第53章 CHAPTER XI(3)

"Understand me," she said, fixing her great languid eyes upon his in a fashion that made him exceedingly uncomfortable, "understand, Vernoon, that if you go out anywhere, it must be in your mask, which you can only put off when you are alone with me?"

"Why?"

"Because, Vernoon, I do not choose that any other woman should see your face. If a woman looks upon your uncovered face, remember that she dies--not nicely."

Alan stared at her blankly, being unable to find appropriate Asiki words in which to reply to this threat. But the Asika only leaned back in her chair and laughed at his evident confusion and dismay, till a new thought struck her.

"Your lips are free now," she said; "kiss my hand after the fashion of your own country," and she stretched it out to Alan, leaving him no choice but to obey her.

"Why," she went on mischievously, taking his hand and in turn touching it with her red lips, "why, are you a thief, Vernoon? That ring was mine and you have stolen it. How did you steal that ring?"

"I don't know," he answered, through Jeekie, "I found it on my finger.

I cannot understand how it came there. I understand nothing of all this talk."

"Well, well, keep it, Vernoon, only give me that other ring of yours in exchange."

"I cannot," he replied, colouring. "I promised to wear it always."

"Whom did you promise?" she asked with a flash of rage. "Was it a woman? Nay, I see, it is a man's ring, and that is well, for otherwise I would bring a curse on her, however far off she may be dwelling. Say no more and forgive my anger. A vow is a vow--keep your ring. But where is that one you used to wear in bygone days? I recall that it had a cross upon it, not this star and figure of an eagle."

Now Alan remembered that his uncle owned such a ring with a cross upon it, and was frightened, for how did this woman know these things?

"Jeekie," he said, "ask the Asika if I am mad, or if she is. How can she know what I used to wear, seeing that I was never in this place till yesterday, and certainly I have not met her anywhere else."

"She mean when you your reverend uncle," said Jeekie, wagging his great head, "she think you identical man."

"What troubles you, Vernoon," the Asika asked softly, then added anything but softly to Jeekie, "Translate, you dog, and be swift."

So Jeekie translated in a great hurry, telling her what Alan had said, and adding on his own account that he, silly white man that he was, could not understand how, as she was quite a young woman, she could have seen him before she was born. If that were so, she would be old and ugly now, not beautiful as she was.

"I never saw you before, and you never saw me, Lady, yet you talk as though we had been friends," broke in Alan in his halting Asiki.

"So we were in the spirit, Vernoon. It was she who went before me who loved that white man whose face was as your face is, but her ghost lives on in me and tells me the tale. There have been many Asikas, for thousands of years they have ruled in this land, yet but one spirit belongs to them all; it is the string upon which the beads of their lives are threaded. White man, I, whom you think young, know everything back to the beginning of the world, back to the time when I was a monkey woman sitting in those cedar trees, and if you wish, I can tell it you."

"I should like to hear it very much indeed," answered Alan, when he had mastered her meaning, "though it is strange that none of the rest of us remember such things. Meanwhile, O Asika, I will tell you that I desire to return to my own land, taking with me that gift of gold that you have given me. When will it please you to allow me to return?"

"Not yet a while, I think," she said, smiling at him weirdly, for no other word will describe that smile. "My spirit remembers that it was always thus. Those wanderers who came hither always wished to return again to their own country, like the birds in spring. Once there was a white man among them, that was more than twenty hundred years ago; he was a native of a country called Roma, and wore a helmet. He wished to return, but my mother of that day, she kept him and by and by I will show him to you if you like. Before that there was a brown man who came from a land where a great river overflows its banks every year.

He was a prince of his own country, who had fled from his king and the desert folk made a slave of him, and so he drifted hither. He wished to return also, for my mother of that day, or my spirit that dwelt in her, showed to him that if he could but be there they would make him king in his own land. But my mother of that day, she would not let him go, and by and by I will show him to you, if you wish."

Bewildered, amazed, Alan listened to her. Evidently the woman was mad, or else she played some mystical part for reasons of her own.

"When will you let me go, O Asika?" he repeated.

"Not yet a while, I think," she said again. "You are too comely and I like you," and she smiled at him. There was nothing coarse in the smile, indeed it had a certain spiritual quality which thrilled him.

"I like you," she went on in her dreamy voice, "I would keep you with me until your spirit is drawn up into my spirit, making it strong and rich as all the spirits that went before have done, those spirits that my mothers loved from the beginning, which dwell in me to-day."

Now Alan grew alarmed, desperate even.

"Queen," he said, "but just now your husband sat here, is it right then that you should talk to me thus?"

"My husband," she answered, laughing. "Why, that man is but a slave who plays the part of husband to satisfy an ancient law. Never has he so much as kissed my finger tips; my women--those who waited on you last night--are his wives, not I,--or may be, if he will. Soon he will die of love for me, and then when he is dead, though not before, I may take another husband, any husband that I choose, and I think that no black man shall be my lord, who have other, purer blood in me.