When I reached Leo he was on the point of expiring—his golden head turned slowly from side to side, and his mouth was slightly open. I called to Ayesha to hold his head, and this she managed to do, although the woman was quivering from head to foot, like an aspen-leaf or a startled horse. Then, forcing the jaws a little further open, I poured the contents of the phial into his mouth. Instantly some vapour arose from it, as happens when one disturbs nitric acid, and this sight did not increase my hopes, already faint enough, of the efficacy of the treatment.
One thing, however, was certain, the death-throes ceased—at first I thought because he had gone beyond them, and crossed the awful river. His face turned to a livid pallor, and his heart-beats, which had been feeble enough before, seemed to die away altogether—only the eyelids still twitched a little. In my doubt I looked up at Ayesha, whose head-wrapping had slipped back in her excitement when she reeled across the room. She was still holding Leo’s head, and, with a face as pale as his own, watched his countenance with such an expression of agonised anxiety as I had never seen before. Clearly she did not know if he would live or die. Five minutes passed slowly, and I saw that she was abandoning hope; her lovely oval face seemed to fall in and visibly grow thinner beneath the pressure of a mental agony whose pencil drew black lines about the hollows of her eyes. The coral faded even from her lips, till they were as white as Leo’s face, and quivered pitifully. It was shocking to see her: even in my own grief I felt for hers.
“Is it too late?” I gasped.
She hid her face in her hands, and made no answer, and I also turned away. But as I turned I heard a deep-drawn breath, and looking down perceived a line of colour creeping up Leo’s face, then another and another, and, wonder of wonders, the man whom we had thought dead rolled over on his side.
“Thou seest,” I said in a whisper.
“I see,” she answered hoarsely. “He is saved. I thought we were too late; another moment—one little moment more—and he had been gone!” and she burst into an awful flood of tears, sobbing as though her heart would break, and yet looking lovelier than ever as she wept. At last she ceased.
“Forgive me, my Holly—forgive me for my weakness,” she said. “Thou seest after all I am a very woman. Think—now think of it! This morning thou didst speak of the place of torment appointed by this new religion of thine. Hell or Hades thou didst call it—a place where the vital essence lives and retains an individual memory, and where all the errors and faults of judgment, and unsatisfied passions, and the unsubstantial terrors of the mind wherewith it hath at any time had to do, come to mock and haunt and gibe and wring the heart for ever and for ever with the vision of its own hopelessness. Thus, even thus, have I lived for full two thousand years—for some six-and-sixty generations, as ye reckon time—in a Hell, as thou callest it—tormented by the memory of a crime, tortured day and night with an unfulfilled desire—without companionship, without comfort, without death, and led on only down my dreary road by the marsh-lights of Hope, which, though they flickered here and there, and now glowed strong, and now were not, yet, as my skill foretold, would one day lead me to my deliverer.
“And then—think of it still, O Holly, for never shalt thou hear such another tale, or see such another scene, nay, not even if I give thee ten thousand years of life—and thou shalt have them in payment if thou wilt—think: at last my deliverer came—he for whom I had watched and waited through the generations—at the appointed time he came to seek me, as I knew that he must come, for my wisdom could not err, though I knew not when or how. Yet see how ignorant I was! See how small my knowledge, and how faint my strength! For hours he lay here sick unto death, and I felt it not—I who had waited for him for two thousand years—I knew it not! And then at last I see him, and behold! my chance is gone but for a hair’s breadth even before I win it, for he is in the very jaws of death, whence no power of mine can draw him. And if he die, surely must the Hell be lived through once more—once more I must face the weary centuries, and wait and wait till time in its fulness shall bring my Beloved back to me. And then thou gavest him the medicine, and that five minutes passed before I knew whether he would live or die, and I tell thee that all the sixty generations that are gone were not so long as that five minutes. But they passed at length, and still he showed no sign, and I knew that if the drug worked not then, so far as I have had knowledge, it would not work at all. Then I thought that once more he was dead, and all the tortures of all the years gathered themselves into a single venomed spear, and pierced me through and through, because again I had lost Kallikrates! And then, when all was done, behold! he sighed, behold! he lived, and I was sure that he would live, for none die on whom the drug takes hold. Think of it now, my Holly—think of the wonder of it! He will sleep for twelve hours, and then the sickness will have left him—will have left him to life and me!”
She ceased, and laid her hand upon the golden head, then she bent down and kissed his brow with a chastened abandonment of tenderness that would have been beautiful to behold had not the sight cut me to the heart—for I was jealous.
*Ayesha was a great chemist; indeed, chemistry appears to have been her only amusement and occupation. One of the caves was fitted up as a laboratory, and, although her appliances were necessarily rude, the results that she attained, as will become clear in the course of this narrative, were sufficiently surprising.—L. H. H.
XVIII
“GO, WOMAN!”
Then followed a silence of a minute or so, during which, if one might judge from the almost angelic rapture of her face—for she looked angelic sometimes—She appeared to be plunged in a happy ecstasy. Suddenly, however, a new thought struck her, and her expression became the very reverse of angelic.
“Almost had I forgotten,” she said, “that woman, Ustane. What is she to Kallikrates—his servant, or——” and she paused, and her voice trembled.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I understand that she is wed to him according to the custom of the Amahagger,” I answered; “but I know not.”
Her face grew dark as a thundercloud. Old as she was, Ayesha had not outlived jealousy.
“Then there is an end,” she said; “she must die, even now!”
“For what crime?” I asked, horrified. “She is guilty of nothing that thou art not guilty of thyself, O Ayesha. She loves the man, and he has been pleased to accept her love; where, then, is her sin?”
“Truly, O Holly, thou art foolish,” she answered, almost petulantly. “Where is her sin? Her sin is that she stands between me and my desire. I know well that I can take him from her—for dwells there a man upon this earth, O Holly, who could resist me if I put out my strength? Men are faithful for so long only as temptations pass them by. If the temptation be but strong enough, then will the man yield, for every man, like every rope, hath his breaking strain, and passion is to men what gold and power are to women—the weight upon their weakness. Believe me, ill will it go with mortal women in that heaven of which thou speakest if only the spirits be more fair, for their lords will never turn to look upon them, and their Heaven will become their Hell. For man can be bought with woman’s beauty, if it be but beautiful enough; and woman’s beauty can be ever bought with gold, if only there be gold enough. So was it in my day, and so it will be to the end of time. The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are for sale to him who bids the highest in the currency of our desires.”
These remarks, which were as cynical as might have been expected from a woman of Ayesha’s age and experience, jarred upon me, and I answered, testily, that in our heaven there was no marriage or giving in marriage.
“Else would it not be heaven, dost thou mean?” she put in. “Fie upon thee, Holly, to think so ill of us poor women! Is it, then, marriage that marks the line between thy heaven and thy hell? But enough of this. Now is no time for disputing and the challenge of our wits. Why dost thou always dispute? Art thou also a philosopher of these latter days? As for this woman, she must die; for, thoug
h I can take her lover from her, yet, while she lived, he might think tenderly of her, and that I cannot suffer. No other woman shall dwell in my lord’s thoughts; my empire must be all my own. She has had her day, let her be content; for better is an hour with love than a century of loneliness—now night shall swallow her.”
“Nay, nay,” I cried, “it would be a wicked crime; and from a crime naught comes but what is evil. For thine own sake do not this deed.”
“Is it, then, a crime, O foolish man, to put away that which stands between us and our ends? Then is our life one long crime, my Holly; for day by day we destroy that we may live, since in this world none save the strongest can endure. Those who are weak must perish; the earth is to the strong, and the fruits thereof. For every tree that grows a score shall wither, that the strong one may take their share. We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes. It is the scheme of things. Thou sayest, too, that a crime breeds evil, but therein thou dost lack experience; for out of crimes come many good things, and out of good grows much evil. The cruel rage of the tyrant may prove the blessing of thousands who come after him, and the sweetheartedness of a holy man may make a nation slaves. Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath—all these things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each? I tell thee that there is a Hand of Fate who twines them up to bear the burden of his purpose, and all things are gathered in that great rope to which all things are requisite. Therefore doth it not become us to say this thing is evil and that good, or the dark is hateful and the light lovely; for to other eyes than ours the evil may be the good and the darkness more beautiful than the day, or all alike be fair. Hearest thou, my Holly?”
I felt that it was hopeless to argue against casuistry of this nature, which, if it were carried to its logical conclusion, would absolutely destroy all morality, as we understand it. But Ayesha’s talk gave me a fresh thrill of fear, for what may not be possible to a being who, unconstrained by human law, is also absolutely unshackled by a moral sense of right and wrong, which, however partial and conventional it may be, is yet based, as our conscience tells us, upon the great wall of individual responsibility that marks off mankind from the beasts?
Still I was most anxious to save Ustane, whom I liked and respected, from the dire fate that overshadowed her at the hands of her mighty rival. So I made one more appeal.
“Ayesha,” I said, “thou art too subtle for me; but thou thyself hast told me that each man should be a law unto himself, and follow the teaching of his heart. Has thy heart no mercy towards her whose place thou wouldst take? Bethink thee, as thou sayest—though to me the thing is incredible—he whom thou desirest has returned to thee after many ages, and but now thou hast, as thou sayest also, wrung him from the jaws of death. Wilt thou celebrate his coming by the murder of one who loved him, and whom perchance he loved—one, at the least, who saved his life for thee when the spears of thy slaves would have made an end of it? Thou sayest also that in past days thou didst grievously wrong this man, that with thine own hand thou didst slay him because of the Egyptian Amenartas whom he loved.”
“How knowest thou that, O stranger? How knowest thou that name? I spoke it not to thee,” she broke in with a cry, catching at my arm.
“Perchance I dreamed it,” I answered; “strange dreams do hover about these caves of Kôr. It seems that the dream was, indeed, a shadow of the truth. What came to thee of thy mad crime? Two thousand years of waiting, was it not? And now wouldst thou repeat this history? Say what thou wilt, I tell thee that evil will come of it; for to him who doeth, at the least, good breeds good and evil evil, even though in after days out of the evil cometh good. Offences must needs come; but woe to him by whom the offence cometh. So said that Messiah of whom I spoke to thee, and it was truly said. If thou slayest this innocent woman, I say unto thee that thou shalt be accursed, and pluck no fruit from thine ancient tree of love. Also, what thinkest thou? How will this man take thee red-handed from the slaughter of her who loved and tended him?”
“As to that,” she answered, “I have already answered thee. Had I slain thee as well as her, yet should he love me, Holly, because he could not save himself therefrom any more than thou couldst save thyself from dying, if by chance I slew thee, O Holly. And yet maybe there is truth in what thou dost say; for in some way it presses on my mind. If it may be, I will spare this woman; for have I not told thee that I am not cruel for the sake of cruelty? I love not to see suffering, or to cause it. Let her come before me—quick now, ere my mood changes,” and she covered her face hastily with its gauzy wrapping.
Well pleased to have succeeded even to this extent, I passed out into the passage and called to Ustane, whose white garment I caught sight of some yards away, huddled up against one of the earthenware lamps that were placed at intervals along the tunnel. She rose, and ran towards me.
“Is my lord dead? Oh, say not he is dead!” she cried, lifting her noble-looking face up to me, all stained as it was with tears, with an air of infinite beseeching that went straight to my heart.
“Nay, he lives,” I answered. “She hath saved him. Come.”
She sighed deeply, entered, and fell upon her hands and knees, after the custom of the Amahagger people, in the presence of the dread She.
“Rise,” said Ayesha, in her coldest voice, “and come hither.”
Ustane obeyed, standing before her with bowed head.
Then came a pause, which Ayesha broke.
“Who is this man?” she said, pointing to the sleeping form of Leo.
“The man is my husband,” she answered in a low voice.
“Who gave him to thee for a husband?”
“I took him, according to the custom of our country, O She.”
“Thou hast done evil, woman, in taking this man, who is a stranger. He is not of thine own race, and the custom fails. Listen: perchance thou didst this thing through ignorance, therefore, woman, do I spare thee, otherwise hadst thou died. Listen again. Go hence back to thine own place, and never dare to speak with or to set thine eyes upon this man again. He is not for thee. Listen a third time. If thou breakest this my law, that moment thou diest. Go!”
But Ustane did not move.
“Go, woman!”
Then Ustane looked up, and I saw that her face was torn with passion.
“Nay, O She, I will not go,” she answered in a choked voice: “the man is my husband, and I love him—I love him, and I will not leave him. What right hast thou to command me to leave my husband?”
I saw a quiver pass down Ayesha’s frame, and shuddered myself, fearing the worst.
“Be pitiful,” I said in Latin; “it is but Nature working.”
“I am pitiful,” she answered coldly in the same language; “had I not been pitiful she had been dead even now.” Then, addressing Ustane: “Woman, I say to thee, go before I destroy thee where thou art!”
“I will not go! He is mine—mine!” she cried in anguish. “I took him, and I saved his life! Destroy me, then, if thou hast the power! I will not give thee my husband—never—never!”
Ayesha made a movement so swift that I could scarcely follow it, but it seemed to me that she struck the poor girl lightly upon the head with her hand. I looked at Ustane, and staggered back in horror, for there upon her hair, straight across her bronze-like tresses, appeared three finger-marks white as snow. As for the girl herself, she lifted her hands to her head like one who is dazed.
“Great heavens!” I said, aghast at this most dreadful manifestation of inhuman power; but She did but laugh a little.
“Thou thinkest, poor ignorant fool,” she said to the bewildered
woman, “that I have not power to slay. Look, there lies a mirror,” and she pointed to Leo’s round shaving-glass that had been arranged by Job with other things upon his baggage; “give it to this woman, my Holly, and let her learn that which lies across her hair, and whether or no I have power to slay.”
I took the glass, and held it before Ustane’s eyes. She gazed, felt at her hair, then gazed again, and presently sank upon the ground with a stifled sob.
“Now wilt thou go, or must I strike a second time?” asked Ayesha, in mockery. “See, I have set my seal upon thee, so that I may know thee till thy hair is all as white as it. If I behold thy face again, be sure, too, that thy bones shall soon be whiter than my stamp upon thy hair.”
Utterly awed and broken down, the poor creature rose, and, marked with that awful mark, she crept from the room, sobbing bitterly.
“Look not so frighted, my Holly,” said Ayesha, when she had gone. “I tell thee I deal not in magic—there is no magic. ’Tis only a force that thou dost not understand. I marked her to strike terror to her heart, else must I have slain her. And now I will bid my servants bear my lord Kallikrates to a chamber near my own, that I may watch over him, and be ready to greet him when he wakes; and thither, too, shalt thou come, my Holly, and the white man, thy servant. But one thing remember at thy peril. Naught shalt thou say to Kallikrates as to how this woman went, and as little as may be of me. Now, I have warned thee!” And she glided away to give her orders, leaving me more absolutely confounded than ever. Indeed, so bewildered was I, so racked and torn with such a succession of various emotions, that I began to think that I must be going mad. However, perhaps fortunately, I had but little time to reflect, for presently the mutes arrived to carry the sleeping Leo and our possessions across the central cave, so for a while all was bustle. Our new rooms were situated immediately behind what we named Ayesha’s boudoir—that curtained space where I had first seen her. Where she herself slept I did not then know, but it was close at hand.
She: A History of Adventure Page 22
