The hot noon-tide sun was beating down on him when he woke to
consciousness again. He tried to move, and could not. After a time his
mind returned clearly; he pinched himself upon the thigh and felt
nothing. That, then, was the reason why he felt no pain, for one of
his legs was evidently broken. He had injured his spine, and it was
paralysed below the waist. This, then, was the end.
"Aura! Aura!"
His heart leapt up in him. It could not be long now.
He was lying in the corrie into which he and Ted had vainly tried to
get that first night of the storm, and as he lay he could watch the
sun tilt from its high glory in the heavens, to touch the world in the
west then disappear. It would be a beautiful sunset. How many more
would he see, he wondered. How long would it last? Some days perhaps.
How idle all things--money, happiness, even love itself seemed beside
this certainty of leaving them all. The only thing that money had
brought to him was the death of a wild animal--thank God!--alone!
Except for Aura.
Aura! Aura! Aura!
Yes! she had been right. Love like his needed nothing. It could
exist--nay! grow to greater strength without trivialities. They were
beyond the Shadow of the Night now; nothing could touch them again.
They would go on and on....
That night he slept a little under the stars, and in his dreams he saw
her walking amid the drifts of iris leading a little child by the
hand. Her face was sad, and as he tried to comfort her, his eyes
opened; and lo! it was dawn once more.
A primrose dawn, with little faint, far grey clouds just flecking the
wide waste of gold.
"It was quite perfect."
Her words came back to him. She was wrong. The part could not be
perfect, and what were they, their griefs, their joys, their loves,
but part of the great whole.
His mind was beginning to wander a little, and in the high noon tide
he slept to dream that he saw the little child alone. Her head was
crowned with iris flowers, her feet were among them, her eyes were
violet and white as they were. They looked into his. "Mother says you
have no right," came her childish voice. "I am the immortality of the
race. Die and forget her. Die and forget all things."
When he awoke, a raven, perched on a rock hard by, cawed hoarsely, and
flapped lazily away to watch from a greater distance.
A few drops of water trickled from the rock close beside him. He had
hollowed out a little cup for it with his hand and drank of it from
time to time. Now he poured some of it on his head which had begun to
ache. What use was there in prolonging the agony? The sooner it was
over the better. He searched in his pockets for any scrap of paper
which might betray him, and, tearing them up, dug them toilfully into
the ground, almost amusing himself in restoring the spot to perfect
homogeneity with its surroundings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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