第82章

THE DEAD AND LIVING MEET.

"SEE now the place where I have slept for these two thousand years," said Ayesha, taking the lamp from Leo's hand and holding it above her head.Its rays fell upon a little hollow in the floor, where I had seen the leaping flame, but the fire was out now.They fell upon the white form stretched there beneath its wrappings upon its bed of stone, upon the fretted carving of the tomb, and upon another shelf of stone opposite the one on which the body lay, and separated from it by the breadth of the cave.

"Here," went on Ayesha, laying her hand upon the rock"here have I slept night by night for all these generations, with but a cloak to cover me.It did not become me that I should lie soft when my spouse yonder," and she pointed to the rigid form, "lay stiff in death.Here night by night have I slept in his cold companytill, thou seest, this thick slab, like the stairs down which we passed, has worn thin with the tossing of my formso faithful have I been to thee even in thy space of sleep, Kallikrates.And now, mine own, thou shalt see a wonderful thingliving, thou shalt behold thyself deadfor well have I tended thee during all these years, Kallikrates.Art thou prepared?"We made no answer, but gazed at each other with frightened eyes, the whole scene was so dreadful and so solemn.Ayesha advanced, and laid her hand upon the corner of the shroud, and once more spoke.

"Be not affrighted," she said; "though the thing seem wonderful to theeall we who live have thus lived before; nor is the very shape that holds us a stranger to the sun! Only we know it not, because memory writes no record, and earth hath gathered in the earth she lent us, for none have saved our glory from the grave.

But I, by my arts and by the arts of those dead men of Ko^r which I have learned, have held thee back, OKallikrates, from the dust, that the waxen stamp of beauty on thy face should ever rest before mine eye.

'Twas a mask that memory might fill, serving to fashion out thy presence from the past, and give it strength to wander in the habitations of my thought, clad in a mummery of life that stayed my appetite with visions of dead days.

"Behold now, let the Dead and Living meet! Across the gulf of Time they still are one.Time hath no power against identity, though sleep the merciful hath blotted out the tablets of our mind, and with oblivion sealed the sorrows that else would hound us from life to life, stuffing the brain with gathered griefs till it burst in the madness of uttermost despair.Still are they one, for the wrappings of our sleep shall roll away as thunder-clouds before the wind; the frozen voices of the past shall melt in music like mountain snows beneath the sun; and the weeping and the laughter of the lost hours shall be heard once more most sweetly echoing up the cliffs of immeasurable time.

"Ay, the sleep shall roll away, and the voices shall be heard, when down the completed chain, whereof our each existence is a link, the lightning of the Spirit hath passed to work out the purpose of our being;quickening and fusing those separated days of life, and shaping them to a staff whereon we may safely lean as we wend to our appointed fate.

"Therefore, have no fear, Kallikrates, when thouliving, and but lately bornshalt look upon thine own departed self, who breathed and died so long ago.I do but turn one page in thy Book of Being, and show thee what is writ thereon.

" _i_ Behold _i_ "

With a sudden motion she drew the shroud from the cold form, and let the lamplight play upon it.I looked, and then shrank back terrified; since, say what she might in explanation, the sight was an uncanny onefor her explanations were beyond the grasp of our finite minds, and when they were stripped from the mists of vague esoteric philosophy, and brought into conflict with the cold and horrifying fact, did not do much to break its force.For there, stretched upon the stone bier before us, robed in white and perfectly preserved, was what appeared to be the body of Leo Vincey.I stared from Leo, standing there alive, to Leo lying there dead, and could see no difference;except, perhaps, that the body on the bier looked older.Feature for feature they were the same, even down to the crop of little golden curls, which was Leo's most uncommon beauty.It even seemed to me, as Ilooked, that the expression on the dead man's face resembled that which I had sometimes seen upon Leo's when he was plunged into profound sleep.I can only sum up the closeness of the resemblance by saying that I never saw twins so exactly similar as that dead and living pair.

I turned to see what effect was produced upon Leo by this sight of his dead self, and found it to be one of partial stupefaction.He stood for two or three minutes staring and said nothing, and when at last he spoke it was only to ejaculate"Cover it up and take me away."

"Nay, wait, Kallikrates," said Ayesha, who, standing with the lamp raised above her head, flooding with its light her own rich beauty and the cold wonder of the death-clothed form upon the bier, resembled an inspired Sibyl rather than a woman, as she rolled out her majestic sentences with a grandeur and a freedom of utterance which I am, alas! quite unable to reproduce.

"Wait; I would show thee something, that no tittle of my crime may.be hidden from thee.Do thou, O Holly, open the garment on the breast of the dead Kallikrates, for perchance my lord may fear to touch himself."I obeyed with trembling hands.It seemed a desecration and an unhallowed thing to touch that sleeping image of the live man by my side.Presently his broad chest was bare, and there upon it, right over the heart, was a wound, evidently inflicted with a spear.