She
customs, naught have I to do with them. Also, call me not Queen—I
am weary of flattery and titles—call me Ayesha, the name hath a
sweet sound in mine ears, it is an echo from the past. As for
this Ustane, I know not. I wonder if it be she against whom I was
warned, and whom I in turn did warn? Hath she—stay, I will see;”
and, bending forward, she passed her hand over the font of water
and gazed intently into it. “See,” she said quietly, “is that the
woman?”
I looked into the water, and there, mirrored upon its placid
surface, was the silhouette of Ustane’s stately face. She was
bending forward, with a look of infinite tenderness upon her
features, watching something beneath her, and with her chestnut
locks falling on to her right shoulder.
“It is she,” I said, in a low voice, for once more I felt much
disturbed at this most uncommon sight. “She watches Leo asleep.”
“Leo!” said Ayesha, in an absent voice; “why, that is ‘lion’ in
the Latin tongue. The old man hath named happily for once. It is
very strange,” she went on, speaking to herself, “very. So
like—but it is not possible!” With an impatient gesture she
passed her hand over the water once more. It darkened, and the
image vanished silently and mysteriously as it had risen, and
once more the lamplight, and the lamplight only, shone on the
placid surface of that limpid, living mirror.
“Hast thou aught to ask me before thou goest, oh Holly?” she
said, after a few moments’ reflection. “It is but a rude life
that thou must live here, for these people are savages, and know
not the ways of cultivated man. Not that I am troubled thereby,
for behold my food,” and she pointed to the fruit upon the little
table. “Naught but fruit doth ever pass my lips—fruit and cakes
of flour, and a little water. I have bidden my girls to wait upon
thee. They are mutes, thou knowest, deaf are they and dumb, and
therefore the safest of servants, save to those who can read
their faces and their signs. I bred them so—it hath taken many
centuries and much trouble; but at last I have triumphed. Once I
succeeded before, but the race was too ugly, so I let it die
away; but now, as thou seest, they are otherwise. Once, too, I
reared a race of giants, but after a while Nature would no more
of it, and it died away. Hast thou aught to ask of me?”
“Ay, one thing, oh Ayesha,” I said boldly; but feeling by no
means as bold as I trust I looked. “I would gaze upon thy face.”
She laughed out in her bell-like notes. “Bethink thee, Holly,”
she answered; “bethink thee. It seems that thou knowest the old
myths of the gods of Greece. Was there not one Actæon who
perished miserably because he looked on too much beauty? If I
show thee my face, perchance thou wouldst perish miserably also;
perchance thou wouldst eat out thy heart in impotent desire; for
know I am not for thee—I am for no man, save one, who hath been,
but is not yet.”
“As thou wilt, Ayesha,” I said. “I fear not thy beauty. I have
put my heart away from such vanity as woman’s loveliness, that
passeth like a flower.”
“Nay, thou errest,” she said; “that does _not_ pass. My beauty
endures even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have
thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the
Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou
wilt not. Never may the man to whom my beauty has been unveiled
put it from his mind, and therefore even with these savages do I
go veiled, lest they vex me, and I should slay them. Say, wilt
thou see?”
“I will,” I answered, my curiosity overpowering me.
She lifted her white and rounded arms—never had I seen such arms
before—and slowly, very slowly, withdrew some fastening beneath
her hair. Then all of a sudden the long, corpse-like wrappings
fell from her to the ground, and my eyes travelled up her form,
now only robed in a garb of clinging white that did but serve to
show its perfect and imperial shape, instinct with a life that
was more than life, and with a certain serpent-like grace that
was more than human. On her little feet were sandals, fastened
with studs of gold. Then came ankles more perfect than ever
sculptor dreamed of. About the waist her white kirtle was
fastened by a double-headed snake of solid gold, above which her
gracious form swelled up in lines as pure as they were lovely,
till the kirtle ended on the snowy argent of her breast, whereon
her arms were folded. I gazed above them at her face, and—I do
not exaggerate—shrank back blinded and amazed. I have heard of
the beauty of celestial beings, now I saw it; only this beauty,
with all its awful loveliness and purity, was _evil_—at least, at
the time, it struck me as evil. How am I to describe it? I
cannot—simply I cannot! The man does not live whose pen could
convey a sense of what I saw. I might talk of the great changing
eyes of deepest, softest black, of the tinted face, of the broad
and noble brow, on which the hair grew low, and delicate,
straight features. But, beautiful, surpassingly beautiful as they
all were, her loveliness did not lie in them. It lay rather, if
it can be said to have had any fixed abiding place, in a visible
majesty, in an imperial grace, in a godlike stamp of softened
power, which shone upon that radiant countenance like a living
halo. Never before had I guessed what beauty made sublime could
be—and yet, the sublimity was a dark one—the glory was not all of
heaven—though none the less was it glorious. Though the face
before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than
thirty years, in perfect health, and the first flush of ripened
beauty, yet it had stamped upon it a look of unutterable
experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not
even the lovely smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth
could hide this shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the
light of the glorious eyes, it was present in the air of majesty,
and it seemed to say: “Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is,
undying and half-divine; memory haunts me from age to age, and
passion leads me by the hand—evil have I done, and from age to
age evil I shall do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption
comes.”
Drawn by some magnetic force which I could not resist, I let my
eyes rest upon her shining orbs, and felt a current pass from
them to me that bewildered and half-blinded me.
She laughed—ah, how musically! and nodded her little head at me
with an air of sublimated coquetry that would have done credit to
a Venus Victrix.
“Rash man!” she said; “like Actæon, thou hast had thy will; be
careful lest, like Actæon, thou too dost perish miserably, torn
to pieces by the ban-hounds of thine own passions. I too, oh
Holly, am a virgin goddess, not to be moved of any man, save one,
and it is not thou. Say, hast thou seen enough!”
“I have looked on beauty, and I am blinded,” I said hoarsely,
lifting my hand to cover up my eyes.
“So! what did I tell thee? Beauty is like the lightning; it is
lovely, but it destroys—especially trees, oh Holly!” and again
she nodded and laughed.
Suddenly she paused, and through my fingers I saw an awful change
come over her countenance. Her great eyes suddenly fixed
themselves into an expression in which horror seemed to struggle
with some tremendous hope arising through the depths of her dark
soul. The lovely face grew rigid, and the gracious willowy form
seemed to erect itself.
“Man,” she half whispered, half hissed, throwing back her head
like a snake about to strike—“Man, whence hadst thou that scarab
on thy hand? Speak, or by the Spirit of Life I will blast thee
where thou standest!” and she took one light step towards me, and
from her eyes there shone such an awful light—to me it seemed
almost like a flame—that I fell, then and there, on the ground
before her, babbling confusedly in my terror.
“Peace,” she said, with a sudden change of manner, and speaking
in her former soft voice. “I did affright thee! Forgive me! But
at times, oh Holly, the almost infinite mind grows impatient of
the slowness of the very finite, and am I tempted to use my power
out of vexation—very nearly wast thou dead, but I remembered——.
But the scarab—about the scarabæus!”
“I picked it up,” I gurgled feebly, as I got on to my feet again,
and it is a solemn fact that my mind was so disturbed that at the
moment I could remember nothing else about the ring except that I
had picked it up in Leo’s cave.
“It is very strange,” she said with a sudden access of womanlike
trembling and agitation which seemed out of place in this awful
woman—“but once I knew a scarab like to that. It—hung round the
neck—of one I loved,” and she gave a little sob, and I saw that
after all she was only a woman, although she might be a very old
one.
“There,” she went on, “it must be one like to it, and yet never did I
see one like to it, for thereto hung a history, and he who wore it
prized it much.[3] But the scarab that I knew was not set thus in the
bezel of a ring. Go now, Holly, go, and, if thou canst, try to forget
that thou hast of thy folly looked upon Ayesha’s beauty,” and, turning
from me, she flung herself on her couch, and buried her face in the
cushions.
[3] I am informed by a renowned and learned Egyptologist, to whom I
have submitted this very interesting and beautifully finished scarab,
“Suten se Ra,” that he has never seen one resembling it. Although it
bears a title frequently given to Egyptian royalty, he is of opinion
that it is not necessarily the cartouche of a Pharaoh, on which either
the throne or personal name of the monarch is generally inscribed.
What the history of this particular scarab may have been we can now,
unfortunately, never know, but I have little doubt but that it played
some part in the tragic story of the Princess Amenartas and her lover
Kallikrates, the forsworn priest of Isis.—Editor.
As for me, I stumbled from her presence, and I do not remember
how I reached my own cave.
XIV.
A SOUL IN HELL
It was nearly ten o’clock at night when I cast myself down upon
my bed, and began to gather my scattered wits, and reflect upon
what I had seen and heard. But the more I reflected the less I
could make of it. Was I mad, or drunk, or dreaming, or was I
merely the victim of a gigantic and most elaborate hoax? How was
it possible that I, a rational man, not unacquainted with the
leading scientific facts of our history, and hitherto an absolute
and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which in Europe goes
by the name of the supernatural, could believe that I had within
the last few minutes been engaged in conversation with a woman
two thousand and odd years old? The thing was contrary to the
experience of human nature, and absolutely and utterly
impossible. It must be a hoax, and yet, if it were a hoax, what