She
know that it is forfeit to thine anger, yet am I glad that I did
risk it, and pay it away in the risking, ay, because he embraced
me once, and told me that he loved me yet.”
Here Ayesha half rose from her couch, and then sank down again.
“I have no magic,” went on Ustane, her rich voice ringing strong
and full, “and I am not a Queen, nor do I live for ever, but a
woman’s heart is heavy to sink through waters, however deep, oh
Queen! and a woman’s eyes are quick to see—even through thy veil,
oh Queen!
“Listen: I know it, thou dost love this man thyself, and
therefore wouldst thou destroy me who stand across thy path. Ay,
I die—I die, and go into the darkness, nor know I whither I go.
But this I know. There is a light shining in my breast, and by
that light, as by a lamp, I see the truth, and the future that I
shall not share unroll itself before me like a scroll. When first
I knew my lord,” and she pointed to Leo, “I knew also that death
would be the bridal gift he gave me—it rushed upon me of a
sudden, but I turned not back, being ready to pay the price, and,
behold, death is here! And now, even as I knew that, so do I,
standing on the steps of doom, know that thou shalt not reap the
profit of thy crime. Mine he is, and, though thy beauty shine
like a sun among the stars, mine shall he remain for thee. Never
here in this life shall he look thee in the eyes and call thee
spouse. Thou too art doomed, I see”—and her voice rang like the
cry of an inspired prophetess; “ah, I see——”
Then came an answering cry of mingled rage and terror. I turned
my head. Ayesha had risen, and was standing with her outstretched
hand pointing at Ustane, who had suddenly stopped speaking. I
gazed at the poor woman, and as I gazed there came upon her face
that same woeful, fixed expression of terror that I had seen once
before when she had broken out into her wild chant. Her eyes grew
large, her nostrils dilated, and her lips blanched.
Ayesha said nothing, she made no sound, she only drew herself up,
stretched out her arm, and, her tall veiled frame quivering like
an aspen leaf, appeared to look fixedly at her victim. Even as
she did so Ustane put her hands to her head, uttered one piercing
scream, turned round twice, and then fell backwards with a
thud—prone upon the floor. Both Leo and myself rushed to her—she
was stone dead—blasted into death by some mysterious electric
agency or overwhelming will-force whereof the dread _She_ had
command.
For a moment Leo did not quite realise what had happened. But,
when he did, his face was awful to see. With a savage oath he
rose from beside the corpse, and, turning, literally sprang at
Ayesha. But she was watching, and, seeing him come, stretched out
her hand again, and he went staggering back towards me, and would
have fallen, had I not caught him. Afterwards he told me that he
felt as though he had suddenly received a violent blow in the
chest, and, what is more, utterly cowed, as if all the manhood
had been taken out of him.
Then Ayesha spoke. “Forgive me, my guest,” she said softly,
addressing him, “if I have shocked thee with my justice.”
“Forgive thee, thou fiend,” roared poor Leo, wringing his hands
in his rage and grief. “Forgive thee, thou murderess! By Heaven,
I will kill thee if I can!”
“Nay, nay,” she answered in the same soft voice, “thou dost not
understand—the time has come for thee to learn. _Thou_ art my
love, my Kallikrates, my Beautiful, my Strong! For two thousand
years, Kallikrates, have I waited for _thee_, and now at length
thou hast come back to me; and as for this woman,” pointing to
the corpse, “she stood between me and thee, and therefore have I
laid her in the dust, Kallikrates.”
“It is an accursed lie!” said Leo. “My name is not Kallikrates! I
am Leo Vincey; my ancestor was Kallikrates—at least, I believe he
was.”
“Ah, thou sayest it—thine ancestor was Kallikrates, and thou,
even thou, art Kallikrates reborn, come back—and mine own dear
lord!”
“I am not Kallikrates, and, as for being thy lord, or having
aught to do with thee, I had sooner be the lord of a fiend from
hell, for she would be better than thou.”
“Sayest thou so—sayest thou so, Kallikrates? Nay, but thou hast
not seen me for so long a time that no memory remains. Yet am I
very fair, Kallikrates!”
“I hate thee, murderess, and I have no wish to see thee. What is
it to me how fair thou art? I hate thee, I say.”
“Yet within a very little space shalt thou creep to my knee, and
swear that thou dost love me,” answered Ayesha, with a sweet,
mocking laugh. “Come, there is no time like the present time,
here before this dead girl who loved thee, let us put it to the
proof.
“Look now on me, Kallikrates!” and with a sudden motion she shook
her gauzy covering from her, and stood forth in her low kirtle
and her snaky zone, in her glorious radiant beauty and her
imperial grace, rising from her wrappings, as it were, like Venus
from the wave, or Galatea from her marble, or a beatified spirit
from the tomb. She stood forth, and fixed her deep and glowing
eyes upon Leo’s eyes, and I saw his clenched fists unclasp, and
his set and quivering features relax beneath her gaze. I saw his
wonder and astonishment grow into admiration, and then into
fascination, and the more he struggled the more I saw the power
of her dread beauty fasten on him and take possession of his
senses, drugging them, and drawing the heart out of him. Did I
not know the process? Had not I, who was twice his age, gone
through it myself? Was I not going through it afresh even then,
although her sweet and passionate gaze was not for me? Yes, alas,
I was! Alas, that I should have to confess that at that very
moment I was rent by mad and furious jealousy. I could have flown
at him, shame upon me! The woman had confounded and almost
destroyed my moral sense, as she was bound to confound all who
looked upon her superhuman loveliness. But—I do not quite know
how—I got the better of myself, and once more turned to see the
climax of the tragedy.
“Oh, great Heaven!” gasped Leo, “art thou a woman?”
“A woman in truth—in very truth—and thine own spouse,
Kallikrates!” she answered, stretching out her rounded ivory arms
towards him, and smiling, ah, so sweetly!
He looked and looked, and slowly I perceived that he was drawing
nearer to her. Suddenly his eye fell upon the corpse of poor
Ustane, and he shuddered and stopped.
“How can I?” he said hoarsely. “Thou art a murderess; she loved
me.”
Observe, he was already forgetting that he had loved her.
“It is naught,” she murmured, and her voice sounded sweet as the
night-wind passing through the trees. “It is naught at all. If I
have sinned, let my beauty answer for my sin. If I have sinned,
it is for love of thee: let my sin, therefore, be put away and
forgotten;” and once more she stretched out her arms and
whispered “_Come_,” and then in another few seconds it was all
over.
I saw him struggle—I saw him even turn to fly; but her eyes drew
him more strongly than iron bonds, and the magic of her beauty
and concentrated will and passion entered into him and
overpowered him—ay, even there, in the presence of the body of
the woman who had loved him well enough to die for him. It sounds
horrible and wicked enough, but he should not be too greatly
blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out. The temptress who
drew him into evil was more than human, and her beauty was
greater than the loveliness of the daughters of men.
I looked up again and now her perfect form lay in his arms, and
her lips were pressed against his own; and thus, with the corpse
of his dead love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to
her red-handed murderess—plight it for ever and a day. For those
who sell themselves into a like dominion, paying down the price
of their own honour, and throwing their soul into the balance to
sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no
deliverance here or hereafter. As they have sown, so shall they
reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have
withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares,
garnered in satiety.
Suddenly, with a snake-like motion, she seemed to slip from his
embrace, and then again broke out into her low laugh of
triumphant mockery.
“Did I not tell thee that within a little space thou wouldst
creep to my knee, oh Kallikrates? And surely the space has not
been a great one!”
Leo groaned in shame and misery; for though he was overcome and
stricken down, he was not so lost as to be unaware of the depth
of the degradation to which he had sunk. On the contrary, his
better nature rose up in arms against his fallen self, as I saw
clearly enough later on.
Ayesha laughed again, and then quickly veiled herself, and made a
sign to the girl mute, who had been watching the whole scene with
curious startled eyes. The girl left, and presently returned,
followed by two male mutes, to whom the Queen made another sign.
Thereon they all three seized the body of poor Ustane by the
arms, and dragged it heavily down the cavern and away through the
curtains at the end. Leo watched it for a little while, and then
covered his eyes with his hand, and it too, to my excited fancy,
seemed to watch us as it went.
“There passes the dead past,” said Ayesha, solemnly, as the curtains
shook and fell back into their places, when the ghastly procession had
vanished behind them. And then, with one of those extraordinary
transitions of which I have already spoken, she again threw off her
veil, and broke out, after the ancient and poetic fashion of the
dwellers in Arabia,[1] into a pæan of triumph or epithalamium, which,
wild and beautiful as it was, is exceedingly difficult to render into
English, and ought by rights to be sung to the music of a cantata,
rather than written and read. It was divided into two parts—one
descriptive or definitive, and the other personal; and, as nearly as I
can remember, ran as follows:—
[1] Among the ancient Arabians the power of poetic declamation, either
in verse or prose, was held in the highest honour and esteem, and he
who excelled in it was known as “Khâteb,” or Orator. Every year a
general assembly was held at which the rival poets repeated their
compositions, when those poems which were judged to be the best were,
so soon as the knowledge and the art of writing became general,
inscribed on silk in letters of gold, and publicly exhibited, being
known as “Al Modhahabât,” or golden verses. In the poem given above by
Mr. Holly, Ayesha evidently followed the traditional poetic manner of
her people, which was to embody their thoughts in a series of somewhat
disconnected sentences, each remarkable for its beauty and the grace
of its expression. —Editor.
Love is like a flower in the desert.