Part 14 (2/2)
”Decide,” said Leo, ”I cannot bear much more Like that woman, whoever she may be, whatever happens, I will not blame you, Horace”
”Good,” I answered, ”I have decided,” and, stepping forward, I said: ”We have taken counsel, Hes, and it is our will, ould learn the truth and be at rest, that thou shouldst unveil before us, here and now”
”I hear and obey,” the Priestess answered, in a voice like to that of a dying woman, ”only, I beseech you both, be pitiful to me, spare me your mockeries; add not the coals of your hate and scorn to the fires of a soul in hell, for whate'er I am, I became it for thy sake, Kallikrates Yet, yet I also ah I wieldremains to me to learn-what is the worth of the love of rave?”
Then, rising slowly, the Hesea walked, or rather tottered to the unroofed open space in front of the rock chaulf beneath
”Come hither, Papave, and loose these veils,” she cried in a shrill, thin voice
Papave advanced, and with a look of awe upon her handsoan the task She was not a tall woman, yet as she bent over her I noted that she seemed to tower above hermore within These fell also, and now before us stood the h it see who had met us in the Place of Bones So it would seeh priestess Hes were the sas sank frorew the frame within? She was very short now, unnaturally short for a full-grooes uncoiled thes from a stick; trinkled hands appeared, if hands they could be called Then the feet-once I had seen such on the ypt, and even now by some fantastic play of the mind, I remembered that on her coffin this princess was naone now, except a shi+ft and a last inner veil about the head Hes waved back the priestess Papave, who fell half fainting to the ground and lay there covering her eyes with her hand Then uttering soripped this veil in her thin talons, tore it away, and with a gesture of uttermost despair, turned and faced us
Oh! she was-nay, I will not describe her I knew her at once, for thus had I seen her last before the Fire of Life, and, strangely enough, through the h that cloak of hulorious and superhuman Ayesha: the shape of the face, the air of defiant pride that for an instant bore her up-I know not what
Yes, there she stood, and the fierce light of the heartless fires beat upon her, revealing every shame
There was a dreadful silence I saw Leo's lips turn white and his knees begin to give; but by soht like a dead man held by a wire Also I saw Atene-and this is to her credit-turn her head away She had desired to see her rival huht shocked her; some sense of their common womanhood for the moment touched her pity Only Simbri, who, I think, knehat to expect, and Oros rehastly silence the latter spoke, and ever afterwards I loved him for his words
”What of the vile vessel, rotted in the grave of tih the ruined lah its covering carrion to the inextinguishable soul”
My heart applauded these noble sentiments I was of one , and I wished that it would go, so that I athered on Ayesha's mummy face? At first there had been a little hope, but the hope died, and anguish, anguish, anguish took its place
Soether, no ould coan to contemplate the scenery Hoonderful were that sheet of flaht Hoesoulf beloith the dead Rassen, but oh! I wished that I shared his bed and had finished with these agonies
Thank Heaven, Atene was speaking She had stepped to the side of the naked-headed Thing, and stood by it in all the pride of her rich beauty and perfect womanhood
”Leo Vincey, or Kallikrates,” said Atene, ”take which name thou wilt; thou thinkest ill of me perhaps, but know that at least I scorn to mock a rival in her mortal shame She told us a wild tale but now, a tale true or false, but more false than true, I think, of how I robbed a Goddess of a votary, and of how that Goddess-Ayesha's self perchance-was avenged uponto the man I loved Well, let Goddesses-if such indeed there be-take their way and work their will upon the helpless, and I, a mortal, will take mine until the clutch of doom closes round my throat and chokes out life and memory, and I too am a Goddess-or a clod
”Meanwhile, thou man, I shame not to say it before all these witnesses, I love thee, and it seems that this-this woman or Goddess-loves thee also, and she has told us that no thou must choose between us once and for ever She has told us too that if I sinned against Isis, whose minister be it remembered she declares herself, herself she sinned yet more For she would have taken thee both from a heavenly uerdon of immortality which is hers to-day Therefore if I am evil, she is worse, nor does the flame that burns within the casket whereof Oros spoke shi+ne so very pure and bright
”Choose thou then Leo Vincey, and let there be an end I vaunt not myself; thou knohat I have been and seest what I aive thee love and happiness and, mayhap, children to follow after thee, and with theive thee thou canst guess Tales of the past, pictures on the flame, wise maxims and honeyed words, and after thou art dead once more, promises perhaps, of joy to come when that terrible Goddess whom she serves so closely shall be appeased I have spoken Yet I will add a word: ”O thou for whom, if the Hesea's tale be true, I did once lay down ers of an unsailed sea; O thou whoone I would have sheltered withwitch; O thou whoo at my own life's risk I drew from death in yonder river, choose, choose!”
To all this speech, so moderate yet so cruel, so well-reasoned and yet so false, because of its glosses and omissions, the huddled Ayesha seemed to listen with a fierce intentness Yet she n even; she who had said her say and scorned to plead her part
I looked at Leo's ashen face He leaned towards Atene, drawn perhaps by the passion shi+ning in her beauteous eyes, then of a sudden straightened hihed The colour flarew al aloud rather than speaking, ”I have to do not with unknowable pasts or with s of h two thousand years; Atene could marry a man she hated for power's sake, and then could poison him, as perhaps she would poison me when I wearied her I know not what oaths I swore to Amenartas, if such a woman lived I remember the oaths I swore to Ayesha If I shrink from her nohy then my life is a lie and e and never can survive the grave
”Nay, re what Ayesha was I take her as she is, in faith and hope of what she shall be At least love is immortal and if it must, why let it feed on me to where stood the dreadful, shrivelled form, Leo knelt down before it and kissed her on the brow
Yes, he kissed the tre horror of that wrinkled head, and I think it was one of the greatest, bravest acts ever done by man
”Thou hast chosen,” said Atene in a cold voice, ”and I tell thee, Leo Vincey, that the manner of thy choice makes me mourn my loss the more Take now thy-thy bride and let n, till presently she sank upon her bony knees and began to pray aloud These were the words of her prayer, as I heard theh the exact Power to which it was addressed is not very easy to determine, as I never discovered who or what it was that she worshi+pped in her heart-”O Thou hty Will, thou sharp sword in the hand of Doom, thou inevitable Law that art nayptians, but art the Goddess of all clies; thou that leadest the man to the est our dust to its kindred dust, that givest life to death, and into the dark of death breathest the light of life again; thou who causest the abundant earth to bear, whose sh is the ripple of the sea, whose noontide rest is drowsy Suht, hear thou the supplication of thy chosen child and th with deathless days, and beauty above every daughter of this Star But I sinned against thee sore, and for my sin I paid in endless centuries of solitude, in the vileness that makes me loathsome to my lover's eyes, and for its diadem of perfect power sets upon my brow this crown of naked ht loom, thou didst vow to me that I who cannot die should once more pluck the lost flower of my immortal loveliness from this foul slime of shame
”Therefore, merciful Mother that bore me, to thee I make my prayer Oh, let his true love atone ive me death, the last and most blessed of thy boons!”
CHAPTER XVI
THE CHANGE
She ceased, and there was a long, long silence Leo and I looked at each other in disainst hope that this beautiful and piteous prayer, addressed apparently to the great, dumb spirit of Nature, would be answered That ation of the life of Ayesha was a h it is true that so as she had done
The transference of her spirit from the Caves of Kor to this teh the dwellers in these parts of Central Asia would not hold it so That she should re-appear with the same hideous body was a miracle But was it the same body? Was it not the body of the last Hesea? One very ancient wo of the soul or identity within ive to the borrowed form some reseures on that mirror of the flame were a miracle Nay, why so? A hundred clairvoyants in a hundred cities can produce or see their like in water and in crystal, the difference being only one of size They were but reflections of scenes familiar to the mind of Ayesha, or perhaps not so much as that Perhaps they were only phantasms called up in our s were true ht be capable of explanation What right then had we to expect a hts as these rose in ourhappened
Yes, at last one thing did happen The light froradually away as the flame itself sank doards into the abysses of the pit But about this in itself there was nothing wonderful, for as we had seen with our own eyes from afar this fire varied much, and indeed it was customary for it to die down at the approach of dahich no very near
Still that onward-creeping darkness added to the terrors of the scene By the last rays of the lurid lightAyesha rise and advance soe of the pit off which the body of Rassen had been hurled; saw her standing on it, also, looking like solohich still rose froone forward to her, for he believed that she was about to hurl herself to doon But the priest Oros, and the priestess Papave, obeying, I suppose, so to hi his arh the darkness we could hear Ayesha chanting a dirge-like hyue which was unknown to us
A great flake of fire floated through the gloo to and fro like soht, torn by the gale fro curtain as I have described But-but-”Horace,” whispered Leo through his chattering teeth, ”that flaainst the wind!”
”Perhaps the wind has changed,” I answered, though I kneell that it had not; that it blew stronger than ever fro fla dark between thes appeared to fold theure that stood thereon-illuht went out of the vanished
A while passed, it may have been one minute or ten, when suddenly the priestess Papave, in obedience to some summons which we could not hear, crept by arments touched me as she went Another space of silence and of deep darkness, during which I heard Papave return, breathing in short, sobbing gasps like one who is very frightened
Ah! I thought, Ayesha has cast herself into the pit The tragedy is finished!
Then it was that the wondrous music came Of course itbeyond us, but I do not think so, since its quality was quite different to any that I heard in the temple before or afterwards: to any indeed that ever I heard upon the earth
I cannot describe it, but it ful to listen to, yetFrom the black, smoke-veiled pit where the fire had burned it welled and echoed-now a single heavenly voice, noeet chorus, and now an air-shaking thunder as of a hundred organs played to time
That diverse and majestic harmony seemed to include, to express every huht since then that in its all-e or paean of her re-birth was symbolical of the infinite variety of Ayesha's spirit Yet like that spirit it had its , mystery and loveliness Also there could be no doubt as to the general significance of the chant by whohty soul; it orshi+p, worshi+p, worshi+p of a queen divine!
Like slow clouds of incense fading to the bannered roof of sorew faint; in the far distance of the hollow pit they wailed thele ray of upward-springing light
”Behold the dawn,” said the quiet voice of Oros
That ray pierced the heavens above our heads, a very sword of flame It sank doards, swiftly Suddenly it fell, not upon us, for as yet the rocky walls of our chamber warded it away, but on to the little proe