Chapter XX: Triumph

Then followed a moment of the most painful silence that I ever
endured. It was broken by Ayesha, who addressed herself to Leo.

“Nay, now, my lord and guest,” she said in her softest tones,
which yet had the ring of steel about them, “look not so bashful.
Surely the sight was a pretty one—the leopard and the lion!”

“Oh, hang it all!” said Leo in English.

“And thou, Ustane,” she went on, “surely I should have passed
thee by, had not the light fallen on the white across thy hair,”
and she pointed to the bright edge of the rising moon which was
now appearing above the horizon. “Well! well! the dance is
done—see, the tapers have burnt down, and all things end in
silence and in ashes. So thou thoughtest it a fit time for love,
Ustane, my servant—and I, dreaming not that I could be disobeyed,
thought thee already far away.”

“Play not with me,” moaned the wretched woman; “slay me, and let
there be an end.”

“Nay, why? It is not well to go so swift from the hot lips of
love down to the cold mouth of the grave,” and she made a motion
to the mutes, who instantly stepped up and caught the girl by
either arm. With an oath Leo sprang upon the nearest, and hurled
him to the ground, and then stood over him with his face set, and
his fist ready.

Again Ayesha laughed. “It was well thrown, my guest; thou hast a
strong arm for one who so late was sick. But now out of thy
courtesy I pray thee let that man live and do my bidding. He
shall not harm the girl; the night air grows chill, and I would
welcome her in mine own place. Surely she whom thou dost favour
shall be favoured of me also.”

I took Leo by the arm, and pulled him from the prostrate mute,
and he, half bewildered, obeyed the pressure. Then we all set out
for the cave across the plateau, where a pile of white human
ashes was all that remained of the fire that had lit the dancing,
for the dancers had vanished.

In due course we gained Ayesha’s boudoir—all too soon, it seemed
to me, having a sad presage of what was to come lying heavy on my
heart.

Ayesha seated herself upon her cushions, and, having dismissed
Job and Billali, by signs bade the mutes tend the lamps and
retire—all save one girl, who was her favourite personal
attendant. We three remained standing, the unfortunate Ustane a
little to the left of the rest of us.

“Now, oh Holly,” Ayesha began, “how came it that thou who didst
hear my words bidding this evil-doer”—and she pointed to
Ustane—“to go hence—thou at whose prayer I did weakly spare her
life—how came it, I say, that thou wast a sharer in what I saw
to-night? Answer, and for thine own sake, I say, speak all the
truth, for I am not minded to hear lies upon this matter!”

“It was by accident, oh Queen,” I answered. “I knew naught of
it.”

“I do believe thee, oh Holly,” she answered coldly, “and well it
is for thee that I do—then does the whole guilt rest upon her.”

“I do not find any guilt therein,” broke in Leo. “She is not
another man’s wife, and it appears that she has married me
according to the custom of this awful place, so who is the worse?
Any way, madam,” he went on, “whatever she has done I have done
too, so if she is to be punished let me be punished also; and I
tell thee,” he went on, working himself up into a fury, “that if
thou biddest one of those deaf and dumb villains to touch her
again I will tear him to pieces!” And he looked as though he
meant it.

Ayesha listened in icy silence, and made no remark. When he had
finished, however, she addressed Ustane.

“Hast thou aught to say, woman? Thou silly straw, thou feather,
who didst think to float towards thy passion’s petty ends, even
against the great wind of my will! Tell me, for I fain would
understand. Why didst thou this thing?”

And then I think I saw the most tremendous exhibition of moral
courage and intrepidity that it is possible to conceive. For the
poor doomed girl, knowing what she had to expect at the hands of
her terrible Queen, knowing, too, from bitter experience, how
great was her adversary’s power, yet gathered herself together,
and out of the very depths of her despair drew materials to defy
her.

“I did it, oh _She_,” she answered, drawing herself up to the
full of her stately height, and throwing back the panther skin
from her head, “because my love is stronger than the grave. I did
it because my life without this man whom my heart chose would be
but a living death. Therefore did I risk my life, and, now that I
know that it is forfeit to thine anger, yet am I glad that I did
risk it, and pay it away in the risking, ay, because he embraced
me once, and told me that he loved me yet.”

Here Ayesha half rose from her couch, and then sank down again.

“I have no magic,” went on Ustane, her rich voice ringing strong
and full, “and I am not a Queen, nor do I live for ever, but a
woman’s heart is heavy to sink through waters, however deep, oh
Queen! and a woman’s eyes are quick to see—even through thy veil,
oh Queen!

“Listen: I know it, thou dost love this man thyself, and
therefore wouldst thou destroy me who stand across thy path. Ay,
I die—I die, and go into the darkness, nor know I whither I go.
But this I know. There is a light shining in my breast, and by
that light, as by a lamp, I see the truth, and the future that I
shall not share unroll itself before me like a scroll. When first
I knew my lord,” and she pointed to Leo, “I knew also that death
would be the bridal gift he gave me—it rushed upon me of a
sudden, but I turned not back, being ready to pay the price, and,
behold, death is here! And now, even as I knew that, so do I,
standing on the steps of doom, know that thou shalt not reap the
profit of thy crime. Mine he is, and, though thy beauty shine
like a sun among the stars, mine shall he remain for thee. Never
here in this life shall he look thee in the eyes and call thee
spouse. Thou too art doomed, I see”—and her voice rang like the
cry of an inspired prophetess; “ah, I see——”

Then came an answering cry of mingled rage and terror. I turned
my head. Ayesha had risen, and was standing with her outstretched
hand pointing at Ustane, who had suddenly stopped speaking. I
gazed at the poor woman, and as I gazed there came upon her face
that same woeful, fixed expression of terror that I had seen once
before when she had broken out into her wild chant. Her eyes grew
large, her nostrils dilated, and her lips blanched.

Ayesha said nothing, she made no sound, she only drew herself up,
stretched out her arm, and, her tall veiled frame quivering like
an aspen leaf, appeared to look fixedly at her victim. Even as
she did so Ustane put her hands to her head, uttered one piercing
scream, turned round twice, and then fell backwards with a
thud—prone upon the floor. Both Leo and myself rushed to her—she
was stone dead—blasted into death by some mysterious electric
agency or overwhelming will-force whereof the dread _She_ had
command.

For a moment Leo did not quite realise what had happened. But,
when he did, his face was awful to see. With a savage oath he
rose from beside the corpse, and, turning, literally sprang at
Ayesha. But she was watching, and, seeing him come, stretched out
her hand again, and he went staggering back towards me, and would
have fallen, had I not caught him. Afterwards he told me that he
felt as though he had suddenly received a violent blow in the
chest, and, what is more, utterly cowed, as if all the manhood
had been taken out of him.

Then Ayesha spoke. “Forgive me, my guest,” she said softly,
addressing him, “if I have shocked thee with my justice.”

“Forgive thee, thou fiend,” roared poor Leo, wringing his hands
in his rage and grief. “Forgive thee, thou murderess! By Heaven,
I will kill thee if I can!”

“Nay, nay,” she answered in the same soft voice, “thou dost not
understand—the time has come for thee to learn. _Thou_ art my
love, my Kallikrates, my Beautiful, my Strong! For two thousand
years, Kallikrates, have I waited for _thee_, and now at length
thou hast come back to me; and as for this woman,” pointing to
the corpse, “she stood between me and thee, and therefore have I
laid her in the dust, Kallikrates.”

“It is an accursed lie!” said Leo. “My name is not Kallikrates! I
am Leo Vincey; my ancestor was Kallikrates—at least, I believe he
was.”

“Ah, thou sayest it—thine ancestor was Kallikrates, and thou,
even thou, art Kallikrates reborn, come back—and mine own dear
lord!”

“I am not Kallikrates, and, as for being thy lord, or having
aught to do with thee, I had sooner be the lord of a fiend from
hell, for she would be better than thou.”

“Sayest thou so—sayest thou so, Kallikrates? Nay, but thou hast
not seen me for so long a time that no memory remains. Yet am I
very fair, Kallikrates!”

“I hate thee, murderess, and I have no wish to see thee. What is
it to me how fair thou art? I hate thee, I say.”

“Yet within a very little space shalt thou creep to my knee, and
swear that thou dost love me,” answered Ayesha, with a sweet,
mocking laugh. “Come, there is no time like the present time,
here before this dead girl who loved thee, let us put it to the
proof.

“Look now on me, Kallikrates!” and with a sudden motion she shook
her gauzy covering from her, and stood forth in her low kirtle
and her snaky zone, in her glorious radiant beauty and her
imperial grace, rising from her wrappings, as it were, like Venus
from the wave, or Galatea from her marble, or a beatified spirit
from the tomb. She stood forth, and fixed her deep and glowing
eyes upon Leo’s eyes, and I saw his clenched fists unclasp, and
his set and quivering features relax beneath her gaze. I saw his
wonder and astonishment grow into admiration, and then into
fascination, and the more he struggled the more I saw the power
of her dread beauty fasten on him and take possession of his
senses, drugging them, and drawing the heart out of him. Did I
not know the process? Had not I, who was twice his age, gone
through it myself? Was I not going through it afresh even then,
although her sweet and passionate gaze was not for me? Yes, alas,
I was! Alas, that I should have to confess that at that very
moment I was rent by mad and furious jealousy. I could have flown
at him, shame upon me! The woman had confounded and almost
destroyed my moral sense, as she was bound to confound all who
looked upon her superhuman loveliness. But—I do not quite know
how—I got the better of myself, and once more turned to see the
climax of the tragedy.

“Oh, great Heaven!” gasped Leo, “art thou a woman?”

“A woman in truth—in very truth—and thine own spouse,
Kallikrates!” she answered, stretching out her rounded ivory arms
towards him, and smiling, ah, so sweetly!

He looked and looked, and slowly I perceived that he was drawing
nearer to her. Suddenly his eye fell upon the corpse of poor
Ustane, and he shuddered and stopped.

“How can I?” he said hoarsely. “Thou art a murderess; she loved
me.”

Observe, he was already forgetting that he had loved her.

“It is naught,” she murmured, and her voice sounded sweet as the
night-wind passing through the trees. “It is naught at all. If I
have sinned, let my beauty answer for my sin. If I have sinned,
it is for love of thee: let my sin, therefore, be put away and
forgotten;” and once more she stretched out her arms and
whispered “_Come_,” and then in another few seconds it was all
over.

I saw him struggle—I saw him even turn to fly; but her eyes drew
him more strongly than iron bonds, and the magic of her beauty
and concentrated will and passion entered into him and
overpowered him—ay, even there, in the presence of the body of
the woman who had loved him well enough to die for him. It sounds
horrible and wicked enough, but he should not be too greatly
blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out. The temptress who
drew him into evil was more than human, and her beauty was
greater than the loveliness of the daughters of men.

I looked up again and now her perfect form lay in his arms, and
her lips were pressed against his own; and thus, with the corpse
of his dead love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to
her red-handed murderess—plight it for ever and a day. For those
who sell themselves into a like dominion, paying down the price
of their own honour, and throwing their soul into the balance to
sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no
deliverance here or hereafter. As they have sown, so shall they
reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have
withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares,
garnered in satiety.

Suddenly, with a snake-like motion, she seemed to slip from his
embrace, and then again broke out into her low laugh of
triumphant mockery.

“Did I not tell thee that within a little space thou wouldst
creep to my knee, oh Kallikrates? And surely the space has not
been a great one!”

Leo groaned in shame and misery; for though he was overcome and
stricken down, he was not so lost as to be unaware of the depth
of the degradation to which he had sunk. On the contrary, his
better nature rose up in arms against his fallen self, as I saw
clearly enough later on.

Ayesha laughed again, and then quickly veiled herself, and made a
sign to the girl mute, who had been watching the whole scene with
curious startled eyes. The girl left, and presently returned,
followed by two male mutes, to whom the Queen made another sign.
Thereon they all three seized the body of poor Ustane by the
arms, and dragged it heavily down the cavern and away through the
curtains at the end. Leo watched it for a little while, and then
covered his eyes with his hand, and it too, to my excited fancy,
seemed to watch us as it went.

“There passes the dead past,” said Ayesha, solemnly, as the curtains shook and fell back into their places, when the ghastly procession had vanished behind them. And then, with one of those extraordinary transitions of which I have already spoken, she again threw off her veil, and broke out, after the ancient and poetic fashion of the dwellers in Arabia,[1] into a pæan of triumph or epithalamium, which, wild and beautiful as it was, is exceedingly difficult to render into English, and ought by rights to be sung to the music of a cantata, rather than written and read. It was divided into two parts—one descriptive or definitive, and the other personal; and, as nearly as I can remember, ran as follows:—

[1] Among the ancient Arabians the power of poetic declamation, either in verse or prose, was held in the highest honour and esteem, and he who excelled in it was known as “Khâteb,” or Orator. Every year a general assembly was held at which the rival poets repeated their compositions, when those poems which were judged to be the best were, so soon as the knowledge and the art of writing became general, inscribed on silk in letters of gold, and publicly exhibited, being known as “Al Modhahabât,” or golden verses. In the poem given above by Mr. Holly, Ayesha evidently followed the traditional poetic manner of her people, which was to embody their thoughts in a series of somewhat disconnected sentences, each remarkable for its beauty and the grace of its expression. —Editor.

Love is like a flower in the desert.

It is like the aloe of Arabia that blooms but once and dies; it
blooms in the salt emptiness of Life, and the brightness of its
beauty is set upon the waste as a star is set upon a storm.

It hath the sun above that is the Spirit, and above it blows the
air of its divinity.

At the echoing of a step, Love blooms, I say; I say Love blooms,
and bends her beauty down to him who passeth by.

He plucketh it, yea, he plucketh the red cup that is full of
honey, and beareth it away; away across the desert, away till the
flower be withered, away till the desert be done.

There is only one perfect flower in the wilderness of Life.

That flower is Love!

There is only one fixed star in the midsts of our wandering.

That star is Love!

There is only one hope in our despairing night.

That hope is Love!

All else is false. All else is shadow moving upon water. All else
is wind and vanity.

Who shall say what is the weight or the measure of Love?

It is born of the flesh, it dwelleth in the spirit. From each
doth it draw its comfort.

For beauty it is as a star.

Many are its shapes, but all are beautiful, and none know where
the star rose, or the horizon where it shall set.

Then, turning to Leo, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, she
went on in a fuller and more triumphant tone, speaking in
balanced sentences that gradually grew and swelled from idealised
prose into pure and majestic verse:—

Long have I loved thee, oh, my love; yet has my love not
lessened.

Long have I waited for thee, and behold my reward is at hand—is
here!

Far away I saw thee once, and thou wast taken from me.

Then in a grave sowed I the seed of patience, and shone upon it
with the sun of hope, and watered it with tears of repentance,
and breathed on it with the breath of my knowledge. And now, lo!
it hath sprung up, and borne fruit. Lo! out of the grave hath it
sprung. Yea, from among the dry bones and ashes of the dead.

I have waited and my reward is with me.

I have overcome Death, and Death brought back to me him that was
dead.

Therefore do I rejoice, for fair is the future.

Green are the paths that we shall tread across the everlasting
meadows.

The hour is at hand. Night hath fled away into the valleys.

The dawn kisseth the mountain tops.

Soft shall we live, my love, and easy shall we go.

Crowned shall we be with the diadem of Kings.

Worshipping and wonder struck all peoples of the world, Blinded
shall fall before our beauty and might.

From time unto times shall our greatness thunder on, Rolling like
a chariot through the dust of endless days.

Laughing shall we speed in our victory and pomp, Laughing like
the Daylight as he leaps along the hills.

Onward, still triumphant to a triumph ever new!

Onward, in our power to a power unattained!

Onward, never weary, clad with splendour for a robe!

Till accomplished be our fate, and the night is rushing down.

She paused in her strange and most thrilling allegorical chant,
of which I am, unfortunately, only able to give the burden, and
that feebly enough, and then said—

“Perchance thou dost not believe my word, Kallikrates—perchance
thou thinkest that I do delude thee, and that I have not lived
these many years, and that thou hast not been born again to me.
Nay, look not so—put away that pale cast of doubt, for oh be sure
herein can error find no foothold! Sooner shall the suns forget
their course and the swallow miss her nest, than my soul shall
swear a lie and be led astray from thee, Kallikrates. Blind me,
take away mine eyes, and let the darkness utterly fence me in,
and still mine ears would catch the tone of thy unforgotten
voice, striking more loud against the portals of my sense than
can the call of brazen-throated clarions:—stop up mine hearing
also, and let a thousand touch me on the brow, and I would name
thee out of all:—yea, rob me of every sense, and see me stand
deaf and blind, and dumb, and with nerves that cannot weigh the
value of a touch, yet would my spirit leap within me like a
quickening child and cry unto my heart, behold Kallikrates!
behold, thou watcher, the watches of thy night are ended! behold
thou who seekest in the night season, thy morning Star ariseth.”

She paused awhile and then continued, “But stay, if thy heart is
yet hardened against the mighty truth and thou dost require a
further pledge of that which thou dost find too deep to
understand, even now shall it be given to thee, and to thee also,
oh my Holly. Bear each one of you a lamp, and follow after me
whither I shall lead you.”

Without stopping to think—indeed, speaking for myself, I had
almost abandoned the function in circumstances under which to
think seemed to be absolutely useless, since thought fell hourly
helpless against a black wall of wonder—we took the lamps and
followed her. Going to the end of her “boudoir,” she raised a
curtain and revealed a little stair of the sort that is so common
in these dim caves of Kôr. As we hurried down the stair I
observed that the steps were worn in the centre to such an extent
that some of them had been reduced from seven and a half inches,
at which I guessed their original height, to about three and a
half. Now, all the other steps that I had seen in the caves were
practically unworn, as was to be expected, seeing that the only
traffic which ever passed upon them was that of those who bore a
fresh burden to the tomb. Therefore this fact struck my notice
with that curious force with which little things do strike us
when our minds are absolutely overwhelmed by a sudden rush of
powerful sensations; beaten flat, as it were, like a sea beneath
the first burst of a hurricane, so that every little object on
the surface starts into an unnatural prominence.

At the bottom of the staircase I stood and stared at the worn
steps, and Ayesha, turning, saw me.

“Wonderest thou whose are the feet that have worn away the rock,
my Holly?” she asked. “They are mine—even mine own light feet! I
can remember when those stairs were fresh and level, but for two
thousand years and more have I gone down hither day by day, and
see, my sandals have worn out the solid rock!”

I made no answer, but I do not think that anything that I had
heard or seen brought home to my limited understanding so clear a
sense of this being’s overwhelming antiquity as that hard rock
hollowed out by her soft white feet. How many hundreds of
thousands of times must she have passed up and down that stair to
bring about such a result?

The stair led to a tunnel, and a few paces down the tunnel was
one of the usual curtain-hung doorways, a glance at which told me
that it was the same where I had been a witness of that terrible
scene by the leaping flame. I recognised the pattern of the
curtain, and the sight of it brought the whole event vividly
before my eyes, and made me tremble even at its memory. Ayesha
entered the tomb (for it was a tomb), and we followed her—I, for
one, rejoicing that the mystery of the place was about to be
cleared up, and yet afraid to face its solution.