Part 11 (1/2)
”Very well, sir,” said Job, ”it isn't oing anywhere, sir, I should be obliged if you could lad to have a friendly face to look at when the tih, as it were And now, sir, I'll be getting the breakfast,” and he went, leaving me in a very uncomfortable state of mind I was deeply attached to old Job, as one of the best and honestest men I have ever had to do with in any class of life, and reallyhappening to hiht a lump into my throat Beneath all his ludicrous talk I could see that he hi to happen, and though in most cases these convictions turn out to be utter moonshi+ne--and this particular one especially was to be as in which its victim was placed--still it did more or less carry a chill to enuine object of belief is apt to do, however absurd the belief may be Presently the breakfast arrived, and with it Leo, who had been taking a walk outside the cave --to clear his ave hts After breakfast ent for another walk, and watched sorain from which they make their beer This they did in scriptural fashi+on--a oat's hide fastened round his waist walking up and down the plot and scattering the seed as he went It was a positive relief to see one of these dreadful people do anything so homely and pleasant as sow a field, perhaps because it seemed to link them, as it were, with the rest of hu Billali met us, and informed us that it was She's pleasure that we should wait upon her, and accordingly we entered her presence, not without trepidation, for Ayesha was certainly an exception to the rule Faht and did breed passion and wonder and horror, but it certainly did not breed contempt
We were as usual shown in by the mutes, and after these had retired Ayesha unveiled, and oncehis heart-searchings of the previous night, he did with more alacrity and fervour than in strictness courtesy required
She laid her white hand on his head, and looked him fondly in the eyes ”Dost thou wonder, my Kallikrates,” she said, ”when thou shalt call me all thine own, and e shall of a truth be for one another and to one another? I will tell thee First, must thou be even as I am, not imainst the attacks of Tiorous life as the sunbealance from water As yet I may not mate with thee, for thou and I are different, and the very brightness ofwould burn thee up, and perchance destroy thee Thou couldst not even endure to look upona time lest thine eyes should ache, and thy senses swim, and therefore” (with a little nod) ”shall I presently veil ain” (This by the way she did not do) ”No: listen, thou shalt not be tried beyond endurance, for this very evening, an hour before the sun goes down, shall we start hence, and by to-oes well, and the road is not lost to me, which I pray it may not be, shall we stand in the place of Life, and thou shalt bathe in the fire, and colorified, as no man ever was before thee, and then, Kallikrates, shalt thou call me wife, and I will call thee husband”
Leostatehed a little at his confusion, and went on
”And thou, too, oh Holly; on thee also will I confer this boon, and then of a truth shalt thou be evergreen, and this will I do--well, because thou hast pleased ether a fool, like h thou hast a school of philosophy as full of nonsense as those of the old days, yet hast thou not forgotten how to turn a pretty phrase about a lady's eyes”
”Hulloa, old fellohispered Leo, with a return of his old cheerfulness, ”have you been paying coht it of you!”
”I thank thee, oh Ayesha,” I replied, with as nity as I could command, ”but if there be such a place as thou dost describe, and if in this strange place there may be found a fiery virtue that can hold off Death when he comes to pluck us by the hand, yet would I none of it For me, oh Ayesha, the world has not proved so soft a nest that I would lie in it for ever A stony-hearted ives her children for their daily food Stones to eat and bitter water for their thirst, and stripes for tender nurture Who would endure this for many lives? Who would so load up his back with hbour's sorrows that he cannot lessen, and wisdos not consolation? Hard is it to die, because our delicate flesh doth shrink back from the wor-sheet doth curtain from our view But harder still, to reen in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and feel that other secret wor ever at the heart”
”Bethink thee, Holly,” she said; ”yet doth long life and strength and beauty beyond s that are dear to s that are dear to man? Are they not bubbles? Is not aht is ever cliht leads on to height, and there is no resting-place upon the, and there is no limit to the number Doth not wealth satiate, and becoer serve to satisfy or pleasure, or to buy an hour's peace of mind? And is there any end to wisdom that we may hope to reach it? Rather, the more we learn, shall we not thereby be able only to better conorance? Did we live ten thousand years could we hope to solve the secrets of the suns, and of the space beyond the suns, and of the Hand that hung the hunger calling our consciousness day by day to a knowledge of the eht in one of these great caverns, that, though bright it burn, and brighter yet, doth but the looain by length of days?”
”Nay, s beautiful, and doth breathe divinity into the very dust we tread With love shall life roll gloriously on froreat les' wings above the sordid shame and folly of the earth”
”It may be so,” I answered; ”but if the loved one prove a broken reed to pierce us, or if the love be loved in vain--what then? Shall a rave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write therow old with otten For I do hope for an immortality to which the little span that perchance thou canst confer will be but as a finger's length laid against the reat world; and, mark this! the immortality to which I look, and which my faith doth promise me, shall be free from the bonds that here must tie my spirit down For, while the flesh endures, sorrow and evil and the scorpion whips of sin must endure also; but when the flesh hath fallen frohtness of eternal good, and for its cohts that the highest aspiration of our manhood, or the purest incense of a ross to float therein”
”Thou lookest high,” answered Ayesha, with a little laugh, ”and speakest clearly as a trumpet and with no uncertain sound And yet methinks that but now didst thou talk of 'that Unknown' fro-sheet doth curtain us But perchance, thou seest with the eye of Faith, gazing on that brightness, that is to be, through the painted-glass of thy ie are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draith this brush of faith and this e, too, that no one of theree with another! I could tell thee--but there, what is the use? why rob a fool of his bauble? Let it pass, and I pray, oh Holly, that when thou dost feel old age creeping slowly toward thyself, and the confusion of senility ret that thou didst cast away the iiven to thee But so it hath ever been; man can never be content with that which his hand can pluck If a lah the darkness, he must needs cast it down because it is no star Happiness danceth ever apace before him, like the marsh-fires in the swamps, and he ht to hiht, because others can weigh hiht, because there have been greater ainst thee Well, thou dreamest that thou shalt pluck the star I believe it not, and I think thee a fool, my Holly, to throay the lamp”
I made no answer, for I could not--especially before Leo--tell her that since I had seen her face I knew that it would always be beforean existence which must always be haunted and tortured by her memory, and by the last bitterness of unsatisfied love But so it was, and so, alas, is it to this hour!
”And noent on She, changing her tone and the subject together, ”tell me, my Kallikrates, for as yet I know it not, how caht thou didst say that Kallikrates--him whom thou sawest--was thine ancestor Hoas it? Tell me--thou dost not speak overmuch!”
Thus adjured, Leo told her the wonderful story of the casket and of the potsherd that, written on by his ancestress, the Egyptian A us to her Ayesha listened intently, and, when he had finished, spoke to ood and evil, oh Holly--it hen ood caood--that they who sowed knew not what the crop should be, nor he who struck where the blow should fall? See, now: this Egyptian Amenartas, this royal child of the Nile who hated ainsther lover to h her he hath comeback to me! She would have done ht reap tares, and behold she hath given e square for thee to fit into thy circle of good and evil, oh Holly!
”And so,” she went on, after a pause--”and so she bade her son destroy ht, because I slew his father And thou, my Kallikrates, art the father, and in a sense thou art likewise the son; and wouldst thou avenge thy wrong, and the wrong of that far-off mother of thine, upon me, oh Kallikrates? See,” and she slid to her knees, and drew the white corsage still farther down her ivory bosom--”see, here beats , and sharp, the very knife to slay an erring woed Strike, and strike hoh life a happy , and obeyed the mandate of the past”
He looked at her, and then stretched out his hand and lifted her to her feet
”Rise, Ayesha,” he said sadly; ”well thou knowest that I cannot strike thee, no, not even for the sake of her whoht I am in thy power, and a very slave to thee How can I kill thee?--sooner should I slay in to love”And now tell reat people, is it not? with an empire like that of Rome! Surely thou wouldst return thither, and it is well, for I mean not that thou shouldst dwell in these caves of Kor Nay, when once thou art even as I ao hence--fear not but that I shall find a path--and then shall we journey to this England of thine, and live as it becometh us to live Two thousand years have I waited for the day when I should see the last of these hateful caves and this glooed folk, and now it is at hand, and my heart bounds up to meet it like a child's towards its holiday For thou shalt rule this England----”
”But we have a queen already,” broke in Leo, hastily
”It is naught, it is naught,” said Ayesha; ”she can be overthrown”
At this we both broke out into an exclamation of dismay, and explained that we should as soon think of overthrowing ourselves
”But here is a strange thing,” said Ayesha, in astonishment; ”a queen whoed since I dwelt in Kor”
Again we explained that it was the character of ed, and that the one under e lived was venerated and beloved by all right-thinking people in her vast realms Also, we told her that real power in our country rested in the hands of the people, and that ere in fact ruled by the votes of the lower and least educated classes of the community
”Ah,” she said, ”a de since seen that de no clear will of their own, in the end set up a tyrant, and worshi+p him”
”Yes,” I said, ”we have our tyrants”
”Well,” she answered resignedly, ”we can at any rate destroy these tyrants, and Kallikrates shall rule the land”
I instantly infor” was not an aed in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law and probably end upon a scaffold
”The law,” she laughed with scorn--”the law! Canst thou not understand, oh Holly, that I am above the law, and so shall my Kallikrates be also? All human laill be to us as the north wind to a mountain Does the wind bend the mountain, or the mountain the wind?”
”And now leave me, I pray thee, and thou too, ainst our journey, and so reat quantity of things with thee, for I trust that we shall be but three days gone Then shall we return hither, and I will make a plan whereby we can bid farewell for ever to these sepulchres of Kor Yea, surely thoudeeply on the awful nature of the problem that now opened out before us The terrible She had evidently land, and it made me absolutely shudder to think ould be the result of her arrival there What her poere I knew, and I could not doubt but that she would exercise theht be possible to control her for a while, but her proud, ae itself for the long centuries of its solitude She would, if necessary, and if the power of her beauty did not unaided prove equal to the occasion, blast her way to any end she set before her, and, as she could not die, and for aught I knew could not even be killed,[] as there to stop her? In the end she would, I had little doubt, assume absolute rule over the British doh I was sure that she would speedily lorious and prosperous empire that the world has ever seen, it would be at the cost of a terrible sacrifice of life
[] I regret to say that I was never able to ascertain if She was invulnerable against the ordinary accidents of life Presumably this was so, else some misadventure would have been sure to put an end to her in the course of so many centuries True, she offered to let Leo slay her, but very probably this was only an experiment to try his teave way to impulse without so sounded like a dream or some extraordinary invention of a speculative brain, and yet it was a fact--a wonderful fact--of which the whole world would soon be called on to take notice What was theI could only conclude that this marvellous creature, whose passion had kept her for so many centuries chained as it were, and comparatively harmless, was now about to be used by Providence as a e the order of the world, and possibly, by the building up of a power that could no ainst or questioned than the decrees of Fate, to change it materially for the better
XXIII
THE TEMPLE OF TRUTH
Our preparations did not take us very long We put a change of clothing apiece and so, also we took our revolvers and an express rifle each, together with a good supply of ammunition, a precaution to which, under Providence, we subsequently owed our lives over and over again The rest of our gear, together with our heavy rifles, we left behind us
A few minutes before the appointed time we once more attended in Ayesha's boudoir, and found her also ready, her dark cloak thrown over her winding-sheetlike wrappings
”Are ye prepared for the great venture?” she said
”We are,” I answered, ”though for my part, Ayesha, I have no faith in it”
”Ah, my Holly,” she said, ”thou art of a truth like those old Jews--of who, and hard to accept that which they have not known But thou shalt see; for unless my mirror beyond lies,” and she pointed to the font of crystal water, ”the path is yet open as it was of old time And now let us start upon the new life which shall end--who knohere?”
”Ah,” I echoed, ”who knohere?” and we passed down into the great central cave, and out into the light of day At the le litter with six bearers, all of the, and with them I was relieved to see our old friend Billali, for whom I had conceived a sort of affection It appeared that, for reasons not necessary to explain at length, Ayesha had thought it best that, with the exception of herself, we should proceed on foot, and this ere nothing loth to do, after our long confineht be for sarcophagi--a singularly inappropriate word, by the way, for these particular toiven to their keeping--were depressing habitations for breathing mortals like ourselves Either by accident or by the orders of She, the space in front of the cave where we had beheld that awful dance was perfectly clear of spectators Not a soul was to be seen, and consequently I do not believe that our departure was known to anybody, except perhaps the mutes aited on She, and they were, of course, in the habit of keeping what they saw to the out sharply across the great cultivated plain or lake bed, fra cliff, and had another opportunity of wondering at the extraordinary nature of the site chosen by these old people of Kor for their capital, and at theskill that ht into requisition by the founders of the city to drain so huge a sheet of water, and to keep it clear of subsequent accuoes, an unequalled instance of what man can do in the face of nature, for in my opinion such achievements as the Suez Canal or even the Mont Cenis Tunnel do not approach this ancient undertaking in randeur of conception
When we had been walking for about half an hour, enjoying ourselves exceedingly in the delightful cool which about this tireat plain of Kor, and which in soree atoned for the want of any land or sea breeze--for all as kept off by the rocky et a clear viehat Billali had inforreat city And even from that distance we could see hoonderful those ruins were, a fact which with every step we took becae if compared to Babylon or Thebes, or other cities of remote antiquity; perhaps its outer wall contained soround, or a little e e reached theh, probably not ht where they had not through the sinking of the ground, or some such cause, fallen into ruin The reason of this, no doubt, was that the people of Kor, being protected from any outside attack by far more tremendous ramparts than any that the hand of ainst civil discord But on the other hand they were as broad as they were high, built entirely of dressed stone, hewn, no doubt, froreat moat about sixty feet in width, some reaches of which were still filled ater About ten minutes before the sun finally sank we reached thisacross what evidently were the piled-up frage in order to do so, and then with some little difficulty over the slope of the wall to its suive soht that thensun, were miles upon miles of ruins--colus, varied with patches of green bush Of course, the roofs of these buildings had long since fallen into decay and vanished, but owing to the extre, and to the hardness and durability of the rock ereat colu[]
[] In connection with the extraordinary state of preservation of these ruins after so vast a lapse of time--at least six thousand years--it must be remembered that Kor was not burnt or destroyed by an ene to the action of a terrible plague Consequently the houses were left unharmed; also the climate of the plain is remarkably fine and dry, and there is very little rain or wind; as a result of which these relics have only to contend against the unaided action of time, that works but slowly upon such ht before us stretched ahat had evidently been the hfare of the city, for it was very wide, wider than the Tha, as we afterwards discovered, paved, or rather built, throughout of blocks of dressed stone, such as were erown even noith grass and shrubs that could get no depth of soil to live in What had been the parks and gardens, on the contrary, were now dense jungle Indeed, it was easy even from a distance to trace the course of the various roads by the burnt-up appearance of the scanty grass that grew upon thehfare were vast blocks of ruins, each block, generally speaking, being separated frohbour by a space of what had once, I suppose, been garden-ground, but was now dense and tangled bush They were all built of the same coloured stone, and most of them had pillars, which was as ht as we passed swiftly up thefoot had pressed for thousands of years[]
[] Billali told er believe that the site of the city is haunted, and could not be persuaded to enter it upon any consideration Indeed, I could see that he hi so, and was only consoled by the reflection that he was under the direct protection of She It struck Leo and myself as very curious that a people which has no objection to living ast the dead, ho their bodies for purposes of fuel, should be terrified at approaching the habitations that these very departed had occupied when alive After all, however, it is only a savage inconsistency--L H H