Ayesha, H. Rider Haggard [top 10 books to read TXT] 📗

this eye there poured that blistering and intolerable light. It was shut round by thick, funnel-shaped screens of a material that looked like fire-brick, yet it pierced them as though they were but muslin. More, the rays thus directed upwards struck full upon a lump of metal held in place above them by a massive frame-work.

And what rays they were! If all the cut diamonds of the world were brought together and set beneath a mighty burning-glass, the light flashed from them would not have been a thousandth part so brilliant. They scorched my eyes and caused the skin of my face and limbs to smart, yet Ayesha stood there unshielded from them. Aye, she even went down the length of the room and, throwing back her veil, bent over them, as it seemed a woman of molten steel in whose body the bones were visible, and examined the mass that was supported by the hanging cradle.

“It is ready and somewhat sooner than I thought,” she said. Then as though it were but a feather weight, she lifted the lump in her bare hands and glided back with it to where we stood, laughing and saying—“Tell me now, O thou well-read Holly, if thou hast ever heard of a better alchemist than this poor priestess of a forgotten faith?” And she thrust the glowing substance up almost to the mask that hid my face.

Then I turned and ran, or rather waddled, for in that gear I could not run, out of the chamber until the rock wall beyond stayed me, and there, with my back towards her, thrust my helmeted head against it, for I felt as though red-hot bradawls had been plunged into my eyes. So I stood while she laughed and mocked behind me until at length I heard the door close and the blessed darkness came like a gift from Heaven.

Then Ayesha began to loose Leo from his ray-proof armour, if so it can be called, and he in turn loosed me; and there in that gentle radiance we stood blinking at each other like owls in the sunlight, while the tears streamed down our faces.

“Well, art satisfied, my Holly?” she asked.

“Satisfied with what?” I answered angrily, for the smarting of my eyes was unbearable. “Yes, with burnings and bedevilments I am well satisfied.”

“And I also,” grumbled Leo, who was swearing softly but continuously to himself in the other corner of the place.

But Ayesha only laughed, oh! she laughed until she seemed the goddess of all merriment come to earth, laughed till she also wept, then said—“Why, what ingratitude is this? Thou, my Leo, didst wish to see the wonders that I work, and thou, O Holly, didst come unbidden after I bade thee stay behind, and now both of you are rude and angry, aye, and weeping like a child with a burnt finger. Here take this,” and she gave us some salve that stood upon a shelf, “and rub it on your eyes and the smart will pass away.”

So we did, and the pain went from them, though, for hours afterwards, mine remained red as blood.

“And what are these wonders?” I asked her presently. “If thou meanest that unbearable flame——”

“Nay, I mean what is born of the flame, as, in thine ignorance thou dost call that mighty agent. Look now;” and she pointed to the metallic lump she had brought with her, which, still gleaming faintly, lay upon the floor. “Nay, it has no heat. Thinkest thou that I would wish to burn my tender hands and so make them unsightly? Touch it, Holly.”

But I would not, who thought to myself that Ayesha might be well accustomed to the hottest fires, and feared her impish mischief. I looked, however, long and earnestly.

“Well, what is it, Holly?”

“Gold,” I said, then corrected myself and added, “Copper,” for the dull, red glow might have been that of either metal.

“Nay, nay,” she answered, “it is gold, pure gold.”

“The ore in this place must be rich,” said Leo, incredulously, for I would not speak any more.

“Yes, my Leo, the iron ore is rich.”

“Iron ore?” and he looked at her.

“Surely,” she answered, “for from what mine do men dig out gold in such great masses? Iron ore, beloved, that by my alchemy I change to gold, which soon shall serve us in our need.”

Now Leo stared and I groaned, for I did not believe that it was gold, and still less that she could make that metal. Then, reading my thought, with one of those sudden changes of mood that were common to her, Ayesha grew very angry.

“By Nature’s self!” she cried; “wert thou not my friend, Holly, the fool whom it pleases me to cherish, I would bind that right hand of thine in those secret rays till the very bones within it were turned to gold. Nay, why should I be vexed with thee, who art both blind and deaf? Yet thou shalt be persuaded,” and leaving us, she passed down the passages, called something to the priests who were labouring in the workshop, then returned to us.

Presently they followed her, carrying on a kind of stretcher between them an ingot of iron ore that seemed to be as much as they could lift.

“Now,” she said, “how wilt thou that I mark this mass which as thou must admit is only iron? With the sign of Life? Good,” and at her bidding the priests took cold-chisels and hammers and roughly cut upon its surface the symbol of the looped cross—the crux ansata.

“It is not enough,” she said when they had finished. “Holly, lend me that knife of thine, to-morrow I will return it to thee, and of more value.”

So I drew my hunting knife, an Indian-made thing, that had a handle of plated iron, and gave it her.

“Thou knowest the marks on it,” and she pointed to various dents and to the maker’s name upon the blade; for though the hilt was Indian work the steel was of Sheffield manufacture.

I nodded. Then she bade the priests put on the ray-proof armour that we had discarded, and told us to go without the chamber and lie in the darkness of the passage with our faces against the floor.

This we did, and remained so until, a few minutes later, she called us again. We rose and returned into the chamber to find the priests, who had removed the protecting garments, gasping and rubbing the salve upon their eyes; to find also that the lump of iron ore and my knife were gone. Next she commanded them to place the block of gold-coloured metal upon their stretcher and to bring it with them. They obeyed, and we noted that, although those priests were both of them strong men they groaned beneath its weight.

“How came it,” said Leo, “that thou, a woman, couldst carry what these men find so heavy?”

“It is one of the properties of that force which thou callest fire,” she answered sweetly, “to make what has been exposed to it, if for a little while only, as light as thistle-down. Else, how could I, who am so frail, have borne yonder block of gold?”

“Quite so! I understand now,” answered Leo.

Well, that was the end of it. The lump of metal was hid away in a kind of rock pit, with an iron cover, and we returned to Ayesha’s apartments.

“So all wealth is thine, as well as all power,” said Leo, presently, for remembering Ayesha’s awful threat I scarcely dared to open my mouth.

“It seems so,” she answered wearily, “since centuries ago I discovered that great secret, though until ye came I had put it to no use. Holly here, after his common fashion, believes that this is magic, but I tell thee again that there is no magic, only knowledge which I have chanced to win.”

“Of course,” said Leo, “looked at in the right way, that is in thy way, the thing is simple.” I think he would have liked to add, “as lying,” but as the phrase would have involved explanations, did not. “Yet, Ayesha,” he went on, “hast thou thought that this discovery of thine will wreck the world?”

“Leo,” she answered, “is there then nothing that I can do which will not wreck this world, for which thou hast such tender care, who shouldst keep all thy care—for me?”

I smiled, but remembering in time, turned the smile into a frown at Leo, then fearing lest that also might anger her, made my countenance as blank as possible.

“If so,” she continued, “well, let the world be wrecked. But what meanest thou? Oh! my lord, Leo, forgive me if I am so dull that I cannot always follow thy quick thought—I who have lived these many years alone, without converse with nobler minds, or even those to which mine own is equal.”

“It pleases thee to mock me,” said Leo, in a vexed voice, “and that is not too brave.”

Now Ayesha turned on him fiercely, and I looked towards the door. But he did not shrink, only folded his arms and stared her straight in the face. She contemplated him a little, then said—“After that great ordained reason which thou dost not know, I think, Leo, that why I love thee so madly is that thou alone art not afraid of me. Not like Holly there, who, ever since I threatened to turn his bones to gold—which, indeed, I was minded to do,” and she laughed—“trembles at my footsteps and cowers beneath my softest glance.

“Oh! my lord, how good thou art to me, how patient with my moods and woman’s weaknesses,” and she made as though she were about to embrace him. Then suddenly remembering herself, with a little start that somehow conveyed more than the most tragic gesture, she pointed to the couch in token that he should seat himself. When he had done so she drew a footstool to his feet and sank upon it, looking up into his face with attentive eyes, like a child who listens for a story.

“Thy reasons, Leo, give me thy reasons. Doubtless they are good, and, oh! be sure I’ll weigh them well.”

“Here they are in brief,” he answered. “The world, as thou knewest in thy—” and he stopped.

“Thy earlier wanderings there,” she suggested.

“Yes—thy earlier wanderings there, has set up gold as the standard of its wealth. On it all civilizations are founded. Make it as common as it seems thou canst, and these must fall to pieces. Credit will fail and, like their savage forefathers, men must once more take to barter to supply their needs as they do in Kaloon to-day.”

“Why not?” she asked. “It would be more simple and bring them closer to the time when they were good and knew not luxury and greed.”

“And smashed in each other’s heads with stone axes,” added Leo.

“Who now pierce each other’s hearts with steel, or those leaden missiles of which thou hast told me. Oh! Leo, when the nations are beggared and their golden god is down; when the usurer and the fat merchant tremble and turn white as chalk because their hoards are but useless dross; when I have made the bankrupt Exchanges of the world my mock, and laugh across the ruin of its richest markets, why, then, will not true worth come to its heritage again?

“What of it if I do discomfort those who think more of pelf than of courage and of virtue; those who, as that Hebrew prophet wrote, lay field to field and house to house, until the wretched whom they have robbed find no place left whereon to dwell? What if I proved your sagest chapmen fools, and gorge your greedy moneychangers with the gold that they desire until they loathe its very sight and touch? What if I uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed against the ravening lusts of Mammon? Why, will not this world of yours be happier then?”

“I do not know,” answered Leo. “All that I know is that