She
look on than anything that can be conceived. But at first we saw
no flashes, and heard no more of the thunderous sound. Presently,
however, as we stood in amaze, gazing at the marvellous sight,
and wondering whence the rosy radiance flowed, a dread and
beautiful thing happened. Across the far end of the cavern, with
a grinding and crashing noise—a noise so dreadful and
awe-inspiring that we all trembled, and Job actually sank to his
knees—there flamed out an awful cloud or pillar of fire, like a
rainbow many-coloured, and like the lightning bright. For a
space, perhaps forty seconds, it flamed and roared thus, turning
slowly round and round, and then by degrees the terrible noise
ceased, and with the fire it passed away—I know not where—leaving
behind it the same rosy glow that we had first seen.
“Draw near, draw near!” cried Ayesha, with a voice of thrilling
exultation. “Behold the very Fountain and Heart of Life as it
beats in the bosom of the great world. Behold the substance from
which all things draw their energy, the bright Spirit of the
Globe, without which it cannot live, but must grow cold and dead
as the dead moon. Draw near, and wash you in the living flames,
and take their virtue into your poor frames in all its virgin
strength—not as it now feebly glows within your bosoms, filtered
thereto through all the fine strainers of a thousand intermediate
lives, but as it is here in the very fount and seat of earthly
Being.”
We followed her through the rosy glow up to the head of the cave,
till at last we stood before the spot where the great pulse beat
and the great flame passed. And as we went we became sensible of
a wild and splendid exhilaration, of a glorious sense of such a
fierce intensity of Life that the most buoyant moments of our
strength seemed flat and tame and feeble beside it. It was the
mere effluvium of the flame, the subtle ether that it cast off as
it passed, working on us, and making us feel strong as giants and
swift as eagles.
We reached the head of the cave, and gazed at each other in the
glorious glow, and laughed aloud—even Job laughed, and he had not
laughed for a week—in the lightness of our hearts and the divine
intoxication of our brains. I know that I felt as though all the
varied genius of which the human intellect is capable had
descended upon me. I could have spoken in blank verse of
Shakesperian beauty, all sorts of great ideas flashed through my
mind; it was as though the bonds of my flesh had been loosened
and left the spirit free to soar to the empyrean of its native
power. The sensations that poured in upon me are indescribable. I
seemed to live more keenly, to reach to a higher joy, and sip the
goblet of a subtler thought than ever it had been my lot to do
before. I was another and most glorified self, and all the
avenues of the Possible were for a space laid open to the
footsteps of the Real.
Then, suddenly, whilst I rejoiced in this splendid vigour of a
new-found self, from far, far away there came a dreadful
muttering noise, that grew and grew to a crash and a roar, which
combined in itself all that is terrible and yet splendid in the
possibilities of sound. Nearer it came, and nearer yet, till it
was close upon us, rolling down like all the thunder-wheels of
heaven behind the horses of the lightning. On it came, and with
it came the glorious blinding cloud of many-coloured light, and
stood before us for a space, turning, as it seemed to us, slowly
round and round, and then, accompanied by its attendant pomp of
sound, passed away I know not whither.
So astonishing was the wondrous sight that one and all of us,
save _She_, who stood up and stretched her hands towards the
fire, sank down before it, and hid our faces in the sand.
When it was gone, Ayesha spoke.
“Now, Kallikrates,” she said, “the mighty moment is at hand. When
the great flame comes again thou must stand in it. First throw
aside thy garments, for it will burn them, though thee it will
not hurt. Thou must stand in the flame while thy senses will
endure, and when it embraces thee suck the fire down into thy
very heart, and let it leap and play around thy every part, so
that thou lose no moiety of its virtue. Hearest thou me,
Kallikrates?”
“I hear thee, Ayesha,” answered Leo, “but, of a truth—I am no
coward—but I doubt me of that raging flame. How know I that it
will not utterly destroy me, so that I lose myself and lose thee
also? Nevertheless will I do it,” he added.
Ayesha thought for a minute, and then said—
“It is not wonderful that thou shouldst doubt. Tell me,
Kallikrates: if thou seest me stand in the flame and come forth
unharmed, wilt thou enter also?”
“Yes,” he answered, “I will enter even if it slay me. I have said
that I will enter now.”
“And that will I also,” I cried.
“What, my Holly!” she laughed aloud; “methought that thou wouldst
naught of length of days. Why, how is this?”
“Nay, I know not,” I answered, “but there is that in my heart
that calleth me to taste of the flame and live.”
“It is well,” she said. “Thou art not altogether lost in folly.
See now, I will for the second time bathe me in this living bath.
Fain would I add to my beauty and my length of days if that be
possible. If it be not possible, at the least it cannot harm me.
“Also,” she continued, after a momentary pause, “is there another
and a deeper cause why I would once again dip me in the flame.
When first I tasted of its virtue full was my heart of passion
and of hatred of that Egyptian Amenartas, and therefore, despite
my strivings to be rid thereof, have passion and hatred been
stamped upon my soul from that sad hour to this. But now it is
otherwise. Now is my mood a happy mood, and filled am I with the
purest part of thought, and so would I ever be. Therefore,
Kallikrates, will I once more wash and make me pure and clean,
and yet more fit for thee. Therefore also, when thou dost in turn
stand in the fire, empty all thy heart of evil, and let soft
contentment hold the balance of thy mind. Shake loose thy
spirit’s wings, and take thy stand upon the utter verge of holy
contemplation; ay, dream upon thy mother’s kiss, and turn thee
towards the vision of the highest good that hath ever swept on
silver wings across the silence of thy dreams. For from the germ
of what thou art in that dread moment shall grow the fruit of
what thou shalt be for all unreckoned time.
“Now prepare thee, prepare! even as though thy last hour were at
hand, and thou wast to cross to the Land of Shadows, and not
through the Gates of Glory into the realms of Life made
beautiful. Prepare, I say!”
XXVI.
WHAT WE SAW
Then came a few moments’ pause, during which Ayesha seemed to be
gathering up her strength for the fiery trial, while we clung to
each other, and waited in utter silence.
At last, from far far away, came the first murmur of sound, that
grew and grew till it began to crash and bellow in the distance.
As she heard it, Ayesha swiftly threw off her gauzy wrapping,
loosened the golden snake from her kirtle, and then, shaking her
lovely hair about her like a garment, beneath its cover slipped
the kirtle off and replaced the snaky belt around her and outside
the masses of her falling hair. There she stood before us as Eve
might have stood before Adam, clad in nothing but her abundant
locks, held round her by the golden band; and no words of mine
can tell how sweet she looked—and yet how divine. Nearer and
nearer came the thunder-wheels of fire, and as they came she
pushed one ivory arm through the dark masses of her hair and
flung it round Leo’s neck.
“Oh, my love, my love!” she murmured, “wilt thou ever know how I
have loved thee?” and she kissed him on the forehead, and then
went and stood in the pathway of the flame of Life.
There was, I remember, to my mind something very touching about
her words and that embrace upon the forehead. It was like a
mother’s kiss, and seemed to convey a benediction with it.
On came the crashing, rolling noise, and the sound of it was as
the sound of a forest being swept flat by a mighty wind, and then
tossed up like so much grass, and thundered down a mountain-side.
Nearer and nearer it came; now flashes of light, forerunners of
the revolving pillar of flame, were passing like arrows through
the rosy air; and now the edge of the pillar itself appeared.
Ayesha turned towards it, and stretched out her arms to greet it.
On it came very slowly, and lapped her round with flame. I saw
the fire run up her form. I saw her lift it with both hands as
though it were water, and pour it over her head. I even saw her
open her mouth and draw it down into her lungs, and a dread and
wonderful sight it was.
Then she paused, and stretched out her arms, and stood there
quite still, with a heavenly smile upon her face, as though she
were the very Spirit of the Flame.
The mysterious fire played up and down her dark and rolling
locks, twining and twisting itself through and around them like
threads of golden lace; it gleamed upon her ivory breast and
shoulder, from which the hair had slipped aside; it slid along
her pillared throat and delicate features, and seemed to find a
home in the glorious eyes that shone and shone, more brightly
even than the spiritual essence.
Oh, how beautiful she looked there in the flame! No angel out of
heaven could have worn a greater loveliness. Even now my heart
faints before the recollection of it, as she stood and smiled at
our awed faces, and I would give half my remaining time upon this
earth to see her once like that again.
But suddenly—more suddenly than I can describe—a kind of change
came over her face, a change which I could not define or explain,
but none the less a change. The smile vanished, and in its place
there came a dry, hard look; the rounded face seemed to grow
pinched, as though some great anxiety were leaving its impress
upon it. The glorious eyes, too, lost their light, and, as I
thought, the form its perfect shape and erectness.
I rubbed my eyes, thinking that I was the victim of some
hallucination, or that the refraction from the intense light
produced an optical delusion; and, as I did so, the flaming
pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes
to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing
where it had been.
As soon as it was gone, she stepped forward to Leo’s side—it
seemed to me that there was no spring in her step—and stretched
out her hand to lay it on his shoulder. I gazed at her arm. Where
was its wonderful roundness and beauty? It was getting thin and
angular. And her face—by Heaven!—_her face was growing old before
my eyes!_ I suppose that Leo saw it also; certainly he recoiled a