She
Then out of the press and throng there sprang a dark-haired
youth, and put his arms about this long-forgotten maid, and
kissed her pale face in which the blood shot up like lights of
the red dawn across the silent sky. And next there was turmoil
and uproar, and a flashing of swords, and they tore the youth
from her arms, and stabbed him, but with a cry she snatched the
dagger from his belt, and drove it into her snowy breast, home to
the heart, and down she fell, and then, with cries and wailing,
and every sound of lamentation, the pageant rolled away from the
arena of my vision, and once more the past shut to its book.
Let him who reads forgive the intrusion of a dream into a history
of fact. But it came so home to me—I saw it all so clear in a
moment, as it were; and, besides, who shall say what proportion
of fact, past, present, or to come, may lie in the imagination?
What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible
truth, perhaps it is the soul’s thought.
In an instant the whole thing had passed through my brain, and
_She_ was addressing me.
“Behold the lot of man,” said the veiled Ayesha, as she drew the
winding sheets back over the dead lovers, speaking in a solemn,
thrilling voice, which accorded well with the dream that I had
dreamed: “to the tomb, and to the forgetfulness that hides the
tomb, must we all come at last! Ay, even I who live so long. Even
for me, oh Holly, thousands upon thousands of years hence;
thousands of years after thou hast gone through the gate and been
lost in the mists, a day will dawn whereon I shall die, and be
even as thou art and these are. And then what will it avail that
I have lived a little longer, holding off death by the knowledge
that I have wrung from Nature, since at last I too must die? What
is a span of ten thousand years, or ten times ten thousand years,
in the history of time? It is as naught—it is as the mists that
roll up in the sunlight; it fleeth away like an hour of sleep or
a breath of the Eternal Spirit. Behold the lot of man! Certainly
it shall overtake us, and we shall sleep. Certainly, too, we
shall awake and live again, and again shall sleep, and so on and
on, through periods, spaces, and times, from æon unto æon, till
the world is dead, and the worlds beyond the world are dead, and
naught liveth but the Spirit that is Life. But for us twain and
for these dead ones shall the end of ends be Life, or shall it be
Death? As yet Death is but Life’s Night, but out of the night is
the Morrow born again, and doth again beget the Night. Only when
Day and Night, and Life and Death, are ended and swallowed up in
that from which they came, what shall be our fate, oh Holly? Who
can see so far? Not even I!”
And then, with a sudden change of tone and manner—
“Hast thou seen enough, my stranger guest, or shall I show thee
more of the wonders of these tombs that are my palace halls? If
thou wilt, I can lead thee to where Tisno, the mightiest and most
valorous King of Kôr, in whose day these caves were ended, lies
in a pomp that seems to mock at nothingness, and bid the empty
shadows of the past do homage to his sculptured vanity!”
“I have seen enough, oh Queen,” I answered. “My heart is
overwhelmed by the power of the present Death. Mortality is weak,
and easily broken down by a sense of the companionship that waits
upon its end. Take me hence, oh Ayesha!”
XVII.
THE BALANCE TURNS
In a few minutes, following the lamps of the mutes, which, held
out from the body as a bearer holds water in a vessel, had the
appearance of floating down the darkness by themselves, we came
to a stair which led us to _She’s_ ante-room, the same that
Billali had crept up upon on all fours on the previous day. Here
I would have bid the Queen adieu, but she would not.
“Nay,” she said, “enter with me, oh Holly, for of a truth thy
conversation pleaseth me. Think, oh Holly: for two thousand years
have I had none to converse with save slaves and my own thoughts,
and though of all this thinking hath much wisdom come, and many
secrets been made plain, yet am I weary of my thoughts, and have
come to loathe mine own society, for surely the food that memory
gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the
teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it. Now, though thy
thoughts are green and tender, as becometh one so young, yet are
they those of a thinking brain, and in truth thou dost bring back
to my mind certain of those old philosophers with whom in days
bygone I have disputed at Athens, and at Becca in Arabia, for
thou hast the same crabbed air and dusty look, as though thou
hadst passed thy days in reading ill-writ Greek, and been stained
dark with the grime of manuscripts. So draw the curtain, and sit
here by my side, and we will eat fruit, and talk of pleasant
things. See, I will again unveil to thee. Thou hast brought it on
thyself, oh Holly; fairly have I warned thee—and thou shalt call
me beautiful as even those old philosophers were wont to do. Fie
upon them, forgetting their philosophy!”
And without more ado she stood up and shook the white wrappings
from her, and came forth shining and splendid like some
glittering snake when she has cast her slough; ay, and fixed her
wonderful eyes upon me—more deadly than any Basilisk’s—and
pierced me through and through with their beauty, and sent her
light laugh ringing through the air like chimes of silver bells.
A new mood was on her, and the very colour of her mind seemed to
change beneath it. It was no longer torture-torn and hateful, as
I had seen it when she was cursing her dead rival by the leaping
flames, no longer icily terrible as in the judgment-hall, no
longer rich, and sombre, and splendid, like a Tyrian cloth, as in
the dwellings of the dead. No, her mood now was that of Aphrodité
triumphing. Life—radiant, ecstatic, wonderful—seemed to flow from
her and around her. Softly she laughed and sighed, and swift her
glances flew. She shook her heavy tresses, and their perfume
filled the place; she struck her little sandalled foot upon the
floor, and hummed a snatch of some old Greek epithalamium. All
the majesty was gone, or did but lurk and faintly flicker through
her laughing eyes, like lightning seen through sunlight. She had
cast off the terror of the leaping flame, the cold power of
judgment that was even now being done, and the wise sadness of
the tombs—cast them off and put them behind her, like the white
shroud she wore, and now stood out the incarnation of lovely
tempting womanhood, made more perfect—and in a way more
spiritual—than ever woman was before.
“So, my Holly, sit there where thou canst see me. It is by thine
own wish, remember—again I say, blame me not if thou dost wear
away thy little span with such a sick pain at the heart that thou
wouldst fain have died before ever thy curious eyes were set upon
me. There, sit so, and tell me, for in truth I am inclined for
praises—tell me, am I not beautiful? Nay, speak not so hastily;
consider well the point; take me feature by feature, forgetting
not my form, and my hands and feet, and my hair, and the
whiteness of my skin, and then tell me truly, hast thou ever
known a woman who in aught, ay, in one little portion of her
beauty, in the curve of an eyelash even, or the modelling of a
shell-like ear, is justified to hold a light before my
loveliness? Now, my waist! Perchance thou thinkest it too large,
but of a truth it is not so; it is this golden snake that is too
large, and doth not bind it as it should. It is a wide snake, and
knoweth that it is ill to tie in the waist. But see, give me thy
hands—so—now press them round me, and there, with but a little
force, thy fingers touch, oh Holly.”
I could bear it no longer. I am but a man, and she was more than
a woman. Heaven knows what she was—I do not! But then and there I
fell upon my knees before her, and told her in a sad mixture of
languages—for such moments confuse the thoughts—that I worshipped
her as never woman was worshipped, and that I would give my
immortal soul to marry her, which at that time I certainly would
have done, and so, indeed, would any other man, or all the race
of men rolled into one. For a moment she looked surprised, and
then she began to laugh, and clap her hands in glee.
“Oh, so soon, oh Holly!” she said. “I wondered how many minutes
it would need to bring thee to thy knees. I have not seen a man
kneel before me for so many days, and, believe me, to a woman’s
heart the sight is sweet, ay, wisdom and length of days take not
from that dear pleasure which is our sex’s only right.
“What wouldst thou?—what wouldst thou? Thou dost not know what
thou doest. Have I not told thee that I am not for thee? I love
but one, and thou art not the man. Ah Holly, for all thy
wisdom—and in a way thou art wise—thou art but a fool running
after folly. Thou wouldst look into mine eyes—thou wouldst kiss
me! Well, if it pleaseth thee, _look_,” and she bent herself
towards me, and fixed her dark and thrilling orbs upon my own;
“ay, and _kiss_ too, if thou wilt, for, thanks be given to the
scheme of things, kisses leave no marks, except upon the heart.
But if thou dost kiss, I tell thee of a surety wilt thou eat out
thy breast with love of me, and die!” and she bent yet further
towards me till her soft hair brushed my brow, and her fragrant
breath played upon my face, and made me faint and weak. Then of a
sudden, even as I stretched out my hands to clasp, she
straightened herself, and a quick change passed over her.
Reaching out her hand, she held it over my head, and it seemed to
me that something flowed from it that chilled me back to common
sense, and a knowledge of propriety and the domestic virtues.
“Enough of this wanton folly,” she said with a touch of
sternness. “Listen, Holly. Thou art a good and honest man, and I
fain would spare thee; but, oh! it is so hard for woman to be
merciful. I have said I am not for thee, therefore let thy
thoughts pass by me like an idle wind, and the dust of thy
imagination sink again into the depths—well, of despair, if thou
wilt. Thou dost not know me, Holly. Hadst thou seen me but ten
hours past when my passion seized me, thou hadst shrunk from me
in fear and trembling. I am of many moods, and, like the water in
that vessel, I reflect many things; but they pass, my Holly; they
pass, and are forgotten. Only the water is the water still, and I
still am I, and that which maketh the water maketh it, and that
which maketh me maketh me, nor can my quality be altered.
Therefore, pay no heed to what I seem, seeing that thou canst not
know what I am. If thou troublest me again I will veil myself,
and thou shalt behold my face no more.”
I rose, and sank on the cushioned couch beside her, yet quivering