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CHAPTER XXXVI
THE END
Templemore was carried, with much difficulty, to ‘Monella Lodge,’ where an attack of fever supervened, and it was nearly two weeks before the doctor pronounced him out of danger.
Carenna came over from her village to nurse him, and tended him as devotedly as she had Leonard. In the height of the fever he raved constantly of the great devil-tree, of gigantic serpents, of Monella, and of ‘lost souls’; and, mixed up with all, were a number of names strange to those who listened to him; for he had been too ill when found in the cavern to give more than a brief idea of the adventures he had passed through.
While he lay upon his bed of sickness, anxious friends watched from the mountain top for tidings of his fate, but received no intelligible answers to their signals; for none of those now with Templemore knew how to reply to them. Thus it was not till he was convalescent and well enough to be taken out into the open air, that any interchange of messages became possible.
Those below, looking up, day after day had seen little flashes of light, of which they could make nothing; but now Templemore explained their meaning. A search in the cabin brought to light the mirror Monella had thoughtfully packed up and hidden carefully away; and Templemore was thus able at last to open communication with his Roraima friends.
His first signalled message to them brought back the reply: —
“Heaven be praised! We are all so thankful! We have mourned you as dead! And we are in great affliction, besides, for Monella, the great, great-hearted Mellenda, is dead! He died peacefully the day after you went away.”
Then, presently, when Templemore had sent back a message of sorrow and condolence, another came.
“The whole valley at the bottom of the canyon is half-filled up. It would take years to clear it. And we pictured you as lying dead beneath it all!”
Many messages passed to and fro during the remainder of the travellers’ stay; and then, after a time, Templemore having thoroughly recovered, preparations were made for the journey back to the coast.
Both Carenna and Matava were grieved at the thought that Leonard had remained on the mountain for good, and that they were never likely to see him more. Carenna, alone, however, expressed no surprise. She told Templemore that the deception as to Leonard she had practised upon the good people who had received them so hospitably in their lonely mountain retreat had, all her life, been a sore trouble to her. It was some consolation to her, therefore, to know that he had, after all, been led back to his own people. She at first refused the valuable present Leonard had sent her, saying that to receive forgiveness was in itself more than she had hoped for. But, needless to say, Templemore persuaded her into accepting it. Matava’s delight with what had been sent him was unbounded; especially when Templemore told him what treasures he could purchase with it: rifles, pistols, unbounded supplies of powder, and unlimited tobacco, and other things that Indians prize.
Meanwhile, Doctor Lorien and his son had been assiduous in collecting specimens of all the botanical and zoological treasures with which the neighbourhood of Roraima abounds; and, when the time for starting came, they had good reason to be satisfied with the result. They might have done still better, perhaps, if they had gone more into Roraima Forest; but this they could not make up their minds to do. Indeed, they could not venture far without an Indian guide; and this they could not get. Neither Matava nor any one of the other Indians could be prevailed upon to go into the wood again; and even the doctor was not very pressing. All had had quite enough of the ‘haunted wood.’ For it now came out, too, that Templemore had become a believer in the ‘didi.’ He declared that more than once during his imprisonment in the cavern he had seen, either at early morning or at dusk, strange human-like shapes – gigantic apes – standing watching within the shadow of the trees.
Nothing, he said, would induce him to enter that wood again. And he felt certain that only the fact that the entrance to the cavern was so high from the ground had enabled him to escape with his life.
’Nea,’ the puma, alone showed no fear of the gloomy forest. She went hunting there daily, and nearly always returned with something to reward her enterprise.
When all was ready for the start, two or three last messages passed between the travellers and their friends upon the mountain.
“Heaven keep you and all those dear to you! Your memory will always be cherished by all here,” came from Leonard. To which Templemore replied: —
“Long life and happiness to you and your dear wife and all your people.”
“God bless you, Jack!”
“God bless you, Leonard!”
Thus they finally parted; and a few hours later the homeward-bound friends looked their last upon Roraima from the ridge near Daranato. The mountain was lighted with the red rays of the setting sun and towered up in glowing splendour. The greens of the wood at its base, varied and vivid in colouring, as they were, contrasted with the pinks, and purples, and reds of the precipitous walls above, that now looked again like a fairy fortress in the clouds, smiling, and fascinating in its light, aerial beauty.
“What a pity the city does not show!” said Harry. “What a glorious sight it would make!”
“At least you have conquered the secret the mysterious mountain has so long and so well concealed,” Doctor Lorien observed to Templemore.
The latter gazed on the mountain gloomily. His mind went back to the morning when he saw it first and the vague forebodings that had then come into his mind.
“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I have not brought away with me the most wonderful secret of all – the ‘Plant of Life.’ When I think how I was cheated out of that, by the mountain itself, as you may truly say – for its very rocks came crashing down to prevent my escape, or to kill me if I persisted; or at least, to insure my leaving nearly everything behind – when I think of this, it seems to me that Roraima has guarded most of its secrets pretty effectually, and I am almost persuaded there is something uncanny about it.”
Harry laughed at this; the more so that it came from Jack.
“That’s very fanciful – for you,” he returned. “If it had been Leonard, now, I should not have been surprised.”
“I am afraid my ideas of what is precisely practical and what is fanciful have been a good deal modified,” Jack confessed. “So would yours, if you had passed through my experiences.”
“Well, after all, perhaps you haven’t lost much,” Harry returned. “A small bundle of dried plants wouldn’t have been of much use, and as to the seeds, if, as I understand you, they only thrive high up on the mountains, I don’t see what you were going to do with them. Moreover, very likely they would have been eaten up by insects, or lost, or got wetted and spoiled, or something, before you got back or could have planted them in a likely spot.”
Then they continued their journey, staying that night in Daranato, where the great puma at first created a scare among the dusky inhabitants, but, showing friendliness towards all, she was soon the object of unbounded wonder and interest on every side.
Some two months later there was again a little dinner party at ‘Meldona,’ Mr. Kingsford’s residence, and the same faces were gathered round the hospitable board – all but Leonard Elwood’s. Maud looked charming and happy as she glanced, now and again, first at Jack Templemore’s bronzed face, and then at her brother, listening, not for the first time now, to her lover’s wondrous tale.
She and Stella had shuddered before at the accounts of the great tree and its victims, and of the horrors of the ‘haunted wood’; and had talked of Ulama and Zonella, and wondered, again and again, what they were like.
“Poor Leonard! I am sorry to lose him,” Maud said. “Yet, I suppose, he does not need pity; for he is to be envied in many ways. Fancy his dreamings – about which we used to tease him so – coming true after all!”
“It is just a year ago to-day,” observed Mr. Kingsford to the doctor, “that you were at dinner here and first told us about that wondrous stranger, Monella. We’ve had an anxious time ever since.”
“I have never known a happy moment till you all came back the other day,” said Maud sadly. “I am so thankful that the cruel suspense is ended at last. I have often recalled the words Dr. Lorien used about Roraima; that ‘its very name had come to be surrounded by a halo of dread and indefinable fear.’ I can truly declare that it has been so with me. I, too, had come to hate and dread the very name. It has seemed to me like a great, remorseless ogre that had swallowed up two of our friends, and, as I feared, was going to swallow up my brother and two more. Yet,” she added, looking at Jack, “had I known how things really were, had I known of your lying lamed, and ill, and alone in the den in that horrible forest, I think I should have gone mad! What a comfort to you this dear, faithful animal must have been!”
‘Nea’ was by her side, and she put her tear-stained face affectionately down to the animal’s head. The big puma had already established herself as a favourite with every one in the house.
“Truly,” returned Jack, “such thoughts occurred to me while I was cooped up there. I couldn’t help going over things in my mind; and, when I considered how the mountain itself, and all the horrors of the forest, seemed to have combined against me to prevent my escape, I was seized with a sort of hate and detestation of the place. And, ever since, my sleep has been disturbed – and will be for years to come, I feel convinced – by nightmare dreams of the sights and sounds that haunt my memory!”
“I feel that I have a grudge against it, too,” the doctor avowed. “Consider all the wonderful things you have told us that are to be found inside! Then, just when I got so near, to be shut out in that way! That ‘Plant of Life,’ too! I’d have given a good deal to have some specimens of that, and some seeds. I would have got them to grow, somehow, if the thing could be done!”
“I’m precious glad, then, that you didn’t,” the irreverent Harry put in. “I’m hoping to be a physician – one day – remember! And what chance would there be for me and the rest of the profession, if you taught people how to live for hundreds of years without so much as an illness?”
This very unexpected view of the matter from the vivacious ‘budding doctor’ had the effect of turning the thoughts of the others from the somewhat gloomy channel into which they seemed to have drifted.
After dinner, the belt, and the purses, and their glittering contents, were brought in and spread out to view.
“Whatever else may be said,” Mr. Kingsford declared, with emotion, “there is not one here who will not have cause to remember the stranger Monella, and Leonard, and their friends, with grateful feelings. And you, Jack, above all; for, if I am any judge of the value of your share of these things, you are a millionaire. And that brings back to my mind the thought that is now constantly perplexing me, Who was this wondrous Monella after all? I really cannot bring myself to believe he was – what was his name? – Mellenda, you know.”
“No,” assented the doctor. “As a man, I have the greatest liking and respect for him; but, as a scientist, I am bound to disbelieve in that part.”
“Since I have no claim yet to be considered a scientist,” said Harry, “I suppose I am free to believe what I like. So I go the whole ticket. I believe he was what I first pronounced him to be – a magician – and – I swallow the Mellenda legend – whole! So there!” This very emphatically.
“Oh dear, yes!” Stella exclaimed, her blue eyes opening wide at the doubting ones. “Why, of course, it must be true. It is so much more romantic and poetic, you know!”
Robert shook his head gravely.
“No!” he said, very decidedly. “I honour and respect the man, and his memory, from all I have heard of him, but – I cannot accept that wonderful part of it.”
“Well, I do,” Maud exclaimed, looking round with a pretty air of defiance, more particularly directed against Jack. “So that makes opinion even, so far – three for, and three against. Now,” to Templemore, “of course, I know you will side with the others.”
To every one’s surprise, however, Jack also shook his head.
“I don’t know that,” he answered, with a comically bewildered air. “I’ve really had all my old notions so mixed up and blown about, that I honestly admit I really cannot make up my mind. The whole thing is an enigma that I cannot solve as yet – probably never shall. So you may put me down as neutral – undecided – whatever you like to call it.”
Maud clapped her hands; and upon that the puma gave a loud roar, evidently signifying her assent and approbation.
“Three for, three against, and one neutral,” Maud cried “That’s better than I hoped for!”
The doctor laughed, and his good-natured eyes twinkled.
“You’ve all but beaten us,” he said good-humouredly. “But, going away from that part of the subject, I feel truly sorry to think that he should have died so soon after he had accomplished the work he had had so much at heart.”
“There again I am inclined to differ,” Templemore answered slowly. “I honestly believe that nothing could have happened to please him more. All his later talk clearly showed that. He said he was utterly weary of life, and anxious to be ‘released,’ as he called it; yet his love for his people was so great, he let no sign of this appear till he felt sure all had been finally achieved. It was the fear that that work might be upset after he had gone – and that alone – that made him so anxious to shut out all future communication with the world outside; of that I feel convinced. It was that that influenced him too, I have no doubt, in making me promise to keep my adventures there a secret from the world in general. But, just at the last, almost when I was coming away, a doubt seemed to come into his mind, and he said to me, ‘I release you from that promise, if circumstances should arise in which you conscientiously believe it would be conducive to the good of my country to tell the story of your sojourn here.’ What he meant I cannot conceive; I only tell you what he said. Possibly time may show. He seemed to have the ‘gift of prophecy’ to some extent in those days; certainly, everything went to show that he foresaw, or expected, his own approaching death.”
This was all some years ago.
Maud Kingsford and Templemore were married shortly after; and Stella and Harry Lorien are now married too. And, when the two sisters appear in society, they excite admiration, not only by their beauty, but also by their matchless jewels – that once glittered on the bosom of Ulama, Princess of Manoa, and that had adorned, probably, the persons of generations of descendants of former mighty kings of that once mighty empire.
But of this nothing is known to the general public. Templemore and his friends have kept the promise he gave, and preserved the secret of Roraima. It was only a short time ago that circumstances arose that seemed to him to justify a departure from the course he had hitherto observed. This was when the dispute which has been dormant for just upon a hundred years respecting the boundaries of British Guiana suddenly reached an acute stage.
“Truly,” he said to his wife, then, “I think this is the contingency our friend Monella must have had in his mind when he intimated that in certain circumstances I was to be free to depart from the silence he had enjoined. It seems to me more than ever the case that he must have had ‘the gift of prophecy’ at that time. I cannot doubt that, if he were alive now, and saw that the future international position of Roraima was hanging in the balance, he would wish it to become permanently British territory, rather than Venezuelan. And, if he could know of the present state of indifference – or want of information – that seems to prevail in England, I feel satisfied he would wish me to do what I could to awaken the English nation to the true facts of the question that is at stake.”
And that is how it has come about that, after some years of silence, this strange story of Roraima and the ancient city of El Dorado is now given to the world.
