Ayesha, the Return of She, H. Rider Haggard [books to read now .TXT] 📗

is that he strove to escape from her, and that in the end she gave him a day to choose between death and marriage with her, when her lord should be dead. So, helped by the Khan, her husband, who was jealous of him, we fled towards this Mountain, which we desired to reach. Then the Khan set his hounds upon us, for he was mad and false-hearted. We killed him and came on in spite of this lady, his wife, and her uncle, who would have prevented us, and were met in a Place of Bones by a certain veiled guide, who led us up the Mountain and twice saved us from death. That is all the story.”

“Woman, what hast thou to say?” asked the Hesea in a menacing voice.

“But little,” Atene answered, without flinching. “For years I have been bound to a madman and a brute, and if my fancy wandered towards this man and his fancy wandered towards me—well, Nature spoke to us, and that is all. Afterwards it seems that he grew afraid of the vengeance of Rassen, or this Holly, whom I would that the hounds had torn bone from bone, grew afraid. So they strove to escape the land, and perchance wandered to thy Mountain. But I weary of this talk, and ask thy leave to rest before to-morrow’s rite.”

“Thou sayest, Atene,” said the Hesea, “that Nature spoke to this man and to thee, and that his heart is thine; but that, fearing thy lord’s vengeance, he fled from thee, he who seems no coward. Tell me, then, is that tress he hides in the satchel on his breast thy gage of love to him?”

“I know nothing of what he hides in the satchel,” answered the Khania sullenly.

“And yet, yonder in the Gatehouse when he lay so sick he set the lock against thine own—ah, dost remember now?”

“So, O Hes, already he has told thee all our secrets, though they be such as most men hide within their breasts;” and she looked contemptuously at Leo.

“I told her nothing of the matter, Khania,” Leo said in an angry voice.

“Nay, thou toldest me nothing, Wanderer; my watching wisdom told me. Oh, didst thou think, Atene, that thou couldst hide the truth from the all-seeing Hesea of the Mountain? If so, spare thy breath, for I know all, and have known it from the first. I passed thy disobedience by; of thy false messages I took no heed. For my own purposes I, to whom time is naught, suffered even that thou shouldst hold these, my guests, thy prisoners whilst thou didst strive by threats and force to win a love denied.”

She paused, then went on coldly: “Woman, I tell thee that, to complete thy sin, thou hast even dared to lie to me here, in my very Sanctuary.”

“If so, what of it?” was the bold answer. “Dost thou love the man thyself? Nay, it is monstrous. Nature would cry aloud at such a shame. Oh! tremble not with rage. Hes, I know thy evil powers, but I know also that I am thy guest, and that in this hallowed place, beneath yonder symbol of eternal Love, thou may’st shed no blood. More, thou canst not harm me, Hes, who am thy equal.”

“Atene,” replied the measured Voice, “did I desire it, I could destroy thee where thou art. Yet thou art right, I shall not harm thee, thou faithless servant. Did not my writ bid thee through yonder searcher of the stars, thy uncle, to meet these guests of mine and bring them straight to my shrine? Tell me, for I seek to know, how comes it that thou didst disobey me?”

“Have then thy desire,” answered Atene in a new and earnest voice, devoid now of bitterness and falsehood. “I disobeyed because that man is not thine, but mine, and no other woman’s; because I love him and have loved him from of old. Aye, since first our souls sprang into life I have loved him, as he has loved me. My own heart tells me so; the magic of my uncle here tells me so, though how and where and when these things have been I know not. Therefore I come to thee, Mother of Mysteries, Guardian of the secrets of the past, to learn the truth. At least thou canst not lie at thine own altar, and I charge thee, by the dread name of that Power to which thou also must render thy account, that thou answer now and here.

“Who is this man to whom my being yearns? What has he been to me? What has he to do with thee? Speak, O Oracle and make the secret clear. Speak, I command, even though afterwards thou dost slay me—if thou canst.”

“Aye, speak! speak!” said Leo, “for know I am in sore suspense. I also am bewildered by memories and rent with hopes and fears.”

And I too echoed, “Speak!”

“Leo Vincey,” asked the Hesea, after she had thought awhile, “whom dost thou believe me to be?”

“I believe,” he answered solemnly, “that thou art that Ayesha at whose hands I died of old in the Caves of Kôr in Africa. I believe thou art that Ayesha whom not twenty years ago I found and loved in those same Caves of Kôr, and there saw perish miserably, swearing that thou wouldst return again.”

“See now, how madness can mislead a man,” broke in Atene triumphantly. “‘Not twenty years ago,’ he said, whereas I know well that more than eighty summers have gone by since my grandsire in his youth saw this same priestess sitting on the Mother’s throne.”

“And whom dost thou believe me to be, O Holly?” the Priestess asked, taking no note of the Khania’s words.

“What he believes I believe,” I answered. “The dead come back to life—sometimes. Yet alone thou knowest the truth, and by thee only it can be revealed.”

“Aye,” she said, as though musing, “the dead come back to life—sometimes—and in strange shape, and, mayhap, I know the truth. To-morrow when yonder body is borne on high for burial we will speak of it again. Till then rest you all, and prepare to face that fearful thing—the Truth.”

While the Hesea still spoke the silvery curtains swung to their place as mysteriously as they had opened. Then, as though at some signal, the black-robed priests advanced. Surrounding Atene, they led her from the Sanctuary, accompanied by her uncle the Shaman, who, as it seemed to me, either through fatigue or fear, could scarcely stand upon his feet, but stood blinking his dim eyes as though the light dazed him. When these were gone, the priests and priestesses, who all this time had been ranged round the walls, far out of hearing of our talk, gathered themselves into their separate companies, and still chanting, departed also, leaving us alone with Oros and the corpse of the Khan, which remained where it had been set down.

Now the head-priest Oros beckoned to us to follow him, and we went also. Nor was I sorry to leave the place, for its death-like loneliness—enhanced, strangely enough, as it was, by the flood of light that filled it; a loneliness which was concentrated and expressed in the awful figure stretched upon the bier, oppressed and overcame us, whose nerves were broken by all that we had undergone. Thankful enough was I when, having passed the transepts and down the length of the vast nave, we came to the iron