XXI
THE DEAD AND LIVING MEET
"See now the place where I have slept for these two thousand years,"said Ayesha, taking the lamp from Leo's hand and holding it above herhead. Its rays fell upon a little hollow in the floor, where I had seenthe leaping flame, but the fire was out now. They fell upon the whiteform stretched there beneath its wrappings upon its bed of stone,upon the fretted carving of the tomb, and upon another shelf of stoneopposite the one on which the body lay, and separated from it by thebreadth of the cave.
"Here," went on Ayesha, laying her hand upon the rock--"here have Islept night by night for all these generations, with but a cloak tocover me. It did not become me that I should lie soft when my spouseyonder," and she pointed to the rigid form, "lay stiff in death. Herenight by night have I slept in his cold company--till, thou seest, thisthick slab, like the stairs down which we passed, has worn thin with thetossing of my form--so faithful have I been to thee even in thy spaceof sleep, Kallikrates. And now, mine own, thou shalt see a wonderfulthing--living, thou shalt behold thyself dead--for well have I tendedthee during all these years, Kallikrates. Art thou prepared?"
We made no answer, but gazed at each other with frightened eyes, thewhole scene was so dreadful and so solemn. Ayesha advanced, and laid herhand upon the corner of the shroud, and once more spoke.
"Be not affrighted," she said; "though the thing seem wonderful tothee--all we who live have thus lived before; nor is the very shapethat holds us a stranger to the sun! Only we know it not, because memorywrites no record, and earth hath gathered in the earth she lent us, fornone have saved our glory from the grave. But I, by my arts and by thearts of those dead men of Kôr which I have learned, have held theeback, oh Kallikrates, from the dust, that the waxen stamp of beautyon thy face should ever rest before mine eye. 'Twas a mask that memorymight fill, serving to fashion out thy presence from the past, andgive it strength to wander in the habitations of my thought, clad in amummery of life that stayed my appetite with visions of dead days.
"Behold now, let the Dead and Living meet! Across the gulf of Time theystill are one. Time hath no power against Identity, though sleep themerciful hath blotted out the tablets of our mind, and with oblivionsealed the sorrows that else would hound us from life to life, stuffingthe brain with gathered griefs till it burst in the madness of uttermostdespair. Still are they one, for the wrappings of our sleep shall rollaway as thunder-clouds before the wind; the frozen voice of the pastshall melt in music like mountain snows beneath the sun; and the weepingand the laughter of the lost hours shall be heard once more most sweetlyechoing up the cliffs of immeasurable time.
"Ay, the sleep shall roll away, and the voices shall be heard, when downthe completed chain, whereof our each existence is a link, the lightningof the Spirit hath passed to work out the purpose of our being;quickening and fusing those separated days of life, and shaping them toa staff whereon we may safely lean as we wend to our appointed fate.
"Therefore, have no fear, Kallikrates, when thou--living, and but latelyborn--shalt look upon thine own departed self, who breathed and diedso long ago. I do but turn one page in thy Book of Being, and show theewhat is writ thereon.
"_Behold!_"
With a sudden motion she drew the shroud from the cold form, and let thelamplight play upon it. I looked, and then shrank back terrified; since,say what she might in explanation, the sight was an uncanny one--for herexplanations were beyond the grasp of our finite minds, and when theywere stripped from the mists of vague esoteric philosophy, and broughtinto conflict with the cold and horrifying fact, did not do much tobreak its force. For there, stretched upon the stone bier before us,robed in white and perfectly preserved, was what appeared to be the bodyof Leo Vincey. I stared from Leo, standing _there_ alive, to Leo lying_there_ dead, and could see no difference; except, perhaps, that thebody on the bier looked older. Feature for feature they were the same,even down to the crop of little golden curls, which was Leo's mostuncommon beauty. It even seemed to me, as I looked, that the expressionon the dead man's face resembled that which I had sometimes seen uponLeo's when he was plunged into profound sleep. I can only sum up thecloseness of the resemblance by saying that I never saw twins so exactlysimilar as that dead and living pair.
I turned to see what effect was produced upon Leo by the sight of hisdead self, and found it to be one of partial stupefaction. He stoodfor two or three minutes staring, and said nothing, and when at last hespoke it was only to ejaculate--
"Cover it up, and take me away."
"Nay, wait, Kallikrates," said Ayesha, who, standing with the lampraised above her head, flooding with its light her own rich beauty andthe cold wonder of the death-clothed form upon the bier, resembledan inspired Sibyl rather than a woman, as she rolled out her majesticsentences with a grandeur and a freedom of utterance which I am, alas!quite unable to reproduce.
"Wait, I would show thee something, that no tittle of my crime may behidden from thee. Do thou, oh Holly, open the garment on the breastof the dead Kallikrates, for perchance my lord may fear to touch ithimself."
I obeyed with trembling hands. It seemed a desecration and an unhallowedthing to touch that sleeping image of the live man by my side. Presentlyhis broad chest was bare, and there upon it, right over the heart, was awound, evidently inflicted with a spear.
"Thou seest, Kallikrates," she said. "Know then that it was _I_ who slewthee: in the Place of Life _I_ gave thee death. I slew thee because ofthe Egyptian Amenartas, whom thou didst love, for by her wiles she heldthy heart, and her I could not smite as but now I smote that woman, forshe was too strong for me. In my haste and bitter anger I slew thee, andnow for all these days have I lamented thee, and waited for thy coming.And thou hast come, and none can stand between thee and me, and of atruth now for death I will give thee life--not life eternal, for thatnone can give, but life and youth that shall endure for thousands uponthousands of years, and with it pomp, and power, and wealth, and allthings that are good and beautiful, such as have been to no man beforethee, nor shall be to any man who comes after. And now one thing more,and thou shalt rest and make ready for the day of thy new birth. Thouseest this body, which was thine own. For all these centuries it hathbeen my cold comfort and my companion, but now I need it no more, forI have thy living presence, and it can but serve to stir up memoriesof that which I would fain forget. Let it therefore go back to the dustfrom which I held it.
"Behold! I have prepared against this happy hour!" And going to theother shelf or stone ledge, which she said had served her for a bed, shetook from it a large vitrified double-handed vase, the mouth of whichwas tied up with a bladder. This she loosed, and then, having bent downand gently kissed the white forehead of the dead man, she undid thevase, and sprinkled its contents carefully over the form, taking, Iobserved, the greatest precautions against any drop of them touchingus or herself, and then poured out what remained of the liquid upon thechest and head. Instantly a dense vapour arose, and the cave was filledwith choking fumes that prevented us from seeing anything while thedeadly acid (for I presume it was some tremendous preparation of thatsort) did its work. From the spot where the body lay came a fiercefizzing and cracking sound, which ceased, however, before the fumes hadcleared away. At last they were all gone, except a little cloud thatstill hung over the corpse. In a couple of minutes more this too hadvanished, and, wonderful as it may seem, it is a fact that on the stonebench that had supported the mortal remains of the ancient Kallikratesfor so many centuries there was now nothing to be seen but a fewhandfuls of smoking white powder. The acid had utterly destroyed thebody, and even in places eaten into the stone. Ayesha stooped down, and,taking a handful of this powder in her grasp, 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 dead to thedead!--Kallikrates is dead, and is born again!"
The ashes floated noiselessly to the rocky floor, and we stood in awedsilence and watched them fall, too overcom
e 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 thepath that we must 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 withthe murdered Ustane, quite prostrated by the terrors of the Amahaggerfestivity. He was sleeping soundly, good honest fellow that he was,and I rejoiced to think that his nerves, which, like those of mostuneducated people, were far from strong, had been spared the closingscenes of this dreadful day. Then we entered our own chamber, and hereat last poor Leo, who, ever since he had looked upon that frozenimage of his living self, had been in a state not far removed fromstupefaction, burst out into a torrent of grief. Now that he was nolonger in the presence of the dread _She_, his sense of the awfulnessof all that had happened, and more especially of the wicked murder ofUstane, who was bound to him by ties so close, broke upon him like astorm, and lashed him into an agony of remorse and terror which waspainful to witness. He cursed himself--he cursed the hour when we hadfirst seen the writing on the sherd, which was being so mysteriouslyverified, and bitterly he cursed his own weakness. Ayesha he dared notcurse--who dared speak evil of such a woman, whose consciousness, foraught we knew, was watching us at the very moment?
"What am I to do, old fellow?" he groaned, resting his head against myshoulder in the extremity of his grief. "I let her be killed--not thatI could help that, but within five minutes I was kissing her murderessover her body. I am a degraded brute, but I cannot resist that" (andhere his voice sank)--"that awful sorceress. I know I shall do it againto-morrow; I know that I am in her power for always; if I never saw heragain I should never think of anybody else during all my life; I mustfollow her as a needle follows a magnet; I would not go away now if Icould; I could not leave her, my legs would not carry me, but my mind isstill clear enough, and in my mind I hate her--at least, I think so. Itis all so horrible; and that--that body! What can I make of it? It was_I_! I am sold into bondage, old fellow, and she will take my soul asthe price of herself!"
Then, for the first time, I told him that I was in a but very littlebetter position; and I am bound to say that, notwithstanding his owninfatuation, he had the decency to sympathise with me. Perhaps he didnot think it worth while being jealous, realising that he had no causeso far as the lady was concerned. I went on to suggest that we shouldtry to run away, but we soon rejected the project as futile, and, to beperfectly honest, I do not believe that either of us would really haveleft Ayesha even if some superior power had suddenly offered to conveyus from these gloomy caves and set us down in Cambridge. We could nomore have left her than a moth can leave the light that destroys it. Wewere like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knewthe deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared toabandon its terrible delights.
No man who once had seen _She_ unveiled, and heard the music of hervoice, and drunk in the bitter wisdom of her words, would willingly giveup the sight for a whole sea of placid joys. How much more, then, wasthis likely to be so when, as in Leo's case, to put myself out of thequestion, this extraordinary creature declared her utter and absolutedevotion, and gave what appeared to be proofs of its having lasted forsome two thousand years?
No doubt she was a wicked person, and no doubt she had murdered Ustanewhen she stood in her path, but then she was very faithful, and by alaw of nature man is apt to think but lightly of a woman's crimes,especially if that woman be beautiful, and the crime be committed forthe love of him.
And then, for the rest, when had such a chance ever come to a man beforeas that which now lay in Leo's hand? True, in uniting himself to thisdread woman, he would place his life under the influence of a mysteriouscreature of evil tendencies,[*] but then that would be likely enough tohappen to him in any ordinary marriage. On the other hand, however, noordinary marriage could bring him such awful beauty--for awful is theonly word that can describe it--such divine devotion, such wisdom, andcommand over the secrets of nature, and the place and power that theymust win, or, lastly, the royal crown of unending youth, if indeed shecould give that. No, on the whole, it is not wonderful that, though Leowas plunged in bitter shame and grief, such as any gentleman would havefelt under the circumstances, he was not ready to entertain the idea ofrunning away from his extraordinary fortune.
[*] 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 shrewdly suspect that, were we endowed with the same absolute power, and if we had the same tremendous interest at stake, we would 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 question, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we get; indeed many of us are only saved by timely death from utter moral petrifaction if not 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 that 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 was but one thing worth living for, and that was 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.
My own opinion is that he would have been mad if he had done so. Butthen I confess that my statement on the matter must be accepted withqualifications. I am in love with Ayesha myself to this day, and I wouldrather have been the object of her affection for one short week thanthat of any other woman in the world for a whole lifetime. And let meadd that, if anybody who doubts this statement, and thinks me foolishfor making it, could have seen Ayesha draw her veil and flash out inbeauty on his gaze, his view would exactly coincide with my own. Ofcourse, I am speaking of any _man_. We never had the advantage of alady's opinion of Ayesha, but I think it quite possible that shewould have regarded the Queen with dislike, would have expressed herdisapproval in some more or less pointed manner, and ultimately have gotherself blasted.
For two hours or more Leo and I sat with shaken nerves and frightenedeyes, and talked over the miraculous events through which we werepassing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of the solemn,sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd wasnot only true, but that we should live to verify its truth, and thatwe two seekers should find her who was sought, patiently awaiting ourcoming in the tombs of Kôr? Who would have thought that in the personof Leo this mysterious woman should, as she believed, discover thebeing whom she awaited from century to century, and whose former earthlyhabitation she had till this very night preserved? But so it was. In theface of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoningmen any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore
at last, with humblehearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and theinsolence of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it hasno experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates inthe hands of that watching Providence which had thus chosen to allow usto draw the veil of human ignorance, and reveal to us for good or evilsome glimpse of the possibilities of life.