She by H. Rider Haggard (read an ebook week .TXT) 📖

     [*] After some months of consideration of this statement I
     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.

XXII
JOB 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