She
“Ah!” she said, “perchance thou didst not know. Learn, my Holly,
learn: there lies—there lies my lost Kallikrates. Kallikrates,
who has come back to me at last, as I knew he would, as I knew he
would;” and she began to sob and to laugh, and generally to
conduct herself like any other lady who is a little upset,
murmuring “Kallikrates, Kallikrates!”
“Nonsense,” thought I to myself, but I did not like to say it;
and, indeed, at that moment I was thinking of Leo’s life, having
forgotten everything else in that terrible anxiety. What I feared
now was that he should die while she was “carrying on.”
“Unless thou art able to help him, Ayesha,” I put in, by way of a
reminder, “thy Kallikrates will soon be far beyond thy calling.
Surely he dieth even now.”
“True,” she said, with a start. “Oh, why did I not come before! I
am unnerved—my hand trembles, even mine—and yet it is very easy.
Here, thou Holly, take this phial,” and she produced a tiny jar
of pottery from the folds of her garment, “and pour the liquid in
it down his throat. It will cure him if he be not dead. Swift,
now! Swift! The man dies!”
I glanced towards him; it was true enough, Leo was in his
death-struggle. I saw his poor face turning ashen, and heard the
breath begin to rattle in his throat. The phial was stoppered
with a little piece of wood. I drew it with my teeth, and a drop
of the fluid within flew out upon my tongue. It had a sweet
flavour, and for a second made my head swim, and a mist gather
before my eyes, but happily the effect passed away as swiftly as
it had arisen.
When I reached Leo’s side he was plainly expiring—his golden head
was slowly turning from side to side, and his mouth was slightly
open. I called to Ayesha to hold his head, and this she managed
to do, though the woman was quivering from head to foot, like an
aspen-leaf or a startled horse. Then, forcing the jaw a little
more open, I poured the contents of the phial into his mouth.
Instantly a little vapour arose from it, as happens when one
disturbs nitric acid, and this sight did not increase my hopes,
already faint enough, of the efficacy of the treatment.
One thing, however, was certain, the death throes ceased—at first
I thought because he had got beyond them, and crossed the awful
river. His face turned to a livid pallor, and his heart-beats,
which had been feeble enough before, seemed to die away
altogether—only the eyelid still twitched a little. In my doubt I
looked up at Ayesha, whose head-wrapping had slipped back in her
excitement when she went reeling across the room. She was still
holding Leo’s head, and, with a face as pale as his own, watching
his countenance with such an expression of agonised anxiety as I
had never seen before. Clearly she did not know if he would live
or die. Five minutes slowly passed and I saw that she was
abandoning hope; her lovely oval face seemed to fall in and grow
visibly thinner beneath the pressure of a mental agony whose
pencil drew black lines about the hollows of her eyes. The coral
faded even from her lips, till they were as white as Leo’s face,
and quivered pitifully. It was shocking to see her: even in my
own grief I felt for hers.
“Is it too late?” I gasped.
She hid her face in her hands, and made no answer, and I too
turned away. But as I did so I heard a deep-drawn breath, and
looking down perceived a line of colour creeping up Leo’s face,
then another and another, and then, wonder of wonders, the man we
had thought dead turned over on his side.
“Thou seest,” I said in a whisper.
“I see,” she answered hoarsely. “He is saved. I thought we were
too late—another moment—one little moment more—and he had been
gone!” and she burst into an awful flood of tears, sobbing as
though her heart would break, and yet looking lovelier than ever
as she did it. At last she ceased.
“Forgive me, my Holly—forgive me for my weakness,” she said.
“Thou seest after all I am a very woman. Think—now think of it!
This morning didst thou speak of the place of torment appointed
by this new religion of thine. Hell or Hades thou didst call it—a
place where the vital essence lives and retains an individual
memory, and where all the errors and faults of judgment, and
unsatisfied passions and the unsubstantial terrors of the mind
wherewith it hath at any time had to do, come to mock and haunt
and gibe and wring the heart for ever and for ever with the
vision of its own hopelessness. Thus, even thus, have I lived for
full two thousand years—for some six and sixty generations, as ye
reckon time—in a Hell, as thou callest it—tormented by the memory
of a crime, tortured day and night with an unfulfilled
desire—without companionship, without comfort, without death, and
led on only down my dreary road by the marsh lights of Hope,
which, though they flickered here and there, and now glowed
strong, and now were not, yet, as my skill told me, would one day
lead unto my deliverer.
“And then—think of it still, oh Holly, for never shalt thou hear
such another tale, or see such another scene, nay, not even if I
give thee ten thousand years of life—and thou shalt have it in
payment if thou wilt—think: at last my deliverer came—he for whom
I had watched and waited through the generations—at the appointed
time he came to seek me, as I knew that he must come, for my
wisdom could not err, though I knew not when or how. Yet see how
ignorant I was! See how small my knowledge, and how faint my
strength! For hours he lay there sick unto death, and I felt it
not—I who had waited for him for two thousand years—I knew it
not. And then at last I see him, and behold, my chance is gone
but by a hair’s breadth even before I have it, for he is in the
very jaws of death, whence no power of mine can draw him. And if
he die, surely must the Hell be lived through once more—once more
must I face the weary centuries, and wait, and wait till the time
in its fulness shall bring my Beloved back to me. And then thou
gavest him the medicine, and that five minutes dragged long
before I knew if he would live or die, and I tell thee that all
the sixty generations that are gone were not so long as that five
minutes. But they passed at length, and still he showed no sign,
and I knew that if the drug works not then, so far as I have had
knowledge, it works not at all. Then thought I that he was once
more dead, and all the tortures of all the years gathered
themselves into a single venomed spear, and pierced me through
and through, because again I had lost Kallikrates! And then, when
all was done, behold! he sighed, behold! he lived, and I knew
that he would live, for none die on whom the drug takes hold.
Think of it now, my Holly—think of the wonder of it! He will
sleep for twelve hours and then the fever will have left him!”
She stopped, and laid her hand upon his golden head, and then
bent down and kissed his brow with a chastened abandonment of
tenderness that would have been beautiful to behold had not the
sight cut me to the heart—for I was jealous!
XVIII.
“GO, WOMAN!”
Then followed a silence of a minute or so, during which _She_
appeared, if one might judge from the almost angelic rapture of
her face—for she looked angelic sometimes—to be plunged into a
happy ecstasy. Suddenly, however, a new thought struck her, and
her expression became the very reverse of angelic.
“Almost had I forgotten,” she said, “that woman, Ustane. What is
she to Kallikrates—his servant, or——” and she paused, and her
voice trembled.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I understand that she is wed to him
according to the custom of the Amahagger,” I answered; “but I
know not.”
Her face grew dark as a thunder-cloud. Old as she was, Ayesha had
not outlived jealousy.
“Then there is an end,” she said; “she must die, even now!”
“For what crime?” I asked, horrified. “She is guilty of naught
that thou art not guilty of thyself, oh Ayesha. She loves the
man, and he has been pleased to accept her love: where, then, is
her sin?”
“Truly, oh Holly, thou art foolish,” she answered, almost
petulantly. “Where is her sin? Her sin is that she stands between
me and my desire. Well, I know that I can take him from her—for
dwells there a man upon this earth, oh Holly, who could resist me
if I put out my strength? Men are faithful for so long only as
temptations pass them by. If the temptation be but strong enough,
then will the man yield, for every man, like every rope, hath his
breaking strain, and passion is to men what gold and power are to
women—the weight upon their weakness. Believe me, ill will it go
with mortal woman in that heaven of which thou speakest, if only
the spirits be more fair, for their lords will never turn to look
upon them, and their Heaven will become their Hell. For man can
be bought with woman’s beauty, if it be but beautiful enough; and
woman’s beauty can be ever bought with gold, if only there be
gold enough. So was it in my day, and so it will be to the end of
time. The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are
for sale to him who bids the highest in the currency of our
desires.”
These remarks, which were as cynical as might have been expected
from a woman of Ayesha’s age and experience, jarred upon me, and
I answered, testily, that in our heaven there was no marriage or
giving in marriage.
“Else would it not be heaven, dost thou mean?” she put in. “Fie
on thee, Holly, to think so ill of us poor women! Is it, then,
marriage that marks the line between thy heaven and thy hell? but
enough of this. This is no time for disputing and the challenge
of our wits. Why dost thou always dispute? Art thou also a
philosopher of these latter days? As for this woman, she must
die; for, though I can take her lover from her, yet, while she
lived, might he think tenderly of her, and that I cannot away
with. No other woman shall dwell in my Lord’s thoughts; my empire
shall be all my own. She hath had her day, let her be content;
for better is an hour with love than a century of loneliness—now
the night shall swallow her.”
“Nay, nay,” I cried, “it would be a wicked crime; and from a
crime naught comes but what is evil. For thine own sake, do not
this deed.”
“Is it, then, a crime, oh foolish man, to put away that which
stands between us and our ends? Then is our life one long crime,
my Holly, since day by day we destroy that we may live, since in
this world none save the strongest can endure. Those who are weak
must perish; the earth is to the strong, and the fruits thereof.
For every tree that grows a score shall wither, that the strong
one may take their share. We run to place and power over the dead
bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat