第54章

"Hast thou aught to ask me before thou goest, OHolly?" she said, after a few moments' reflection."It is but a rude life that thou must live here, for these people are savages, and know not the ways of cultivated man.Not that I am troubled thereby, for, behold my food," and she pointed to the fruit upon the little table."Naught but fruit doth ever pass my lipsfruit and cakes of flour, and a little water.Ihave bidden my girls to wait upon thee.They are mutes, thou knowest, deaf are they and dumb, and therefore the safest of servants; save to those who can read their faces and their signs.I bred them soit hath taken many centuries and much trouble; but last I have triumphed.Once I succeeded before, but the race was too ugly, so I let it die away; but now, as thou seest, they are otherwise.Once, too, I reared a race of giants, but after a while Nature would no more of it, and it died away.Hast thou aught to ask of me?""Ay, one thing, O Ayesha," I said, boldly; but feeling by no means as bold as I trust I looked."I would gaze upon thy face."She laughed out in her bell-like notes."Bethink thee, Holly," she answered; "bethink thee.It seems that thou knowest the old myths of the gods of Greece.Was there not one Actaeon who perished miserably because he looked on too much beauty? If I show thee my face, perchance thou wouldst perish miserably also;perchance thou wouldst eat out thy heart in impotent desire; for know I am not for theeI am for no man, save one, who hath been, but is not yet.""As thou wilt, Ayesha," I said."I fear not thy beauty.I have put my heart away from such vanity as woman's loveliness, that passes like a flower.""Nay, thou errest," she said; "that does not pass.My beauty endures even as I endure; still if thou wilt, Orash man, have thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not.

Never may the man to whom my beauty hath been unveiled put it from his mind, and therefore even with these savages do I go veiled, lest they vex me, and I should slay them.Say, wilt thou see?""I will," I answered, my curiosity overpowering me.

She lifted her white and rounded armsnever had Iseen such arms before-and slowly, very slowly, withdrew some fastening beneath her hair.Then all of a sudden the long, corpse-like wrappings fell from her to the ground, and my eyes travelled up her form, now only robed in a garb of clinging white that did but serve to show its perfect and imperial shape, instinct with a life that was more than life, and with a certain serpent-like grace that was more than human.

On her little feet were sandals, fastened with studs of gold.Then came ankles more perfect than ever sculptor dreamed of.About the waist her white kirtle was fastened by a double-headed snake of solid gold, above which her gracious form swelled up in lines as pure as they were lovely, till the kirtle ended on the snowy argent of her breast, whereon her arms were folded.I gazed above them at her face, andI do not exaggerate shrank back blinded and amazed.I have heard of the beauty of celestial beings, now I saw it;only this beauty, with all its awful loveliness and purity, was evilat least, at the time, it struck me as evil.How am I to describe it? I cannotsimply, Icannot! The man does not live whose pen could convey a sense of what I saw.I might talk of the great changing eyes of deepest, softest black, of the tinted face, of the broad and noble brow; on which the hair grew low, and delicate, straight features.But, beautiful, surpassingly beautiful as they all were, her loveliness did not lie in them.It lay rather, if it can be said to have had any fixed abiding-place, in a visible majesty, in an imperial grace, in a godlike stamp of softened power, which shone upon that radiant countenance like a living halo.Never before had Iguessed what beauty made sublime could be, and yet the sublimity was a dark one; the glory was not all of heaven, though none the less was it glorious.Though the face before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than thirty years, in perfect health, and the first flush of ripened beauty, yet it had stamped upon it a look of unutterable experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion.Not even the lovely smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide this shadow of sin and sorrow.It shone even in the light of the glorious eyes, it was present in the air of majesty, and it seemed to say:

"Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is, undying and half divine; memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand; evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil I shall do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes."Drawn by some magnetic force which I could not resist, I let my eyes rest upon her shining orbs, and felt a current pass from them to me that bewildered and half blinded me.

She laughedah, how musically! and nodded her little head at me with an air of sublimated coquetry that would have done credit to a Venus Victrix.

"Rash man!" she said; "like Actaeon, thou hast had thy will; be careful lest, like Actaeon, thou too dost perish miserably, torn to pieces by the ban-hounds of thine own passions.I too, O Holly, am a virgin goddess, not to be moved of any man, save one, and it is not thou.Say, hast thou seen enough?""I have looked on beauty, and I am blinded," I said, hoarsely, lifting my hand to cover up my eyes.

"So! what did I tell thee? Beauty is like the lightning; it is lovely, but it destroysspecially trees, O Holly!" And again she nodded and laughed.

Suddenly she paused, and through my fingers I saw an awful change come over her countenance.Her great eyes suddenly fixed themselves into an expression in which horror seemed to struggle with some tremendous hope arising through the depths of her dark soul.The lovely face grew rigid, and the gracious, willowy form seemed to erect itself.

"Man," she half whispered, half hissed, throwing back her head like a snake about to strike"man, where didst thou get that scarab on thy hand? Speak, or by the Spirit of Life I will blast thee where thou standest!" and she took one light step towards me, and from her eyes there shone such an awful lightto me it seemed almost like a flamethat I fell, then and there, on the ground before her, babbling confusedly in my terror.

"Peace," she said, with a sudden change of manner, and speaking in her former soft voice, "I did affright thee! Forgive me! But at times, O Holly, the almost infinite mind grows impatient of the slowness of the very finite, and I am tempted to use my power out of pure vexationvery nearly wast thou dead, but IrememberedBut the scarababout the scarabaeus!""I picked it up," I gurgled feebly, as I got on to my feet again, and it is a solemn fact that my mind was so disturbed that at the moment I could remember nothing else about the ring except that I had picked it up in Leo's cave.

"It is very strange," she said, with a sudden access of woman-like trembling and agitation which seemed out of place in this awful woman"but once I knew a scarab like that.Ithung round the neckof one Iloved," and she gave a little sob, and I saw that after all she was only a woman, although she might be a very old one."There," she went on, "it must be one like it, and yet never did I see one like it, for thereto hung a history, and he who wrote it prized it much.But the scarab that I knew was not set thus in the bezel of a ring.Go now, Holly, go, and, if thou canst, try to forget that thou hast looked upon Ayesha's beauty," and, turning from me, she flung herself on her couch, and buried her face in the cushions.

As for me, I stumbled from her presence, and I do not remember how I reached my own cave.