Chapter XIII: Ayesha Unveils

“There,” said _She_, “he has gone, the white-bearded old fool!
Ah, how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He
gathereth it up like water, but like water it runneth through his
fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew,
behold a generation of fools call out, ‘See, he is a wise man!’
Is it not so? But how call they thee? ‘Baboon,’ he says,” and she
laughed; “but that is the fashion of these savages who lack
imagination, and fly to the beasts they resemble for a name. How
do they call thee in thine own country, stranger?”

“They call me Holly, oh Queen,” I answered.

“Holly,” she answered, speaking the word with difficulty, and yet
with a most charming accent; “and what is ‘Holly’?”

“’Holly’ is a prickly tree,” I said.

“So. Well, thou hast a prickly and yet a tree-like look. Strong
art thou, and ugly, but if my wisdom be not at fault, honest at
the core, and a staff to lean on. Also one who thinks. But stay,
oh Holly, stand not there, enter with me and be seated by me. I
would not see thee crawl before me like those slaves. I am aweary
of their worship and their terror; sometimes when they vex me I
could blast them for very sport, and to see the rest turn white,
even to the heart.” And she held the curtain aside with her ivory
hand to let me pass in.

I entered, shuddering. This woman was very terrible. Within the
curtains was a recess, about twelve feet by ten, and in the
recess was a couch and a table whereon stood fruit and sparkling
water. By it, at its end, was a vessel like a font cut in carved
stone, also full of pure water. The place was softly lit with
lamps formed out of the beautiful vessels of which I have spoken,
and the air and curtains were laden with a subtle perfume.
Perfume too seemed to emanate from the glorious hair and
white-clinging vestments of _She_ herself. I entered the little
room, and there stood uncertain.

“Sit,” said _She_, pointing to the couch. “As yet thou hast no
cause to fear me. If thou hast cause, thou shalt not fear for
long, for I shall slay thee. Therefore let thy heart be light.”

I sat down on the foot of the couch near to the font-like basin
of water, and _She_ sank down softly on to the other end.

“Now, Holly,” she said, “how comest thou to speak Arabic? It is my own dear tongue, for Arabian am I by my birth, even ‘al Arab al Ariba’ (an Arab of the Arabs), and of the race of our father Yárab, the son of Kâhtan, for in that fair and ancient city Ozal was I born, in the province of Yaman the Happy. Yet dost thou not speak it as we used to speak. Thy talk doth lack the music of the sweet tongue of the tribes of Hamyar which I was wont to hear. Some of the words too seemed changed, even as among these Amahagger, who have debased and defiled its purity, so that I must speak with them in what is to me another tongue.”[1]

[1] Yárab the son of Kâhtan, who lived some centuries before the time of Abraham, was the father of the ancient Arabs, and gave its name Araba to the country. In speaking of herself as “al Arab al Ariba,” _She_ no doubt meant to convey that she was of the true Arab blood as distinguished from the naturalised Arabs, the descendants of Ismael, the son of Abraham and Hagar, who were known as “al Arab al mostáraba.” The dialect of the Koreish was usually called the clear or “perspicuous” Arabic, but the Hamaritic dialect approached nearer to the purity of the mother Syriac.—L. H. H.

“I have studied it,” I answered, “for many years. Also the
language is spoken in Egypt and elsewhere.”

“So it is still spoken, and there is yet an Egypt? And what
Pharaoh sits upon the throne? Still one of the spawn of the
Persian Ochús, or are the Achæmenians gone, for far is it to the
days of Ochús.”

“The Persians have been gone from Egypt for nigh two thousand
years, and since then the Ptolemies, the Romans, and many others
have flourished and held sway upon the Nile, and fallen when
their time was ripe,” I said, aghast. “What canst thou know of
the Persian Artaxerxes?”

She laughed, and made no answer, and again a cold chill went
through me. “And Greece,” she said; “is there still a Greece? Ah,
I loved the Greeks. Beautiful were they as the day, and clever,
but fierce at heart and fickle, notwithstanding.”

“Yes,” I said, “there is a Greece; and, just now, it is once more
a people. Yet the Greeks of to-day are not what the Greeks of the
old time were, and Greece herself is but a mockery of the Greece
that was.”

“So! The Hebrews, are they yet at Jerusalem? And does the Temple
that the wise king built stand, and if so what God do they
worship therein? Is their Messiah come, of whom they preached so
much and prophesied so loudly, and doth He rule the earth?”

“The Jews are broken and gone, and the fragments of their people
strew the world, and Jerusalem is no more. As for the temple that
Herod built——”

“Herod!” she said. “I know not Herod. But go on.”

“The Romans burnt it, and the Roman eagles flew across its ruins,
and now Judæa is a desert.”

“So, so! They were a great people, those Romans, and went
straight to their end—ay, they sped to it like Fate, or like
their own eagles on their prey!—and left peace behind them.”

“Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant,” I suggested.

“Ah, thou canst speak the Latin tongue, too!” she said, in
surprise. “It hath a strange ring in my ears after all these
days, and it seems to me that thy accent does not fall as the
Romans put it. Who was it wrote that? I know not the saying, but
it is a true one of that great people. It seems that I have found
a learned man—one whose hands have held the water of the world’s
knowledge. Knowest thou Greek also?”

“Yes, oh Queen, and something of Hebrew, but not to speak them
well. They are all dead languages now.”

She clapped her hands in childish glee. “Of a truth, ugly tree
that thou art, thou growest the fruits of wisdom, oh Holly,” she
said; “but of those Jews whom I hated, for they called me
‘heathen’ when I would have taught them my philosophy—did their
Messiah come, and doth He rule the world?”

“Their Messiah came,” I answered with reverence; “but He came
poor and lowly, and they would have none of Him. They scourged
Him, and crucified Him upon a tree, but yet His words and His
works live on, for He was the Son of God, and now of a truth He
doth rule half the world, but not with an Empire of the World.”

“Ah, the fierce-hearted wolves,” she said, “the followers of
Sense and many gods—greedy of gain and faction-torn. I can see
their dark faces yet. So they crucified their Messiah? Well can I
believe it. That He was a Son of the Living Spirit would be
naught to them, if indeed He was so, and of that we will talk
afterwards. They would care naught for any God if He came not
with pomp and power. They, a chosen people, a vessel of Him they
call Jehovah, ay, and a vessel of Baal, and a vessel of Astoreth,
and a vessel of the gods of the Egyptians—a high-stomached
people, greedy of aught that brought them wealth and power. So
they crucified their Messiah because He came in lowly guise—and
now are they scattered about the earth? Why, if I remember, so
said one of their prophets that it should be. Well, let them
go—they broke my heart, those Jews, and made me look with evil
eyes across the world, ay, and drove me to this wilderness, this
place of a people that was before them. When I would have taught
them wisdom in Jerusalem they stoned me, ay, at the Gate of the
Temple those white-bearded hypocrites and Rabbis hounded the
people on to stone me! See, here is the mark of it to this day!”
and with a sudden move she pulled up the gauzy wrapping on her
rounded arm, and pointed to a little scar that showed red against
its milky beauty.

I shrank back, horrified.

“Pardon me, oh Queen,” I said, “but I am bewildered. Nigh upon
two thousand years have rolled across the earth since the Jewish
Messiah hung upon His cross at Golgotha. How then canst thou have
taught thy philosophy to the Jews before He was? Thou art a woman
and no spirit. How can a woman live two thousand years? Why dost
thou befool me, oh Queen?”

She leaned back upon the couch, and once more I felt the hidden
eyes playing upon me and searching out my heart.

“Oh man!” she said at last, speaking very slowly and
deliberately, “it seems that there are still things upon the
earth of which thou knowest naught. Dost thou still believe that
all things die, even as those very Jews believed? I tell thee
that naught dies. There is no such thing as Death, though there
be a thing called Change. See,” and she pointed to some
sculptures on the rocky wall. “Three times two thousand years
have passed since the last of the great race that hewed those
pictures fell before the breath of the pestilence which destroyed
them, yet are they not dead. E’en now they live; perchance their
spirits are drawn towards us at this very hour,” and she glanced
round. “Of a surety it sometimes seems to me that my eyes can see
them.”

“Yes, but to the world they are dead.”

“Ay, for a time; but even to the world are they born again and again. I, yes I, Ayesha[2]—for that, stranger, is my name—I say to thee that I wait now for one I loved to be born again, and here I tarry till he finds me, knowing of a surety that hither he will come, and that here, and here only, shall he greet me. Why, dost thou believe that I, who am all-powerful, I, whose loveliness is more than the loveliness of the Grecian Helen, of whom they used to sing, and whose wisdom is wider, ay, far more wide and deep than the wisdom of Solomon the Wise—I, who know the secrets of the earth and its riches, and can turn all things to my uses—I, who have even for a while overcome Change, that ye call Death—why, I say, oh stranger, dost thou think that I herd here with barbarians lower than the beasts?”

[2] Pronounced Assha.—L. H. H.

“I know not,” I said humbly.

“Because I wait for him I love. My life has perchance been evil,
I know not—for who can say what is evil and what good?—so I fear
to die even if I could die, which I cannot until mine hour comes,
to go and seek him where he is; for between us there might rise a
wall I could not climb, at least, I dread it. Surely easy would
it be also to lose the way in seeking in those great spaces
wherein the planets wander on for ever. But the day will come, it
may be when five thousand more years have passed, and are lost
and melted into the vault of Time, even as the little clouds melt
into the gloom of night, or it may be to-morrow, when he, my
love, shall be born again, and then, following a law that is
stronger than any human plan, he shall find me _here_, where once
he knew me, and of a surety his heart will soften towards me,
though I sinned against him; ay, even though he knew me not
again, yet will he love me, if only for my beauty’s sake.”

For a moment I was dumbfounded, and could not answer. The matter
was too overpowering for my intellect to grasp.

“But even so, oh Queen,” I said at last, “even if we men be born
again and again, that is not so with thee, if thou speakest
truly.” Here she looked up sharply, and once more I caught the
flash of those hidden eyes; “thou,” I went on hurriedly, “who
hast never died?”

“That is so,” she said; “and it is so because I have, half by
chance and half by learning, solved one of the great secrets of
the world. Tell me, stranger: life is—why therefore should not
life be lengthened for a while? What are ten or twenty or fifty
thousand years in the history of life? Why in ten thousand years
scarce will the rain and storms lessen a mountain top by a span
in thickness? In two thousand years these caves have not changed,
nothing has changed but the beasts, and man, who is as the
beasts. There is naught that is wonderful about the matter,
couldst thou but understand. Life is wonderful, ay, but that it
should be a little lengthened is not wonderful. Nature hath her
animating spirit as well as man, who is Nature’s child, and he
who can find that spirit, and let it breathe upon him, shall live
with her life. He shall not live eternally, for Nature is not
eternal, and she herself must die, even as the nature of the moon
hath died. She herself must die, I say, or rather change and
sleep till it be time for her to live again. But when shall she
die? Not yet, I ween, and while she lives, so shall he who hath
all her secret live with her. All I have it not, yet have I some,
more perchance than any who were before me. Now, to thee I doubt
not that this thing is a great mystery, therefore I will not
overcome thee with it now. Another time I will tell thee more if
the mood be on me, though perchance I shall never speak thereof
again. Dost thou wonder how I knew that ye were coming to this
land, and so saved your heads from the hot-pot?”

“Ay, oh Queen,” I answered feebly.

“Then gaze upon that water,” and she pointed to the font-like
vessel, and then, bending forward, held her hand over it.

I rose and gazed, and instantly the water darkened. Then it
cleared, and I saw as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my
life—I saw, I say, our boat upon that horrible canal. There was
Leo lying at the bottom asleep in it, with a coat thrown over him
to keep off the mosquitoes, in such a fashion as to hide his
face, and myself, Job, and Mahomed towing on the bank.

I started back, aghast, and cried out that it was magic, for I
recognised the whole scene—it was one which had actually
occurred.

“Nay, nay; oh Holly,” she answered, “it is no magic, that is a
fiction of ignorance. There is no such thing as magic, though
there is such a thing as a knowledge of the secrets of Nature.
That water is my glass; in it I see what passes if I will to
summon up the pictures, which is not often. Therein I can show
thee what thou wilt of the past, if it be anything that hath to
do with this country and with what I have known, or anything that
thou, the gazer, hast known. Think of a face if thou wilt, and it
shall be reflected from thy mind upon the water. I know not all
the secret yet—I can read nothing in the future. But it is an old
secret; I did not find it. In Arabia and in Egypt the sorcerers
knew it centuries gone. So one day I chanced to bethink me of
that old canal—some twenty ages since I sailed upon it, and I was
minded to look thereon again. So I looked, and there I saw the
boat and three men walking, and one, whose face I could not see,
but a youth of noble form, sleeping in the boat, and so I sent
and saved ye. And now farewell. But stay, tell me of this
youth—the Lion, as the old man calls him. I would look upon him,
but he is sick, thou sayest—sick with the fever, and also wounded
in the fray.”

“He is very sick,” I answered sadly; “canst thou do nothing for
him, oh Queen! who knowest so much?”

“Of a surety I can. I can cure him; but why speakest thou so
sadly? Dost thou love the youth? Is he perchance thy son?”

“He is my adopted son, oh Queen! Shall he be brought in before
thee?”

“Nay. How long hath the fever taken him?”

“This is the third day.”

“Good; then let him lie another day. Then will he perchance throw
it off by his own strength, and that is better than that I should
cure him, for my medicine is of a sort to shake the life in its
very citadel. If, however, by to-morrow night, at that hour when
the fever first took him, he doth not begin to mend, then will I
come to him and cure him. Stay, who nurses him?”

“Our white servant, him whom Billali names the Pig; also,” and
here I spoke with some little hesitation, “a woman named Ustane,
a very handsome woman of this country, who came and embraced him
when she first saw him, and hath stayed by him ever since, as I
understand is the fashion of thy people, oh Queen.”

“My people! speak not to me of my people,” she answered hastily;
“these slaves are no people of mine, they are but dogs to do my
bidding till the day of my deliverance comes; and, as for their
customs, naught have I to do with them. Also, call me not Queen—I
am weary of flattery and titles—call me Ayesha, the name hath a
sweet sound in mine ears, it is an echo from the past. As for
this Ustane, I know not. I wonder if it be she against whom I was
warned, and whom I in turn did warn? Hath she—stay, I will see;”
and, bending forward, she passed her hand over the font of water
and gazed intently into it. “See,” she said quietly, “is that the
woman?”

I looked into the water, and there, mirrored upon its placid
surface, was the silhouette of Ustane’s stately face. She was
bending forward, with a look of infinite tenderness upon her
features, watching something beneath her, and with her chestnut
locks falling on to her right shoulder.

“It is she,” I said, in a low voice, for once more I felt much
disturbed at this most uncommon sight. “She watches Leo asleep.”

“Leo!” said Ayesha, in an absent voice; “why, that is ‘lion’ in
the Latin tongue. The old man hath named happily for once. It is
very strange,” she went on, speaking to herself, “very. So
like—but it is not possible!” With an impatient gesture she
passed her hand over the water once more. It darkened, and the
image vanished silently and mysteriously as it had risen, and
once more the lamplight, and the lamplight only, shone on the
placid surface of that limpid, living mirror.

“Hast thou aught to ask me before thou goest, oh Holly?” she
said, after a few moments’ reflection. “It is but a rude life
that thou must live here, for these people are savages, and know
not the ways of cultivated man. Not that I am troubled thereby,
for behold my food,” and she pointed to the fruit upon the little
table. “Naught but fruit doth ever pass my lips—fruit and cakes
of flour, and a little water. I have bidden my girls to wait upon
thee. They are mutes, thou knowest, deaf are they and dumb, and
therefore the safest of servants, save to those who can read
their faces and their signs. I bred them so—it hath taken many
centuries and much trouble; but at last I have triumphed. Once I
succeeded before, but the race was too ugly, so I let it die
away; but now, as thou seest, they are otherwise. Once, too, I
reared a race of giants, but after a while Nature would no more
of it, and it died away. Hast thou aught to ask of me?”

“Ay, one thing, oh Ayesha,” I said boldly; but feeling by no
means as bold as I trust I looked. “I would gaze upon thy face.”

She laughed out in her bell-like notes. “Bethink thee, Holly,”
she answered; “bethink thee. It seems that thou knowest the old
myths of the gods of Greece. Was there not one Actæon who
perished miserably because he looked on too much beauty? If I
show thee my face, perchance thou wouldst perish miserably also;
perchance thou wouldst eat out thy heart in impotent desire; for
know I am not for thee—I am for no man, save one, who hath been,
but is not yet.”

“As thou wilt, Ayesha,” I said. “I fear not thy beauty. I have
put my heart away from such vanity as woman’s loveliness, that
passeth like a flower.”

“Nay, thou errest,” she said; “that does _not_ pass. My beauty
endures even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have
thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the
Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou
wilt not. Never may the man to whom my beauty has been unveiled
put it from his mind, and therefore even with these savages do I
go veiled, lest they vex me, and I should slay them. Say, wilt
thou see?”

“I will,” I answered, my curiosity overpowering me.

She lifted her white and rounded arms—never had I seen such arms
before—and slowly, very slowly, withdrew some fastening beneath
her hair. Then all of a sudden the long, corpse-like wrappings
fell from her to the ground, and my eyes travelled up her form,
now only robed in a garb of clinging white that did but serve to
show its perfect and imperial shape, instinct with a life that
was more than life, and with a certain serpent-like grace that
was more than human. On her little feet were sandals, fastened
with studs of gold. Then came ankles more perfect than ever
sculptor dreamed of. About the waist her white kirtle was
fastened by a double-headed snake of solid gold, above which her
gracious form swelled up in lines as pure as they were lovely,
till the kirtle ended on the snowy argent of her breast, whereon
her arms were folded. I gazed above them at her face, and—I do
not exaggerate—shrank back blinded and amazed. I have heard of
the beauty of celestial beings, now I saw it; only this beauty,
with all its awful loveliness and purity, was _evil_—at least, at
the time, it struck me as evil. How am I to describe it? I
cannot—simply I cannot! The man does not live whose pen could
convey a sense of what I saw. I might talk of the great changing
eyes of deepest, softest black, of the tinted face, of the broad
and noble brow, on which the hair grew low, and delicate,
straight features. But, beautiful, surpassingly beautiful as they
all were, her loveliness did not lie in them. It lay rather, if
it can be said to have had any fixed abiding place, in a visible
majesty, in an imperial grace, in a godlike stamp of softened
power, which shone upon that radiant countenance like a living
halo. Never before had I guessed what beauty made sublime could
be—and yet, the sublimity was a dark one—the glory was not all of
heaven—though none the less was it glorious. Though the face
before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than
thirty years, in perfect health, and the first flush of ripened
beauty, yet it had stamped upon it a look of unutterable
experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not
even the lovely smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth
could hide this shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the
light of the glorious eyes, it was present in the air of majesty,
and it seemed to say: “Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is,
undying and half-divine; memory haunts me from age to age, and
passion leads me by the hand—evil have I done, and from age to
age evil I shall do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption
comes.”

Drawn by some magnetic force which I could not resist, I let my
eyes rest upon her shining orbs, and felt a current pass from
them to me that bewildered and half-blinded me.

She laughed—ah, how musically! and nodded her little head at me
with an air of sublimated coquetry that would have done credit to
a Venus Victrix.

“Rash man!” she said; “like Actæon, thou hast had thy will; be
careful lest, like Actæon, thou too dost perish miserably, torn
to pieces by the ban-hounds of thine own passions. I too, oh
Holly, am a virgin goddess, not to be moved of any man, save one,
and it is not thou. Say, hast thou seen enough!”

“I have looked on beauty, and I am blinded,” I said hoarsely,
lifting my hand to cover up my eyes.

“So! what did I tell thee? Beauty is like the lightning; it is
lovely, but it destroys—especially trees, oh Holly!” and again
she nodded and laughed.

Suddenly she paused, and through my fingers I saw an awful change
come over her countenance. Her great eyes suddenly fixed
themselves into an expression in which horror seemed to struggle
with some tremendous hope arising through the depths of her dark
soul. The lovely face grew rigid, and the gracious willowy form
seemed to erect itself.

“Man,” she half whispered, half hissed, throwing back her head
like a snake about to strike—“Man, whence hadst thou that scarab
on thy hand? Speak, or by the Spirit of Life I will blast thee
where thou standest!” and she took one light step towards me, and
from her eyes there shone such an awful light—to me it seemed
almost like a flame—that I fell, then and there, on the ground
before her, babbling confusedly in my terror.

“Peace,” she said, with a sudden change of manner, and speaking
in her former soft voice. “I did affright thee! Forgive me! But
at times, oh Holly, the almost infinite mind grows impatient of
the slowness of the very finite, and am I tempted to use my power
out of vexation—very nearly wast thou dead, but I remembered——.
But the scarab—about the scarabæus!”

“I picked it up,” I gurgled feebly, as I got on to my feet again,
and it is a solemn fact that my mind was so disturbed that at the
moment I could remember nothing else about the ring except that I
had picked it up in Leo’s cave.

“It is very strange,” she said with a sudden access of womanlike
trembling and agitation which seemed out of place in this awful
woman—“but once I knew a scarab like to that. It—hung round the
neck—of one I loved,” and she gave a little sob, and I saw that
after all she was only a woman, although she might be a very old
one.

“There,” she went on, “it must be one like to it, and yet never did I see one like to it, for thereto hung a history, and he who wore it prized it much.[3] But the scarab that I knew was not set thus in the bezel of a ring. Go now, Holly, go, and, if thou canst, try to forget that thou hast of thy folly looked upon Ayesha’s beauty,” and, turning from me, she flung herself on her couch, and buried her face in the cushions.

[3] I am informed by a renowned and learned Egyptologist, to whom I have submitted this very interesting and beautifully finished scarab, “Suten se Ra,” that he has never seen one resembling it. Although it bears a title frequently given to Egyptian royalty, he is of opinion that it is not necessarily the cartouche of a Pharaoh, on which either the throne or personal name of the monarch is generally inscribed. What the history of this particular scarab may have been we can now, unfortunately, never know, but I have little doubt but that it played some part in the tragic story of the Princess Amenartas and her lover Kallikrates, the forsworn priest of Isis.—Editor.

As for me, I stumbled from her presence, and I do not remember
how I reached my own cave.