“Curse her where she is. Let my curses reach her where she is and
disturb her rest.
“Curse her through the starry spaces. Let her shadow be accursed.
“Let my power find her even there.
“Let her hear me even there. Let her hide herself in the
blackness.
“Let her go down into the pit of despair, because I shall one day
find her.”
Again the flame fell, and again she covered her eyes with her
hands.
“It is of no use—no use,” she wailed; “who can reach those who
sleep? Not even I can reach them.”
Then once more she began her unholy rites.
“Curse her when she shall be born again. Let her be born
accursed.
“Let her be utterly accursed from the hour of her birth until
sleep finds her.
“Yea, then, let her be accursed; for then shall I overtake her
with my vengeance, and utterly destroy her.”
And so on. The flame rose and fell, reflecting itself in her
agonised eyes; the hissing sound of her terrible maledictions,
and no words of mine can convey how terrible they were, ran round
the walls and died away in little echoes, and the fierce light
and deep gloom alternated themselves on the white and dreadful
form stretched upon that bier of stone.
But at length she seemed to wear herself out and cease. She sat
herself down upon the rocky floor, shook the dense cloud of her
beautiful hair over her face and breast, and began to sob
terribly in the torture of a heartrending despair.
“Two thousand years,” she moaned—“two thousand years have I
wanted and endured; but though century doth still creep on to
century, and time give place to time, the sting of memory hath
not lessened, the light of hope doth not shine more bright. Oh!
to have lived two thousand years, with all my passion eating out
my heart, and with my sin ever before me. Oh, that for me life
cannot bring forgetfulness! Oh, for the weary years that have
been and are yet to come, and evermore to come, endless and
without end!
“My love! my love! my love! Why did that stranger bring thee back
to me after this sort? For five hundred years I have not suffered
thus. Oh, if I sinned against thee, have I not wiped away the
sin? When wilt thou come back to me who have all, and yet without
thee have naught? What is there that I can do? What? What? What?
And perchance she—perchance that Egyptian doth abide with thee
where thou art, and mock my memory. Oh, why could I not die with
thee, I who slew thee? Alas, that I cannot die! Alas! Alas!” and
she flung herself prone upon the ground, and sobbed and wept till
I thought her heart must burst.
Suddenly she ceased, raised herself to her feet, rearranged her
robe, and, tossing back her long locks impatiently, swept across
to where the figure lay upon the stone.
“Oh Kallikrates,” she cried, and I trembled at the name, “I must
look upon thy face again, though it be agony. It is a generation
since I looked upon thee whom I slew—slew with mine own hand,”
and with trembling fingers she seized the corner of the
sheet-like wrapping that covered the form upon the stone bier,
and then paused. When she spoke again, it was in a kind of awed
whisper, as though her idea were terrible even to herself.
“Shall I raise thee,” she said, apparently addressing the corpse,
“so that thou standest there before me, as of old? I _can_ do
it,” and she held out her hands over the sheeted dead, while her
whole frame became rigid and terrible to see, and her eyes grew
fixed and dull. I shrank in horror behind the curtain, my hair
stood up upon my head, and, whether it was my imagination or a
fact I am unable to say, but I thought that the quiet form
beneath the covering began to quiver, and the winding sheet to
lift as though it lay on the breast of one who slept. Suddenly
she withdrew her hands, and the motion of the corpse seemed to me
to cease.
“To what purpose?” she said gloomily. “Of what good is it to
recall the semblance of life when I cannot recall the spirit?
Even if thou stoodest before me thou wouldst not know me, and
couldst but do what I bid thee. The life in thee would be _my_
life, and not _thy_ life, Kallikrates.”
For a moment she stood there brooding, and then cast herself down
on her knees beside the form, and began to press her lips against
the sheet, and weep. There was something so horrible about the
sight of this awe-inspiring woman letting loose her passion on
the dead—so much more horrible even than anything that had gone
before—that I could no longer bear to look at it, and, turning,
began to creep, shaking as I was in every limb, slowly along the
pitch-dark passage, feeling in my trembling heart that I had seen
a vision of a Soul in Hell.
On I stumbled, I scarcely know how. Twice I fell, once I turned
up the bisecting passage, but fortunately found out my mistake in
time. For twenty minutes or more I crept along, till at last it
occurred to me that I must have passed the little stair by which
I had descended. So, utterly exhausted, and nearly frightened to
death, I sank down at length there on the stone flooring, and
sank into oblivion.
When I came to I noticed a faint ray of light in the passage just
behind me. I crept to it, and found it was the little stair down
which the weak dawn was stealing. Passing up it, I gained my
chamber in safety, and, flinging myself on the couch, was soon
lost in slumber or rather stupor.
XV.
AYESHA GIVES JUDGMENT
The next thing that I remember was opening my eyes and perceiving
the form of Job, who had now practically recovered from his
attack of fever. He was standing in the ray of light that pierced
into the cave from the outer air, shaking out my clothes as a
makeshift for brushing them, which he could not do because there
was no brush, and then folding them up neatly and laying them on
the foot of the stone couch. This done, he got my travelling
dressing-case out of the Gladstone bag, and opened it ready for
my use. First he stood it on the foot of the couch also, then,
being afraid, I suppose, that I should kick it off, he placed it
on a leopard skin on the floor, and stood back a step or two to
observe the effect. It was not satisfactory, so he shut up the
bag, turned it on end, and, having rested it against the foot of
the couch, placed the dressing-case on it. Next he looked at the
pots full of water, which constituted our washing apparatus.
“Ah!” I heard him murmur, “no hot water in this beastly place. I
suppose these poor creatures only use it to boil each other in,”
and he sighed deeply.
“What is the matter, Job?” I said.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, touching his hair. “I thought you
were asleep, sir; and I am sure you seem as though you want it.
One might think from the look of you that you had been having a
night of it.”
I only groaned by way of answer. I had, indeed, been having a
night of it, such as I hope never to have again.
“How is Mr. Leo, Job?”
“Much the same, sir. If he don’t soon mend, he’ll end, sir; and
that’s all about it; though I must say that that there savage,
Ustane, do do her best for him, almost like a baptised Christian.
She is always hanging round and looking after him, and if I
ventures to interfere it’s awful to see her; her hair seems to
stand on end, and she curses and swears away in her heathen
talk—at least I fancy she must be cursing, from the look of her.”
“And what do you do then?”
“I make her a perlite bow, and I say, ‘Young woman, your position
is one that I don’t quite understand, and can’t recognise. Let me
tell you that I has a duty to perform to my master as is
incapacitated by illness, and that I am going to perform it until
I am incapacitated too,’ but she don’t take no heed, not she—only
curses and swears away worse than ever. Last night she put her
hand under that sort of night-shirt she wears and whips out a
knife with a kind of a curl in the blade, so I whips out my
revolver, and we walks round and round each other till at last
she bursts out laughing. It isn’t nice treatment for a Christian
man to have to put up with from a savage, however handsome she
may be, but it is what people must expect as is _fools_ enough”
(Job laid great emphasis on the “fools”) “to come to such a place
to look for things no man is meant to find. It’s a judgment on
us, sir—that’s my view; and I, for one, is of opinion that the
judgment isn’t half done yet, and when it is done we shall be
done too, and just stop in these beastly caves with the ghosts
and the corpseses for once and all. And now, sir, I must be
seeing about Mr. Leo’s broth, if that wild cat will let me; and,
perhaps, you would like to get up, sir, because it’s past nine
o’clock.”
Job’s remarks were not of an exactly cheering order to a man who
had passed such a night as I had; and, what is more, they had the
weight of truth. Taking one thing with another, it appeared to me
to be an utter impossibility that we should escape from the place
we were. Supposing that Leo recovered, and supposing that _She_
would let us go, which was exceedingly doubtful, and that she did
not “blast” us in some moment of vexation, and that we were not
hot-potted by the Amahagger, it would be quite impossible for us
to find our way across the network of marshes which, stretching
for scores and scores of miles, formed a stronger and more
impassable fortification round the various Amahagger households
than any that could be built or designed by man. No, there was
but one thing to do—face it out; and, speaking for my own part, I
was so intensely interested in the whole weird story that, so far
as I was concerned, notwithstanding the shattered state of my
nerves, I asked nothing better, even if my life paid forfeit to
my curiosity. What man for whom physiology has charms could
forbear to study such a character as that of this Ayesha when the
opportunity of doing so presented itself? The very terror of the
pursuit added to its fascination, and besides, as I was forced to
own to myself even now in the sober light of day, she herself had
attractions that I could not forget. Not even the dreadful sight
which I had witnessed during the night could drive that folly
from my mind; and alas! that I should have to admit it, it has
not been driven thence to this hour.
After I had dressed myself I passed into the eating, or rather
embalming chamber, and had some food, which was as before brought
to me by the girl mutes. When I had finished I went and saw poor
Leo, who was quite off his head, and did not even know me. I
asked Ustane how she thought he was; but she only shook her head
and began to cry a little. Evidently her hopes were small; and I
then and there made up my mind that, if it were in any way
possible, I would get _She_ to come and see him. Surely she would
cure him if she chose—at any rate she said she could. While I was
in the room, Billali entered, and also shook his head.
“He will die at night,” he said.
“God forbid, my father,” I answered, and turned away with a heavy
heart.
“_She-who-must-be-obeyed_ commands thy presence, my Baboon,” said
the old man as soon as we got to the curtain; “but, oh my dear
son, be more careful. Yesterday I made sure in my heart that
_She_ would blast thee when thou didst not crawl upon thy stomach
before her. She is sitting in the great hall even now to do
justice upon those who would have smitten thee and the Lion. Come
on, my son; come swiftly.”
I turned, and followed him down the passage, and when we reached
the great central cave saw that many Amahagger, some robed, and
some merely clad in the sweet simplicity of a leopard skin, were
hurrying along it. We mingled with the throng, and walked up the
enormous and, indeed, almost interminable cave. All the way its
walls were elaborately sculptured, and every twenty paces or so
passages opened out of it at right angles, leading, Billali told
me, to tombs, hollowed in the rock by “the people who were
before.” Nobody visited those tombs now, he said; and I must say
that my heart rejoiced when I thought of the opportunities of
antiquarian research which opened out before me.
At last we came to the head of the cave, where there was a rock
daïs almost exactly similar to the one on which we had been so
furiously attacked, a fact that proved to me that these daïs must
have been used as altars, probably for the celebration of
religious ceremonies, and more especially of rites connected with
the interment of the dead. On either side of this daïs were
passages leading, Billali informed me, to other caves full of
dead bodies. “Indeed,” he added, “the whole mountain is full of
dead, and nearly all of them are perfect.”
In front of the daïs were gathered a great number of people of
both sexes, who stood staring about in their peculiar gloomy
fashion, which would have reduced Mark Tapley himself to misery
in about five minutes. On the daïs was a rude chair of black wood
inlaid with ivory, having a seat made of grass fibre, and a
footstool formed of a wooden slab attached to the framework of
the chair.
Suddenly there was a cry of “Hiya! Hiya!” (“_She! She!_”), and
thereupon the entire crowd of spectators instantly precipitated
itself upon the ground, and lay still as though it were
individually and collectively stricken dead, leaving me standing
there like some solitary survivor of a massacre. As it did so a
long string of guards began to defile from a passage to the left,
and ranged themselves on either side of the daïs. Then followed
about a score of male mutes, then as many women mutes bearing
lamps, and then a tall white figure, swathed from head to foot,
in whom I recognised _She_ herself. She mounted the daïs and sat
down upon the chair, and spoke to me in _Greek_, I suppose
because she did not wish those present to understand what she
said.
“Come hither, oh Holly,” she said, “and sit thou at my feet, and
see me do justice on those who would have slain thee. Forgive me
if my Greek doth halt like a lame man; it is so long since I have
heard the sound of it that my tongue is stiff, and will not bend
rightly to the words.”