She and Allan: Introduction

Introduction

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 _H�ya_, 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 K�r 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 K�r, 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 _K�r_! Now of veiled women there are
plenty in the world, but were there also two K�rs?

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.

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