# Mirrikh, or, A Woman from Mars/Chapter 30

CHAPTER XXX.
CONCLUSION.
“A miracle!” roared the Doctor; yet again. “Wylde, I’m as mad as the rest of you! By Jove! Did you see it? I swear to you man, she was dead.”
But Walla—shall I call her Walla still?—paid not the slightest attention to us.
“Maurice! Maurice!” she shouted, running toward the edge of the precipice with outstretched hands, calling out when she reached it, in that unknown tongue.
I looked across the rift at Maurice.
Fearful was the change which had come over his face.
“Don’t look at me, George Wylde!” he shouted. “Don’t look at me, man! I did not do it! I swear to God I had no hand in Walla’s death!”
Still, in spite of his prohibition, I might have looked at him—might even have attempted to argue the point when he reached my side, for already he had started, walking as ​well as he ever walked, across the swaying bridge. In short, it is quite impossible to tell what I might or might not have done, had a not sharp exclamation from the Doctor warned me that still another change had come.
It was a light flashing beneath the arch.
There stood a man in Chinese dress holding in one hand a lantern, in the other the dragon flag.
Instantly I recognized him as the man who had headed the procession which Mirrikh showed me at the foot of the mountain, and I knew that the time for transcendental reflection had passed, never to return.
“By Jove! There’s a whole troop of them!” gasped the Doctor. “The jig is up just as we’ve got everything fixed. We’ll be marched off to the Tale Lama and be beheaded as sure as fate.”
By this time Maurice was over the bridge and had flung his arms about—well, I suppose I might as well begin, and say Merzilla.
“Speak to them, George. They are all Chinamen!” he cried. “Now is the time to see if Mirrikh’s letter is any good.”
Through the arch they came pouring, with a hideous din of beating tom-toms and a formidable display of glistening spears.
I pulled out the letter, glancing hastily at the line of Thibetan characters inscribed upon it, and bowing low, laid it in the hand of the fat Celestial who came shambling toward us, evidently being in command.
He glared at me and then opened the letter—we watched him.
To save my soul from perdition I could not remember a solitary word of Chinese, though I had rather prided myself upon my pure Pekinese accent in the old days at Swatow.
Slowly he read the letter through to the end, and then, with a changed expression, bowed low before us—so low that the glass ball on his cap almost touched the rock.
“Peace be unto you, my lords lamas! These children of the Flowery Kingdom are at your disposal. May your path to the frontier be strewn with roses, and long life and much happiness await you in your native land!”
Years have passed.
I write these lines not upon Thibetan territory, but amid the most prosaic surroundings. I am in my bedroom in the house of my friend, Maurice De Veber. As I glance from my window I can see only other windows opposite, while the roar of the city penetrates the lowered upper sash.
Need I say that I am back in New York?
Scarcely.
For the true New Yorker there is but one city—his own.
Mirrikh’s letter proved to be all that he had promised—but no more.
We never came any nearer to Lh’asa than the foot of the mountain.
Without an adventure worth narrating, we were escorted hurriedly to the frontier, and as the Doctor expressed it, “promptly fired across.”
At last we found ourselves safe in Mandalay, from whence the journey to Calcutta was just nothing at all. And I learned from our conductor that to a certainty would we have met death but for that piece of paper which came so strangely into my hands.
At Calcutta, Doctor Philpot left us, and from that day to this I have never seen him, although we still occasionally correspond. The last I heard he was in Australia. He never makes the slightest allusion in his letters to our Thibetan experiences; although he writes in the most friendly spirit, and repeatedly refers to “the pleasant days at the Nagkon Wat.”
One word more. The Doctor is preaching again. He has a charge at Wagga-Wagga, I think it is; I have mislaid his last letter and am not quite sure about the name. If his nature has changed I am not aware of it. Certainly his letters are written in the same light vein which ever characterized the man from the first hour of our meeting upon the tower stairs.
So much for the Doctor.
Concerning Maurice and his companion I have only this to say: he calls her Merzilla and speaks to her in a language which certainly is not one of the tongues of earth.
She is much like ordinary women and can now speak English, but seldom uses it in addressing her husband.
Maurice married her in Calcutta and she signed the ​register Merzilla Layakwoma, giving her residence, etc., as Thibet.
Most surely is she a lady, and a highly intelligent one; most decidedly are they the happiest married couple I ever knew. But one thing mars their happiness. As yet there are no olive plants about their table. Maurice says there never will be any. Probably he is right.
As for myself, I live with these, my friends, for I have no others, unless, indeed, it is the Doctor—but stay, there is Mr. Mirrikh! Have I not a friend on Mars?
The thought is stupendous!
For years I could not pluck up courage to brave the sneers of the skeptical and follow Mirrikh’s injunction; but at last I put myself down to the task, and for better or worse launch my strange story upon the world.
This done, I await the result with a calmness amounting almost to indifference.
I have done my part, and have but one ambition now—to meet her beyond the veil.
To those who have followed me through my strange adventures, I can express my state of mind in a single word.
Hope!
THE END.