第38章

She was so beautiful that I was wont to creep in hither with a lamp and gaze upon her.Had it not been for her cold hands, almost could I think that she slept and would one day awake, so fair and peaceful was she in her robes of white.White was she, too, and her hair was yellow and lay down her almost to the feet.There are many such still in the tombs at the place where _i_ She _i_ is for those who set them there had a way I know naught of, whereby to keep their beloved out of the crumbling hand of Decay, even when Death had slain them.Ay, day by day I came hither, and gazed on her till at last, laugh not at me, stranger, for I was but a silly lad, I learned to love that dead form, that shell which once had held a life that no more is.I would creep up to her and kiss her cold face, and wonder how many men had lived and died since she was, and who had loved her and embraced her in the days that long had passed away.And, my Baboon, I think I learned wisdom from that dead one, for of a truth it taught me of the littleness of life, and the length of death, and how all things that are under the sun go down one path, and are forever forgotten.And so I mused, and it seemed to me that wisdom flowed into me from the dead, till one day my mother, a watchful woman, but hasty minded, seeing Iwas changed, followed me, and saw the beautiful white one, and feared that I was bewitched, as, indeed, Iwas.So half in dread, and half in anger, she took the lamp, and, standing the dead woman up against the wall there, set fire to her hair, and she burned fiercely, even down to the feet, for those who are thus kept burn excellently well.

"See, my son, there on the roof is yet the smoke of her burning."I looked up doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of the sepulchre was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three feet or more across.Doubtless it had in the course of years been rubbed off the sides of the little cave, but on the roof it remained, and there was no mistaking its appearance.

"She burned," he went on in a meditative way, "even to the feet, but the feet I came back and saved, cutting the burned bone from them, and hid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a piece of linen.

Surely, I remember it as though it were but yesterday.

Perchance they are there if none have found them, even to this hour.Of truth I have not entered this chamber from that time to this very day.Stay, I will look, and, kneeling down, he groped about with his long arm in the recess under the.stone bench.Presently his face brightened, and with an exclamation he pulled something forth that was caked in dust, which he shook on to the floor.It was covered with the remains of a rotting rag, which he undid, and revealed to my astonished gaze a beautifully shaped and almost white woman's foot, looking as fresh and firm as though it had but now been placed there.

"Thou seest, my son, the Baboon," he said, in a sad voice; "I spake the truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining.Take it, my son, and gaze upon it."I took this cold fragment of-mortality in my hand and looked at it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixed up were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination.It was light, much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and the flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung a faintly aromatic odor.For the rest it was not shrunk or shriveled, or even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burned, perfect as on the day of deatha very triumph of embalming.

Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lain for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty that it had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgotten civilizationfirst as a merry child's, then as a blushing maid's, and lastly as a perfect woman's.

Through what halls of Life had its soft step echoed, and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down the dusty ways of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of night when the black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened for its stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon the proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman's beauty, and well might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon its jewelled whiteness.

I wrapped up this relic of the past in the remnants of the old linen rag which had evidently formed a portion of its owner's grave-clothes, for it was partially burned, and put it away in my Gladstone bag, which Ihad bought at the Army and Navy Storesa strange combination, I thought.Then with Billali's help Istaggered off to see Leo.I found him dreadfully bruised, worse even than myself, perhaps owing to the excessive whiteness of his skin, and faint and weak with the loss of blood from the flesh wound in his side, but for all that cheerful as a cricket, and asking for some breakfast.Job and Ustane got him on to the bottom, or rather the sacking of a litter, which was removed from its pole for that purpose, and with the aid of old Billali carried him out into the shade at the mouth of the cave, from which, by the way, every trace of the slaughter of the previous night had now been removed, and there we all breakfasted, and indeed spent that day, and most of the two following ones.

On the third morning Job and myself were practically recovered.Leo also was so much better that I yielded to Billali's often expressed entreaty, and agreed to start at once upon our journey to Ko^r, which we were told was the name of the place where the mysterious _i_ She _i_ lived, though I still feared for its effects upon Leo, and especially lest the motion should cause his wound, which was scarcely skinned over, to break open again.Indeed, had it not been for Billali's evident anxiety to get off, which led us to suspect that some difficulty or danger might threaten us if we did not comply with it, I would not have consented to go.