She
P.S.—There is on consideration one circumstance that, after a
reperusal of this history, struck me with so much force that I
cannot resist calling the attention of the reader to it. He will
observe that so far as we are made acquainted with him there
appears to be nothing in the character of Leo Vincey which in the
opinion of most people would have been likely to attract an
intellect so powerful as that of Ayesha. He is not even, at any
rate to my view, particularly interesting. Indeed, one might
imagine that Mr. Holly would under ordinary circumstances have
easily outstripped him in the favour of _She_. Can it be that
extremes meet, and that the very excess and splendour of her mind
led her by means of some strange physical reaction to worship at
the shrine of matter? Was that ancient Kallikrates nothing but a
splendid animal loved for his hereditary Greek beauty? Or is the
true explanation what I believe it to be—namely, that Ayesha,
seeing further than we can see, perceived the germ and
smouldering spark of greatness which lay hid within her lover’s
soul, and well knew that under the influence of her gift of life,
watered by her wisdom, and shone upon with the sunshine of her
presence, it would bloom like a flower and flash out like a star,
filling the world with light and fragrance?
Here also I am not able to answer, but must leave the reader to
form his own judgment on the facts before him, as detailed by Mr.
Holly in the following pages.
I.
MY VISITOR
There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding
detail seems to be graven on the memory in such fashion that we
cannot forget it, and so it is with the scene that I am about to
describe. It rises as clearly before my mind at this moment as
though it had happened but yesterday.
It was in this very month something over twenty years ago that I,
Ludwig Horace Holly, was sitting one night in my rooms at
Cambridge, grinding away at some mathematical work, I forget
what. I was to go up for my fellowship within a week, and was
expected by my tutor and my college generally to distinguish
myself. At last, wearied out, I flung my book down, and, going to
the mantelpiece, took down a pipe and filled it. There was a
candle burning on the mantelpiece, and a long, narrow glass at
the back of it; and as I was in the act of lighting the pipe I
caught sight of my own countenance in the glass, and paused to
reflect. The lighted match burnt away till it scorched my
fingers, forcing me to drop it; but still I stood and stared at
myself in the glass, and reflected.
“Well,” I said aloud, at last, “it is to be hoped that I shall be
able to do something with the inside of my head, for I shall
certainly never do anything by the help of the outside.”
This remark will doubtless strike anybody who reads it as being
slightly obscure, but I was in reality alluding to my physical
deficiencies. Most men of twenty-two are endowed at any rate with
some share of the comeliness of youth, but to me even this was
denied. Short, thick-set, and deep-chested almost to deformity,
with long sinewy arms, heavy features, deep-set grey eyes, a low
brow half overgrown with a mop of thick black hair, like a
deserted clearing on which the forest had once more begun to
encroach; such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a century
ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day. Like
Cain, I was branded—branded by Nature with the stamp of abnormal
ugliness, as I was gifted by Nature with iron and abnormal
strength and considerable intellectual powers. So ugly was I that
the spruce young men of my College, though they were proud enough
of my feats of endurance and physical prowess, did not even care
to be seen walking with me. Was it wonderful that I was
misanthropic and sullen? Was it wonderful that I brooded and
worked alone, and had no friends—at least, only one? I was set
apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast,
and hers only. Women hated the sight of me. Only a week before I
had heard one call me a “monster” when she thought I was out of
hearing, and say that I had converted her to the monkey theory.
Once, indeed, a woman pretended to care for me, and I lavished
all the pent-up affection of my nature upon her. Then money that
was to have come to me went elsewhere, and she discarded me. I
pleaded with her as I have never pleaded with any living creature
before or since, for I was caught by her sweet face, and loved
her; and in the end by way of answer she took me to the glass,
and stood side by side with me, and looked into it.
“Now,” she said, “if I am Beauty, who are you?” That was when I
was only twenty.
And so I stood and stared, and felt a sort of grim satisfaction
in the sense of my own loneliness; for I had neither father, nor
mother, nor brother; and as I did so there came a knock at my
door.
I listened before I went to open it, for it was nearly twelve
o’clock at night, and I was in no mood to admit any stranger. I
had but one friend in the College, or, indeed, in the
world—perhaps it was he.
Just then the person outside the door coughed, and I hastened to
open it, for I knew the cough.
A tall man of about thirty, with the remains of great personal
beauty, came hurrying in, staggering beneath the weight of a
massive iron box which he carried by a handle with his right
hand. He placed the box upon the table, and then fell into an
awful fit of coughing. He coughed and coughed till his face
became quite purple, and at last he sank into a chair and began
to spit up blood. I poured out some whisky into a tumbler, and
gave it to him. He drank it, and seemed better; though his better
was very bad indeed.
“Why did you keep me standing there in the cold?” he asked
pettishly. “You know the draughts are death to me.”
“I did not know who it was,” I answered. “You are a late
visitor.”
“Yes; and I verily believe it is my last visit,” he answered,
with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I am done for, Holly. I am
done for. I do not believe that I shall see to-morrow.”
“Nonsense!” I said. “Let me go for a doctor.”
He waved me back imperiously with his hand. “It is sober sense;
but I want no doctors. I have studied medicine and I know all
about it. No doctors can help me. My last hour has come! For a
year past I have only lived by a miracle. Now listen to me as you
have never listened to anybody before; for you will not have the
opportunity of getting me to repeat my words. We have been
friends for two years; now tell me how much do you know about
me?”
“I know that you are rich, and have had a fancy to come to
College long after the age that most men leave it. I know that
you have been married, and that your wife died; and that you have
been the best, indeed almost the only friend I ever had.”
“Did you know that I have a son?”
“No.”
“I have. He is five years old. He cost me his mother’s life, and
I have never been able to bear to look upon his face in
consequence. Holly, if you will accept the trust, I am going to
leave you that boy’s sole guardian.”
I sprang almost out of my chair. “_Me!_” I said.
“Yes, you. I have not studied you for two years for nothing. I have
known for some time that I could not last, and since I realised the
fact I have been searching for some one to whom I could confide the boy
and this,” and he tapped the iron box. “You are the man, Holly; for,
like a rugged tree, you are hard and sound at core. Listen; the boy
will be the only representative of one of the most ancient families in
the world, that is, so far as families can be traced. You will laugh at
me when I say it, but one day it will be proved to you beyond a doubt,
that my sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian
priest of Isis, though he was himself of Grecian extraction, and was
called Kallikrates.[1] His father was one of the Greek mercenaries
raised by Hak-Hor, a Mendesian Pharaoh of the twenty-ninth dynasty, and
his grandfather or great-grandfather, I believe, was that very
Kallikrates mentioned by Herodotus.[2] In or about the year 339 before
Christ, just at the time of the final fall of the Pharaohs, this
Kallikrates (the priest) broke his vows of celibacy and fled from Egypt
with a Princess of Royal blood who had fallen in love with him, and was
finally wrecked upon the coast of Africa, somewhere, as I believe, in
the neighbourhood of where Delagoa Bay now is, or rather to the north
of it, he and his wife being saved, and all the remainder of their
company destroyed in one way or another. Here they endured great
hardships, but were at last entertained by the mighty Queen of a savage
people, a white woman of peculiar loveliness, who, under circumstances
which I cannot enter into, but which you will one day learn, if you
live, from the contents of the box, finally murdered my ancestor
Kallikrates. His wife, however, escaped, how, I know not, to Athens,
bearing a child with her, whom she named Tisisthenes, or the Mighty
Avenger. Five hundred years or more afterwards, the family migrated to
Rome under circumstances of which no trace remains, and here, probably
with the idea of preserving the idea of vengeance which we find set out
in the name of Tisisthenes, they appear to have pretty regularly
assumed the cognomen of Vindex, or Avenger. Here, too, they remained
for another five centuries or more, till about 770 A.D., when
Charlemagne invaded Lombardy, where they were then settled, whereon the
head of the family seems to have attached himself to the great Emperor,
and to have returned with him across the Alps, and finally to have
settled in Brittany. Eight generations later his lineal representative
crossed to England in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and in the
time of William the Conqueror was advanced to great honour and power.
From that time to the present day I can trace my descent without a
break. Not that the Vinceys—for that was the final corruption of the
name after its bearers took root in English soil—have been particularly
distinguished—they never came much to the fore. Sometimes they were
soldiers, sometimes merchants, but on the whole they have preserved a
dead level of respectability, and a still deader level of mediocrity.
From the time of Charles II. till the beginning of the present century
they were merchants. About 1790 my grandfather made a considerable
fortune out of brewing, and retired. In 1821 he died, and my father
succeeded him, and dissipated most of the money. Ten years ago he died
also, leaving me a net income of about two thousand a year. Then it was
that I undertook an expedition in connection with _that_,” and he
pointed to the iron chest, “which ended disastrously enough. On my way
back I travelled in the South of Europe, and finally reached Athens.
There I met my beloved wife, who might well also have been called the
‘Beautiful,’ like my old Greek ancestor. There I married her, and
there, a year afterwards, when my boy was born, she died.”
[1] The Strong and Beautiful, or, more accurately, the Beautiful in
strength.