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_ During the weeks that followed these momentous days often and often I
wondered to myself whether a more truly wretched being had ever lived
than the woman, or the spirit, whom we knew as She, Hes, and Ayesha.
Whether in fact also, or in our imagination only, she had arisen from
the ashes of her hideous age into the full bloom of perpetual life and
beauty inconceivable.
These things at least were certain: Ayesha had achieved the secret of
an existence so enduring that for all human purposes it might be
called unending. Within certain limitations--such as her utter
inability to foresee the future--undoubtedly also, she was endued with
powers that can only be described as supernatural.
Her rule over the strange community amongst whom she lived was
absolute; indeed, its members regarded her as a goddess, and as such
she was worshipped. After marvellous adventures, the man who was her
very life, I might almost say her soul, whose being was so
mysteriously intertwined with hers, whom she loved also with the
intensest human passion of which woman can be capable, had sought her
out in this hidden corner of the world.
More, thrice he had proved his unalterable fidelity to her. First, by
his rejection of the royal and beautiful, if undisciplined, Atene.
Secondly, by clinging to Ayesha when she seemed to be repulsive to
every natural sense. Thirdly, after that homage scene in the Sanctuary
--though with her unutterable perfections before his eyes this did not
appear to be so wonderful--by steadfastness in the face of her
terrible avowal, true or false, that she had won her gifts and him
through some dim, unholy pact with the powers of evil, in the unknown
fruits and consequences of which he must be involved as the price of
her possession.
Yet Ayesha was miserable. Even in her lightest moods it was clear to
me that those skeletons at the feast of which she had spoken were her
continual companions. Indeed, when we were alone she would acknowledge
it in dark hints and veiled allegories or allusions. Crushed though
her rival the Khania Atene might be, also she was still jealous of
her.
Perhaps "afraid" would be a better word, for some instinct seemed to
warn Ayesha that soon or late her hour would come to Atene again, and
that then it would be her own turn to drink of the bitter waters of
despair.
What troubled her more a thousandfold, however, were her fears for
Leo. As may well be understood, to stand in his intimate relationship
to this half divine and marvellous being, and yet not to be allowed so
much as to touch her lips, did not conduce to his physical or mental
well-being, especially as he knew that the wall of separation must not
be climbed for at least two years. Little wonder that Leo lost
appetite, grew thin and pale, and could not sleep, or that he implored
her continually to rescind her decree and marry him.
But on this point Ayesha was immovable. Instigated thereto by Leo, and
I may add my own curiosity, when we were alone I questioned her again
as to the reasons of this self-denying ordinance. All she would tell
me, however, was that between them rose the barrier of Leo's
mortality, and that until his physical being had been impregnated with
the mysterious virtue of the Vapour of Life, it was not wise that she
should take him as a husband.
I asked her why, seeing that though a long-lived one, she was still a
woman, whereon her face assumed a calm but terrifying smile, and she
answered--
"Art so sure, my Holly? Tell me, do your women wear such jewels as
that set upon my brow?" and she pointed to the faint but lambent light
which glowed about her forehead.
More, she began slowly to stroke her abundant hair, then her breast
and body. Wherever her fingers passed the mystic light was born, until
in that darkened room--for the dusk was gathering--she shimmered from
head to foot like the water of a phosphorescent sea, a being glorious
yet fearful to behold. Then she waved her hand, and, save for the
gentle radiance on her brow, became as she had been.
"Art so sure, my Holly?" Ayesha repeated. "Nay, shrink not; that flame
will not burn thee. Mayhap thou didst but imagine it, as I have noted
thou dost imagine many things; for surely no woman could clothe
herself in light and live, nor has so much as the smell of fire passed
upon my garments."
Then at length my patience was outworn, and I grew angry.
"I am sure of nothing, Ayesha," I answered, "except that thou wilt
make us mad with all these tricks and changes. Say, art thou a spirit
then?"
"We are all spirits," she said reflectively, "and I, perhaps, more
than some. Who can be certain?"
"Not I," I answered. "Yet I implore, woman or spirit, tell me one
thing. Tell me the truth. In the beginning what wast thou to Leo, and
what was he to thee?"
She looked at me very solemnly and answered--
"Does my memory deceive me, Holly, or is it written in the first book
of the Law of the Hebrews, which once I used to study, that the sons
of Heaven came down to the daughters of men, and found that they were
fair?"
"It is so written," I answered.
"Then, Holly, might it not have chanced that once a daughter of Heaven
came down to a man of Earth and loved him well? Might it not chance
that for her great sin, she, this high, fallen star, who had befouled
her immortal state for him, was doomed to suffer till at length his
love, made divine by pain and faithful even to a memory, was permitted
to redeem her?"
Now at length I saw light and sprang up eagerly, but in a cold voice
she added:
"Nay, Holly, cease to question me, for there are things of which I can
but speak to thee in figures and in parables, not to mock and bewilder
thee, but because I must. Interpret them as thou wilt. Still, Atene
thought me no mortal, since she told us that man and spirit may not
mate; and there are matters in which I let her judgment weigh with me,
as without doubt now, as in other lives, she and that old Shaman, her
uncle, have wisdom, aye, and foresight. So bid my lord press me no
more to wed him, for it gives me pain to say him nay--ah! thou knowest
not how much.
"Moreover, I will declare myself to thee, old friend; whatever else I
be, at least I am too womanly to listen to the pleadings of my best
beloved and not myself be moved. See, I have set a curb upon desire
and drawn it until my heart bleeds; but if he pursues me with
continual words and looks of burning love, who knoweth but that I
shall kindle in his flame and throw the reins of reason to the winds?
"Oh, then together we might race adown our passions' steep; together
dare the torrent that rages at its foot, and there perchance be
whelmed or torn asunder. Nay, nay, another space of journeying, but a
little space, and we reach the bridge my wisdom found, and cross it
safely, and beyond for ever ride on at ease through the happy meadows
of our love."
Then she was silent, nor would she speak more upon the matter. Also--
and this was the worst of it--even now I was not sure that she told me
the truth, or, at any rate, all of it, for to Ayesha's mind truth
seemed many coloured as are the rays of light thrown from the
different faces of a cut jewel. We never could be certain which shade
of it she was pleased to present, who, whether by preference or of
necessity, as she herself had said, spoke of such secrets in figures
of speech and parables.
It is a fact that to this hour I do not know whether Ayesha is spirit
or woman, or, as I suspect, a blend of both. I do not know the limits
of her powers, or if that elaborate story of the beginning of her love
for Leo was true--which personally I doubt--or but a fable, invented
by her mind, and through it, as she had hinted, pictured on the flame
for her own hidden purposes.
I do not know whether when first we saw her on the Mountain she was
really old and hideous, or did but put on that shape in our eyes in
order to test her lover. I do not know whether, as the priest Oros
bore witness--which he may well have been bidden to do--her spirit
passed into the body of the dead priestess of Hes, or whether when she
seemed to perish there so miserably, her body and her soul were wafted
straightway from the Caves of Kor to this Central Asian peak.
I do not know why, as she was so powerful, she did not come to seek
us, instead of leaving us to seek her through so many weary years,
though I suggest that some superior force forbade her to do more than
companion us unseen, watching our every act, reading our every
thought, until at length we reached the predestined place and hour.
Also, as will appear, there were other things of which this is not the
time to speak, whereby I am still more tortured and perplexed.
In short, I know nothing, except that my existence has been
intertangled with one of the great mysteries of the world; that the
glorious being called Ayesha won the secret of life from whatever
power holds it in its keeping; that she alleged--although of this,
remember, we have no actual proof--such life was to be attained by
bathing in a certain emanation, vapour or essence; that she was
possessed by a passion not easy to understand, but terrific in its
force and immortal in its nature, concentrated upon one other being
and one alone. That through this passion also some angry fate smote
her again, again, and yet again, making of her countless days a
burden, and leading the power and the wisdom which knew all but could
foreknow nothing, into abysses of anguish, suspense, and
disappointment such as--Heaven be thanked!--we common men and women
are not called upon to plumb.
For the rest, should human eyes ever fall upon it, each reader must
form his own opinion of this history, its true interpretation and
significance. These and the exact parts played by Atene and myself in
its development I hope to solve shortly, though not here.
Well, as I have said, the upshot of it all was that Ayesha was
devoured with anxiety about Leo. Except in this matter of marriage,
his every wish was satisfied, and indeed forestalled. Thus he was
never again asked to share in any of the ceremonies of the Sanctuary,
though, indeed, stripped of its rites and spiritual symbols, the
religion of the College of Hes proved pure and harmless enough. It was
but a diluted version of the Osiris and Isis worship of old Egypt,
from which it had been inherited, mixed with the Central Asian belief
in the transmigration or reincarnation of souls and the possibility of
drawing near to the ultimate Godhead by holiness of thought and life.
In fact, the head priestess and Oracle was only worshipped as a
representative of the Divinity, while the temporal aims of the College
in practice were confined to good works, although it is true that they
still sighed for their lost authority over the country of Kaloon. Thus
they had hospitals, and during the long and severe winters, when the
Tribes of the Mountain slopes were often driven to the verge of
starvation, gave liberally to the destitute from their stores of food.
Leo liked to be with Ayesha continually, so we spent each evening in
her company, and much of the day also, until she found that this
inactivity told upon him who for years had been accustomed to endure
every rigour of climate in the open air. After this came home to her--
although she was always haunted by terror lest any accident should
befall him--Ayesha insisted upon his going out to kill the wild sheep
and the ibex, which lived in numbers on the mountain ridges, placing
him in the charge of the chiefs and huntsmen of the Tribes, with whom
thus he became well acquainted. In this exercise, however, I
accompanied him but rarely, as, if used too much, my arm still gave me
pain.
Once indeed such an accident did happen. I was seated in the garden
with Ayesha and watching her. Her head rested on her hand, and she was
looking with her wide eyes, across which the swift thoughts passed
like clouds over a windy sky, or dreams through the mind of a sleeper
--looking out vacantly towards the mountain snows. Seen thus her
loveliness was inexpressible, amazing; merely to gaze upon it was an
intoxication. Contemplating it, I understood indeed that, like to that
of the fabled Helen, this gift of hers alone--and it was but one of
many--must have caused infinite sorrows, had she ever been permitted
to display it to the world. It would have driven humanity to madness:
the men with longings and the women with jealousy and hate.
And yet in what did her surpassing beauty lie? Ayesha's face and form
were perfect, it is true; but so are those of some other women. Not in
these then did it live alone, but rather, I think, especially while
what I may call her human moods were on her, in the soft mystery that
dwelt upon her features and gathered and changed in her splendid eyes.
Some such mystery may be seen, however faintly, on the faces of
certain of the masterpieces of the Greek sculptors, but Ayesha it
clothed like an ever-present atmosphere, suggesting a glory that was
not of earth, making her divine.
As I gazed at her and wondered thus, of a sudden she became terribly
agitated, and, pointing to a shoulder of the Mountain miles and miles
away, said--
"Look!"
I looked, but saw nothing except a sheet of distant snow.
"Blind fool, canst thou not see that my lord is in danger of his
life?" she cried. "Nay, I forgot, thou hast no vision. Take it now
from me and look again;" and laying her hand, from which a strange,
numbing current seemed to flow, upon my head, she muttered some swift
words.
Instantly my eyes were opened, and, not upon the distant Mountain, but
in the air before me as it were, I saw Leo rolling over and over at
grips with a great snow-leopard, whilst the chief and huntsmen with
him ran round and round, seeking an opportunity to pierce the savage
brute with their spears and yet leave him unharmed.
Ayesha, rigid with terror, swayed to and fro at my side, till
presently the end came, for I could see Leo drive his long knife into
the bowels of the leopard, which at once grew limp, separated from
him, and after a struggle or two in the bloodstained snow, lay still.
Then he rose, laughing and pointing to his rent garments, whilst one
of the huntsmen came forward and began to bandage some wounds in his
hands and thigh with strips of linen torn from his under-robe.
The vision vanished suddenly as it had come, and I felt Ayesha leaning
heavily upon my shoulder like any other frightened woman, and heard
her gasp--
"That danger also has passed by, but how many are there to follow? Oh!
tormented heart, how long canst thou endure!"
Then her wrath flamed up against the chief and his huntsmen, and she
summoned messengers and sent them out at speed with a litter and
ointments, bidding them to bear back the lord Leo and to bring his
companions to her very presence.
"Thou seest what days are mine, my Holly, aye, and have been these
many years," she said; "but those hounds shall pay me for this agony."
Nor would she suffer me to reason with her.
Four hours later Leo returned, limping after the litter in which,
instead of himself, for whom it was sent, lay a mountain sheep and the
skin of the snow-leopard that he had placed there to save the huntsmen
the labour of carrying them. Ayesha was waiting for him in the hall of
her dwelling, and gliding to him--I cannot say she walked--overwhelmed
him with mingled solicitude and reproaches. He listened awhile, then
asked--
"How dost thou know anything of this matter? The leopard skin has not
yet been brought to thee."
"I know because I saw," she answered. "The worst hurt was above thy
knee; hast thou dressed it with the salve I sent?"
"Not I," he said. "But thou hast not left this Sanctuary; how didst
thou see? By thy magic?"
"If thou wilt, at least I saw, and Holly also saw thee rolling in the
snow with that fierce brute, while those curs ran round like scared
children."
"I am weary of this magic," interrupted Leo crossly. "Cannot a man be
left alone for an hour even with a leopard of the mountain? As for
those brave men----"
At this moment Oros entered and whispered something, bowing low.
"As for those 'brave men,' I will deal with them," said Ayesha with
bitter emphasis, and covering herself--for she never appeared unveiled
to the people of the Mountain--she swept from the place.
"Where has she gone, Horace?" asked Leo. "To one of her services in
the Sanctuary?"
"I don't know," I answered; "but if so, I think it will be that
chief's burial service."
"Will it?" he exclaimed, and instantly limped after her.
A minute or two later I thought it wise to follow. In the Sanctuary a
curious scene was in progress. Ayesha was seated in front of the
statue. Before her, very much frightened, knelt a brawny, red-haired
chieftain and five of his followers, who still carried their hunting
spears, while with folded arms and an exceedingly grim look upon his
face, Leo, who, as I learned afterwards, had already interfered and
been silenced, stood upon one side listening to what passed. At a
little distance behind were a dozen or more of the temple guards, men
armed with swords and picked for their strength and stature.
Ayesha, in her sweetest voice, was questioning the men as to how the
leopard, of which the skin lay before her, had come to attack Leo. The
chief answered that they had tracked the brute to its lair between two
rocks; that one of them had gone in and wounded it, whereon it sprang
upon him and struck him down; that then the lord Leo had engaged it
while the man escaped, and was also struck down, after which, rolling
with it on the ground, he stabbed and slew the animal. That was all.
"No, not all," said Ayesha; "for you forget, cowards that you are,
that, keeping yourselves in safety, you left my lord to the fury of
this beast. Good. Drive them out on to the Mountain, there to perish
also at the fangs of beasts, and make it known that he who gives them
food or shelter dies."
Offering no prayer for pity or excuse, the chief and his followers
rose, bowed, and turned to go.
"Stay a moment, comrades," said Leo, "and, chief, give me your arm; my
scratch grows stiff; I cannot walk fast. We will finish this hunt
together."
"What doest thou? Art mad?" asked Ayesha.
"I know not whether I am mad," he answered, "but I know that thou art
wicked and unjust. Look now, than these hunters none braver ever
breathed. That man"--and he pointed to the one whom the leopard had
struck down--"took my place and went in before me because I ordered
that we should attack the creature, and thus was felled. As thou seest
all, thou mightest have seen this also. Then it sprang on me, and the
rest of these, my friends, ran round waiting a chance to strike, which
at first they could not do unless they would have killed me with it,
since I and the brute rolled over and over in the snow. As it was, one
of them seized it with his bare hands: look at the teeth marks on his
arm. So if they are to perish on the Mountain, I, who am the man to
blame, perish with them."
Now, while the hunters looked at him with fervent gratitude in their
eyes, Ayesha thought a little, then said cleverly enough--
"In truth, my lord Leo, had I known all the tale, well mightest thou
have named me wicked and unjust; but I knew only what I saw, and out
of their own mouths did I condemn them. My servants, my lord here has
pleaded for you, and you are forgiven; more, he who rushed in upon the
leopard and he who seized it with his hands shall be rewarded and
advanced. Go; but I warn you if you suffer my lord to come into more
danger, you shall not escape so easily again."
So they bowed and went, still blessing Leo with their eyes, since
death by exposure on the Mountain snows was the most terrible form of
punishment known to these people, and one only inflicted by the direct
order of Hes upon murderers or other great criminals.
When we had left the Sanctuary and were alone again in the hall, the
storm that I had seen gathering upon Leo's face broke in earnest.
Ayesha renewed her inquiries about his wounds, and wished to call
Oros, the physician, to dress them, and as he refused this, offered to
do so herself. He begged that she would leave his wounds alone, and
then, his great beard bristling with wrath, asked her solmenly if he
was a child in arms, a query so absurd that I could not help laughing.
Then he scolded her--yes, he scolded Ayesha! Wishing to know what she
meant (1) by spying upon him with her magic, an evil gift that he had
always disliked and mistrusted; (2) by condemning brave and excellent
men, his good friends, to a death of fiendish cruelty upon such
evidence, or rather out of temper, on no evidence at all; and (3) by
giving him into charge of them, as though he were a little boy, and
telling them that they would have to answer for it if he were hurt: he
who, in his time, had killed every sort of big game known and passed
through some perils and encounters?
Thus he beat her with his words, and, wonderful to say, Ayesha, this
being more than woman, submitted to the chastisement meekly. Yet had
any other man dared to address her with roughness even, I doubt not
that his speech and his life would have come to a swift and
simultaneous end, for I knew that now, as of old, she could slay by
the mere effort of her will. But she did not slay; she did not even
threaten, only, as any other loving woman might have done, she began
to cry. Yes, great tears gathered in those lovely eyes of hers and,
rolling one by one down her face, fell--for her head was bent humbly
forward--like heavy raindrops on the marble floor.
At the sight of this touching evidence of her human, loving heart all
Leo's anger melted. Now it was he who grew penitent and prayed her
pardon humbly. She gave him her hand in token of forgiveness, saying--
"Let others speak to me as they will" (sorry should I have been to try
it!) "but from thee, Leo, I cannot bear harsh words. Oh, thou art
cruel, cruel. In what have I offended? Can I help it if my spirit
keeps its watch upon thee, as indeed, though thou knewest it not, it
has done ever since we parted yonder in the Place of Life? Can I help
it if, like some mother who sees her little child at play upon a
mountain's edge, my soul is torn with agony when I know thee in
dangers that I am powerless to prevent or share? What are the lives of
a few half-wild huntsmen that I should let them weigh for a single
breath against thy safety, seeing that if I slew these, others would
be more careful of thee? Whereas if I slay them not, they or their
fellows may even lead thee into perils that would bring about--thy
/death/," and she gasped with horror at the word.
"Listen, beloved," said Leo. "The life of the humblest of those men is
of as much value to him as mine is to me, and thou hast no more right
to kill him than thou hast to kill me. It is evil that because thou
carest for me thou shouldst suffer thy love to draw thee into cruelty
and crime. If thou art afraid for me, then clothe me with that
immortality of thine, which, although I dread it somewhat, holding it
a thing unholy, and, on this earth, not permitted by my Faith, I
should still rejoice to inherit for thy dear sake, knowing that then
we could never more be parted. Or, if as thou sayest, this as yet thou
canst not do, then let us be wed and take what fortune gives us. All
men must die; but at least before I die I shall have been happy with
thee for a while--yes, if only for a single hour."
"Would that I dared," Ayesha answered with a little piteous motion of
her hand. "Oh! urge me no more, Leo, lest that at last I should take
the risk and lead thee down a dreadful road. Leo, hast thou never
heard of the love which slays, or of the poison that may lurk in a cup
of joy too perfect?"
Then, as though she feared herself, Ayesha turned from him and fled.
Thus this matter ended. In itself it was not a great one, for Leo's
hurts were mere scratches, and the hunters, instead of being killed,
were promoted to be members of his body-guard. Yet it told us many
things. For instance, that whenever she chose to do so, Ayesha had the
power of perceiving all Leo's movements from afar, and even of
communicating her strength of mental vision to others, although to
help him in any predicament she appeared to have no power, which, of
course, accounted for the hideous and ever-present might of her
anxiety.
Think what it would be to any one of us were we mysteriously
acquainted with every open danger, every risk of sickness, every
secret peril through which our best-beloved must pass. To see the rock
trembling to its fall and they loitering beneath it; to see them drink
of water and know it full of foulest poison; to see them embark upon a
ship and be aware that it was doomed to sink, but not to be able to
warn them or to prevent them. Surely no mortal brain could endure such
constant terrors, since hour by hour the arrows of death flit unseen
and unheard past the breasts of each of us, till at length one finds
its home there.
What then must Ayesha have suffered, watching with her spirit's eyes
all the hair-breadth escapes of our journeyings? When, for instance,
in the beginning she saw Leo at my house in Cumberland about to kill
himself in his madness and despair, and by some mighty effort of her
superhuman will, wrung from whatever Power it was that held her in its
fearful thraldom, the strength to hurl her soul across the world and
thereby in his sleep reveal to him the secret of the hiding-place
where he would find her.
Or to take one more example out of many--when she saw him hanging by
that slender thread of yak's hide from the face of the waterfall of
ice and herself remained unable to save him, or even to look forward
for a single moment and learn whether or no he was about to meet a
hideous death, in which event she must live on alone until in some dim
age he was born again.
Nor can her sorrows have ended with these more material fears, since
others as piercing must have haunted her. Imagine, for instance, the
agonies of her jealous heart when she knew her lover to be exposed to
the temptations incident to his solitary existence, and more
especially to those of her ancient rival Atene, who, by Ayesha's own
account, had once been his wife. Imagine also her fears lest time and
human change should do their natural work on him, so that by degrees
the memory of her wisdom and her strength, and the image of her
loveliness faded from his thought, and with them his desire for her
company; thus leaving her who had endured so long, forgotten and alone
at last.
Truly, the Power that limited our perceptions did so in purest mercy,
for were it otherwise with us, our race would go mad and perish raving
in its terrors.
Thus it would seem that Ayesha, great tormented soul, thinking to win
life and love eternal and most glorious, was in truth but another
blind Pandora. From her stolen casket of beauty and super-human power
had leapt into her bosom, there to dwell unceasingly, a hundred
torturing demons, of whose wings mere mortal kind do but feel the far-
off, icy shadowing.
Yes; and that the parallel might be complete, Hope alone still
lingered in that rifled chest. _
Read next: CHAPTER XX - AYESHA'S ALCHEMY
Read previous: CHAPTER XVIII - THE THIRD ORDEAL
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