Lilith: A Romance

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER XXX. ADAM EXPLAINS

  "We must be on our guard," he said, "or she will again outwit us. Shewould befool the very elect!"

  "How are we to be on our guard?" I asked.

  "Every way," he answered. "She fears, therefore hates her child, and isin this house on her way to destroy her. The birth of children is in hereyes the death of their parents, and every new generation the enemy ofthe last. Her daughter appears to her an open channel through which herimmortality--which yet she counts self-inherent--is flowing fast away:to fill it up, almost from her birth she has pursued her with an utterenmity. But the result of her machinations hitherto is, that in theregion she claims as her own, has appeared a colony of children, towhich that daughter is heart and head and sheltering wings. My Evelonged after the child, and would have been to her as a mother to herfirst-born, but we were then unfit to train her: she was carried intothe wilderness, and for ages we knew nothing of her fate. But she wasdivinely fostered, and had young angels for her playmates; nor did sheever know care until she found a baby in the wood, and the mother-heartin her awoke. One by one she has found many children since, and thatheart is not yet full. Her family is her absorbing charge, and neverchildren were better mothered. Her authority over them is withoutappeal, but it is unknown to herself, and never comes to the surfaceexcept in watchfulness and service. She has forgotten the time when shelived without them, and thinks she came herself from the wood, the firstof the family.

  "You have saved the life of her and their enemy; therefore your lifebelongs to her and them. The princess was on her way to destroy them,but as she crossed that stream, vengeance overtook her, and she wouldhave died had you not come to her aid. You did; and ere now she wouldhave been raging among the Little Ones, had she dared again cross thestream. But there was yet a way to the blessed little colony through theworld of the three dimensions; only, from that, by the slaying of herformer body, she had excluded herself, and except in personal contactwith one belonging to it, could not re-enter it. You provided theopportunity: never, in all her long years, had she had one before. Herhand, with lightest touch, was on one or other of your muffled feet,every step as you climbed. In that little chamber, she is now watchingto leave it as soon as ever she may."

  "She cannot know anything about the door!--she cannot at least know howto open it!" I said; but my heart was not so confident as my words.

  "Hush, hush!" whispered the librarian, with uplifted hand; "she can hearthrough anything!--You must go at once, and make your way to my wife'scottage. I will remain to keep guard over her."

  "Let me go to the Little Ones!" I cried.

  "Beware of that, Mr. Vane. Go to my wife, and do as she tells you."

  His advice did not recommend itself: why haste to encounter measurelessdelay? If not to protect the children, why go at all? Alas, even now Ibelieved him only enough to ask him questions, not to obey him!

  "Tell me first, Mr. Raven," I said, "why, of all places, you have shuther up there! The night I ran from your house, it was immediately intothat closet!"

  "The closet is no nearer our cottage, and no farther from it, than anyor every other place."

  "But," I returned, hard to persuade where I could not understand, "howis it then that, when you please, you take from that same door a wholebook where I saw and felt only a part of one? The other part, you havejust told me, stuck through into your library: when you put it again onthe shelf, will it not again stick through into that? Must not then thetwo places, in which parts of the same volume can at the same momentexist, lie close together? Or can one part of the book be in space, orSOMEWHERE, and the other out of space, or NOWHERE?"

  "I am sorry I cannot explain the thing to you," he answered; "but thereis no provision in you for understanding it. Not merely, therefore,is the phenomenon inexplicable to you, but the very nature of it isinapprehensible by you. Indeed I but partially apprehend it myself. Atthe same time you are constantly experiencing things which you not onlydo not, but cannot understand. You think you understand them, but yourunderstanding of them is only your being used to them, and therefore notsurprised at them. You accept them, not because you understand them,but because you must accept them: they are there, and have unavoidablerelations with you! The fact is, no man understands anything; when heknows he does not understand, that is his first tottering step--nottoward understanding, but toward the capability of one dayunderstanding. To such things as these you are not used, therefore youdo not fancy you understand them. Neither I nor any man can here helpyou to understand; but I may, perhaps, help you a little to believe!"

  He went to the door of the closet, gave a low whistle, and stoodlistening. A moment after, I heard, or seemed to hear, a soft whir ofwings, and, looking up, saw a white dove perch for an instant on the topof the shelves over the portrait, thence drop to Mr. Raven's shoulder,and lay her head against his cheek. Only by the motions of their twoheads could I tell that they were talking together; I heard nothing.Neither had I moved my eyes from them, when suddenly she was not there,and Mr. Raven came back to his seat.

  "Why did you whistle?" I asked. "Surely sound here is not sound there!"

  "You are right," he answered. "I whistled that you might know I calledher. Not the whistle, but what the whistle meant reached her.--There isnot a minute to lose: you must go!"

  "I will at once!" I replied, and moved for the door.

  "You will sleep to-night at my hostelry!" he said--not as a question,but in a tone of mild authority.

  "My heart is with the children," I replied. "But if you insist----"

  "I do insist. You can otherwise effect nothing.--I will go with you asfar as the mirror, and see you off."

  He rose. There came a sudden shock in the closet. Apparently theleopardess had flung herself against the heavy door. I looked at mycompanion.

  "Come; come!" he said.

  Ere we reached the door of the library, a howling yell came afterus, mingled with the noise of claws that scored at the hard oak. Ihesitated, and half turned.

  "To think of her lying there alone," I murmured, "--with that terriblewound!"

  "Nothing will ever close that wound," he answered, with a sigh. "It musteat into her heart! Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only goodwhere evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its eviluntil it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil."

  I held my peace until a sound I did not understand overtook us.

  "If she should break loose!" I cried.

  "Make haste!" he rejoined. "I shall hurry down the moment you are gone,and I have disarranged the mirrors."

  We ran, and reached the wooden chamber breathless. Mr. Raven seized thechains and adjusted the hood. Then he set the mirrors in their properrelation, and came beside me in front of the standing one. Already I sawthe mountain range emerging from the mist.

  Between us, wedging us asunder, darted, with the yell of a demon, thehuge bulk of the spotted leopardess. She leaped through the mirror asthrough an open window, and settled at once into a low, even, swiftgallop.

  I cast a look of dismay at my companion, and sprang through to followher. He came after me leisurely.

  "You need not run," he called; "you cannot overtake her. This is ourway."

  As he spoke he turned in the opposite direction.

  "She has more magic at her finger-tips than I care to know!" he addedquietly.

  "We must do what we can!" I said, and ran on, but sickening as I saw herdwindle in the distance, stopped, and went back to him.

  "Doubtless we must," he answered. "But my wife has warned Mara, and shewill do her part; you must sleep first: you have given me your word!"

  "Nor do I mean to break it. But surely sleep is not the first thing!Surely, surely, action takes precedence of repose!"

  "A man can do nothing he is not fit to do.--See! did I not tell you Marawould do her part?"

  I looked whither he pointed, and saw a white spot moving at an acuteangle with the line taken by the leopardes
s.

  "There she is!" he cried. "The spotted leopardess is strong, but thewhite is stronger!"

  "I have seen them fight: the combat did not appear decisive as to that."

  "How should such eyes tell which have never slept? The princess didnot confess herself beaten--that she never does--but she fled! When sheconfesses her last hope gone, that it is indeed hard to kick againstthe goad, then will her day begin to dawn! Come; come! He who cannot actmust make haste to sleep!"