Part 11 (2/2)
”The principal na-that-should-never-have-been-born,'” I answered
”Read the writing, Allan,” she said
I unfolded the sheet and read Arabic words which s-bark-and-children-wail”
”The last two are near enough,” she said, ”but the first is wrong”
”Nay, Ayesha, since in this ence at which she clapped her hands as a ht do ”The reat doctor, one who sees and knows things that others do not, but I do not understand why this token carved in his likeness should have power, as you say it has”
”Because with it goes his spirit, Allan Have you never heard of the Egyptians, a very wise people who, as I remember, declared that man has a Ka or Double, a second self, that can either dwell in his statue or be sent afar?”
I answered that I had heard this
”Well the Ka of this Zikali goes with that hideous ih ers and why also I seeht Tell me nohat does Zikali want of me whose power he knows very well?”
”An oracle, the answer to a riddle, Ayesha”
”Then set it out another time So you decide to see the dead, and this old dwarf, who is a horeater than he Good And what are you, or both of you, prepared to pay for these boons? Know, Allan, that I am a merchant who sells my favours dear Tell me then, will you pay?”
”I think that it depends upon the price,” I answered cautiously ”Set out the price, Ayesha”
”Be not afraid, O cunning dealer,” she mocked ”I do not ask your soul or even that love of yours which you guard so jealously, since these things I could take without the asking Nay, I ask only what a brave and honest ive without shame: your help in war, and perhaps,” she added with a softer tone, ”your friendshi+p I think, Allan, that I like you well, perhaps because you reo”
I bowed at the co proud and pleased at the prospect of a friendshi+p with this wonderful and splendid creature, although I are that it had ers Then I sat still and waited She also waited, brooding
”Listen,” she said after a while, ”I will tell you a story and when you have heard it you shall answer, even if you do not believe it, but not before Does it please you to listen to so of the tale of my life which I am moved to tell you, that you ain I bowed, thinking tothat would pleasecuriosity about this wo off the dais, began to walk up and down the chaliding of an eagle through the air or the racious As she walked she spoke in a low and thrilling voice
”Listen,” she said again, ”and even if my story seems marvellous to you, interrupt, and above all, ht be ill for you I a conquered the secrets of Nature,” here I felt an intense desire to ask what secrets, but reue, ”to es Moreover in the past, perhaps in payment for my sins, I have lived other lives of which some memory remains with me
”By my last birth I as of the East There I dwelt in the wilderness and ruled a people, and at night I gathered wisdoth I wearied of it all and ht ht to do with men, yet men went mad because of my beauty and slew each other out of jealousy Moreover other peoples ht be a wife to their kings So I left theold and jewels, together with a certain holythe nations and their worshi+ps At Jerusalem I tarried and learned of Jehovah who is, or was, its God
”At Paphos in the Isle of Chitiht that I was Aphrodite returned to earth and sought to worshi+p me For this reason and because I made a ht to do withthat her yoke should lie e than on that of any woman who had breathed beneath the sun
”It was a wondrous scene,” she added reflectively, ”that of the cursing, since for every word I gave back two Moreover I told the hoary villain of a high-priest toafter she was dead in the world, I would live on, for the spirit of prophecy was on me in that hour Yet the curse fell in its season, since in her day, doubt it or not, Aphrodite had strength, as indeed under other naht I know, beyond it Do they worshi+p her now in any land, Allan?”
”No, only her statues because of their beauty, though Love is alorshi+pped”
”Yes, who can testify to that better than you yourself, Allan, if he who is called Zikali tellsyou in the dreams he sends? As for the statues, I saw some of them as they left the ht have found a better model, once I was that model If this marble still endures, it h perchance Aphrodite has shattered it in her jealous rage You shall tell me of these statues afterwards; mine had a mark on the left shoulder like to a mole, but the stone was imperfect, notit better not to enter on a discussion as to Ayesha's shoulder, I reypt also, and there, to be rid of hs and importunities, also to acquire more wisdom of which she was the mistress, I entered the service of the Goddess Isis, Queen of Heaven, vowing to reh-priestess and in her most sacred shrines upon the Nile, I communed with the Goddess and shared her power, since frohter, she withheld none of her secrets So it cah Pharaohs held the sceptre, it was I who ruled Egypt and brought it and Sidon to their fall, it matters not hohy, as it was fated that I s would come to seek counsel froarb of Isis and breathing out her power Yet, reeary, as men will surely do of the heavens that they preach, should they chance to find theht be, but only asked, ”Why?”
”Because in their pictured heaven all things lie to their hands and le, and wo woiven, has no value, Allan; to be enjoyed, it ht”
I asked pardon and she went on, ”Then it was that the shadow of the curse of Aphrodite fell upon me, yes, and of the curse of Isis also, so that these twinin the wilderness waiting the fulfilh I have all wisdoether with the gift of life and beauty, the future is as dark to ht without its h it be to my shame I tell it you that all may be clear At a temple of Isis on the Nile where I ruled, there was a certain priest, a Greek by birth, vowed like myself to the service of the Goddess and therefore to wed none but her, the Goddess herself-that is, in the spirit He was nae and of beauty, such an one as those Greeks carved in the statues of their God Apollo Never, I think, was a h in soul he was not great, as often happens to h always happens to women, save myself and perhaps one or two others that history tells of, doubtlesstheir fabled charms
”The Pharaoh of that day, the last of the native blood, hihter, the Princess of Egypt, Ah somewhat swarthy In her youth this Amenartas became enamoured of Kallikrates and he of her, when he was a captain of the Grecian Mercenaries at Pharaoh's Court Indeed, she brought blood upon his hands because of her, wherefore he fled to Isis for forgiveness and for peace Thither in after ti of the thing and knowing it for sacrilege, I suer and of the doorew affrighted He flung hiroans and supplications, and kissing s with the royal Amenartas were but a veil and that it was I whom he worshi+pped His unhalloords filled one and do penance for his cri that I would pray the Goddess on behalf of hiht in the darkening shrine Then sleep fell on me and in my sleep I dreamed a dream, or saw a vision For suddenly there stood before irdle and a veil of gossamer
”'O Ayesha,' she said in a honeyed voice, 'priestess of Isis of the Egyptians, sworn to the barren worshi+p of Isis and fed on the ashes of her unprofitable wisdom, know that I am Aphrodite of the Greeks whom many ti world, as Isis is Queen of the world that is dead Now because thou didst despise th and lay a curse upon thee It is that thou shalt love and desire thistill the world's end to kiss his lips in payh thou art as far above him as the moon thou servest is above the Nile Think not that thou shalt escapethe spirit, here upon the earth the flesh is stronger still and of all flesh I a one
”Allan, I awoke froreat trouble fell upon e of love and for this ht to ed for hiyptian who favoured hirew mad There in the shrine of Isis the divine I cast ive ht, for whose sake I would renounce all else, even if I must pour my wisdom into a beauteous, eround and wept until, outworn, once more sleep fell upon me
”Now in the darkness of the holy place once lory stood the Goddess Isis croith the crescent of the youngin her hand the jewelled sistrum that is her symbol, froazed at er
”'O Ayesha, Daughter of Wisdom,' she said in a solemn voice, 'whom I, Isis, had come to look upon rather as a child than a servant, since in none other of reatness to be found, and whom in a day to be I had purposed to raise to the very steps ofme, hast worshi+pped false Aphrodite of the Greeks who is mine enemy Yea, in the eternal war between the spirit and the flesh, thou hast chosen the part of flesh Therefore I hate thee and add my doom to that which Aphrodite laid upon thee, which, hadst thou prayed to me and not to her, I would have lifted from thy heart
”'Hearken! The Grecian whom thou hast chosen, by Aphrodite's will, thou shalt love as the Pathian said More, thy love shall bring his blood upon thy hands, nor rave For I will show thee the Source of Life and thou shalt drink of it to make thyself more fair even than thou art and thus outpace thy rival, and when thy lover is dead, in a desolate place thou shalt wait in grief and solitude till he is born again and find thee there
”'Yet shall this be but the beginning of thy sorrows, since through all tith thou canst draw up this ht on which thine own soul stands by the ropes of love and loss and suffering Moreover through it all thou shalt despise thyself, which isthe rare feast of spirit spread out before thee, hast chosen to fill thyself frohs of flesh'
”Then, Allan, in , 'Hear hty mistress of many Forms who dost appear in all that lives! An evil fate has fallen upon ainst the driving gale? Can the falling stone turn upwards to the sky, or when Nature draws it, can the tide cease to flow? A Goddess whoth causes the whole world to be, has laid her curse upon me and because I have bent before the storm, as bend I must, or break, another Goddess whom I serve, thou thyself, Mother Isis, hast added to the curse Where then is Justice, O Lady of the Moon?'
”'Not here, Woman,' she answered 'Yet far away Justice lives and shall be won at last and h-stoh ainst her weights and find the balance even Therefore cease froh decrees of destiny which thou canst not understand and be content to suffer, rerows from the root of pain Moreover, know this for thy coather on thee and with it thy beauty and thy power; also that at the last thou shalt look upon ain, in token whereof I leave to thee my symbol, the sistrum that I bear, and with it this coo and avenge enerations pass till he return again Such and no other is thy destiny'
”Allan, the vision faded and when I awoke the lights of dawn played upon the ie of the Goddess in the sanctuary They played,that in my dream her hand had held, the sistruic syoes her pohich henceforth was mine
”I took it and followed after the priest Kallikrates, to whom thenceforward I was bound by passion's ties that are stronger than all the Goddesses in this wide universe”
Here I, Allan, could containher wrath, wished that I had been silent
But she was not angry, perhaps because this tale of her intervieith Goddesses, doubtless fabled, had made her humble, for she answered quietly, ”By Aphrodite, or by Isis, or both of them I did not know All I kneas that I must seek him, then and everh aeons yet unborn So I followed, as I was taught and coiving me the means, and so at last I came to this ancient land whereof the ruin in which you sit was once known as Kor”
CHAPTER XIV
ALLAN MISSES OPPORTUNITY
All the while that she was talking thus the Lady or the Queen or the Witch-wo up and down the place fro me with her scented robes as she passed to and fro, and as she walked she waved her ares of her tale Now at the end of it, or what I took to be the end, she stepped on to the dais and sank upon the couch as if exhausted, though I think her spirit eary rather than her body
Here she sat awhile, brooding, her chin resting on her hand, then suddenly looked up and fixing her glance upon h her thin veil-said, ”What think you of this story, Allan? Do you believe it and have you ever heard its like?”