Produced by John Bickers; Dagny
SHE AND ALLAN
By H. Rider Haggard
First Published 1921.
NOTE BY THE LATE MR. ALLAN QUATERMAIN
My friend, into whose hands I hope that all these manuscripts of minewill pass one day, of this one I have something to say to you.
A long while ago I jotted down in it the history of the events thatit details with more or less completeness. This I did for my ownsatisfaction. You will have noted how memory fails us as we advancein years; we recollect, with an almost painful exactitude, what weexperienced and saw in our youth, but the happenings of our middlelife slip away from us or become blurred, like a stretch of low-lyinglandscape overflowed by grey and nebulous mist. Far off the sun stillseems to shine upon the plains and hills of adolescence and earlymanhood, as yet it shines about us in the fleeting hours of our age,that ground on which we stand to-day, but the valley between is filledwith fog. Yes, even its prominences, which symbolise the more startlingevents of that past, often are lost in this confusing fog.
It was an appreciation of these truths which led me to set down thefollowing details (though of course much is omitted) of my briefintercourse with the strange and splendid creature whom I knew under thenames of _Ayesha_, or _Hiya_, or _She-who-commands_; not indeed with anyview to their publication, but before I forgot them that, if I wished todo so, I might re-peruse them in the evening of old age to which I hopeto attain.
Indeed, at the time the last thing I intended was that they should begiven to the world even after my own death, because they, or many ofthem, are so unusual that I feared lest they should cause smiles andin a way cast a slur upon my memory and truthfulness. Also, as you willread, as to this matter I made a promise and I have always tried tokeep my promises and to guard the secrets of others. For these reasons Iproposed, in case I neglected or forgot to destroy them myself, to leavea direction that this should be done by my executors. Further, I havebeen careful to make no allusion _whatever_ to them either in casualconversation or in anything else that I may have written, my desirebeing that this page of my life should be kept quite private, somethingknown only to myself. Therefore, too, I never so much as hinted of themto anyone, not even to yourself to whom I have told so much.
Well, I recorded the main facts concerning this expedition and itsissues, simply and with as much exactness as I could, and laid themaside. I do not say that I never thought of them again, since amongstthem were some which, together with the problems they suggested, provedto be of an unforgettable nature.
Also, whenever any of Ayesha's sayings or stories which are notpreserved in these pages came back to me, as has happened from time totime, I jotted them down and put them away with this manuscript. Thusamong these notes you will find a history of the city of Kor as she toldit to me, which I have omitted here. Still, many of these remarkableevents did more or less fade from my mind, as the image does froman unfixed photograph, till only their outlines remained, faint ifdistinguishable.
To tell the truth, I was rather ashamed of the whole story in whichI cut so poor a figure. On reflection it was obvious to me, althoughhonesty had compelled me to set out all that is essential exactly as itoccurred, adding nothing and taking nothing away, that I had been thevictim of very gross deceit. This strange woman, whom I had met in theruins of a place called Kor, without any doubt had thrown a glamour overmy senses and at the moment almost caused me to believe much that isquite unbelievable.
For instance, she had told me ridiculous stories as to interviewsbetween herself and certain heathen goddesses, though it is true that,almost with her next breath, these she qualified or contradicted. Also,she had suggested that her life had been prolonged far beyond our mortalspan, for hundreds and hundreds of years, indeed; which, as Euclid says,is absurd, and had pretended to supernatural powers, which is still moreabsurd. Moreover, by a clever use of some hypnotic or mesmeric power,she had feigned to transport me to some place beyond the earth and inthe Halls of Hades to show me what is veiled from the eyes of man,and not only me, but the savage warrior Umhlopekazi, commonly calledUmslopogaas of the Axe, who, with Hans, a Hottentot, was my companionupon that adventure. There were like things equally incredible, such asher appearance, when all seemed lost, in the battle with the troll-likeRezu. To omit these, the sum of it was that I had been shamefully duped,and if anyone finds himself in that position, as most people have at onetime or another in their lives, Wisdom suggests that he had better keepthe circumstances to himself.
Well, so the matter stood, or rather lay in the recesses of my mind--andin the cupboard where I hide my papers--when one evening someone, as amatter of fact it was Captain Good, an individual of romantic tendencieswho is fond, sometimes I think too fond, of fiction, brought a book tothis house which he insisted over and over again really I must peruse.
Ascertaining that it was a novel I declined, for to tell the truth I amnot fond of romance in any shape, being a person who has found the hardfacts of life of sufficient interest as they stand.
Reading I admit I like, but in this matter, as in everything else, myrange is limited. I study the Bible, especially the Old Testament, bothbecause of its sacred lessons and of the majesty of the language of itsinspired translators; whereof that of Ayesha, which I render so poorlyfrom her flowing and melodious Arabic, reminded me. For poetry I turnto Shakespeare, and, at the other end of the scale, to the IngoldsbyLegends, many of which I know almost by heart, while for current affairsI content myself with the newspapers.
For the rest I peruse anything to do with ancient Egypt that I happen tocome across, because this land and its history have a queer fascinationfor me, that perhaps has its roots in occurrences or dreams of whichthis is not the place to speak. Lastly now and again I read one of theLatin or Greek authors in a translation, since I regret to say that mylack of education does not enable me to do so in the original. But formodern fiction I have no taste, although from time to time I sample itin a railway train and occasionally am amused by such excursions intothe poetic and unreal.
So it came about that the more Good bothered me to read this particularromance, the more I determined that I would do nothing of the sort.Being a persistent person, however, when he went away about ten o'clockat night, he deposited it by my side, under my nose indeed, so that itmight not be overlooked. Thus it came about that I could not help seeingsome Egyptian hieroglyphics in an oval on the cover, also the title,and underneath it your own name, my friend, all of which excitedmy curiosity, especially the title, which was brief and enigmatic,consisting indeed of one word, "_She_."
I took up the work and on opening it the first thing my eye fell uponwas a picture of a veiled woman, the sight of which made my heart standstill, so painfully did it remind me of a certain veiled woman whom onceit had been my fortune to meet. Glancing from it to the printed page oneword seemed to leap at me. It was _Kor_! Now of veiled women there areplenty in the world, but were there also two Kors?
Then I turned to the beginning and began to read. This happened inthe autumn when the sun does not rise till about six, but it was broaddaylight before I ceased from reading, or rather rushing through thatbook.
Oh! what was I to make of it? For here in its pages (to say nothing ofold Billali, who, by the way lied, probably to order, when he told Mr.Holly that no white man had visited his country for many generations,and those gloomy, man-eating Amahagger scoundrels) once again Ifound myself face to face with _She-who-commands_, now rendered as_She-who-must-be-obeyed_, which means much the same thing--in her caseat least; yes, with Ayesha the lovely, the mystic, the changeful and theimperious.
Moreover the history filled up many gaps in my own limited experiencesof that enigmatical being who was half divine (though, I think, ratherw
icked or at any rate unmoral in her way) and yet all woman. It is truethat it showed her in lights very different from and higher than thosein which she had presented herself to me. Yet the substratum of hercharacter was the same, or rather of her characters, for of these sheseemed to have several in a single body, being, as she said of herselfto me, "not One but Many and not Here but Everywhere."
Further, I found the story of Kallikrates, which I had set down as amere falsehood invented for my bewilderment, expanded and explained. Orrather not explained, since, perhaps that she might deceive, to meshe had spoken of this murdered Kallikrates without enthusiasm, as ahandsome person to whom, because of an indiscretion of her youth, shewas bound by destiny and whose return--somewhat to her sorrow--she mustwait. At least she did so at first, though in the end when she bared herheart at the moment of our farewell, she vowed she loved him only andwas "appointed" to him "by a divine decree."
Also I found other things of which I knew nothing, such as the Fire ofLife with its fatal gift of indefinite existence, although I rememberthat like the giant Rezu whom Umslopogaas defeated, she did talk of a"Cup of Life" of which she had drunk, that might have been offered to mylips, had I been politic, bowed the knee and shown more faith in her andher supernatural pretensions.
Lastly I saw the story of her end, and as I read it I wept, yes, Iconfess I wept, although I feel sure that she will return again. Now Iunderstood why she had quailed and even seemed to shrivel when, in mylast interview with her, stung beyond endurance by her witcheries andsarcasms, I had suggested that even for her with all her powers, Fatemight reserve one of its shrewdest blows. Some prescience had told herthat if the words seemed random, Truth spoke through my lips, although,and this was the worst of it, she did not know what weapon would dealthe stroke or when and where it was doomed to fall.
I was amazed, I was overcome, but as I closed that book I made up mymind, first that I would continue to preserve absolute silence as toAyesha and my dealings with her, as, during my life, I was bound byoath to do, and secondly that I would _not_ cause my manuscript to bedestroyed. I did not feel that I had any right to do so in view of whatalready had been published to the world. There let it lie to appear oneday, or not to appear, as might be fated. Meanwhile my lips were sealed.I would give Good back his book without comment and--buy another copy!
One more word. It is clear that I did not touch more than the fringeof the real Ayesha. In a thousand ways she bewitched and deceived me sothat I never plumbed her nature's depths. Perhaps this was my own faultbecause from the first I shewed a lack of faith in her and she wished topay me back in her own fashion, or perhaps she had other private reasonsfor her secrecy. Certainly the character she discovered to me differedin many ways from that which she revealed to Mr. Holly and to LeoVincey, or Kallikrates, whom, it seems, once she slew in her jealousyand rage.
She told me as much as she thought it fit that I should know, and nomore!
Allan Quatermain.
The Grange, Yorkshire.
SHE AND ALLAN