Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348. Various
Ellen had removed the silver cups and dishes which had held their corn and water, he and she sat down at the mouth of the cavern, and the little ones got their playthings, and placed them on piece of rock not far off. The mouth of the cave is lofty, and there is a sort of terrace running along one side, at the foot of which lay the channel of the stream, that was now dry. The view is down the first reach of a narrow valley, which turns presently afterwards, and so shuts out the world beyond from sight; and the hill on each side rises high, and from its perpendicularity seems even higher than it is. The shade of the cavern was deep and cool, but the sky glowed with the heat and light of the sun, and there was not a cloud to hinder him from burning up the earth. The hill-sides, the channel where the brook had flowed, the stones of the cave, were all equally bare; there was no sound of voice, or bird, or insect—no cool drop from the ceiling of the cave—no moisture even in the coolness of the shadow. Ellen leaned her head on her husband, and Paulett pressed his arm round her—both of them were thinking of the basin empty of water.
“Ellen,” said Paulett, “I think the time is come when the elements shall melt with fervent heat. It seems like the conflagration of the world; not indeed as we have always fancied it, with flames and visible fire, but not the less on that account the action of heat. It is perhaps the Last Day.”
“I hope it is,” said Ellen, “I hope it is; I wish those precious creatures may be among those that are alive and remain, and may be spared the torments of this thirsty death.”
“You and I could bear it, if they were gone,” said Paulett, glancing at them and withdrawing his eyes.
“Oh, yes!” said Ellen, pressing near to him, and taking his hand in both hers. They were silent, and they heard the children talking as they played.
“There is King Alexander,” said Charles, setting up a pebble—“he is going to dinner. Put the dinner, Alice.”
Alice set out several other pebbles before King Alexander.
“And he has got a great feast. There is plenty of water, more than he can drink; and he drinks, drinks, as much as he likes, and still there is plenty of water when he goes to bed.”
“Poor children! I can’t bear it,” said Ellen.
“Oh, Ellen, it would have been better never to have given them birth!” said Paulett.
“No—not that,” said Ellen, sitting down again; “though they must suffer, they are better to be; when this suffering has dissolved their bodies—on the other side of these mortal pains there is ease and happiness.”
“True, true, dear Ellen,” said Paulett; “it is only difficult to die.”
He held her hand; and while he did so, his eye fastened on a diamond ring which she wore. She observed his fixed look.
“You gave me that when we little thought how it was we should part—when I was a bride—and there was all the pleasure and business of the world round us. It hardly seems as if we were the same creatures.”
“No, we are not; for I am thinking, concerning that ring which you were never to part with, whether I could not convert the diamond into water.”
“How, Paulett?”
“I can’t explain it to you; but it has just crossed my mind that it is possible; and if so, there are still plenty of jewels in the world to keep us alive.”
He drew off the ring as he spoke, and went into the interior of the cave, whither Ellen followed him. There was a fire, and some apparatus belonging to Paulett, which he had used in experiments upon the decreasing water of the basin. He knocked the stone out of its setting, and applied himself to decompose it over the fire. He put forth all his skill and all his power, and was successful; the diamond disappeared, and there remained a few drops of water. He looked at his wife and smiled; she raised her eyes to his, astonished and pleased, took the cup from his hand, and looked at the precious metamorphosis.
“I’ll give it the children,” she said, and was going away; but he stopped her. “No, Ellen, there is not enough to do any good; you and I will drink each other’s health in it; and he put the cup first to her lips and then to his own. God bless you, my Ellen!” he said, “my wife—I pledge you again with that diamond. The first drop of water comes from the stone that plighted my faith to you, and may it bring you health and happiness yet.”
“God bless you, my husband! If we could but die now!”
Chapter II
Paulett now exerted himself to collect all the diamonds that remained without owners in the neighbourhood. First he visited his own forsaken home, and took thence the jewels, which he had neglected in his retreat from it, but which were now as precious as water. He found no great store even after ransacking all the houses within reach, and determined to undertake a longer journey in search of more. The basin in the cavern continued to yield a scanty supply of water; and Paulett extracted a small quantity from his stones. He made what provision he could for his family before setting out; and for his own necessities took the smallest possible portion, in a silver vessel, which was most preciously secured, and concealed about his person. It was a strange parting between his wife and him, both of them feeling and saying, that alive they should probably not meet again: yet death was so near them constantly, and was so far better than life, that his presence had grown familiar; and it was only the mode in which he would come that made them anxious. Paulett perishing alone of thirst was the fearful image to Ellen, and Ellen and her children waiting for him in vain, and dying one after the other for want of his help, was the dread of Paulett. They stood in the cavern, and embraced each other silently, and blessed their children with the same prayer for the last time. The little ones received and returned his caress, and Paulett quitted the cavern and set out on his uncertain expedition.
The face of the country was so much changed that he had some difficulty in making his way. The vivid colours of the earth were all gone, and in place of them was the painful greyness of the dead trees, and the yellow of the parched soil. Nothing was overthrown in ruin, but all stood dead in its place. The shapes of men and animals only lay strewn upon the earth. The human beings were comparatively rare; they were the last survivors of the destroying drought whom there had been none to bury; but these at length had died by hundreds, and in places their bones were seen whiter than any other object; or if any where over the surface there hung a vapour, it came from some collection of dead bodies which had not yet been resolved into the elements. Those whom he found there were mostly in heaps—the beasts had died singly; near what had been water-courses he saw more than once signs of struggle, and the last battles of earth had been fought for possession of its waters. He traced out many a pathetic story among the dry bones and faded garments. Women’s dresses were there; and fallen into a shapeless heap on what had been their bosom, were little forms, and the raiment of children. Where the dry air and the sun had preserved the face, he beheld the fallen estate of those who had been men in the uncovered shame of death; the wide open lips, the sunken eyes, over which the eyelid was undrawn, the swollen tongue, the frame writhed into an expression of anguish, revealed all the pain and shame of death. But here and there, the hand of some one who had been a survivor, was visible in the attempt to conceal all this. In one place there was a shallow grave, into which a body had been rolled, and lay on its side; and close by, on a heap of clothes, out of which bones appeared, there was a spade with which the unfinished work had been attempted. In another, a female body was covered from sun and moon by a man ’s cloak; and a few paces off lay a man, whom nothing shielded. There was an infant’s skeleton wrapped in a woman’s shawl, under what had been a hawthorn hedge; the mother had either perished attempting to find water, or had laid her child down, and gone away, like Hagar in the desert, not to see it die. The poor innocent’s skull was turned on its shoulder; its cheek must have rested there while the face remained. It was too young to have struggled much. Paulett thought of his little Alice; of her unconsciousness to the fate around her; of what would be her and Charles’s and poor Ellen’s fate, if he failed in his search, or perished by the way. He roused himself from looking on all these sorrowful objects, and went on his dreary way. The second day after he left the cavern, he came to a stately pile of building, which he determined to explore for the life-giving stones he was in search of. It stood upon its terraces,