She
terrible sight again. But we went to the pile of rippling hair
that had fallen from her in the agony of that hideous change
which was worse than a thousand natural deaths, and each of us
drew from it a shining lock, and these locks we still have, the
sole memento that is left to us of Ayesha as we knew her in the
fulness of her grace and glory. Leo pressed the perfumed hair to
his lips.
“She called to me not to forget her,” he said hoarsely; “and
swore that we should meet again. By Heaven! I never will forget
her. Here I swear that if we live to get out of this, I will not
for all my days have anything to say to another living woman, and
that wherever I go I will wait for her as faithfully as she
waited for me.”
“Yes,” I thought to myself, “if she comes back as beautiful as we knew
her. But supposing she came back _like that!_”[1]
[1] What a terrifying reflection it is, by the way, that nearly all
our deep love for women who are not our kindred depends—at any rate,
in the first instance—upon their personal appearance. If we lost them,
and found them again dreadful to look on, though otherwise they were
the very same, should we still love them? —L. H. H.
Well, and then we went. We went, and left those two in the
presence of the very well and spring of Life, but gathered to the
cold company of Death. How lonely they looked as they lay there,
and how ill assorted! That little heap had been for two thousand
years the wisest, loveliest, proudest creature—I can hardly call
her woman—in the whole universe. She had been wicked, too, in her
way; but, alas! such is the frailty of the human heart, her
wickedness had not detracted from her charm. Indeed, I am by no
means certain that it did not add to it. It was after all of a
grand order, there was nothing mean or small about Ayesha.
And poor Job too! His presentiment had come true, and there was
an end of him. Well, he has a strange burial-place—no Norfolk
hind ever had a stranger, or ever will; and it is something to
lie in the same sepulchre as the poor remains of the imperial
_She_.
We looked our last upon them and the indescribable rosy glow in
which they lay, and then with hearts far too heavy for words we
left them, and crept thence broken-down men—so broken down that
we even renounced the chance of practically immortal life,
because all that made life valuable had gone from us, and we knew
even then that to prolong our days indefinitely would only be to
prolong our sufferings. For we felt—yes, both of us—that having
once looked Ayesha in the eyes, we could not forget her for ever
and ever while memory and identity remained. We both loved her
now and for all time, she was stamped and carven on our hearts,
and no other woman or interest could ever raze that splendid die.
And I—there lies the sting—I had and have no right to think thus
of her. As she told me, I was naught to her, and never shall be
through the unfathomed depths of Time, unless, indeed, conditions
alter, and a day comes at last when two men may love one woman,
and all three be happy in the fact. It is the only hope of my
broken-heartedness, and a rather faint one. Beyond it I have
nothing. I have paid down this heavy price, all that I am worth
here and hereafter, and that is my sole reward. With Leo it is
different, and often and often I bitterly envy him his happy lot,
for if _She_ was right, and her wisdom and knowledge did not fail
her at the last, which, arguing from the precedent of her own
case, I think most unlikely, he has some future to look forward
to. But I have none, and yet—mark the folly and the weakness of
the human heart, and let him who is wise learn wisdom from it—yet
I would not have it otherwise. I mean that I am content to give
what I have given and must always give, and take in payment those
crumbs that fall from my mistress’s table, the memory of a few
kind words, the hope one day in the far undreamed future of a
sweet smile or two of recognition, a little gentle friendship,
and a little show of thanks for my devotion to her—and Leo.
If that does not constitute true love, I do not know what does,
and all I have to say is that it is a very bad state of affairs
for a man on the wrong side of middle age to fall into.
XXVII.
WE LEAP
We passed through the caves without trouble, but when we came to
the slope of the inverted cone two difficulties stared us in the
face. The first of these was the laborious nature of the ascent,
and the next the extreme difficulty of finding our way. Indeed,
had it not been for the mental notes that I had fortunately taken
of the shape of various rocks, I am sure that we never should
have managed it at all, but have wandered about in the dreadful
womb of the volcano—for I suppose it must once have been
something of the sort—until we died of exhaustion and despair. As
it was we went wrong several times, and once nearly fell into a
huge crack or crevasse. It was terrible work creeping about in
the dense gloom and awful stillness from boulder to boulder, and
examining it by the feeble light of the lamps to see if I could
recognise its shape. We rarely spoke, our hearts were too heavy
for speech, we simply stumbled about, falling sometimes and
cutting ourselves, in a rather dogged sort of way. The fact was
that our spirits were utterly crushed, and we did not greatly
care what happened to us. Only we felt bound to try and save our
lives whilst we could, and indeed a natural instinct prompted us
to it. So for some three or four hours, I should think—I cannot
tell exactly how long, for we had no watch left that would go—we
blundered on. During the last two hours we were completely lost,
and I began to fear that we had got into the funnel of some
subsidiary cone, when at last I suddenly recognised a very large
rock which we had passed in descending but a little way from the
top. It is a marvel that I should have recognised it, and,
indeed, we had already passed it going at right angles to the
proper path, when something about it struck me, and I turned back
and examined it in an idle sort of way, and, as it happened, this
proved our salvation.
After this we gained the rocky natural stair without much further
trouble, and in due course found ourselves back in the little
chamber where the benighted Noot had lived and died.
But now a fresh terror stared us in the face. It will be
remembered that owing to Job’s fear and awkwardness, the plank
upon which we had crossed from the huge spur to the rocking-stone
had been whirled off into the tremendous gulf below.
How were we to cross without the plank?
There was only one answer—we must try and _jump_ it, or else stop
there till we starved. The distance in itself was not so very
great, between eleven and twelve feet I should think, and I have
seen Leo jump over twenty when he was a young fellow at college;
but then, think of the conditions. Two weary, worn-out men, one
of them on the wrong side of forty, a rocking-stone to take off
from, a trembling point of rock some few feet across to land
upon, and a bottomless gulf to be cleared in a raging gale! It
was bad enough, God knows, but when I pointed out these things to
Leo, he put the whole matter in a nutshell, by replying that,
merciless as the choice was, we must choose between the certainty
of a lingering death in the chamber and the risk of a swift one
in the air. Of course, there was no arguing against this, but one
thing was clear, we could not attempt that leap in the dark; the
only thing to do was to wait for the ray of light which pierced
through the gulf at sunset. How near to or how far from sunset we
might be, neither of us had the faintest notion; all we did know
was, that when at last the light came it would not endure more
than a couple of minutes at the outside, so that we must be
prepared to meet it. Accordingly, we made up our minds to creep
on to the top of the rocking-stone and lie there in readiness. We
were the more easily reconciled to this course by the fact that
our lamps were once more nearly exhausted—indeed, one had gone
out bodily, and the other was jumping up and down as the flame of
a lamp does when the oil is done. So, by the aid of its dying
light, we hastened to crawl out of the little chamber and clamber
up the side of the great stone.
As we did so the light went out.
The difference in our position was a sufficiently remarkable one.
Below, in the little chamber, we had only heard the roaring of
the gale overhead—here, lying on our faces on the swinging stone,
we were exposed to its full force and fury, as the great draught
drew first from this direction and then from that, howling
against the mighty precipice and through the rocky cliffs like
ten thousand despairing souls. We lay there hour after hour in
terror and misery of mind so deep that I will not attempt to
describe it, and listened to the wild storm-voices of that
Tartarus, as, set to the deep undertone of the spur opposite
against which the wind hummed like some awful harp, they called
to each other from precipice to precipice. No nightmare dreamed
by man, no wild invention of the romancer, can ever equal the
living horror of that place, and the weird crying of those voices
of the night, as we clung like shipwrecked mariners to a raft,
and tossed on the black, unfathomed wilderness of air.
Fortunately the temperature was not a low one; indeed, the wind
was warm, or we should have perished. So we clung and listened,
and while we were stretched out upon the rock a thing happened
which was so curious and suggestive in itself, though doubtless a
mere coincidence, that, if anything, it added to, rather than
deducted from, the burden on our nerves.
It will be remembered that when Ayesha was standing on the spur,
before we crossed to the stone, the wind tore her cloak from her,
and whirled it away into the darkness of the gulf, we could not
see whither. Well—I hardly like to tell the story; it is so
strange. As we lay there upon the rocking-stone, this very cloak
came floating out of the black space, like a memory from the
dead, and fell on Leo—so that it covered him nearly from head to
foot. We could not at first make out what it was, but soon
discovered by its feel, and then poor Leo, for the first time,
gave way, and I heard him sobbing there upon the stone. No doubt
the cloak had been caught upon some pinnacle of the cliff, and
was thence blown hither by a chance gust; but still, it was a
most curious and touching incident.
Shortly after this, suddenly, without the slightest previous
warning, the great red knife of light came stabbing the darkness
through and through—struck the swaying stone on which we were,
and rested its sharp point upon the spur opposite.
“Now for it,” said Leo, “now or never.”