The Coming Race

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Coming Race


Singling me out, she said, though still with the inimitable deference
of manner which I have called 'chivalrous,' yet not without a certain
abruptness of tone which, as addressed to the weaker sex, Sir Philip
Sydney might have termed 'rustic,' "Why do you never come to see
us?" While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to this
unlooked-for question, Taee said quickly and sternly, "Sister, you
forget--the stranger is of my sex. It is not for persons of my sex,
having due regard for reputation and modesty, to lower themselves by
running after the society of yours."

This speech was received with evident approval by the young Gy-ei in
general; but Taee's sister looked greatly abashed. Poor thing!--and a
PRINCESS too!

Just at this moment a shadow fell on the space between me and the group;
and, turning round, I beheld the chief magistrate coming close upon us,
with the silent and stately pace peculiar to the Vril-ya. At the sight
of his countenance, the same terror which had seized me when I first
beheld it returned. On that brow, in those eyes, there was that same
indefinable something which marked the being of a race fatal to our
own--that strange expression of serene exemption from our common cares
and passions, of conscious superior power, compassionate and inflexible
as that of a judge who pronounces doom. I shivered, and, inclining low,
pressed the arm of my child-friend, and drew him onward silently. The
Tur placed himself before our path, regarded me for a moment without
speaking, then turned his eye quietly on his daughter's face, and, with
a grave salutation to her and the other Gy-ei, went through the midst of
the group,--still without a word.



Chapter XXVIII.


When Taee and I found ourselves alone on the broad road that lay between
the city and the chasm through which I had descended into this region
beneath the light of the stars and sun, I said under my breath, "Child
and friend, there is a look in your father's face which appals me. I
feel as if, in its awful tranquillity, I gazed upon death."

Taee did not immediately reply. He seemed agitated, and as if debating
with himself by what words to soften some unwelcome intelligence. At
last he said, "None of the Vril-ya fear death: do you?"

"The dread of death is implanted in the breasts of the race to which I
belong. We can conquer it at the call of duty, of honour, of love. We
can die for a truth, for a native land, for those who are dearer to us
than ourselves. But if death do really threaten me now and here, where
are such counteractions to the natural instinct which invests with awe
and terror the contemplation of severance between soul and body?"

Taee looked surprised, but there was great tenderness in his voice as
he replied, "I will tell my father what you say. I will entreat him to
spare your life."

"He has, then, already decreed to destroy it?"

"'Tis my sister's fault or folly," said Taee, with some petulance.
"But she spoke this morning to my father; and, after she had spoken,
he summoned me, as a chief among the children who are commissioned to
destroy such lives as threaten the community, and he said to me, 'Take
thy vril staff, and seek the stranger who has made himself dear to thee.
Be his end painless and prompt.'"

"And," I faltered, recoiling from the child--"and it is, then, for my
murder that thus treacherously thou hast invited me forth? No, I cannot
believe it. I cannot think thee guilty of such a crime."

"It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the community; it
would be a crime to slay the smallest insect that cannot harm us."

"If you mean that I threaten the good of the community because your
sister honours me with the sort of preference which a child may feel for
a strange plaything, it is not necessary to kill me. Let me return to
the people I have left, and by the chasm through which I descended. With
a slight help from you I might do so now. You, by the aid of your wings,
could fasten to the rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that you
found, and have no doubt preserved. Do but that; assist me but to the
spot from which I alighted, and I vanish from your world for ever, and
as surely as if I were among the dead."

"The chasm through which you descended! Look round; we stand now on the
very place where it yawned. What see you? Only solid rock. The chasm was
closed, by the orders of Aph-Lin, as soon as communication between him
and yourself was established in your trance, and he learned from
your own lips the nature of the world from which you came. Do you not
remember when Zee bade me not question you as to yourself or your
race? On quitting you that day, Aph-Lin accosted me, and said, 'No path
between the stranger's home and ours should be left unclosed, or the
sorrow and evil of his home may descend to ours. Take with thee the
children of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril
staves till the fall of their fragments fills up every chink through
which a gleam of our lamps could force its way.'"

As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks before me. Huge
and irregular, the granite masses, showing by charred discolouration
where they had been shattered, rose from footing to roof-top; not a
cranny!

"All hope, then, is gone," I murmured, sinking down on the craggy
wayside, "and I shall nevermore see the sun." I covered my face with my
hands, and prayed to Him whose presence I had so often forgotten when
the heavens had declared His handiwork. I felt His presence in the
depths of the nether earth, and amidst the world of the grave. I looked
up, taking comfort and courage from my prayers, and, gazing with a quiet
smile into the face of the child, said, "Now, if thou must slay me,
strike."

Taee shook his head gently. "Nay," he said, "my father's request is not
so formally made as to leave me no choice. I will speak with him, and
may prevail to save thee. Strange that thou shouldst have that fear of
death which we thought was only the instinct of the inferior creatures,
to whom the convictions of another life has not been vouchsafed.
With us, not an infant knows such a fear. Tell me, my dear Tish,"
he continued after a little pause, "would it reconcile thee more to
departure from this form of life to that form which lies on the other
side of the moment called 'death,' did I share thy journey? If so, I
will ask my father whether it be allowable for me to go with thee. I am
one of our generation destined to emigrate, when of age for it, to some
regions unknown within this world. I would just as soon emigrate now to
regions unknown, in another world. The All-Good is no less there than
here. Where is he not?"

"Child," said I, seeing by Taee's countenance that he spoke in serious
earnest, "it is crime in thee to slay me; it were a crime not less in
me to say, 'Slay thyself.' The All-Good chooses His own time to give us
life, and his own time to take it away. Let us go back. If, on speaking
with thy father, he decides on my death, give me the longest warning in
thy power, so that I may pass the interval in self-preparation."



Chapter XXIX.


In the midst of those hours set apart for sleep and constituting the
night of the Vril-ya, I was awakened from the disturbed slumber into
which I had not long fallen, by a hand on my shoulder. I started and
beheld Zee standing beside me. "Hush," she said in a whisper; "let no
one hear us. Dost thou think that I have ceased to watch over thy safety
because I could not win thy love? I have seen Taee. He has not prevailed
with his father, who had meanwhile conferred with the three sages who,
in doubtful matters, he takes into council, and by their advice he has
ordained thee to perish when the world re-awakens to life. I will save
thee. Rise and dress."

Zee pointed to a table by the couch on which I saw the clothes I had
worn on quitting the upper world, and which I had exchanged subsequently
for the more picturesque garments of the Vril-ya. The young Gy then
moved towards the casement and stepped into the balcony, while hastily
and wonderingly I donned my own habiliments. When I joined her on the
balcony, her face was pale and rigid. Taking me by the hand, she said
softly, "See how brightly the art of the Vril-ya has lighted up the
world in which they dwell. To-morrow the world will be dark to me." She
drew me back into the room without waiting for my answer, thence into
the corridor, from which we descended into the hall. We passed into the
deserted streets and along the broad upward road which wound beneath the
rocks. Here, where there is neither day nor night, the Silent Hours
are unutterably solemn--the vast space illumined by mortal skill is
so wholly without the sight and stir of mortal life. Soft as were
our footsteps, their sounds vexed the ear, as out of harmony with the
universal repose. I was aware in my own mind, though Zee said it not,
that she had decided to assist my return to the upper world, and that
we were bound towards the place from which I had descended. Her silence
infected me and commanded mine. And now we approached the chasm. It had
been re-opened; not presenting, indeed, the same aspect as when I had
emerged from it, but through that closed wall of rock before which I
had last stood with Taee, a new clift had been riven, and along its
blackened sides still glimmered sparks and smouldered embers. My
upward gaze could not, however, penetrate more than a few feet into the
darkness of the hollow void, and I stood dismayed, and wondering how
that grim ascent was to be made.

Zee divined my doubt. "Fear not," said she, with a faint smile; "your
return is assured. I began this work when the Silent Hours commenced,
and all else were asleep; believe that I did not paused till the path
back into thy world was clear. I shall be with thee a little while yet.
We do not part until thou sayest, 'Go, for I need thee no more.'"

My heart smote me with remorse at these words. "Ah!" I exclaimed, "would
that thou wert of my race or I of thine, then I should never say, 'I
need thee no more.'"

"I bless thee for those words, and I shall remember them when thou art
gone," answered the Gy, tenderly.

During this brief interchange of words, Zee had turned away from me, her
form bent and her head bowed over her breast. Now, she rose to the full
height of her grand stature, and stood fronting me. While she had been
thus averted from my gaze, she had lighted up the circlet that she wore
round her brow, so that it blazed as if it were a crown of stars. Not
only her face and her form, but the atmosphere around, were illumined by
the effulgence of the diadem.

"Now," said she, "put thine arm around me for the first and last time.
Nay, thus; courage, and cling firm."

As she spoke her form dilated, the vast wings expanded. Clinging to her,
I was borne aloft through the terrible chasm. The starry light from her
forehead shot around and before us through the darkness. Brightly and
steadfastly, and swiftly as an angel may soar heavenward with the soul
it rescues from the grave, went the flight of the Gy, till I heard
in the distance the hum of human voices, the sounds of human toil. We
halted on the flooring of one of the galleries of the mine, and beyond,
in the vista, burned the dim, feeble lamps of the miners. Then I
released my hold. The Gy kissed me on my forehead, passionately, but as
with a mother's passion, and said, as the tears gushed from her eyes,
"Farewell for ever. Thou wilt not let me go into thy world--thou canst
never return to mine. Ere our household shake off slumber, the rocks
will have again closed over the chasm not to be re-opened by me, nor
perhaps by others, for ages yet unguessed. Think of me sometimes, and
with kindness. When I reach the life that lies beyond this speck in
time, I shall look round for thee. Even there, the world consigned to
thyself and thy people may have rocks and gulfs which divide it from
that in which I rejoin those of my race that have gone before, and I may
be powerless to cleave way to regain thee as I have cloven way to lose."

Her voice ceased. I heard the swan-like sough of her wings, and saw the
rays of her starry diadem receding far and farther through the gloom.

I sate myself down for some time, musing sorrowfully; then I rose and
took my way with slow footsteps towards the place in which I heard the
sounds of men. The miners I encountered were strange to me, of another
nation than my own. They turned to look at me with some surprise, but
finding that I could not answer their brief questions in their own
language, they returned to their work and suffered me to pass on
unmolested. In fine, I regained the mouth of the mine, little troubled
by other interrogatories;--save those of a friendly official to whom I
was known, and luckily he was too busy to talk much with me. I took care
not to return to my former lodging, but hastened that very day to quit
a neighbourhood where I could not long have escaped inquiries to which
I could have given no satisfactory answers. I regained in safety my own
country, in which I have been long peacefully settled, and engaged in
practical business, till I retired on a competent fortune, three years
ago. I have been little invited and little tempted to talk of the
rovings and adventures of my youth. Somewhat disappointed, as most men
are, in matters connected with household love and domestic life, I often
think of the young Gy as I sit alone at night, and wonder how I could
have rejected such a love, no matter what dangers attended it, or by
what conditions it was restricted. Only, the more I think of a people
calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed
uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes
of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes
antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances,--the more
devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into
sunlight our inevitable destroyers. Being, however, frankly told by
my physician that I am afflicted by a complaint which, though it gives
little pain and no perceptible notice of its encroachments, may at any
moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty to my fellow-men to place on
record these forewarnings of The Coming Race.