Cleopatra, H. Rider Haggard [english novels to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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And, with one glance to heaven, she drank, and cast the goblet to the ground.
Then at last came the moment of my pent-up vengeance, and of the vengeance of Egypt’s outraged Gods, and of the falling of the curse of Menkau-ra.
“What’s this?” she cried; “I grow cold, but I die not! Thou dark physician, thou hast betrayed me!”
“Peace, Cleopatra! Presently shalt thou die and know the fury of the Gods! The curse of Menkau-ra hath fallen! It is finished! Look upon me, woman! Look upon this marred face, this twisted form, this living mass of sorrow! Look! look! Who am I?”
She stared upon me wildly.
“Oh! oh!” she shrieked, throwing up her arms; “at last I know thee! By the Gods, thou art Harmachis!—Harmachis risen from the dead!”
“Ay, Harmachis risen from the dead to drag thee down to death and agony eternal! See, thou Cleopatra; I have ruined thee as thou didst ruin me! I, working in the dark, and helped of the angry Gods, have been thy secret spring of woe! I filled thy heart with fear at Actium; I held the Egyptians from thy aid; I sapped the strength of Antony; I showed the portent of the Gods unto thy captains! By my hand at length thou diest, for I am the instrument of Vengeance! Ruin I pay thee back for ruin, Treachery for treachery, Death for death! Come hither, Charmion, partner of my plots, who betrayed me, but, repenting, art the sharer of my triumph, come watch this fallen wanton die!”
Cleopatra heard, and sank back upon the golden bed, groaning “And thou, too, Charmion!”
A moment so she sat, then her Imperial spirit burnt up glorious before she died.
She staggered from the bed, and, with arms outstretched, she cursed me.
“Oh! for one hour of life!” she cried—“one short hour, that therein I might make thee die in such fashion as thou canst not dream, thou and that false paramour of thine, who betrayed both me and thee! And thou didst love me! Ah, there I have thee still! See, thou subtle, plotting priest”—and with both hands she rent back the royal robes from her bosom—“see, on this fair breast once night by night thy head was pillowed, and thou didst sleep wrapped in these same arms. Now, put away their memory if thou canst! I read it in thine eyes—that mayst thou not! No torture which I bear can, in its sum, draw nigh to the rage of that deep soul of thine, rent with longings never, never to be reached! Harmachis, thou slave of slaves, from thy triumph-depths I snatch a deeper triumph, and conquered yet I conquer! I spit upon thee—I defy thee—and, dying, doom thee to the torment of thy deathless love! O Antony! I come, my Antony!—I come to thy own dear arms! Soon I shall find thee, and, wrapped in a love undying and divine, together we will float through all the depths of space, and, lips to lips and eyes to eyes, drink of desires grown more sweet with every draught! Or if I find thee not, then I shall sink in peace down the poppied ways of Sleep: and for me the breast of Night, whereon I shall be softly cradled, will yet seem thy bosom, Antony! Oh, I die!— come, Antony—and give me peace!”
Even in my fury I had quailed beneath her scorn, for home flew the arrows of her winged words. Alas! and alas! it was true—the shaft of my vengeance fell upon my own head; never had I loved her as I loved her now. My soul was rent with jealous torture, and thus I swore she should not die.
“Peace!” I cried; “what peace is there for thee? Oh! ye Holy Three, hear now my prayer. Osiris, loosen Thou the bonds of Hell and send forth those whom I shall summon! Come Ptolemy, poisoned of thy sister Cleopatra; come Arsino�, murdered in the sanctuary by thy sister Cleopatra; come Sepa, tortured to death of Cleopatra; come Divine Menkau-ra, whose body Cleopatra tore and whose curse she braved for greed; come one, come all who have died at the hands of Cleopatra! Rush from the breast of Nout and greet her who murdered you! By the link of mystic union, by the symbol of the Life, Spirits, I summon you!”
Thus I spoke the spell; while Charmion, affrighted, clung to my robe, and the dying Cleopatra, resting on her hands, swung slowly to and fro, gazing with vacant eyes.
Then the answer came. The casement burst asunder, and on flittering wings that great bat entered which last I had seen hanging to the eunuch’s chin in the womb of the pyramid of Her. Thrice it circled round, once it hovered o’er dead Iras, then flew to where the dying woman stood. To her it flew, on her breast it settled, clinging to that emerald which was dragged from the dead heart of Menkau-ra. Thrice the grey Horror screamed aloud, thrice it beat its bony wings, and lo! it was gone.
Then suddenly within that chamber sprang up the Shapes of Death. There was Arsino�, the beautiful, even as she had shrunk beneath the butcher’s knife. There was young Ptolemy, his features twisted by the poisoned cup. There was the majesty of Menkau-ra, crowned with the ur�us crown; there was grave Sepa, his flesh all torn by the torturer’s hooks; there were those poisoned slaves; and there were others without number, shadowy and dreadful to behold! who, thronging that narrow chamber, stood silently fixing their glassy eyes upon the face of her who slew them!
“Behold! Cleopatra!” I said. “Behold thy peace, and die!”
“Ay!” said Charmion. “Behold and die! thou who didst rob me of my honour, and Egypt of her King!”
She looked, she saw the awful Shapes—her Spirit, hurrying from the flesh, mayhap could hear words to which my ears were deaf. Then her face sank in with terror, her great eyes grew pale, and, shrieking, Cleopatra fell and died: passing, with that dread company, to her appointed place.
Thus, then, I, Harmachis, fed my soul with vengeance, fulfilling the justice of the Gods, and yet knew myself empty of all joy therein. For though that thing we worship doth bring us ruin, and Love being more pitiless than Death, we in turn do pay all our sorrow back; yet we must worship on, yet stretch out our arms towards our lost Desire, and pour our heart’s blood upon the shrine of our discrowned God.
For Love is of the Spirit, and knows not Death.
OF THE FAREWELL OF CHARMION; OF THE DEATH OF CHARMION; OF THE DEATH OF THE OLD WIFE, ATOUA; OF THE COMING OF HARMACHIS TO ABOUTHIS; OF HIS CONFESSION IN THE HALL OF SIX-AND-THIRTY PILLARS; AND OF THE DECLARING OF THE DOOM OF HARMACHIS
Charmion unclasped my arm, to which she had clung in terror.
“Thy vengeance, thou dark Harmachis,” she said, in a hoarse voice, “is a thing hideous to behold! O lost Egypt, with all thy sins thou wast indeed a Queen!
“Come, aid me, Prince; let us stretch this poor clay upon the bed and deck it royally, so that it may give its dumb audience to the messengers of C�sar as becomes the last of Egypt’s Queens.”
I spoke no word in answer, for my heart was very heavy, and now that all was done I was weary. Together, then, we lifted up the body and laid it on the golden bed. Charmion placed the ur�us crown upon the ivory brow, and combed the night-dark hair that showed never a thread of silver, and, for the last time, shut those eyes wherein had shone all the changing glories of the sea. She folded the chill hands upon the breast whence Passion’s breath had fled, and straightened the bent knees beneath the broidered robe, and by the head set flowers. And there at length Cleopatra lay, more splendid now in her cold majesty of death than in her richest hour of breathing beauty!
We drew back and looked on her, and on dead Iras at her feet.
“It is done!” quoth Charmion; “we are avenged, and now, Harmachis, dost follow by this same road?” And she nodded towards the phial on the board.
“Nay, Charmion. I fly—I fly to a heavier death! Not thus easily may I end my space of earthly penance.”
“So be it, Harmachis! And I, Harmachis—I fly also, but with swifter wings. My game is played. I, too, have made atonement. Oh! what a bitter fate is mine, to have brought misery on all I love, and, in the end, to die unloved! To thee I have atoned; to my angered Gods I have atoned; and now I go to find a way whereby I may atone to Cleopatra in that Hell where she is, and which I must share! For she loved me well, Harmachis; and, now that she is dead, methinks that, after thee, I loved her best of all. So of her cup and the cup of Iras I will surely drink!” And she took the phial, and with a steady hand poured what was left of the poison into the goblet.
“Bethink thee, Charmion,” I said; “yet mayst thou live for many years, hiding these sorrows beneath the withered days.”
“Yet I may, but I will not! To live the prey of so many memories, the fount of an undying shame that night by night, as I lie sleepless, shall well afresh from my sorrow-stricken heart!—to live torn by a love I cannot lose!—to stand alone like some storm-twisted tree, and, sighing day by day to the winds of heaven, gaze upon the desert of my life, while I wait the lingering lightning’s stroke—nay, that will not I, Harmachis! I had died long since, but I lived on to serve thee; now no more thou needest me, and I go. Oh, fare thee well!—for ever fare thee well! For not again shall I look again upon thy face, and there I go thou goest not! For thou dost not love me who still dost love that queenly woman thou hast hounded to the death! Her thou shalt never win, and I thee shall never win, and this is the bitter end of Fate! See, Harmachis: I ask one boon before I go and for all time become naught to thee but a memory of shame. Tell me that thou dost forgive me so far as thine is to forgive, and in token thereof kiss me —with no lover’s kiss, but kiss me on the brow, and bid me pass in peace.”
And she drew near to me with arms outstretched and pitiful trembling lips and gazed upon my face.
“Charmion,” I answered, “we are free to act for good or evil, and yet methinks there is
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