She
was I to make of it? What, too, was to be said of the figures on
the water, of the woman’s extraordinary acquaintance with the
remote past, and her ignorance, or apparent ignorance, of any
subsequent history? What, too, of her wonderful and awful
loveliness? This, at any rate, was a patent fact, and beyond the
experience of the world. No merely mortal woman could shine with
such a supernatural radiance. About that she had, at any rate,
been in the right—it was not safe for any man to look upon such
beauty. I was a hardened vessel in such matters, having, with the
exception of one painful experience of my green and tender youth,
put the softer sex (I sometimes think that this is a misnomer)
almost entirely out of my thoughts. But now, to my intense
horror, I _knew_ that I could never put away the vision of those
glorious eyes; and alas! the very _diablerie_ of the woman,
whilst it horrified and repelled, attracted in even a greater
degree. A person with the experience of two thousand years at her
back, with the command of such tremendous powers, and the
knowledge of a mystery that could hold off death, was certainly
worth falling in love with, if ever woman was. But, alas! it was
not a question of whether or no she was worth it, for so far as I
could judge, not being versed in such matters, I, a fellow of my
college, noted for what my acquaintances are pleased to call my
misogyny, and a respectable man now well on in middle life, had
fallen absolutely and hopelessly in love with this white
sorceress. Nonsense; it must be nonsense! She had warned me
fairly, and I had refused to take the warning. Curses on the
fatal curiosity that is ever prompting man to draw the veil from
woman, and curses on the natural impulse that begets it! It is
the cause of half—ay, and more than half—of our misfortunes. Why
cannot man be content to live alone and be happy, and let the
women live alone and be happy too? But perhaps they would not be
happy, and I am not sure that we should either. Here is a nice
state of affairs. I, at my age, to fall a victim to this modern
Circe! But then she was not modern, at least she said not. She
was almost as ancient as the original Circe.
I tore my hair, and jumped up from my couch, feeling that if I
did not do something I should go off my head. What did she mean
about the scarabæus too? It was Leo’s scarabæus, and had come out
of the old coffer that Vincey had left in my rooms nearly
one-and-twenty years before. Could it be, after all, that the
whole story was true, and the writing on the sherd was _not_ a
forgery, or the invention of some crack-brained, long-forgotten
individual? And if so, could it be that _Leo_ was the man that
_She_ was waiting for—the dead man who was to be born again!
Impossible! The whole thing was gibberish! Who ever heard of a
man being born again?
But if it were possible that a woman could exist for two thousand
years, this might be possible also—anything might be possible. I
myself might, for aught I knew, be a reincarnation of some other
forgotten self, or perhaps the last of a long line of ancestral
selves. Well, _vive la guerre!_ why not? Only, unfortunately, I
had no recollection of these previous conditions. The idea was so
absurd to me that I burst out laughing, and, addressing the
sculptured picture of a grim-looking warrior on the cave wall,
called out to him aloud, “Who knows, old fellow?—perhaps I was
your contemporary. By Jove! perhaps I was you and you are I,” and
then I laughed again at my own folly, and the sound of my
laughter rang dismally along the vaulted roof, as though the
ghost of the warrior had echoed the ghost of a laugh.
Next I bethought me that I had not been to see how Leo was, so,
taking up one of the lamps which was burning at my bedside, I
slipped off my shoes and crept down the passage to the entrance
of his sleeping cave. The draught of the night air was lifting
his curtain to and fro gently, as though spirit hands were
drawing and redrawing it. I slid into the vault-like apartment,
and looked round. There was a light by which I could see that Leo
was lying on the couch, tossing restlessly in his fever, but
asleep. At his side, half-lying on the floor, half-leaning
against the stone couch, was Ustane. She held his hand in one of
hers, but she too was dozing, and the two made a pretty, or
rather a pathetic, picture. Poor Leo! his cheek was burning red,
there were dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his breath came
heavily. He was very, very ill; and again the horrible fear
seized me that he might die, and I be left alone in the world.
And yet if he lived he would perhaps be my rival with Ayesha;
even if he were not the man, what chance should I, middle-aged
and hideous, have against his bright youth and beauty? Well,
thank Heaven! my sense of right was not dead. _She_ had not
killed that yet; and, as I stood there, I prayed to Heaven in my
heart that my boy, my more than son, might live—ay, even if he
proved to be the man.
Then I went back as softly as I had come, but still I could not
sleep; the sight and thought of dear Leo lying there so ill had
but added fuel to the fire of my unrest. My wearied body and
overstrained mind awakened all my imagination into preternatural
activity. Ideas, visions, almost inspirations, floated before it
with startling vividness. Most of them were grotesque enough,
some were ghastly, some recalled thoughts and sensations that had
for years been buried in the _débris_ of my past life. But,
behind and above them all, hovered the shape of that awful woman,
and through them gleamed the memory of her entrancing loveliness.
Up and down the cave I strode—up and down.
Suddenly I observed, what I had not noticed before, that there
was a narrow aperture in the rocky wall. I took up the lamp and
examined it; the aperture led to a passage. Now, I was still
sufficiently sensible to remember that it is not pleasant, in
such a situation as ours was, to have passages running into one’s
bed-chamber from no one knows where. If there are passages,
people can come up them; they can come up when one is asleep.
Partly to see where it went to, and partly from a restless desire
to be doing something, I followed the passage. It led to a stone
stair, which I descended; the stair ended in another passage, or
rather tunnel, also hewn out of the bed-rock, and running, so far
as I could judge, exactly beneath the gallery that led to the
entrance of our rooms, and across the great central cave. I went
on down it: it was as silent as the grave, but still, drawn by
some sensation or attraction that I cannot define, I followed on,
my stockinged feet falling without noise on the smooth and rocky
floor. When I had traversed some fifty yards of space, I came to
another passage running at right angles, and here an awful thing
happened to me: the sharp draught caught my lamp and extinguished
it, leaving me in utter darkness in the bowels of that mysterious
place. I took a couple of strides forward so as to clear the
bisecting tunnel, being terribly afraid lest I should turn up it
in the dark if once I got confused as to the direction, and then
paused to think. What was I to do? I had no match; it seemed
awful to attempt that long journey back through the utter gloom,
and yet I could not stand there all night, and, if I did,
probably it would not help me much, for in the bowels of the rock
it would be as dark at midday as at midnight. I looked back over
my shoulder—not a sight or a sound. I peered forward into the
darkness: surely, far away, I saw something like the faint glow
of fire. Perhaps it was a cave where I could get a light—at any
rate, it was worth investigating. Slowly and painfully I crept
along the tunnel, keeping my hand against its wall, and feeling
at every step with my foot before I put it down, fearing lest I
should fall into some pit. Thirty paces—there was a light, a
broad light that came and went, shining through curtains! Fifty
paces—it was close at hand! Sixty—oh, great heaven!
I was at the curtains, and they did not hang close, so I could
see clearly into the little cavern beyond them. It had all the
appearance of being a tomb, and was lit up by a fire that burnt
in its centre with a whitish flame and without smoke. Indeed,
there, to the left, was a stone shelf with a little ledge to it
three inches or so high, and on the shelf lay what I took to be a
corpse; at any rate, it looked like one, with something white
thrown over it. To the right was a similar shelf, on which lay
some broidered coverings. Over the fire bent the figure of a
woman; she was sideways to me and facing the corpse, wrapped in a
dark mantle that hid her like a nun’s cloak. She seemed to be
staring at the flickering flame. Suddenly, as I was trying to
make up my mind what to do, with a convulsive movement that
somehow gave an impression of despairing energy, the woman rose
to her feet and cast the dark cloak from her.
It was _She_ herself!
She was clothed, as I had seen her when she unveiled, in the
kirtle of clinging white, cut low upon her bosom, and bound in at
the waist with the barbaric double-headed snake, and, as before,
her rippling black hair fell in heavy masses down her back. But
her face was what caught my eye, and held me as in a vice, not
this time by the force of its beauty, but by the power of
fascinated terror. The beauty was still there, indeed, but the
agony, the blind passion, and the awful vindictiveness displayed
upon those quivering features, and in the tortured look of the
upturned eyes, were such as surpass my powers of description.
For a moment she stood still, her hands raised high above her
head, and as she did so the white robe slipped from her down to
her golden girdle, baring the blinding loveliness of her form.
She stood there, her fingers clenched, and the awful look of
malevolence gathered and deepened on her face.
Suddenly I thought of what would happen if she discovered me, and
the reflection made me turn sick and faint. But, even if I had
known that I must die if I stopped, I do not believe that I could
have moved, for I was absolutely fascinated. But still I knew my
danger. Supposing she should hear me, or see me through the
curtain, supposing I even sneezed, or that her magic told her
that she was being watched—swift indeed would be my doom.
Down came the clenched hands to her sides, then up again above
her head, and, as I am a living and honourable man, the white
flame of the fire leapt up after them, almost to the roof,
throwing a fierce and ghastly glare upon _She_ herself, upon the
white figure beneath the covering, and every scroll and detail of
the rockwork.
Down came the ivory arms again, and as they did so she spoke, or