Presently the breakfast arrived, and with it Leo, who had been taking a walk outside the cave—to clear his mind, he said; and very glad I was to see both, for they gave me a respite from my gloomy thoughts. After breakfast we went for another walk, and watched some of the Amahagger sowing a plot of ground with the grain from which they make their beer. This they did in scriptural fashion—a man with a bag made of goat’s hide fastened round his waist striding up and down the plot and scattering seed as he went. It was a positive relief to see one of these dreadful people do anything so homely and pleasant as sow a field, perhaps because it seemed to link them with the rest of humanity.
As we were returning Billali met us, and informed us that it was She’s pleasure that we should wait upon her. Accordingly we entered her presence, not without trepidation, for Ayesha was certainly an exception to the accepted rule: familiarity with her might and did breed passion and wonder and horror, but it certainly did not breed contempt.
As usual we were shown in by the mutes, and after they had retired Ayesha unveiled, and once more bade Leo embrace her, which, his heart-searchings of the previous night notwithstanding, he did with more alacrity and fervour than in strictness courtesy required.
She laid her white hand upon his head, and looked him fondly in the eyes. “Dost thou wonder, my Kallikrates,” she said, “when thou shalt call me all thine own, and when we shall of a truth be for one another and to one another? I will tell thee. First must thou be even as I am, not immortal indeed, for that I am not, but so cased and hardened against the attacks of Time that his arrows shall glance from the armour of thy vigorous life as the sunbeams glance from water. As yet I may not mate with thee, for thou and I are different, and the very brightness of my being would burn thee up, and perchance destroy thee. Thou couldst not even endure to look upon me for too long a time, lest thine eyes should ache and thy senses swim, therefore”—with a little nod—“shall I presently veil myself again.” (This, by the way, she did not do.) “No: listen. Thou shalt not be tried beyond endurance, for this very evening, an hour before the sun goes down, we will start hence, and by to-morrow’s dark, if all goes well, and the road is not lost to me, which I pray it may not be, we shall stand in the place of Life, and thou shalt bathe in the fire, and come forth glorified, as no man ever was before thee, and then, Kallikrates, thou mayst call me wife, and I will call thee husband.”
Leo muttered something in answer to this astonishing statement, I do not know what, and she laughed a little at his confusion, and went on:
“And thou, too, O Holly; to thee also I will grant this boon, and then of a truth thou shalt be evergreen, and this I will do—well, because thou hast pleased me, Holly, for thou art not altogether a fool, like the most of the sons of men, and because, though thou hast a school of philosophy as full of nonsense as those of the old days, yet hast thou not forgotten how to turn a pretty phrase about a lady’s eyes.”
“Hulloa, uncle!” whispered Leo, with a return of his former cheerfulness, “have you been paying compliments? I should never have thought it of you!”
“I thank thee, Ayesha,” I replied, with as much dignity as I could command; “but if there be such a place as thou dost describe, and if in this strange place there may be found a fiery virtue that can hold off Death when he comes to pluck us by the hand, yet I seek none of it. For me, O Ayesha, the world has not proved so soft a nest that I would lie in it for ever. A stony-hearted mother is our earth, and stones are the bread she gives her children for their daily food. Stones to eat and bitter water for their thirst, and stripes for tender nurture. Who would endure this for many lives? Who would so load up his back with memories of lost hours and loves, and of his neighbour’s sorrows which he cannot lessen, and with wisdom that brings not consolation? It is hard to die, because our delicate flesh shrinks back from the worm it will not feel, and from that Unknown which the winding-sheet curtains from our view. But harder still, to my thought, would it be to live on, green in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and to feel that other secret worm of memory gnawing ever at the heart.”
“Bethink thee, Holly,” she said; “yet do long life and strength and beauty beyond measure give power and all things that are dear to man.”
“And what, O Queen,” I answered, “are those things that are dear to man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is no resting-place upon them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number. Does not wealth satiate and become nauseous, and no longer serve to satisfy or pleasure, or to buy an hour’s ease of mind? And is there any end to wisdom that we may hope to win it? Rather, the more we learn, shall we not thereby be able only to better compass out our ignorance? Did we live ten thousand years could we hope to solve the secrets of the suns, and of the space beyond the suns, and of the Hand that hung them in the heavens? Would not our wisdom be but as a gnawing hunger calling our consciousness day by day to a knowledge of the empty craving of our souls? Would it not be but as a light in one of these great caverns, that, though bright it burn, and brighter yet, doth but the more serve to show the depths of the gloom around it? And what good thing is there beyond that we may gain by length of days?”
“Nay, my Holly, there is love—love, which makes all things beautiful, yes, and breathes divinity into the very dust we tread. With love shall life roll on gloriously from year to year, like the voice of some great music that has power to hold the hearer’s heart poised on eagles’ wings above the sordid shame and folly of the earth.”
“It may be so,” I answered; “but if the loved one prove a broken reed to pierce us, or if the love be loved in vain—what then? Shall a man grave his sorrows upon a stone when he has but need to write them on the water? Nay, O She, I will live my day and grow old with my generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten. For I do hope for an immortality to which the little span that perchance thou canst confer will be but as a finger’s length laid against the measure of the great world; and, mark this! the immortality to which I look, and which my faith doth promise to me, shall be free from the bonds that here must tie my spirit down. For, while the flesh endures, sorrow and evil and the scorpion whips of sin must endure also; but when the flesh has fallen from us, then shall the spirit shine forth clad in the brightness of eternal good, and for its common air shall breathe so rare an ether of most noble thoughts that the highest aspiration of our manhood, or the purest incense of a maiden’s prayer, would prove too gross to float therein.”
“Thou lookest high,” answered Ayesha, with a little laugh, “and speakest clearly as a trumpet, and with no uncertain sound. And yet methinks that but now thou didst talk of ‘that Unknown’ from which the winding-sheet doth curtain us. Well, perchance thou seest with the eye of Faith, gazing on this brightness, that is to be, through the painted glass of thy imagination. Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and these many-coloured pigments of the imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them tallies with another! I could tell thee—but there, to what end—why rob a fool of his bauble? Let it pass, and I pray, O Holly, that when thou shalt feel old age creeping slowly over thee, and the dull edge of eld working havoc in thy brain, thou mayst not bitterly regret that thou didst cast away the imperial boon I would have given to thee. But so it has always been; man can never be content with that which his hand may pluck. If a lamp shines for him to light him through the darkness, straightway he casts it down because it is no star. Happiness dances ever a pace before his feet, like the marsh-fire in the swamps, and he must catch the fire, and he must win the star! Beauty is naught to him, because there are lips more honey-sweet; and wealth is poverty, because others can weigh him down with heavier shekels; and fame is emptiness, because there have been greater men than he. Thyself thou saidst it, and I turn thy words against thee. Well, thou dreamest tha
t thou shalt clasp the star. I believe it not, and I name thee fool, my Holly, to throw away the lamp.”
I made no answer, for, especially before Leo, I could not tell her that since I had seen her face I knew it must always be before my eyes, and that I had no wish to prolong an existence which must be ever haunted and tortured by her memory, and by the last bitterness of unsatisfied love. But so it was, and so, alas, is it to this hour!
“And now,” went on She, changing her tone and the subject together, “tell me, my Kallikrates, for as yet I know it not, how came ye to seek me here? Yesternight thou didst say that Kallikrates—him whom thou sawest dead—was thine ancestor. How was it? Tell me—thou dost not speak overmuch!”
Thus adjured, Leo told her the wonderful story of the casket and of the potsherd that, written on by his ancestress, the Egyptian Amenartas, had been the means of guiding us to her. Ayesha listened intently, and, when he had finished, spoke to me.
“Did I not tell thee once, while we talked of good and evil, O Holly—it was when my beloved lay so ill—that out of good came evil, and out of evil good—that they who sowed knew not what the crop should be, nor he who struck where the blow should fall? See, now: this Egyptian Amenartas, this royal child of the Nile, who hated me, and whom even now I hate, for in a measure she prevailed against me—see, I say, she herself hath been the guide to lead her lover to mine arms! For her sake I slew him, and now, behold, through her he has come back to me! She would have done me evil, and sowed her seeds that I might reap tares, and behold she hath given me more than all the world can give, and there is a strange square for thee to fit into thy circle of good and evil, O Holly!
“And so,” she went on after a pause—“and so she bade her son destroy me if he might, because I slew his father. And thou, my Kallikrates, art the father, and in a sense thou art likewise the son; and wouldst thou avenge thy wrong, and the wrong of that far-off mother of thine, upon me, O Kallikrates? See,” and she slid to her knees, and opened the white robe upon her ivory bosom—“see, here beats my heart, and there by thy side is a knife, heavy, and long, and sharp, the very knife to slay an erring woman with. Take it now, and be avenged. Strike, and strike home!—so shalt thou be satisfied, Kallikrates, and go through life a happy man, because thou hast paid back the wrong, and obeyed the mandate of the past.”
He looked at her; then he stretched out his hand and lifted her to her feet.
“Rise, Ayesha,” he said sadly; “thou knowest well that I cannot harm thee, no, not even for the sake of her whom thou slewest but last night. I am in thy power, and a very slave to thee. How can I kill thee?—sooner should I slay myself.”
“Almost dost thou begin to love me, Kallikrates,” she answered, smiling. “And now tell me of thy country—’tis a great people, is it not? with an empire like that of Rome! Surely thou wilt return thither, and it is well, for I would not that thou shouldst dwell in these caves of Kôr. Nay, when once thou art even as I am we will go hence—fear not but that I shall find a path—and then will we journey to this England of thine, and live as it becometh us to live. Two thousand years have I waited for the day when I should see the last of these hateful caves and this gloomy-visaged folk, and now it is at hand, and my heart bounds up to meet it like a child’s towards its holiday. For thou shalt rule this England——”
“But we have a queen already,” interrupted Leo, hastily.
22.1 “Strike, and strike home!”
“It is naught, it is naught,” said Ayesha; “she can be overthrown.”
At this we both broke out into exclamations of dismay, and explained that we should as soon think of overthrowing ourselves.
“But here is a strange thing,” said Ayesha, in astonishment—“a queen whom her people love! Surely the world must have changed since I dwelt in Kôr.”
Again we explained that it was the character of monarchs that had changed, and that the sovereign under whom we lived was venerated and beloved by all right-thinking men in her vast realms. Also, we told her that real power in our country rested in the hands of the people; that, in fact, we were ruled by the votes of the lower and least educated classes of the community.
“Ah,” she said, “a democracy—then surely there is a tyrant, for I have long since seen that democracies, having no clear will of their own, in the end set up a tyrant, and worship him.”
“Yes,” I said, “we have our tyrants.”
“Well,” she answered resignedly, “we can at any rate destroy these tyrants, and Kallikrates shall rule the land.”
I instantly informed Ayesha that in England “blasting” was not an amusement that could be indulged in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law, and probably end upon a scaffold.
“The law!” she laughed with scorn—“the law! Canst thou not understand, O Holly, that I am above the law, and so shall Kallikrates be also? All human law will be to us as the north wind to a mountain. Does the wind bend the mountain, or the mountain the wind?
“And now leave me, I pray thee, and thou, too, my own Kallikrates, for I would make me ready against our journey, and so must ye both, and your servant also. But bring no great store of garments with thee, for I trust that we shall be but three days gone. Then must we return hither, and I will make a plan whereby we can bid farewell for ever to these sepulchres of Kôr. Yea, surely thou mayst kiss my hand!”
So we went, I, for one, meditating deeply on the awful nature of the problem that now opened out before us. Evidently the terrible She had determined to go to England, and it made me shudder to think what would be the result of her arrival there. What her powers were I knew, and I could not doubt but that she would exercise them to the full. It might be possible to control her for a while, but her proud, ambitious spirit would be certain to break loose and to avenge itself for the long centuries of its solitude. If necessary, and if the unaided power of her beauty did not prove sufficient for her purpose, she would blast her way to any end she set before her, and, as she could not die, and for aught I knew could not even be killed,* what was there to stay her? In the end, I had little doubt, she would assume absolute rule over the British dominions, and probably over the whole earth, and, though I was sure that she would speedily make ours the most glorious and prosperous empire that the world has ever seen, it must be at the cost of a terrible sacrifice of life.
The story sounded like a dream or some extraordinary invention of a speculative brain, and yet it was a fact—a wonderful fact—of which the universe would soon be called on to take notice. What was the meaning of it all? After much thinking I could only conclude that this marvellous creature, whose passion had kept her for so many centuries chained as it were, and comparatively harmless, was now about to be used by Providence as a means to change the order of the world, and possibly, by the building up of a power that could no more be rebelled against or questioned than the decrees of Fate, to change it materially for the better.
*I regret to say that I was never able to ascertain if She was invulnerable against the accidents of life. Presumably this was so, else some misadventure would have been sure to put an end to her in the course of so many centuries. True, she suggested to Leo that he should kill her, but very probably this was only an experiment to try his temper and mental attitude towards herself. Ayesha never gave way to impulse without some valid object.—L. H. H.
XXIII
THE TEMPLE OF TRUTH
Our preparations did not take us very long. We packed a change of clothing apiece and some spare boots into my handbag; also we took our revolvers and an Express rifle each, together with a good supply of ammunition, a precaution to which, under Providence, we subsequently owed our lives over and over again. The rest of our gear, together with our heavy rifles, we left behind us.
A few minutes before the appointed time we were summoned to Ayesha’s “boudoir,” and found her also ready, the dark cloak thrown over her corpselike wrappings.
“Are ye prepared for t
he great venture?” she said.
“We are,” I answered, “though for my part, Ayesha, I have no faith in it.”
“Of a truth, my Holly,” she said, “thou art like those old Jews—of whom the memory vexes me so sorely—unbelieving, and slow to accept that which thou hast not known. But thou shalt see; for unless my mirror yonder lies,” and she pointed to the font of crystal water, “the path is yet open as it was of old time. And now let us away, to begin the new life which shall end—who knoweth where?”
“Ah,” I echoed, “who knows where?” and we passed down into the great central cave, and out into the light of day. At the mouth of the cave we found a single litter waiting, with six bearers, all of them mutes; and with these I was relieved to see our old friend Billali, for whom I had conceived a sort of affection. It appeared that, for reasons not necessary to explain at length, Ayesha had thought it best that, with the exception of herself, we should proceed on foot. This we were nothing loth to do after our long confinement in the caves, which, however suitable they might be to serve as the last home of the dead, were depressing habitations for breathing mortals like ourselves. Either by accident or by the orders of She, the space in front of the cave where we had witnessed that awful dance was empty of spectators. Not a man could be seen, and consequently I do not believe that our departure was known to anyone, except, perhaps, to the mutes in attendance upon She, who were necessarily in the habit of keeping what they saw to themselves.
In a few minutes’ time we were stepping out sharply across the great cultivated plain or lake bed, framed like a vast emerald in its setting of frowning cliff. Here we found fresh opportunity to wonder at the extraordinary nature of the site chosen by these old people of Kôr for their capital, and at the marvellous amount of labour, ingenuity, and engineering skill that must have been brought into requisition by the founders of the city to drain so huge a sheet of water, and to keep it free from subsequent accumulations. So far as my experience goes, it is, indeed, an unequalled instance of what man can do in the face of nature, for in my opinion such achievements as the Suez Canal, or even the Mont Cenis Tunnel, do not approach this ancient undertaking in magnitude and grandeur of conception.