that youth is here,”—she put her hand on her bosom,—“and it seems to me that, were we to meet, I should know him. Perhaps, were that to be, Miriam and I might thus come to be aware of each other, and live henceforth one life.”
“Such matters are beyond my knowledge,” said the Indian, shaking his head. “The gods know what will be. It is for us, now, to regain the treasure. Are you willing, my princess, to accompany me thither?” ”

“ In the midst of an arid and hopeless waste, you come suddenly upon the brink of a narrow ravine, sharply defined as if cut out with an axe, and packed to the brim with enchanting and voluptuous fertility. Or you will come upon mountains which sweep upward out of burning death into sumptuous life. When the monotony of life meets the monotony of death, Southern California becomes a land of contrasts; and the contrasts themselves become monotonous.
General Trednoke’s ranch was very near the borders of these two mighty forces. ”

“ Monotony is the ruling characteristic,—monotony of beauty, monotony of desolation, monotony even of variety. The glorious blue overhead is monotonous: as for the thermometer, it paces up and down within the narrowest limits, like a prisoner in his cell, or a meadow-lark hopping to and fro in a seven-inch cage. The plan and aspect of the buildings are monotonous, and so is the way of life of those who inhabit them. Fortunately, the sun does rise and set in Southern California: otherwise life there would be at an absolute stand-still, with no past and no future. ”

“ It was true, the fortune of war might turn the other way; but Don Miguel was aware of a sensation in his bones which made this hope weak.
At length Freeman drew rein and glanced around him. They were in a lonely and—Don Miguel thought—a most desolate and unattractive spot. An open space of about half an acre was bounded on one side by a growth of wild mustard, whose slender stalks rose to more than the height of a man’s head. On the other side was a grove of live-oak; and in front, the ground fell away in a rugged, bush-grown declivity. ”

“ It was certainly very hot. Freeman had been accustomed to torrid suns in the Isthmus; but this was a sun indefinitely multiplied by reflections from the dusty surface underfoot. Nor was it the fine, ethereal fire of the Sahara: the atmosphere was dead and heavy; for the rider was already far below the level of the Pacific, whose cool blue waves rolled and rippled many leagues to the westward, as, aeons ago, they had rolled and rippled here. There was not a breath of air. Freeman could hear his heart beat, and the veins in his temples and wrists throbbed. ”

“ The Indian, after a pause, made a gesture of gloomy resignation. “It shall be as you say, then, Semitzin; and upon your head be it! Henceforth, Miriam is no more. But do you beware of the vengeance of the gods, whose laws you have defied.”
“Let the gods deal with me as they will,” replied the Aztecan. “A day of happiness with the man I love is worth an age of punishment.”
Kamaiakan made no answer, and the two rode forward in silence.
It was midnight, and a bright star, nearly in the zenith, seemed to hang precisely above the summit of the great white pyramid at the mouth of the gorge. ”

“ Her hands left her face, and there was a light in her eyes which made Freeman, in the midst of his rejoicing, feel humble and unworthy. He felt himself in contact with something pure and sacred. At the same moment, the recollection recurred to him of the figure he had seen the night before, with the features of Miriam. Was it she indeed? Was this she? To doubt the identity of the individual is to lose one’s footing on the solid earth. For the first time it occurred to him that this doubt might affect Miriam herself. ”

“ The long ride seemed to have wearied her not a whit. The lean and wiry Indian had already betrayed symptoms of fatigue; but the young princess appeared as fresh as when she started. Not once had she even taken a draught from her canteen; and yet she was closely clad, from head to foot, in the doublet and leggings of the Golden Fleece. One might have thought it had some magic virtue to preserve its wearer’s vitality; and possibly, as is sometimes seen in trance, the energy and concentration of the spirit reacted upon the body. ”

“ But when she asked him such an innocent thing as what he was after in California—an inquiry, by the way, put more in idleness than out of curiosity—Freeman stroked his yellow moustache with the thumb of the hand that held his Cuban cigarette, gazed with narrowed eyelids at the horizon, and for some time made no reply at all. Finally he said that California was a place he had never visited, and that it would be a pity to have been so near it and yet not have improved the opportunity of taking a look at it.
Grace instantly scented a mystery, and was not less promptly resolved to fathom it. ”

“ I will never again leave this world, which I enjoy, for the unknown darkness out of which you called me.”
“Princess, the gods do not permit such dealings. They may, indeed, suffer you to live again; but you must return as an infant, in flesh and bones of your own.”
“The gods have permitted me to return as I have returned; and you well know, Kamaiakan, that, except you use your art to banish me and restore Miriam, there is nothing else that can work a change.”
“Murder is not lawful, Semitzin; and to do as you desire would be an act not different from murder.” ”

“ Meschines knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and sighed.
“No woman ever took compassion on me,” he remarked, “and you see the result,—ashes!”
“Ashes,—with their wonted fires living in them,” said Trednoke.
“We were talking about this Indian of yours,” said Meschines.
“Ay, to be sure. Well, he was attached to Inez’s family when I first knew them. It was a peculiar relation; not like that of a servant. One finds such things in Mexico. The conquered race were of as good strain as their conquerors; the blood of Montezuma was as blue as the best of the Castilian. ”

“ But sometimes the hills are but accumulations of desert dust, which shift slowly from place to place under the action of the wind, melting away here to be re-erected yonder; mounding themselves, perhaps, above a living and struggling human being, to move forward, anon, leaving where he was a little heap of withered bones. A fearful place is this broad abyss, where once murmured the waters of a prehistoric sea. Let us return to the cool and fragrant security of the general’s ranch. ”

“ Be satisfied for the present: in a few days we will meet and speak again.”
“The power is yours, Kamaiakan: it is well to argue, when with a word you can banish me forever! Yet what if I were to say that, unless you consent to the thing I desire, I will not show you where the treasure lies?”
“Princess Semitzin!” exclaimed the Indian, “remember that it is not against me, but against the gods, that you would contend. The gods know that I have no care for treasure. But they will not forgive a broken oath; and they will not hold that one guiltless through whom it is brought to naught?” ”

“ But it was not her jealousy that Freeman minded: it was the prospect of Miriam’s scorn when she should surmise that he had given Grace cause to be jealous. Miriam was not the sort of character to enter into a competition with any other woman about a lover. He would lose her before he had a chance to try to win her.
But fortune proved rather more favorable than Freeman expected, or, perhaps, than he deserved. Grace’s attack was too impetuous. She stopped just inside the threshold, and said, in an imperious tone, “Come here, Mr. Freeman: I wish to speak to you.” ”

“ He was as one preoccupied with momentous business. Presently he arrived at a small open space, remote and secluded. It was completely surrounded by tall shrubbery. In the centre was a basin of stone, evidently very ancient, filled to the brim with the clear water of a spring, which bubbled up from the bottom, and, overflowing by way of a gap in the edge, became a small rivulet, which stole away in the direction of the sea. Across the slightly undulating surface of the basin trembled the radiance of the star.
Kamaiakan knelt down beside it, and, bending over, gazed intently into the water. ”

“ Such an apparition, in an hour and a place so lonely, might stagger a less superstitious soul than that of Don Miguel de Mendoza.
Freeman gazed at it for a moment in silence. It mystified him, and then irritated him. When one is bent heart and soul upon an important enterprise, any interruption is an annoyance. ”

“ Grace, who was ambitious as well as romantic, and who longed for the power and independence that wealth would give, was all alight with the idea of capturing the hoard of Montezuma: her social position would be altered at a stroke, and the world would be at her feet. Whether she would then have rewarded Don Miguel for his devotion, is possibly open to doubt: the sudden acquisition of boundless wealth has been known to turn larger heads than hers. ”

“ Sometimes the level plain is broken up into savage ridges and awful canons, along whose arid bottoms no water streams. As you stagger through their chaotic bottoms, you see vast boulders poised overhead, tottering to a fall; a shiver of earthquake, a breath of hurricane, and they come crashing and splintering in destruction down. Along the sides of these acclivities extend long, level lines and furrows, marks of where the ocean flowed ages ago. ”

“ Freeman’s shot had not only smashed and extinguished the lantern which served as bait for the game, but had also given the professor a disagreeable reminder that the tenure of human life is as precarious as that of the silly moth which allows itself to be lured to destruction by shining promises of bliss. ”

“ In her dark eyes, as she fixed them upon Freeman, there was a mystic light, telling of fathomless depths of tenderness and intelligence: it seemed to her husband that love had expanded and uplifted her; or perhaps that other spirit in her, which had battled with her own, had now become reconciled, and therefore yielded up whatever it had of good and noble to aggrandize the gentle victory of its conqueror. Somehow, somewhere, in Miriam’s nature, Semitzin lived ”

“ A man without a fortune does very well by himself. He can knock about, and live from hand to mouth. But when he wants to live for somebody else,—even if he has only a very faint hope of getting the opportunity of doing it,—then he must have some settled means of livelihood to justify him. So I say I am in a difficult position. For if I give this up, I must go away; and if I go away, I must give up even the little hope I have.”
“Don’t go away,” said Miriam, after a pause.
“Do you know what you are saying?” He hesitated a moment, looking at her as she looked down at the empty basin. ”

“ Perhaps there was in the young American’s nature just enough remains of belief in witches and hobgoblins to make him feel warranted in resorting to extreme measures. At any rate, he lifted his revolver, and fired.
It was a long shot for a revolver: nevertheless it took effect. The luminous object disappeared with a faint explosive sound, followed by a shout unmistakably human. The long stems of the wild mustard swayed and parted, and out sprang a figure, which ran straight towards the two young men.
Hereupon, Don Miguel, hissing out an appeal to the Virgin and the saints, turned and fled. ”

“ Senor, between men of honor, a misunderstanding is a misunderstanding, and an apology is an apology. I lament the existence of the first; the professor, here, is witness that I lay the second at your feet. ”