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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 mine
will 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 that
it details with more or less completeness. This I did for my own
satisfaction. You will have noted how memory fails us as we advance
in years; we recollect, with an almost painful exactitude, what we
experienced and saw in our youth, but the happenings of our middle
life slip away from us or become blurred, like a stretch of low-lying
landscape overflowed by grey and nebulous mist. Far off the sun still
seems to shine upon the plains and hills of adolescence and early
manhood, 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 filled
with fog. Yes, even its prominences, which symbolise the more startling
events of that past, often are lost in this confusing fog.

It was an appreciation of these truths which led me to set down the
following details (though of course much is omitted) of my brief
intercourse with the strange and splendid creature whom I knew under the
names of _Ayesha_, or _Hiya_, or _She-who-commands_; not indeed with any
view to their publication, but before I forgot them that, if I wished to
do so, I might re-peruse them in the evening of old age to which I hope
to attain.

Indeed, at the time the last thing I intended was that they should be
given to the world even after my own death, because they, or many of
them, are so unusual that I feared lest they should cause smiles and
in a way cast a slur upon my memory and truthfulness. Also, as you will
read, as to this matter I made a promise and I have always tried to
keep my promises and to guard the secrets of others. For these reasons I
proposed, in case I neglected or forgot to destroy them myself, to leave
a direction that this should be done by my executors. Further, I have
been careful to make no allusion _whatever_ to them either in casual
conversation or in anything else that I may have written, my desire
being that this page of my life should be kept quite private, something
known only to myself. Therefore, too, I never so much as hinted of them
to anyone, not even to yourself to whom I have told so much.

Well, I recorded the main facts concerning this expedition and its
issues, simply and with as much exactness as I could, and laid them
aside. I do not say that I never thought of them again, since amongst
them were some which, together with the problems they suggested, proved
to be of an unforgettable nature.

Also, whenever any of Ayesha's sayings or stories which are not
preserved in these pages came back to me, as has happened from time to
time, I jotted them down and put them away with this manuscript. Thus
among these notes you will find a history of the city of Kor as she told
it to me, which I have omitted here. Still, many of these remarkable
events did more or less fade from my mind, as the image does from
an unfixed photograph, till only their outlines remained, faint if
distinguishable.

To tell the truth, I was rather ashamed of the whole story in which
I cut so poor a figure. On reflection it was obvious to me, although
honesty had compelled me to set out all that is essential exactly as it
occurred, adding nothing and taking nothing away, that I had been the
victim of very gross deceit. This strange woman, whom I had met in the
ruins of a place called Kor, without any doubt had thrown a glamour over
my senses and at the moment almost caused me to believe much that is
quite unbelievable.

For instance, she had told me ridiculous stories as to interviews
between 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 mortal
span, for hundreds and hundreds of years, indeed; which, as Euclid says,
is absurd, and had pretended to supernatural powers, which is still more
absurd. Moreover, by a clever use of some hypnotic or mesmeric power,
she had feigned to transport me to some place beyond the earth and in
the Halls of Hades to show me what is veiled from the eyes of man,
and not only me, but the savage warrior Umhlopekazi, commonly called
Umslopogaas of the Axe, who, with Hans, a Hottentot, was my companion
upon that adventure. There were like things equally incredible, such as
her appearance, when all seemed lost, in the battle with the troll-like
Rezu. 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 one
time or another in their lives, Wisdom suggests that he had better keep
the circumstances to himself.

Well, so the matter stood, or rather lay in the recesses of my mind--and
in the cupboard where I hide my papers--when one evening someone, as a
matter of fact it was Captain Good, an individual of romantic tendencies
who is fond, sometimes I think too fond, of fiction, brought a book to
this 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 am
not fond of romance in any shape, being a person who has found the hard
facts of life of sufficient interest as they stand.

Reading I admit I like, but in this matter, as in everything else, my
range is limited. I study the Bible, especially the Old Testament, both
because of its sacred lessons and of the majesty of the language of its
inspired translators; whereof that of Ayesha, which I render so poorly
from her flowing and melodious Arabic, reminded me. For poetry I turn
to Shakespeare, and, at the other end of the scale, to the Ingoldsby
Legends, many of which I know almost by heart, while for current affairs
I content myself with the newspapers.

For the rest I peruse anything to do with ancient Egypt that I happen to
come across, because this land and its history have a queer fascination
for me, that perhaps has its roots in occurrences or dreams of which
this is not the place to speak. Lastly now and again I read one of the
Latin or Greek authors in a translation, since I regret to say that my
lack of education does not enable me to do so in the original. But for
modern fiction I have no taste, although from time to time I sample it
in a railway train and occasionally am amused by such excursions into
the poetic and unreal.

So it came about that the more Good bothered me to read this particular
romance, the more I determined that I would do nothing of the sort.
Being a persistent person, however, when he went away about ten o'clock
at night, he deposited it by my side, under my nose indeed, so that it
might not be overlooked. Thus it came about that I could not help seeing
some Egyptian hieroglyphics in an oval on the cover, also the title,
and underneath it your own name, my friend, all of which excited
my 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 upon
was a picture of a veiled woman, the sight of which made my heart stand
still, so painfully did it remind me of a certain veiled woman whom once
it had been my fortune to meet. Glancing from it to the printed page one
word seemed to leap at me. It was _Kor_! Now of veiled women there are
plenty in the world, but were there also two Kors?

Then I turned to the beginning and began to read. This happened in
the autumn when the sun does not rise till about six, but it was broad
daylight before I ceased from reading, or rather rushing through that
book.

Oh! what was I to make of it? For here in its pages (to say nothing of
old 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 I
found myself face to face with _She-who-commands_, now rendered as
_She-who-must-be-obeyed_, which means much the same thing--in her case
at least; yes, with Ayesha the lovely, the mystic, the changeful and the
imperious.

Moreover the history filled up many gaps in my own limited experiences
of that enigmatical being who was half divine (though, I think, rather
wicked or at any rate unmoral in her way) and yet all woman. It is true
that it showed her in lights very different from and higher than those
in which she had presented herself to me. Yet the substratum of her
character was the same, or rather of her characters, for of these she
seemed to have several in a single body, being, as she said of herself
to me, "not One but Many and not Here but Everywhere."

Further, I found the story of Kallikrates, which I had set down as a
mere falsehood invented for my bewilderment, expanded and explained. Or
rather not explained, since, perhaps that she might deceive, to me
she had spoken of this murdered Kallikrates without enthusiasm, as a
handsome person to whom, because of an indiscretion of her youth, she
was bound by destiny and whose return--somewhat to her sorrow--she must
wait. At least she did so at first, though in the end when she bared her
heart at the moment of our farewell, she vowed she loved him only and
was "appointed" to him "by a divine decree."

Also I found other things of which I knew nothing, such as the Fire of
Life with its fatal gift of indefinite existence, although I remember
that 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 my
lips, had I been politic, bowed the knee and shown more faith in her and
her supernatural pretensions.

Lastly I saw the story of her end, and as I read it I wept, yes, I
confess I wept, although I feel sure that she will return again. Now I
understood why she had quailed and even seemed to shrivel when, in my
last interview with her, stung beyond endurance by her witcheries and
sarcasms, I had suggested that even for her with all her powers, Fate
might reserve one of its shrewdest blows. Some prescience had told her
that 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 deal
the 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 my
mind, first that I would continue to preserve absolute silence as to
Ayesha and my dealings with her, as, during my life, I was bound by
oath to do, and secondly that I would _not_ cause my manuscript to be
destroyed. I did not feel that I had any right to do so in view of what
already had been published to the world. There let it lie to appear one
day, 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 fringe
of the real Ayesha. In a thousand ways she bewitched and deceived me so
that I never plumbed her nature's depths. Perhaps this was my own fault
because from the first I shewed a lack of faith in her and she wished to
pay me back in her own fashion, or perhaps she had other private reasons
for her secrecy. Certainly the character she discovered to me differed
in many ways from that which she revealed to Mr. Holly and to Leo
Vincey, or Kallikrates, whom, it seems, once she slew in her jealousy
and rage.

She told me as much as she thought it fit that I should know, and no
more!

Allan Quatermain.

The Grange, Yorkshire.





SHE AND ALLAN



CHAPTER I

THE TALISMAN

I believe it was the old Egyptians, a very wise people, probably indeed
much wiser than we know, for in the leisure of their ample centuries
they had time to think out things, who declared that each individual
personality is made up of six or seven different elements, although the
Bible only allows us three, namely, body, soul, and spirit. The body
that the man or woman wore, if I understand their theory aright which
perhaps I, an ignorant person, do not, was but a kind of sack or fleshly
covering containing these different principles. Or mayhap it did not
contain them all, but was simply a house as it were, in which they lived
from time to time and seldom all together, although one or more of them
was present continually, as though to keep the place warmed and aired.

This is but a casual illustrative suggestion, for what right have
I, Allan Quatermain, out of my little reading and probably erroneous
deductions, to form any judgment as to the theories of the old
Egyptians? Still these, as I understand them, suffice to furnish me with
the text that man is not one, but many, in which connection it may be
remembered that often in Scripture he is spoken of as being the home of
many demons, seven, I think. Also, to come to another far-off example,
the Zulus talk of their witch-doctors as being inhabited by "a multitude
of spirits."

Anyhow of one thing I am quite sure, we are not always the same.
Different personalities actuate us at different times. In one hour
passion of this sort or the other is our lord; in another we are reason
itself. In one hour we follow the basest appetites; in another we hate
them and the spirit arising through our mortal murk shines within or
above us like a star. In one hour our desire is to kill and spare not;
in another we are filled with the holiest compassion even towards an
insect or a snake, and are ready to forgive like a god. Everything
rules us in turn, to such an extent indeed, that sometimes one begins to
wonder whether we really rule anything.

Now the reason of all this homily is that I, Allan, the most practical
and unimaginative of persons, just a homely, half-educated hunter and
trader who chances to have seen a good deal of the particular little
world in which his lot was cast, at one period of my life became the
victim of spiritual longings.

I am a man who has suffered great bereavements in my time such as have
seared my soul, since, perhaps because of my rather primitive and simple
nature, my affections are very strong. By day or night I can never
forget those whom I have loved and whom I believe to have loved me.

For you know, in our vanity some of us are apt to hold that certain
people with whom we have been intimate upon the earth, really did
care for us and, in our still greater vanity--or should it be called
madness?--to imagine that they still care for us after they have left
the earth and entered on some new state of society and surroundings
which, if they exist, inferentially are much more congenial than any
they can have experienced here. At times, however, cold doubts strike us
as to this matter, of which we long to know the truth. Also behind looms
a still blacker doubt, namely whether they live at all.

For some years of my lonely existence these problems haunted me day by
day, till at length I desired above everything on earth to lay them
at rest in one way or another. Once, at Durban, I met a man who was a
spiritualist to whom I confided a little of my perplexities. He laughed
at me and said that they could be settled with the greatest ease. All
I had to do was to visit a certain local medium who for a fee of one
guinea would tell me everything I wanted to know. Although I rather
grudged the guinea, being more than usually hard up at the time, I
called upon this person, but over the results of that visit, or rather
the lack of them, I draw a veil.

My queer and perhaps unwholesome longing, however, remained with me and
would not be abated. I consulted a clergyman of my acquaintance, a good
and spiritually-minded man, but he could only shrug his shoulders and
refer me to the Bible, saying, quite rightly I doubt not, that with what
it reveals I ought to be contented. Then I read certain mystical
books which were recommended to me. These were full of fine words,
undiscoverable in a pocket dictionary, but really took me no forwarder,
since in them I found nothing that I could not have invented myself,
although while I was actually studying them, they seemed to convince
me. I even tackled Swedenborg, or rather samples of him, for he is very
copious, but without satisfactory results. [Ha!--JB]

Then I gave up the business.



Some months later I was in Zululand and being near the Black Kloof
where he dwelt, I paid a visit to my acquaintance of whom I have
written elsewhere, the wonderful and ancient dwarf, Zikali, known as
"The-Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born," also more universally
among the Zulus as "Opener-of-Roads." When we had talked of many things
connected with the state of Zululand and its politics, I rose to leave
for my waggon, since I never cared for sleeping in the Black Kloof if it
could be avoided.

"Is there nothing else that you want to ask me, Macumazahn?" asked
the old dwarf, tossing back his long hair and looking at--I had almost
written through--me.

I shook my head.

"That is strange, Macumazahn, for I seem to see something written on
your mind--something to do with spirits."

Then I remembered all the problems that had been troubling me, although
in truth I had never thought of propounding them to Zikali.

"Ah! it comes back, does it?" he exclaimed, reading my thought. "Out
with it, then, Macumazahn, while I am in a mood to answer, and before
I grow tired, for you are an old friend of mine and will so remain till
the end, many years hence, and if I can serve you, I will."

I filled my pipe and sat down again upon the stool of carved red-wood
which had been brought for me.

"You are named 'Opener-of-Roads,' are you not, Zikali?" I said.

"Yes, the Zulus have always called me that, since before the days of
Chaka. But what of names, which often enough mean nothing at all?"

"Only that _I_ want to open a road, Zikali, that which runs across the
River of Death."

"Oho!" he laughed, "it is very easy," and snatching up a little assegai
that lay beside him, he proffered it to me, adding, "Be brave now and
fall on that. Then before I have counted sixty the road will be wide
open, but whether you will see anything on it I cannot tell you."

Again I shook my head and answered,

"It is against our law. Also while I still live I desire to know whether
I shall meet certain others on that road after my time has come to cross
the River. Perhaps you who deal with spirits, can prove the matter to
me, which no one else seems able to do."

"Oho!" laughed Zikali again. "What do my ears hear? Am I, the poor Zulu
cheat, as you will remember once you called me, Macumazahn, asked
to show that which is hidden from all the wisdom of the great White
People?"

"The question is," I answered with irritation, "not what you are asked
to do, but what you can do."

"That I do not know yet, Macumazahn. Whose spirits do you desire to see?
If that of a woman called Mameena is one of them, I think that perhaps I
whom she loved----"[*]

[*] For the history of Mameena see the book called "Child of
Storm."--Editor.

"She is _not_ one of them, Zikali. Moreover, if she loved you, you paid
back her love with death."

"Which perhaps was the kindest thing I could do, Macumazahn, for reasons
that you may be able to guess, and others with which I will not trouble
you. But if not hers, whose? Let me look, let me look! Why, there seems
to be two of them, head-wives, I mean, and I thought that white men only
took one wife. Also a multitude of others; their faces float up in the
water of your mind. An old man with grey hair, little children, perhaps
they were brothers and sisters, and some who may be friends. Also very
clear indeed that Mameena whom you do not wish to see. Well, Macumazahn,
this is unfortunate, since she is the only one whom I can show you,
or rather put you in the way of finding. Unless indeed there are other
Kaffir women----"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean, Macumazahn, that only black feet travel on the road which I can
open; over those in which ran white blood I have no power."

"Then it is finished," I said, rising again and taking a step or two
towards the gate.

"Come back and sit down, Macumazahn. I did not say so. Am I the only
ruler of magic in Africa, which I am told is a big country?"

I came back and sat down, for my curiosity, a great failing with me, was
excited.

"Thank you, Zikali," I said, "but I will have no dealings with more of
your witch-doctors."

"No, no, because you are afraid of them; quite without reason,
Macumazahn, seeing that they are all cheats except myself. I am the last
child of wisdom, the rest are stuffed with lies, as Chaka found out when
he killed every one of them whom he could catch. But perhaps there might
be a white doctor who would have rule over white spirits."

"If you mean missionaries----" I began hastily.

"No, Macumazahn, I do not mean your praying men who are cast in one
mould and measured with one rule, and say what they are taught to say,
not thinking for themselves."

"Some of them think, Zikali."

"Yes, and then the others fall on them with big sticks. The real priest
is he to whom the Spirit comes, not he who feeds upon its wrappings, and
speaks through a mask carved by his father's fathers. I am a priest like
that, which is why all my fellowship have hated me."

"If so, you have paid back their hate, Zikali, but cease to cast round
the lion, like a timid hound, and tell me what you mean. Of whom do you
speak?"

"That is the trouble, Macumazahn. I do not know. This lion, or rather
lioness, lies hid in the caves of a very distant mountain and I have
never seen her--in the flesh."

"Then how can you talk of what you have never seen?"

"In the same way, Macumazahn, that your priests talk of what they have
never seen, because they, or a few of them, have knowledge of it. I
will tell you a secret. All seers who live at the same time, if they are
great, commune with each other because they are akin and their spirits
meet in sleep or dreams. Therefore I know of a mistress of our craft, a
very lioness among jackals, who for thousands of years has lain sleeping
in the northern caves and, humble though I am, she knows of me."

"Quite so," I said, yawning, "but perhaps, Zikali, you will come to the
point of the spear. What of her? How is she named, and if she exists
will she help me?"

"I will answer your question backwards, Macumazahn. I think that she
will help you if you help her, in what way I do not know, because
although witch-doctors sometimes work without pay, as I am doing now,
Macumazahn, witch-doctoresses never do. As for her name, the only one
that she has among our company is 'Queen,' because she is the first of
all of them and the most beauteous among women. For the rest I can tell
you nothing, except that she has always been and I suppose, in this
shape or in that, will always be while the world lasts, because she has
found the secret of life unending."

"You mean that she is immortal, Zikali," I answered with a smile.

"I do not say that, Macumazahn, because my little mind cannot shape the
thought of immortality. But when I was a babe, which is far ago, she had
lived so long that scarce would she knew the difference between then
and now, and already in her breast was all wisdom gathered. I know it,
because although, as I have said, we have never seen each other, at
times we walk together in our sleep, for thus she shares her loneliness,
and I think, though this may be but a dream, that last night she told me
to send you on to her to seek an answer to certain questions which you
would put to me to-day. Also to me she seemed to desire that you should
do her a service; I know not what service."

Now I grew angry and asked,

"Why does it please you to fool me, Zikali, with such talk as this? If
there is any truth in it, show me where the woman called _Queen_ lives
and how I am to come to her."

The old wizard took up the little assegai which he had offered to me and
with its blade raked our ashes from the fire that always burnt in front
of him. While he did so, he talked to me, as I thought in a random
fashion, perhaps to distract my attention, of a certain white man whom
he said I should meet upon my journey and of his affairs, also of other
matters, none of which interested me much at the time. These ashes
he patted down flat and then on them drew a map with the point of his
spear, making grooves for streams, certain marks for bush and forest,
wavy lines for water and swamps and little heaps for hills.

When he had finished it all he bade me come round the fire and study the
picture across which by an after-thought he drew a wandering furrow with
the edge of the assegai to represent a river, and gathered the ashes in
a lump at the northern end to signify a large mountain.

"Look at it well, Macumazahn," he said, "and forget nothing, since if
you make this journey and forget, you die. Nay, no need to copy it in
that book of yours, for see, I will stamp it on your mind."

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