She
through the brazen gates. On they went, up the splendid streets,
on past fountains, palaces, and temples such as the eye of man
never saw. But there was no man to greet them in the
market-place, and no woman’s face appeared at the windows—only a
bodiless voice went before them, calling: “_Fallen is Imperial
Kôr!—fallen!—fallen! fallen!_” On, right through the city,
marched those gleaming phalanxes, and the rattle of their bony
tread echoed through the silent air as they pressed grimly on.
They passed through the city and clomb the wall, and marched
along the great roadway that was made upon the wall, till at
length they once more reached the drawbridge. Then, as the sun
was sinking, they returned again towards their sepulchre, and
luridly his light shone in the sockets of their empty eyes,
throwing gigantic shadows of their bones, that stretched away,
and crept and crept like huge spiders’ legs as their armies wound
across the plain. Then they came to the cave, and once more one
by one flung themselves in unending files through the hole into
the pit of bones, and I awoke, shuddering, to see _She_, who had
evidently been standing between my couch and Leo’s, glide like a
shadow from the room.
After this I slept again, soundly this time, till morning, when I
awoke much refreshed, and got up. At last the hour drew near at
which, according to Ayesha, Leo was to awake, and with it came
_She_ herself, as usual, veiled.
“Thou shalt see, oh Holly,” she said; “presently shall he awake
in his right mind, the fever having left him.”
Hardly were the words out of her mouth, when Leo turned round and
stretched out his arms, yawned, opened his eyes, and, perceiving
a female form bending over him, threw his arms round her and
kissed her, mistaking her, perhaps, for Ustane. At any rate, he
said, in Arabic, “Hullo, Ustane, why have you tied your head up
like that? Have you got the toothache?” and then, in English, “I
say, I’m awfully hungry. Why, Job, you old son of a gun, where
the deuce have we got to now—eh?”
“I am sure I wish I knew, Mr. Leo,” said Job, edging suspiciously
past Ayesha, whom he still regarded with the utmost disgust and
horror, being by no means sure that she was not an animated
corpse; “but you mustn’t talk, Mr. Leo, you’ve been very ill, and
given us a great deal of hanxiety, and, if this lady,” looking at
Ayesha, “would be so kind as to move, I’ll bring you your soup.”
This turned Leo’s attention to the “lady,” who was standing by in
perfect silence. “Hullo!” he said; “that is not Ustane—where is
Ustane?”
Then, for the first time, Ayesha spoke to him, and her first
words were a lie. “She has gone from hence upon a visit,” she
said; “and, behold, in her place am I here as thine handmaiden.”
Ayesha’s silver notes seemed to puzzle Leo’s half-awakened
intellect, as also did her corpse-like wrappings. However, he
said nothing at the time, but drank off his soup greedily enough,
and then turned over and slept again till the evening. When he
woke for the second time he saw me, and began to question me as
to what had happened, but I had to put him off as best I could
till the morrow, when he awoke almost miraculously better. Then I
told him something of his illness and of my doings, but as Ayesha
was present I could not tell him much except that she was the
Queen of the country, and well disposed towards us, and that it
was her pleasure to go veiled; for, though of course I spoke in
English, I was afraid that she might understand what we were
saying from the expression of our faces, and besides, I
remembered her warning.
On the following day Leo got up almost entirely recovered. The
flesh wound in his side was healed, and his constitution,
naturally a vigorous one, had shaken off the exhaustion
consequent on his terrible fever with a rapidity that I can only
attribute to the effects of the wonderful drug which Ayesha had
given to him, and also to the fact that his illness had been too
short to reduce him very much. With his returning health came
back full recollection of all his adventures up to the time when
he had lost consciousness in the marsh, and of course of Ustane
also, to whom I had discovered he had grown considerably
attached. Indeed, he overwhelmed me with questions about the poor
girl, which I did not dare to answer, for after Leo’s first
awakening _She_ had sent for me, and again warned me solemnly
that I was to reveal nothing of the story to him, delicately
hinting that if I did it would be the worse for me. She also, for
the second time, cautioned me not to tell Leo anything more than
I was obliged about herself, saying that she would reveal herself
to him in her own time.
Indeed, her whole manner changed. After all that I had seen I had
expected that she would take the earliest opportunity of claiming
the man she believed to be her old-world lover, but this, for
some reason of her own, which was at the time quite inscrutable
to me, she did not do. All that she did was to attend to his
wants quietly, and with a humility which was in striking contrast
with her former imperious bearing, addressing him always in a
tone of something very like respect, and keeping him with her as
much as possible. Of course his curiosity was as much excited
about this mysterious woman as my own had been, and he was
particularly anxious to see her face, which I had, without
entering into particulars, told him was as lovely as her form and
voice. This in itself was enough to raise the expectations of any
young man to a dangerous pitch, and, had it not been that he had
not as yet completely shaken off the effects of illness, and was
much troubled in his mind about Ustane, of whose affection and
brave devotion he spoke in touching terms, I have no doubt that
he would have entered into her plans, and fallen in love with her
by anticipation. As it was, however, he was simply wildly
curious, and also, like myself, considerably awed, for, though no
hint had been given to him by Ayesha of her extraordinary age, he
not unnaturally came to identify her with the woman spoken of on
the potsherd. At last, quite driven into a corner by his
continual questions, which he showered on me while he was
dressing on this third morning, I referred him to Ayesha, saying,
with perfect truth, that I did not know where Ustane was.
Accordingly, after Leo had eaten a hearty breakfast, we adjourned
into _She’s_ presence, for her mutes had orders to admit us at
all hours.
She was, as usual, seated in what, for want of a better term, we
called her boudoir, and on the curtains being drawn she rose from
her couch and, stretching out both hands, came forward to greet
us, or rather Leo; for I, as may be imagined, was now quite left
in the cold. It was a pretty sight to see her veiled form gliding
towards the sturdy young Englishman, dressed in his grey flannel
suit; for, though he is half a Greek in blood, Leo is, with the
exception of his hair, one of the most English-looking men I ever
saw. He has nothing of the subtle form or slippery manner of the
modern Greek about him, though I presume that he got his
remarkable personal beauty from his foreign mother, whose
portrait he resembles not a little. He is very tall and
big-chested, and yet not awkward, as so many big men are, and his
head is set upon him in such a fashion as to give him a proud and
vigorous air, which was well translated in his Amahagger name of
the “Lion.”
“Greeting to thee, my young stranger lord,” she said in her
softest voice. “Right glad am I to see thee upon thy feet.
Believe me, had I not saved thee at the last, never wouldst thou
have stood upon those feet again. But the danger is done, and it
shall be my care”—and she flung a world of meaning into the
words—“that it doth return no more.”
Leo bowed to her, and then, in his best Arabic, thanked her for
all her kindness and courtesy in caring for one unknown to her.
“Nay,” she answered softly, “ill could the world spare such a
man. Beauty is too rare upon it. Give me no thanks, who am made
happy by thy coming.”
“Humph! old fellow,” said Leo aside to me in English, “the lady
is very civil. We seem to have tumbled into clover. I hope that
you have made the most of your opportunities. By Jove! what a
pair of arms she has got!”
I nudged him in the ribs to make him keep quiet, for I caught
sight of a gleam from Ayesha’s veiled eyes, which were regarding
me curiously.
“I trust,” went on Ayesha, “that my servants have attended well
upon thee; if there can be comfort in this poor place, be sure it
waits on thee. Is there aught that I can do for thee more?”
“Yes, oh _She_,” answered Leo hastily, “I would fain know whither
the young lady who was looking after me has gone to.”
“Ah,” said Ayesha: “the girl—yes, I saw her. Nay, I know not; she
said that she would go, I know not whither. Perchance she will
return, perchance not. It is wearisome waiting on the sick, and
these savage women are fickle.”
Leo looked both sulky and distressed at this intelligence.
“It’s very odd,” he said to me in English; and then, addressing
_She_, “I cannot understand,” he said; “the young lady and
I—well—in short, we had a regard for each other.”
Ayesha laughed a little very musically, and then turned the
subject.
XIX.
“GIVE ME A BLACK GOAT!”
The conversation after this was of such a desultory order that I do not
quite recollect it. For some reason, perhaps from a desire to keep her
identity and character in reserve, Ayesha did not talk freely, as she
usually did. Presently, however, she informed Leo that she had arranged
a dance that night for our amusement. I was astonished to hear this, as
I fancied that the Amahagger were much too gloomy a folk to indulge in
any such frivolity; but, as will presently more clearly appear, it
turned out that an Amahagger dance has little in common with such
fantastic festivities in other countries, savage or civilised. Then, as
we were about to withdraw, she suggested that Leo might like to see
some of the wonders of the caves, and as he gladly assented thither we
departed, accompanied by Job and Billali. To describe our visit would
only be to repeat a great deal of what I have already said. The tombs
we entered were indeed different, for the whole rock was a honeycomb of
sepulchres,[1] but the contents were nearly always similar. Afterwards
we visited the pyramid of bones that had haunted my dreams on the
previous night, and from thence went down a long passage to one of the
great vaults occupied by the bodies of the poorer citizens of Imperial
Kôr. These bodies were not nearly so well preserved as were those of
the wealthier classes. Many of them had no linen covering on them, also
they were buried from five hundred to one thousand in a single large
vault, the corpses in some instances being thickly piled one upon