David Thomas
Wisdom's Daughter
_The Life and Love Story of
She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed_
By
H. Rider Haggard
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923
DEDICATION
In bygone years the books "She" and "Ayesha" were dedicated to Andrew
Lang. Now, when he is dead, this, the last romance that will be
written concerning "_She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed_," is offered as a tribute
to his beloved and honoured memory.
_Ditchingham_, 1922.
EDITOR'S NOTE
What was the greatest fault of Ayesha, _She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed_?
Surely a vanity so colossal that, to take one out of many examples, it
persuaded her that her mother died after looking upon her, fearing
lest, should she live, she might give birth to another child who was
less fair.
At least, as her story shows, it was vanity, rather than love of the
beauteous Greek, Kallikrates, that stained the hands of She with his
innocent blood and, amongst other ills, brought upon her the fearful
curse of deathlessness while still inhabiting a sphere where Death is
lord of all. Had not Amenartas taunted her with the waning of her
imperial beauty, eaten of the tooth of Time, never would she have
disobeyed the command of her master, the Prophet Noot, and entered
that Fire of Immortality which she was set to guard.
Thus it seems that by denial she would have escaped the net of many
woes in which, perchance, she is still entangled and of Ayesha,
Daughter of Wisdom yet Folly's Slave, there would have been no tale to
tell and, from her parable of the eternal war of flesh and spirit
there would have been no lesson to be learned. But Vanity--or was it
Fate?--led her down another road.
The Editor.
CONTENTS
Introductory
I. The Halls of Heaven
II. Noot the Prophet Comes to Ozal
III. The Battle and the Flight
IV. The Kiss of Fate
V. The Summons
VI. The Divination
VII. The Quelling of the Storm
VIII. The King of Sidon
IX. Dagon Takes His Sacrifice
X. The Vengeance of Beltis
XI. The Escape from Sidon
XII. The Sea Battle
XIII. The Shame of Pharaoh
XIV. The Beguiling of Bagoas
XV. The Plot and the Voice
XVI. The Feast of the King of Kings
XVII. The Flight and the Summons
XVIII. The Tale of Philo
XIX. The Hermitage of Noot
XX. The Coming of Kallikrates
XXI. The Truth and the Temptation
XXII. Beware!
XXIII. The Doom of the Fire
XXIV. The Counsel of Philo
XXV. In Undying Loneliness
WISDOM'S DAUGHTER
INTRODUCTORY
_The manuscript of which the contents are printed here was discovered
among the effects of the late L. Horace Holly, though not until some
years after his death. It was in an envelope on which had been
scribbled a direction that it should be forwarded to the present
editor "at the appointed time," words that at first he did not
understand. However, in due course it arrived without any accompanying
note of explanation, so that to this hour he does not know by whom it
was sent or where from, since the only postmark on the packet was
London, W., and the address was typewritten._
_When opened the package proved to contain two thick notebooks, bound
in parchment, or rather scraped goat or sheepskin, and very roughly as
though by an unskilled hand, perhaps in order to preserve them if
exposed to hard usage or weather. The paper of these books is
extremely thin and tough so that each of them contains a great number
of sheets. It is not of European make, and its appearance suggests
that it was manufactured in the East, perhaps in China._
_There could be no doubt as to who had owned these notebooks, because
on one of them, the first, written in red ink upon the parchment cover
in block letters, appears the name of Mr. Holly himself. Also on its
first pages are various memoranda of travel evidently made by him and
no one else. After these follow sheet upon sheet of apparently
indecipherable shorthand mixed up with tiny Arabic characters. This
shorthand proved to belong to no known system, and although every
effort was made to decipher it, for over two years it remained
unread._
_At length, when all attempts had been abandoned, almost by chance, it
was shown to a great Oriental scholar, a friend of the Editor, who
glanced at it and took it to bed with him. Next morning at breakfast
he announced calmly that he had discovered the key and could read the
stuff as easily as though it were a newspaper leader. It seemed that
the writing was an ancient form of contracted Arabic, mixed in places
with the Demotic of the Egyptians--a shorthand Arabic and a shorthand
Demotic, difficult at first, but once the key was found easily
decipherable by some six or eight living men, of whom, as it chanced,
the learned scholar into whose hands it had thus fallen accidentally
was one._
_So it came about that with toil and cost and time, at length those
two closely written volumes were transcribed in full and translated.
For the rest, they speak for themselves. Let the reader judge of
them._
_There is but one thing to add. Although it is recorded in notebooks
that had been his property, clearly this manuscript was_ not
_written by Mr. Holly. For reasons which she explains it was written
with the hand of_ She _herself, during the period of her second
incarnation when at last Leo found her in the mountains of Thibet, as
is described in the book called "Ayesha."_
CHAPTER I
The Halls of Heaven
To the learned man, ugly of form and face but sound at heart, Holly
by name, a citizen of a northern land whom at times I think that once
I knew as Noot the Holy, that philosopher who was my master in a past
which seems far to him and is forgot, but to me is but as yesterday,
to this Holly, I say, I, who on earth am named Ayesha, daughter of
Yarab the Arab chief, but who have many other titles here and
elsewhere, have told certain stories of my past days and the part I
played in them. Also I have told the same or other stories to my lord
Kallikrates, the Greek, now named Leo Vincey, aforetimes a warrior
after the habit of his race and his forefathers, who for religious
reasons became a priest of Isis, the great goddess of Egypt and, once
I believed, my mother in the spirit. Also I have told these or
different tales to one Allan, a wandering hunter of beasts and a
fighting man of good blood who visited me at Kôr, though of this I
said nothing to Holly or to my lord Kallikrates, now known as Leo or
the Lion, because as to this Allan I held it wiser to be silent.
All these stories do not agree together, since often I spoke them as
parables, or in order to tell to each that which he would wish to
hear, or to hide my mind for my own purposes.
Yet in every one of them lay hid something of the truth, a grain of
gold in the ore of fable that might be found by him who had the skill
and strength to seek.
Now my spirit moves me to interpret these parables and set down what I
am and whence I came and certain of the things that I have seen and
done, or at the least such of them as I am permitted to reveal by
those mightier than I of whom I am the servant, as they in their turn
are the servants of others yet mightier than themselves.
Here in these Asian caves I sit, the Hesea of the Mountain, the last
priestess of the worship of Mother Isis upon earth, as aforetime I sat
amid the ruins of Kôr in Libya.
At Kôr for two thousand years I watched and waited till at length
reborn, Kallikrates, whom unwittingly I slew in a rage of jealousy,
came back to me where I had slain him. There, because of the curse
that is on me and him, I lost him again, for in this very place, too,
I was slain most horribly, slain by an excess of life wherewith I
thought to make myself more beautiful even than I was and in striving
to overfill the vase, shattered it to the vilest dust. Thus once more
Fate made a mock of me; once more I lost Kallikrates whom it is my
doom to desire in the flesh and to raise up in the spirit through time
untold.
My soul passed out and on and here for a little while it found a home
masked in the withered shape of an ancient priestess of my worship.
As was foredoomed my lord came back to me and saw the shining soul
within that hideous shape and claimed it with a kiss, as I think the
bravest deed and the most faithful that was ever done by man. In the
magic of that kiss as also was foredoomed, my beauty grew again before
his eyes, so that once more I stand a glory upon earth. Now we are
plighted, now, if all goes well, within a year we shall be wed, aye,
within one short year after I have borne him back to Kôr and unsealed
the hidden Fire of Life and plunged him in its essence, giving to him
my own gift of undying days.
And yet and yet--who knows the end? He presses me sore, and the
starved woman part of me is passionate and weak and I may yield, and
if his lips touch mine, who can say but that the fire within me will
destroy him, the unfortified, and bring all my plans to dust and
nothingness? I am great, set far above mortals, yet I play against
forces I cannot see, that are greater than I, and it may please them
to snatch the cup from my lips, and once more to overthrow me; for
even though the blood of gods runs in him, as it runs in all of us,
who can stand against their master, Doom, and its decrees? Therefore
I, named Wisdom's Daughter, named Child of Isis, to-night am as full
of fears as any mortal maid craving her lover beneath the moon and not
knowing but that war, or chance, or the vile breath of sickness may
have borne him away into that gulf where all things must be
lost--until they are found again.
From month to month Leo, my lord, hunts upon the mountain after the
fashion of men, and I, Ayesha, brood within the caves after the
fashion of women. Yes, I who am half a goddess still brood within the
caves after the fashion of women who wait and watch. Holly, the
instructed, who loves me, as all men must do, bides here with me in
the caves and we talk together of ancient things whereof the world has
lost count, for he is a learned man skilled in the tongues of Greece
and Rome, and one who thinks and, perchance, remembers.
But yesterday he said to me that I who seemed to know the past and to
whom doors were opened that cannot be entered by human feet, should
write down what I know and have experienced, that in time to come the
world may be the wiser.
This the fancy has taken me to do, though whether I shall persevere to
the end, I cannot say. He has given me that wherein I can write. 'Tis
not the old papyrus, but it will serve, and I have pens of reed and
can make ink of various colours, who in the bygone days was no mean
scribe. Also I sleep but little, whose body, filled like a cup with
life, needs small rest, and the long hours of the night pass wearily
for me who lie and brood upon what has been and is to come, searching
the darkness of the future with aching, fearful soul. Moreover, I am
able to write in characters which, with all his learning, Holly cannot
read, I who am not minded that he should know my thoughts and deeds
and betray them to my lord whom they might cause to think the worse of
me.
Why, then, should I write at all? For this reason: in certain matters
I have foreknowledge and my spirit tells me that in a day to come, at
the time appointed, some will guess the secret of my script and render
it into tongues that all may read, so that when, soon or late, upon
the circle of my eternal path, I pass hence to whence I came, and,
like to the Fire-God in the caves of Kôr am hid awhile, this record
will remain my monument. Ah! there peeps out the mortal in me, for
see! like any common man or woman I would not be forgot even among the
passing dwellers in a petty world.
Now to my task.
I have a vision of what chanced to my soul before it descended to
dwell on earth, and with it I will begin. Maybe it is but a parable
not to be strictly rendered, a token and a symbol rather than a truth.
Yet of this I am sure that in it there is something of the truth,
since otherwise why through the long centuries did it return to me
again and yet again? Mayhap Greece and Egypt had no gods save those
they fashioned for themselves. Holly tells me, as did the Wanderer,
Allan, who also had some smattering of knowledge, that Zeus and
Aphrodite and Osiris and Horus and Ammon are now dethroned with all
their company and lie in the dust like the shattered columns of their
temples, the mock of men who talk of them as the fables of the early
world, so that of all the divinities that I knew, He of the Jews,
although changed of character and countenance, alone is worshipped and
remains.
Doubtless it is so, yet while man lives, always there is God, though
his shapes be many. Always there is the eternal Good, as in a dream
the holy Noot named the ultimate Divine, and behold! it is called
Ammon or otherwise. Always there is Evil and behold! it is called Set
or Baal, or Moloch, or otherwise. Always the stained soul of man seeks
redemption, and he who saves is called Osiris or otherwise. Always
Nature endures and she is called Isis or otherwise. Always the great
world that will not die strains and pulses to new life, and the
Life-bringer is called Aphrodite or otherwise. And so on continually.
Where man is, again I say, there was and is and will be God, or
Good--the Spirit named by many names.
I go to my window-place in this cave-chamber and look out upon the
stars shining countless in the frosty sky and lo! there I see God clad
in one of the most glorious of His garments. I look at the moth
flitting round my lamp or resting on the wall and, by the magic that
is in it, summoning its mate from far, and lo! there I see God in
another of His humbler garments. For God is in all things and
everywhere, and from the great suns down, to Him who sent them forth
and to Whom they return again, all that hath life must bow.
This is the vision wherein I read a parable of eternal truths.
I, Ayesha, daughter of Yarab, not yet of the flesh, but above and
beyond the flesh inhabited the halls of that great goddess of the
earth, a minister of That which rules all the earth (Nature's self as
now I know), who in Egypt was named Isis, Mother of Mysteries.
_Child_, she named me, and _Messenger_; and in that dream or parable,
as a child was I to her, for I drank of the cup of her wisdom and
something of her greatness was in my soul.
The goddess sat brooding in her sanctuary where Spirits came and went
bearing tidings from all lands or emptying at her feet the cups of
offered prayer. About her fell her robes, blue as the sky, and over
the robes hung down her hair dusky as the night, and beneath her bent
brows shone her eyes like stars of the night. In her hand was the rod
of power and the footstool at her feet was shaped like the round
world. There, canopied with light, she sat upon an ebon seat and
brooded while round her beat music like sea waves upon the shore, such
music as is not known upon the earth.
I appeared. I stood before her, I abased myself, I bowed till my
forehead lay upon the ground and my hair swept the dust of the ground.
She touched me with her sceptre, bidding me arise.
"Speak, Child," she said. "What message dost thou bring from the
shores of Nile? How goes my worship in the temples of Isis and are my
servants faithful to my law?"
Then I made answer.
"O Mother divine, I have accomplished my embassy. Unseen, a spirit, I
have wandered through the Land of Egypt. I have visited thy temples,
I have hearkened to the councils of thy priests, I have watched thy
worshippers and read their hearts. This is my report. Thy holy temples
are empty; thy priests neglect thine altars; save a remnant who remain
faithful, thy worshippers bow themselves before the shrines of another
goddess."
"How is this goddess named, O Child of my love and wisdom?"
"She is named Aphrodite of the Greeks, a people who have flowed into
Egypt, also other folk know her as Ashtoreth and Venus. Her sanctuary
of sanctuaries is at Paphos in Cyprus, an island of the sea over
against Egypt. She is the Queen of earthly love and love is the ritual
of her worship, and she makes a mock of thee, O Mother, and of all the
ancient gods, thy brothers and sisters, swearing that thy day and
theirs is done and that she has risen from the sea to rule the world,
and will rule it to the end. Here and there she reveals herself and
conquers by her beauty, making all men to worship her and teaching all
women to follow in her steps and beguile as she does, so that thy very
priests turn to her and thy priestesses break from their vows and
wanton with them."
"All of this I have learned, O Child, and more; yet it was my desire
to hear it from thy lips that cannot lie, since in thee dwells my
spirit. Hearken now! I am minded to be avenged upon these false
Egyptians, and thou shalt be the sword of vengeance wherewith I will
smite them, bringing their ancient glory to the dust and for ever
setting the yoke of bondage on their necks. Aye, I am so minded and it
shall be done, how, I will teach thee afterward. But first, as I have
the power to do, I who under the Strength above me am regent of the
ball of earth, will summon this Aphrodite to my presence here and now,
and bid her speak out her heart to me.
"Hear me, Aphrodite, wherever thou art in earth or heaven. Aphrodite,
I bid thee appear."
Then in my vision the Mother rose from her throne. Standing before it,
terrible to see, she beckoned with her sceptre, north and south and
east and west, uttering the secret words of power. Thrice she beckoned
and thrice she spoke the secret words, and waited.
There was a stir at the end of the great hall and a sound of singing.
Behold! floating between the long lines of the flame-clad guardians of
that hall, attended by her subject gods, her mænads and her maidens,
a shape of naked loveliness, came Aphrodite of the Greeks. Veiled in
her curling locks and roped about with gleaming pearls for necklace
and for girdle, she stood before the throne and bowed to the Majesty
it bore, then asked in a laughing voice of music,
"I have heard thy summons, Mother of Mysteries, and I am here. What
wouldst thou of me, Isis, Queen of the World? How can the Sea-born
whose name is Beauty and whose gift is Love, serve thee, Isis, Queen
of the World?
"Thus, thou who art shameless, thou born of the new gods and fashioned
from the evil that is in the race of men--by lifting thy spell from
off my worshippers. I know thy works. Drunken with desires they flock
to thee in troops and for reward thou givest them the wages of their
sin. Thou layest waste their homes; thou defilest their maidens, thou
turnest men to beasts and makest a mock of them. Thy flowers fade; thy
joys fill the mouth with ashes and those who drink of thy cup suck up
poison in their souls. Thy fair flesh is a rottenness and thy perfumes
are a stench and the incense of thine altars is the reek of hell.
Therefore I command thee, go back to whence thou camest and leave the
world in peace."
"Whither, then, should I go, Mother?" answered Aphrodite with her
silvery laugh, "save into thy bosom, whence indeed I sprang, seeing
that thou art Nature's self and I am thy child. Stern is thy law and
sweet, yet without me thou wouldst have none over whom to rule. Aye,
without me would no child be born and not even a flower would blow.
Without me thou wouldst rule a wilderness with but the wisdom of which
thou boastest to keep thee company. Hearken! We are at war and in that
war I shall be conqueror, for I am eternal and all life is my slave,
because my name is Life. Get thee to thy heaven, Isis, and rule there
with Osiris, Lord of Death, but leave me the living. Soon their day is
done and they pass beyond my spells into thy dominion. There treat
them as thou wilt and be content, for then I have no more need of
them, nor they of me. Why of a sudden art thou so wrath with me, whom
thou hast known from the beginning? Is it because I take new names and
set up my altars in thine own Egypt, altars wreathed with flowers,
leaving all desolate thine where prayers are mumbled from starved
hearts and cold hands make the offering of denial? Come now, Mother
Isis, let us play a game and let Egypt be the stake. Thou hast the
vantage there, seeing that for æons it has bowed to thy laws and thy
yoke has been upon its neck."
"What, then, O Aphrodite, dost thou promise Egypt to which I and those
who rule with me have given greatness, wisdom, and hope beyond the
grave?"
"None of these high things, Mother. My gifts are love and joy; sweet
love and joy in which for a little while all fears are forgot. Small
gains thou mayest think, looking backward to the past and onward to
the future, thou whose eyes are upon eternity. Yet they shall prevail.
Isis, in Egypt thy day is done; there, as elsewhere, thy sceptre
falls."
"If so, Wanton, with it falls Egypt that henceforth shall be the
world's slave. When conqueror after conqueror sets his foot upon her
neck, then let her think on Isis whom she has forsaken, and wailing,
fill her soul with thy swine's food. Lo! I depart, leaving my curse on
Egypt. Have thy little day till before the Judgment seat we settle our
account. No more will I listen to thy falsehoods and thy blasphemies.
Till then, Wanton, look on my majesty no more."
So in that vision spoke the Mother and was gone. With her, flashing
like lightnings, went the flame-clad guardians that attend the
goddess, leaving the great place empty save for Aphrodite and her
throng, and for the soul of me, Ayesha, who watched and hearkened,
wondering. The Paphian looked around and laughed, then glided to the
vacant throne and seating herself thereon, laughed again, till the
music of her mockery echoing from pillar to pillar, filled all the
temple's halls.
"It is an omen," she cried. "What Isis leaves I take; henceforth her
seat and power are mine. See now my ministers, I queen it here, though
I wear no vulture cap or symbols of the moon, whose brow is better
graced by these abundant locks and whose sceptre is a flower whereof
the odours make men mad. Yes, I queen it here as everywhere, though in
this solemn melancholy fane I lack a subject."
She glanced about her till her glorious, roving eyes fell upon that
spirit which was I.
"Come hither, thou," she said, "and do me homage."
Now in my dream I, that spirit who in the world am named Ayesha, came
and stood before her, saying,
"Nay, I am the child of Isis and to her I bow alone."
"Thinkest thou so?" she answered, smiling and looking me up and down.
"Well, I have another mind. It seems to me that soon thou wilt descend
from this sad realm to the joyous fields of earth, that there thou
mayest fulfil a certain purpose, for such is the fate decreed for
thee. Now, I, Aphrodite, add to that fate and lighten it. Look behind
thee, Spirit that shall be woman!"
I turned and looked, there to behold a shape of beauty that I knew for
Man. So beautiful was he that my breast rose and the life in me stood
still. He smiled at me and I smiled back at him. Then he was gone,
leaving his picture stamped upon my soul.
"This is what I add to that tragic fate of thine, O Spirit that shall
be woman. Take him, the man appointed to thee, who from the beginning
was always thine, and as perchance thou hast done before, in his kiss
forget thy Mother Isis and thy crown of woes."
Thus this vision ends, and though now I, Ayesha, have learned that
Isis, as we knew and named her in the ancient time, is but a symbol of
that eternal holiness which is set above all heavens and all earths, I
say again that, as I believe, in its parable is hid something of the
changeless truth.