She
women, flee from them, for they are evil, and in the end will
destroy thee.’ It is a good proverb, especially the last part of
it: I think that it must have come down from the ancients.
Nevertheless I like this Baboon, and I wonder where they taught
him his tricks, and I trust that _She_ will not bewitch him. Poor
Baboon! he must be wearied after that fight. I will go lest I
should awake him.”
I waited till he had turned and was nearly through the entrance,
walking softly on tiptoe, and then I called after him.
“My father,” I said, “is it thou?”
“Yes, my son, it is I; but let me not disturb thee. I did but
come to see how thou didst fare, and to tell thee that those who
would have slain thee, my Baboon, are by now far on their road to
_She_. _She_ said that ye also were to come at once, but I fear
ye cannot yet.”
“Nay,” I said, “not till we have recovered a little; but have me
borne out into the daylight, I pray thee, my father. I love not
this place.”
“Ah, no,” he answered, “it hath a sad air. I remember when I was
a boy I found the body of a fair woman lying where thou liest
now, yes, on that very bench. She was so beautiful that I was
wont to creep in hither with a lamp and gaze upon her. Had it not
been for her cold hands, almost could I think that she slept and
would one day awake, so fair and peaceful was she in her robes of
white. White was she, too, and her hair was yellow and lay down
her almost to the feet. There are many such still in the tombs at
the place where _She_ is, for those who set them there had a way
I know naught of, whereby to keep their beloved out of the
crumbling hand of Decay, even when Death had slain them. Ay, day
by day I came hither, and gazed on her till at last—laugh not at
me, stranger, for I was but a silly lad—I learned to love that
dead form, that shell which once had held a life that no more is.
I would creep up to her and kiss her cold face, and wonder how
many men had lived and died since she was, and who had loved her
and embraced her in the days that long had passed away. And, my
Baboon, I think I learned wisdom from that dead one, for of a
truth it taught me of the littleness of life, and the length of
Death, and how all things that are under the sun go down one
path, and are for ever forgotten. And so I mused, and it seemed
to me that wisdom flowed into me from the dead, till one day my
mother, a watchful woman, but hasty-minded, seeing I was changed,
followed me, and saw the beautiful white one, and feared that I
was bewitched, as, indeed, I was. So half in dread, and half in
anger, she took up the lamp, and standing the dead woman up
against the wall even there, set fire to her hair, and she burnt
fiercely, even down to the feet, for those who are thus kept burn
excellently well.
“See, my son, there on the roof is yet the smoke of her burning.”
I looked up doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of
the sepulchre, was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three
feet or more across. Doubtless it had in the course of years been
rubbed off the sides of the little cave, but on the roof it
remained, and there was no mistaking its appearance.
“She burnt,” he went on in a meditative way, “even to the feet,
but the feet I came back and saved, cutting the burnt bone from
them, and hid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a
piece of linen. Surely, I remember it as though it were but
yesterday. Perchance they are there, if none have found them,
even to this hour. Of a truth I have not entered this chamber
from that time to this very day. Stay, I will look,” and,
kneeling down, he groped about with his long arm in the recess
under the stone bench. Presently his face brightened, and with an
exclamation he pulled something forth which was caked in dust;
which he shook on to the floor. It was covered with the remains
of a rotting rag, which he undid, and revealed to my astonished
gaze a beautifully shaped and almost white woman’s foot, looking
as fresh and firm as though it had but now been placed there.
“Thou seest, my son, the Baboon,” he said, in a sad voice, “I
spake the truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take
it, my son, and gaze upon it.”
I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at
it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot
describe, so mixed up were they between astonishment, fear, and
fascination. It was light, much lighter I should say than it had
been in the living state, and the flesh to all appearance was
still flesh, though about it there clung a faintly aromatic
odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, or even
black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but
plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt,
perfect as on the day of death—a very triumph of embalming.
Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had
lain for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the
beauty that it had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a
forgotten civilisation—first as a merry child’s, then as a
blushing maid’s, and lastly as a perfect woman’s. Through what
halls of Life had its soft step echoed, and in the end, with what
courage had it trodden down the dusty ways of Death! To whose
side had it stolen in the hush of night when the black slave
slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened for its
stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon
the proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman’s beauty, and
well might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon
its jewelled whiteness.
I wrapped up this relic of the past in the remnants of the old
linen rag which had evidently formed a portion of its owner’s
grave-clothes, for it was partially burnt, and put it away in my
Gladstone bag—a strange combination, I thought. Then with
Billali’s help I staggered off to see Leo. I found him dreadfully
bruised, worse even than myself, perhaps owing to the excessive
whiteness of his skin, and faint and weak with the loss of blood
from the flesh wound in his side, but for all that cheerful as a
cricket, and asking for some breakfast. Job and Ustane got him on
to the bottom, or rather the sacking of a litter, which was
removed from its pole for that purpose, and with the aid of old
Billali carried him out into the shade at the mouth of the cave,
from which, by the way, every trace of the slaughter of the
previous night had now been removed, and there we all
breakfasted, and indeed spent that day, and most of the two
following ones.
On the third morning Job and myself were practically recovered.
Leo also was so much better that I yielded to Billali’s often
expressed entreaty, and agreed to start at once upon our journey
to Kôr, which we were told was the name of the place where the
mysterious _She_ lived, though I still feared for its effect upon
Leo, and especially lest the motion should cause his wound, which
was scarcely skinned over, to break open again. Indeed, had it
not been for Billali’s evident anxiety to get off, which led us
to suspect that some difficulty or danger might threaten us if we
did not comply with it, I would not have consented to go.
X.
SPECULATIONS
Within an hour of our finally deciding to start five litters were
brought up to the door of the cave, each accompanied by four
regular bearers and two spare hands, also a band of about fifty
armed Amahagger, who were to form the escort and carry the
baggage. Three of these litters, of course, were for us, and one
for Billali, who, I was immensely relieved to hear, was to be our
companion, while the fifth I presumed was for the use of Ustane.
“Does the lady go with us, my father?” I asked of Billali, as he
stood superintending things in general.
He shrugged his shoulders as he answered—
“If she wills. In this country the women do what they please. We
worship them, and give them their way, because without them the
world could not go on; they are the source of life.”
“Ah,” I said, the matter never having struck me quite in that
light before.
“We worship them,” he went on, “up to a point, till at last they
get unbearable, which,” he added, “they do about every second
generation.”
“And then what do you do?” I asked, with curiosity.
“Then,” he answered, with a faint smile, “we rise, and kill the
old ones as an example to the young ones, and to show them that
we are the strongest. My poor wife was killed in that way three
years ago. It was very sad, but to tell thee the truth, my son,
life has been happier since, for my age protects me from the
young ones.”
“In short,” I replied, quoting the saying of a great man whose
wisdom has not yet lightened the darkness of the Amahagger, “thou
hast found thy position one of greater freedom and less
responsibility.”
This phrase puzzled him a little at first from its vagueness,
though I think my translation hit off its sense very well, but at
last he saw it, and appreciated it.
“Yes, yes, my Baboon,” he said, “I see it now, but all the
‘responsibilities’ are killed, at least some of them are, and
that is why there are so few old women about just now. Well, they
brought it on themselves. As for this girl,” he went on, in a
graver tone, “I know not what to say. She is a brave girl, and
she loves the Lion (Leo); thou sawest how she clung to him, and
saved his life. Also, she is, according to our custom, wed to
him, and has a right to go where he goes, unless,” he added
significantly, “_She_ would say her no, for her word overrides
all rights.”
“And if _She_ bade her leave him, and the girl refused? What
then?”
“If,” he said, with a shrug, “the hurricane bids the tree to
bend, and it will not; what happens?”
And then, without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked to
his litter, and in ten minutes from that time we were all well
under way.
It took us an hour and more to cross the cup of the volcanic
plain, and another half-hour or so to climb the edge on the
farther side. Once there, however, the view was a very fine one.
Before us was a long steep slope of grassy plain, broken here and
there by clumps of trees mostly of the thorn tribe. At the bottom
of this gentle slope, some nine or ten miles away, we could make
out a dim sea of marsh, over which the foul vapours hung like
smoke about a city. It was easy going for the bearers down the
slopes, and by midday we had reached the borders of the dismal
swamp. Here we halted to eat our midday meal, and then, following
a winding and devious path, plunged into the morass. Presently
the path, at any rate to our unaccustomed eyes, grew so faint as
to be almost indistinguishable from those made by the aquatic