She by H. Rider Haggard (english books to improve english .txt) 📕
"I know that you are rich, and have had a fancy to come to College long after the age that most men leave it. I know that you have been married, and that your wife died; and that you have been the best, indeed almost the only friend I ever had."
"Did you know that I have a son?"
"No."
"I have. He is five years old. He cost me his mother's life, and I have never been able to bear to look upon his face in consequence. Holly, if you will accept the trust, I am going to leave you that boy's sole guardian."
I sprang almost out of my chair. "Me!" I said.
"Yes, you. I have not studied you for two years for nothing. I have known for some time that I could not last, and since I realised the fact I have been searching for some one to whom I could confide
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“What am I to do, old fellow?” he groaned, resting his head against my shoulder in the extremity of his grief. “I let her be killed—not that I could help that, but within five minutes I was kissing her murderess over her body. I am a degraded brute, but I cannot resist that” (and here his voice sank)—“that awful sorceress. I know I shall do it again to-morrow; I know that I am in her power for always; if I never saw her again I should never think of anybody else during all my life; I must follow her as a needle follows a magnet; I would not go away now if I could; I could not leave her, my legs would not carry me, but my mind is still clear enough, and in my mind I hate her—at least, I think so. It is all so horrible; and that—that body! What can I make of it? It was I! I am sold into bondage, old fellow, and she will take my soul as the price of herself!”
Then, for the first time, I told him that I was in a but very little better position; and I am bound to say that, notwithstanding his own infatuation, he had the decency to sympathise with me. Perhaps he did not think it worth while being jealous, realising that he had no cause so far as the lady was concerned. I went on to suggest that we should try to run away, but we soon rejected the project as futile, and, to be perfectly honest, I do not believe that either of us would really have left Ayesha even if some superior power had suddenly offered to convey us from these gloomy caves and set us down in Cambridge. We could no more have left her than a moth can leave the light that destroys it. We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.
No man who once had seen She unveiled, and heard the music of her voice, and drunk in the bitter wisdom of her words, would willingly give up the sight for a whole sea of placid joys. How much more, then, was this likely to be so when, as in Leo’s case, to put myself out of the question, this extraordinary creature declared her utter and absolute devotion, and gave what appeared to be proofs of its having lasted for some two thousand years?
No doubt she was a wicked person, and no doubt she had murdered Ustane when she stood in her path, but then she was very faithful, and by a law of nature man is apt to think but lightly of a woman’s crimes, especially if that woman be beautiful, and the crime be committed for the love of him.
And then, for the rest, when had such a chance ever come to a man before as that which now lay in Leo’s hand? True, in uniting himself to this dread woman, he would place his life under the influence of a mysterious creature of evil tendencies,[*] but then that would be likely enough to happen to him in any ordinary marriage. On the other hand, however, no ordinary marriage could bring him such awful beauty—for awful is the only word that can describe it—such divine devotion, such wisdom, and command over the secrets of nature, and the place and power that they must win, or, lastly, the royal crown of unending youth, if indeed she could give that. No, on the whole, it is not wonderful that, though Leo was plunged in bitter shame and grief, such as any gentleman would have felt under the circumstances, he was not ready to entertain the idea of running away from his extraordinary fortune.
am bound to confess that I am not quite satisfied of its
truth. It is perfectly true that Ayesha committed a murder,
but I shrewdly suspect that, were we endowed with the same
absolute power, and if we had the same tremendous interest
at stake, we would be very apt to do likewise under parallel
circumstances. Also, it must be remembered that she looked
on it as an execution for disobedience under a system which
made the slightest disobedience punishable by death. Putting
aside this question of the murder, her evil-doing resolves
itself into the expression of views and the acknowledgment
of motives which are contrary to our preaching if not to our
practice. Now at first sight this might be fairly taken as a
proof of an evil nature, but when we come to consider the
great antiquity of the individual it becomes doubtful if it
was anything more than the natural cynicism which arises
from age and bitter experience, and the possession of
extraordinary powers of observation. It is a well known fact
that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the
question, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we
get; indeed many of us are only saved by timely death from
utter moral petrifaction if not moral corruption. No one
will deny that a young man is on the average better than an
old one, for he is without that experience of the order of
things that in certain thoughtful dispositions can hardly
fail to produce cynicism, and that disregard of acknowledged
methods and established custom which we call evil. Now the
oldest man upon the earth was but a babe compared to Ayesha,
and the wisest man upon the earth was not one-third as wise.
And the fruit of her wisdom was this, that there was but one
thing worth living for, and that was Love in its highest
sense, and to gain that good thing she was not prepared to
stop at trifles. This is really the sum of her evil doings,
and it must be remembered, on the other hand, that, whatever
may be thought of them, she had some virtues developed to a
degree very uncommon in either sex—constancy, for
instance.—L. H. H.
My own opinion is that he would have been mad if he had done so. But then I confess that my statement on the matter must be accepted with qualifications. I am in love with Ayesha myself to this day, and I would rather have been the object of her affection for one short week than that of any other woman in the world for a whole lifetime. And let me add that, if anybody who doubts this statement, and thinks me foolish for making it, could have seen Ayesha draw her veil and flash out in beauty on his gaze, his view would exactly coincide with my own. Of course, I am speaking of any man. We never had the advantage of a lady’s opinion of Ayesha, but I think it quite possible that she would have regarded the Queen with dislike, would have expressed her disapproval in some more or less pointed manner, and ultimately have got herself blasted.
For two hours or more Leo and I sat with shaken nerves and frightened eyes, and talked over the miraculous events through which we were passing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of the solemn, sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd was not only true, but that we should live to verify its truth, and that we two seekers should find her who was sought, patiently awaiting our coming in the tombs of Kôr? Who would have thought that in the person of Leo this mysterious woman should, as she believed, discover the being whom she awaited from century to century, and whose former earthly habitation she had till this very night preserved? But so it was. In the face of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoning men any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore at last, with humble hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the insolence of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it has no experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in the hands of that watching Providence which had thus chosen to allow us to draw the veil of human ignorance, and reveal to us for good or evil some glimpse of the possibilities of life.
XXIIJOB HAS A PRESENTIMENT
It was nine o’clock on the following morning when Job, who still looked scared and frightened, came in to call me, and at the same time breathe his gratitude at finding us alive in our beds, which it appeared was more than he had expected. When I told him of the awful end of poor Ustane he was even more grateful at our survival, and much shocked, though Ustane had been no favourite of his, or he of hers, for the matter of that. She called him “pig” in bastard Arabic, and he called her “hussy” in good English, but these amenities were forgotten in the face of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her at the hands of her Queen.
“I don’t want to say anything as mayn’t be agreeable, sir,” said Job, when he had finished exclaiming at my tale, “but it’s my opinion that that there She is the old gentleman himself, or perhaps his wife, if he has one, which I suppose he has, for he couldn’t be so wicked all by himself. The Witch of Endor was a fool to her, sir: bless you, she would make no more of raising every gentleman in the Bible out of these here beastly tombs than I should of growing cress on an old flannel. It’s a country of devils, this is, sir, and she’s the master one of the lot; and if ever we get out of it it will be more than I expect to do. I don’t see no way out of it. That witch isn’t likely to let a fine young man like Mr. Leo go.”
“Come,” I said, “at any rate she saved his life.”
“Yes, and she’ll take his soul to pay for it. She’ll make him a witch, like herself. I say it’s wicked to have anything to do with those sort of people. Last night, sir, I lay awake and read in my little Bible that my poor old mother gave me about what is going to happen to sorceresses and them sort, till my hair stood on end. Lord, how the old lady would stare if she saw where her Job had got to!”
“Yes, it’s a queer country, and a queer people too, Job,” I answered, with a sigh, for, though I am not superstitious like Job, I admit to a natural shrinking (which will not bear investigation) from the things that are above Nature.
“You are right, sir,” he answered, “and if you won’t think me very foolish, I should like to say something to you now that Mr. Leo is out of the way”—(Leo had got up early and gone for a stroll)—“and that is that I know it is the last country as ever I shall see in this world. I had a dream last night, and I dreamed that I saw my old father with a kind of night-shirt on him, something like these folks wear when they want to be in particular full-dress, and a bit of that feathery grass in his hand, which he may have gathered on the way, for I saw lots of it yesterday about three hundred yards from the mouth of this beastly cave.
“’Job,’ he said to me, solemn like, and yet with a kind of satisfaction shining through him, more like a Methody parson when he has sold a neighbour a marked horse for a sound one and cleared twenty pounds by
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