Lilith, George MacDonald [autobiographies to read .TXT] 📗

be⁠—yea, or without a light behind the substance!”

He listened for a moment, then called out, with a glad smile, “Hark to the golden cock! Silent and motionless for millions of years has he stood on the clock of the universe; now at last he is flapping his wings! now will he begin to crow! and at intervals will men hear him until the dawn of the day eternal.”

I listened. Far away⁠—as in the heart of an aeonian silence, I heard the clear jubilant outcry of the golden throat. It hurled defiance at death and the dark; sang infinite hope, and coming calm. It was the “expectation of the creature” finding at last a voice; the cry of a chaos that would be a kingdom!

Then I heard a great flapping.

“The black bat is flown!” said Mara.

“Amen, golden cock, bird of God!” cried Adam, and the words rang through the house of silence, and went up into the airy regions.

At his amen⁠—like doves arising on wings of silver from among the potsherds, up sprang the Little Ones to their knees on their beds, calling aloud,

“Crow! crow again, golden cock!”⁠—as if they had both seen and heard him in their dreams.

Then each turned and looked at the sleeping bedfellow, gazed a moment with loving eyes, kissed the silent companion of the night, and sprang from the couch. The Little Ones who had lain down beside my father and mother gazed blank and sad for a moment at their empty places, then slid slowly to the floor. There they fell each into the other’s arms, as if then first, each by the other’s eyes, assured they were alive and awake. Suddenly spying Lona, they came running, radiant with bliss, to embrace her. Odu, catching sight of the leopardess on the feet of the princess, bounded to her next, and throwing an arm over the great sleeping head, fondled and kissed it.

“Wake up, wake up, darling!” he cried; “it is time to wake!”

The leopardess did not move.

“She has slept herself cold!” he said to Mara, with an upcast look of appealing consternation.

“She is waiting for the princess to wake, my child,” said Mara.

Odu looked at the princess, and saw beside her, still asleep, two of his companions. He flew at them.

“Wake up! wake up!” he cried, and pushed and pulled, now this one, now that.

But soon he began to look troubled, and turned to me with misty eyes.

“They will not wake!” he said. “And why are they so cold?”

“They too are waiting for the princess,” I answered.

He stretched across, and laid his hand on her face.

“She is cold too! What is it?” he cried⁠—and looked round in wondering dismay.

Adam went to him.

“Her wake is not ripe yet,” he said: “she is busy forgetting. When she has forgotten enough to remember enough, then she will soon be ripe, and wake.”

“And remember?”

“Yes⁠—but not too much at once though.”

“But the golden cock has crown!” argued the child, and fell again upon his companions.

“Peter! Peter! Crispy!” he cried. “Wake up, Peter! wake up, Crispy! We are all awake but you two! The gold cock has crown so loud! The sun is awake and coming! Oh, why won’t you wake?”

But Peter would not wake, neither would Crispy, and Odu wept outright at last.

“Let them sleep, darling!” said Adam. “You would not like the princess to wake and find nobody? They are quite happy. So is the leopardess.”

He was comforted, and wiped his eyes as if he had been all his life used to weeping and wiping, though now first he had tears wherewith to weep⁠—soon to be wiped altogether away.

We followed Eve to the cottage. There she offered us neither bread nor wine, but stood radiantly desiring our departure. So, with never a word of farewell, we went out. The horse and the elephants were at the door, waiting for us. We were too happy to mount them, and they followed us.

XLV The Journey Home

It had ceased to be dark; we walked in a dim twilight, breathing through the dimness the breath of the spring. A wondrous change had passed upon the world⁠—or was it not rather that a change more marvellous had taken place in us? Without light enough in the sky or the air to reveal anything, every heather-bush, every small shrub, every blade of grass was perfectly visible⁠—either by light that went out from it, as fire from the bush Moses saw in the desert, or by light that went out of our eyes. Nothing cast a shadow; all things interchanged a little light. Every growing thing showed me, by its shape and colour, its indwelling idea⁠—the informing thought, that is, which was its being, and sent it out. My bare feet seemed to love every plant they trod upon. The world and my being, its life and mine, were one. The microcosm and macrocosm were at length atoned, at length in harmony! I lived in everything; everything entered and lived in me. To be aware of a thing, was to know its life at once and mine, to know whence we came, and where we were at home⁠—was to know that we are all what we are, because Another is what he is! Sense after sense, hitherto asleep, awoke in me⁠—sense after sense indescribable, because no correspondent words, no likenesses or imaginations exist, wherewithal to describe them. Full indeed⁠—yet ever expanding, ever making room to receive⁠—was the conscious being where things kept entering by so many open doors! When a little breeze brushing a bush of heather set its purple bells a ringing, I was myself in the joy of the bells, myself in the joy of the breeze to which responded their sweet tin-tinning,2 myself in the joy of the sense, and of the soul that received all the joys together. To everything glad I lent the hall of my being wherein to revel. I was a peaceful ocean upon which the ground-swell of a living