“Behold! I have prepared against this happy hour!” Then, from the other shelf or stone ledge, which Ayesha said served her for a couch, she took a large vitrified double-handled vase, the mouth of which was covered with a bladder. This she loosed, and, having first bent down and gently kissed the white forehead of the dead man, she undid the vase, and sprinkled its contents carefully over the corpse, taking, I observed, the greatest precautions against any drop of them touching us or herself; then poured out what remained of the liquid upon the chest and head. Instantly a dense vapour arose, and the cave was filled with choking fumes, which prevented us from seeing anything while the deadly acid did its work, for I presume it was some powerful preparation of the sort. From the spot where the body lay came a fierce fizzing and crackling sound, which ceased, however, before the fumes had cleared away. At last they were all gone, except a little cloud that still hung over the corpse. In two or three minutes more this had vanished also, and, wonderful as it may seem, it is a fact that on the stone bench which had supported the mortal remains of the ancient Kallikrates for so many centuries there was now nothing to be seen but a few handfuls of smoking white powder. The acid had utterly destroyed the body, and even in places eaten into the stone. Ayesha stooped down, and taking a handful of this powder, she threw it into the air, saying at the same time, in a voice of calm solemnity—
“Dust to dust!—the past to the past!—the lost to the lost!—Kallikrates is dead, and is born again!”
The ashes floated about us and fell to the rocky floor, while in awed silence we watched them fall, too overcome for words.
“Now leave me,” she said, “and sleep if ye may. I must watch and think, for to-morrow night we go hence, and the time is long since I trod the path that we shall follow.”
Accordingly we bowed, and left her.
As we passed to our own apartment I peeped into Job’s sleeping-place, to see how he fared, for he had gone away, just before our interview with the murdered Ustane, quite prostrated by the terrors of the Amahagger festivity. He was sleeping soundly, good honest fellow that he was, and I rejoiced to think that his nerves, which, like those of most uneducated people, were far from strong, had been spared the closing scenes of this dreadful day. Then we entered our own chamber, and here at last poor Leo, who, ever since he had looked upon that frozen image of his living self, had been in a state not far removed from stupor, burst out into a torrent of grief. Now that he was no longer in the presence of the dread She his sense of the awfulness of all that had happened, and more especially of the wicked murder of Ustane, who was bound to him by ties so close, broke upon him like a storm, and lashed him into an agony of remorse and terror which was painful to witness. He cursed himself—he cursed the hour when we had first seen the writing on the sherd, which was being so mysteriously verified, and bitterly he cursed his own weakness. Ayesha he dared not curse—who would dare to speak evil of such a woman, whose spirit, for aught we knew, was watching us at the very moment?
“What am I to do, old fellow?” he groaned, resting his head against my shoulder in the extremity of his grief. “I let her be killed—not that I could help that, but within five minutes I was kissing her murderess over her body. I am a degraded brute, but I cannot resist this,” and here his voice sank—“awful sorceress. I know I shall do the same tomorrow; I know that I am in her power for always; if I never saw her again I should think of no other woman during all my life; I must follow her as a needle follows a magnet; I would not go away now if I might; I could not leave her, my legs would not carry me, but my mind is still clear enough, and in my mind I hate her—at least, I think so. It is all so horrible; and that—that dead man! What can I make of it? It was I! I am sold into bondage, old fellow, and she will take my soul as the price of herself!”
Then, for the first time, I told him that I was in but a very little better position; and I am bound to say that, notwithstanding his own infatuation, he had the decency to sympathise with me. Perhaps he did not think it worth while to be jealous, seeing that he had no cause so far as the lady was concerned. I went on to suggest that we should try to run away; but we soon rejected the project as futile, and, to be perfectly honest, I do not believe that either of us would really have left Ayesha, even if some superior power had suddenly offered to convey us from these gloomy caves and set us down in Cambridge. We could no more have left her than a moth can leave the light that destroys it. We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but certainly we were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.
No man who once had seen She unveiled, and heard the music of her voice, and drunk in the bitter wisdom of her words, would willingly give up that joy for a whole sea of placid pleasure. How much more, then, was this likely to be so when, as in Leo’s case, to put myself out of the question, this extraordinary creature declared her utter and absolute devotion, and gave to him what appeared to be proofs of its endurance through some two thousand years?
No doubt she was a wicked person, and no doubt she had murdered Ustane when she stood in her path; but then, she was very faithful, and by a law of nature man is apt to think but lightly of a woman’s crimes, especially if that woman be beautiful, and the crimes are committed for the love of himself.
For the rest, when had such a chance ever come to a man before as that which now lay in Leo’s hand? True, in uniting himself to this dread woman he would place his life under the influence of a mysterious creature of evil tendencies,* but then, that would be likely enough to happen to him in any ordinary marriage. On the other hand, however, no ordinary marriage could bring him such awful beauty—for awful is the only word that can describe it—such divine devotion, such wisdom, and command over the secrets of nature, and the place and power which they must win, or, lastly, the royal crown of unending youth, if indeed she could give that. No, on the whole, it is not wonderful, though Leo was plunged in bitter shame and grief, such as any gentleman would have felt under the circumstances, that he was not ready to entertain the idea of running away from his extraordinary fortune.
My own opinion is that he would have been mad if he had done so. But then, I confess, my views on the matter must be accepted with qualifications. I am in love with Ayesha myself to this day, and I would rather have been the object of her affection for one short week than that of any other woman’s in the world for a whole lifetime. And let me add that if anybody who doubts this statement, and thinks me foolish for making it, could have seen Ayesha draw her veil and flash out in beauty on his gaze, his view would exactly coincide with my own. Of course, I am speaking of any man. We never had the advantage of a lady’s opinion of Ayesha, but I think it quite possible that she would have regarded the Queen with dislike; would have expressed her disapproval in some more or less pointed manner, and ultimately have been “blasted.”
For two hours or more Leo and I sat with shaken nerves and frightened eyes, and talked over the miraculous events through which we were passing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of solemn, sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd was not only true, but that we should live to verify it, and that we two seekers should find her who was sought patiently awaiting our coming in the tombs of Kôr? Who would have thought that in the person of Leo this mysterious woman should, as she believed, discover the being whom she awaited from century to century, and whose former earthly tenement she had till this very night preserved? But so it was. In the face of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoning men any longer to doubt its truth. Therefore at last, with humble hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the insolence of the assumption which denies the possibility of that whereof it has no experience, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in the hands of the watching Providence which had chosen thus to allow us to draw the veil of human ignorance, and to reveal to us for good or evil a glimpse of the potentialities of life.
*After some months of consideration of this statement I am bound to confess that I am not quite satisfied of its truth. It is perfectly true that Ayesha committed a murder, but I suspect that, were we endowed with the same absolute power, and if we had the same tremendous interest at stake, we should be very apt to do likewise under parallel circumstances. Also, it must be remembered that she looked on it as an execution for disobedience under a system which made the slightest disobedience punishable by death. Putting aside this question of the murder, her evil-doing resolves itself into the expression of views and the acknowledgment of motives which are contrary to our preaching, if not to our practice. Now at first sight this might be fairly taken as a proof of an evil nature, but when we come to consider the great antiquity of the individual, it becomes doubtful if it was anything more than the natural cynicism which arises from age and bitter experience, and the possession of extraordinary powers of observation. It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrifaction, if not from moral corruption. No one will deny that a young man is on the average better than an old one, for he is without that experience of the order of things which in certain thoughtful dispositions can hardly fail to produce cynicism, and that disregard of acknowledged methods and established custom which we call evil. Now the oldest man upon the earth was but a babe compared to Ayesha, and the wisest man upon the earth was not one-third as wise. And the fruit of her wisdom was this that there is but one-thing worth living for, and that is Love in its highest sense, and to gain that good thing she was not prepared to stop at trifles. This is really the sum of her evil doings, and it must be remembered, on the other hand, that, whatever may be thought of them, she had some virtues developed to a degree very uncommon in either sex—constancy, for instance.—L. H. H.
XXII
JOB HAS A PRESENTIMENT
It was nine o’clock on the following morning when Job, who still looked scared and tremulous, came in to call me, and at the same time to breathe his gratitude at finding us alive in our beds, which, it appeared, was more than he had expected. When I told him of the awful end of poor Ustane he was even more thankful for our survival, and much shocked; though, indeed, Ustane had been no favourite of his, or he of hers. She called him “pig” in bastard Arabic, and he called her “hussy” in good English, but these amenities were forgotten in face of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her at the hands of her Queen.
“I don’t want to say anything as mayn’t be agreeable, sir,” said Job, when he had finished exclaiming at my tale, “but it’s my opinion that that there She is Old Nick himself, or perhaps his wife, if he has one, which I suppose he has, for he couldn’t be so wicked all alone. The Witch of Endor was a fool to her, sir: bless you, she would make no more of raising every gentleman in the Bible out of these here musty tombs than I should of growing cress on a bit of flannel! It’s a country of devils, this is, sir, and she’s the master one of the lot; and if ever we get clear it will be more than I expect to do. I don’t see no way out of it. That witch isn’t likely to let a fine young man like Mr. Leo go.”
“Come,” I said, “at any rate she saved his life.”
“Yes, and she’ll take his soul to pay for it. She’ll make him a witch, like herself. I say it’s wicked to have anything to do with those sort of people. Last night, sir, I lay awake and read in my little Bible that my poor mother gave me about what is going to happen to sorceresses and them sort, till my hair stood on end. Lord, how the old lady would stare if she saw where her Job had got to!”
“Yes, it’s a queer country, and a queer people, too, Job,” I answered, with a sigh, for, though I am not superstitious like Job, I admit to a natural shrinking, which will not bear investigation, from the things that are above Nature.
“You are right, sir,” he answered, “and if you won’t think me very foolish, I should like to say something to you now that Mr. Leo is out of the way”—(Leo had risen early and gone for a stroll)—“and that is, that I know it is the last country as ever I shall see in this world. I had a dream last night, and I dreamed that I saw my old father with a kind of night-shirt on him, something like these folk wear when they want to be in particular full-dress, and a bit of that feathery grass in his hand, which he may have gathered on the way, for I saw lots of it yesterday about three hundred yards from the mouth of this beastly cave.
“ ‘Job,’ he said to me, solemn like, and yet with a kind of satisfaction shining through him, more like a Methody elder when he has sold a neighbour a marked horse for a sound one and cleared twenty pounds by the job than anything I can think on—‘Job, time’s up, Job; but I never did expect to have to come and hunt you out in this ’ere place, Job! Such ado as I have had to nose you up; it wasn’t friendly to give your poor old father such a run, let alone that a wonderful lot of bad characters hail from this place Kôr.’ ”
“Regular cautions,” I suggested.
“Yes, sir—of course, sir, that’s just what he said they was—‘cautions, downright scorchers’—sir, and I’m sure I don’t doubt it, seeing what I know of them and their hot-potting ways,” went on Job, sadly. “Anyway, he was sure that time was up, and went away saying that we should see more than we cared for of each other soon, and I suppose he was a-thinking of the fact that father and I never could hit it off together for longer nor three days, and I daresay that things will be similar when we meet again.”
“Surely,” I said, “you don’t think that you are going to die because you dreamed you saw your old father; if one dies because one dreams of one’s father, what happens to a man who dreams of his mother-in-law?”
“Ah, sir, you’re laughing at me,” said Job; “but, you see, you didn’t know my father. If it had been anybody else—my Aunt Mary, for instance, who never made much of a job—I should not have thought so much of it; but my father was that idle, which he shouldn’t have been with seventeen children, that he would never have put himself out to come here just to see the place. No, sir; I know that he meant business. Well, sir, I can’t help it; I suppose every man must go some time or other, though it is a hard thing to die in a hole like this, where Christian burial isn’t to be had for its weight in gold. I’ve tried to be a good man, sir, and do my duty honest, and if it wasn’t for the supercilus kind of way in which father carried on last night—a sort of sniffing at me as it were, as though he hadn’t no opinion of my references and testimonials—I should feel easy enough in my mind. Anyway, sir, I’ve been a good servant to you and Mr. Leo, bless him!—why, it seems but the other day that I used to lead him about the streets with a penny whip;—and if ever you get out of this place—which, as father didn’t allude to you, perhaps you may—I hope you will think kindly of my whitened bones, and never have anything more to do with Greek writing on flower-pots, sir, if I may make so bold as to say so.”
“Come, come, Job,” I said seriously, “this is all rubbish, you know. You mustn’t be so silly as to get such ideas into your head. We’ve lived through some queer things, and I hope that we may go on doing so.”
“No, sir,” answered Job, in a tone of conviction that jarred on me unpleasantly, “it isn’t rubbish. I’m a doomed man, and I feel it, and a wonderful uncomfortable feeling it is, sir, for one can’t help wondering how it’s going to come about. If you are eating your dinner you think of poison, and it goes against your stomach, and if you are walking along these dark rabbit-burrows you think of knives, and Lord, don’t you just shiver about the back! I ain’t particular, sir, provided it’s sharp, like that poor girl, who, now that she’s gone, I am sorry to have spoke hard on, though I don’t approve of her morals in getting married, which I consider too quick to be decent. Still, sir,” and poor Job turned a shade paler as he said it, “I do hope it won’t be that hot-pot game.”
“Nonsense,” I broke in angrily, “nonsense!”
??
?Very well, sir,” said Job, “it isn’t my place to differ from you, sir, but if you happen to be going anywhere, sir, I should be obliged if you could manage to take me with you, seeing that I shall be glad to have a friendly face to look at when the time comes, just to help one through, as it were. And now, sir, I’ll be getting the breakfast,” and he went, leaving me in a very uncomfortable state of mind.
I was deeply attached to old Job, who was one of the best and honestest men I have ever had to do with in any class of life, really more of a friend than a servant, and the mere idea of anything happening to him brought a lump into my throat. Beneath all his ludicrous talk I could see that he himself was quite convinced that something was going to happen, and though in most cases these convictions turn out to be utter moonshine—and this particular one especially was to be amply accounted for by the gloomy and unaccustomed surroundings in which its victim was placed—still it did more or less carry a chill to my heart, as any dread that is obviously a genuine object of belief is apt to do, however absurd that belief may be.