HE.
by Andrew Lang.
DEDICATION.
_KoR_, _Jan._ 30, 1887.
_DEAR ALLAN QUATERMAIN,
You, who, with others, have aided so manfully in the Restoration of King Romance, know that His Majesty is a Merry Monarch.
You will not think, therefore, that the respectful Liberty we have taken with your Wondrous Tale (as Pamela did with the 137th Psalm) indicates any lack of Loyalty to our Lady Ayesha.
Her beauties are beyond the reach of danger from Burlesque, nor does_ her _form flit across our humble pages.
May you restore to us yet the prize of her perfections, for we, at least, can never believe that she wholly perished in the place of the Pillar of Fire!
Yours ever,
TWO OF THE AMA LO-GROLLA._
HE.
CHAPTER I.
EDITOR"S INTRODUCTION.
As I sat, one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the head of a Moo Cow[1] from Canada, I was roused by a ring at the door bell.
[1]
A literary friend to whom I have shown your MS. says a weendigo is Ojibbeway for a cannibal. And why do you shoot poor Moo Cows?--PUBLISHER.
Mere slip of the pen. Meant a Cow Moose. Literary gent no sportsman.--ED.
All right.--PUBLISHER.
The hall-porter presently entered, bearing a huge parcel, which had just arrived by post. I opened it with all the excitement that an unexpected parcel can cause, and murmured, like Thackeray"s sailor-man, "Claret, perhaps, Mumm, I hope----"
It was a Mummy Case, by Jingo!
This was no common, or museum mummy case. The lid, with the gilded mask, was absent, and the under half or lower segment, painted all over with hieroglyphics of an unusual type, and _green_ in colour--had obviously been used as a cradle for unconscious infancy. A baby had slept in the last sleeping-place of the dead! What an opportunity for the moralist! But I am not a collector of cradles.
Who had sent it, and why?
The question was settled by an envelope in a feminine hand, which, with a cylindrical packet, fell out of the Mummy Case, and contained a letter running as follows:--
_"Lady Betty"s, Oxford._
_"My dear Sir,--You have not forgotten me and my friend Leonora O"Dolite?_
_"The Mummy Case which encloses this doc.u.ment is the Cradle of her ancient Race._
_"We are, for reasons you will discover in the accompanying ma.n.u.script, about to start for Treasure Island, where, if anywhere in this earth, ready money is to be found on easy terms of personal insecurity."_
"Oh, confound it," I cried, "here"s another fiend of a woman sending me another ma.n.u.script! They are always at it! Wants to get it into a high-cla.s.s magazine, as usual." And my guess was correct.
The letter went on:--
"_You, who are so well known, will have no difficulty in getting the editor of the Nineteenth Century, or the Quarterly Review, or Bow Bells, to accept my little contribution. I shall be glad to hear what remuneration I am to expect, and cheques may be forwarded to_
"_Yours very truly,_
"MARY MARTIN.
"P.S.--_The mummy case is very valuable. Please deposit it at the Old Bank, in the High, where it will represent my balance._
"M. M."
Now I get letters like this (not usually escorted by a mummy case) about thrice a day, and a pretty sum it costs me in stamps to send back the rubbish to the amateur authors. But how could I send back a ma.n.u.script to a lady already on her way to Treasure Island?
Here, perhaps, I should explain how Mary Martin, as she signed herself, came to choose _me_ for her literary agent. To be sure, total strangers are always sending me their ma.n.u.scripts, but Mrs. Martin had actually been introduced to me years before.
I was staying, as it happened, at one of our university towns, which I shall call Oxford, for short--not that that was _really_ its name.
Walking one day with a niece, a scholar of Lady Betty"s Hall, we chanced to meet in the High two rather remarkable persons. One of them was the very prettiest girl I ever saw in my life. Her n.o.ble frame marked her as the victor over Girton at lawn-tennis; while her _pince-nez_ indicated the student. She reminded me, in the grace of her movements, of the Artemis of the Louvre and the Psyche of Naples, while her thoughtful expression recalled the celebrated "Reading Girl" of Donatello. Only a reading girl, indeed, could have been, as she was, Reader in English Literature on the Churton Collins Foundation.
"Who is she?" I said to my friend, the scholar of Lady Betty"s; "what a lovely creature she is!"
"Who, _that_?" she replied with some tartness. "Well, what you can see in _her_, _I_ don"t know. That"s Leonora O"Dolite, and the lady with her is the Lady Superior of Lady Betty"s.
"They call them Pretty and the Proctor," my friend went on, "as Mrs.
Martin--Polly they call her too--has been Proctor twice."[2]
[2]
I say, you know, keep clear of improbabilities! No one was ever old enough to have been Proctor _twice_.--PUBLISHER.
That"s all you know about it. Why, I shall bring in a character old enough to have been Proctor a thousand times.--ED.
Now n.o.body could have called Polly bewitching. Her age must really have been quite thirty-five. I dislike dwelling on this topic, but she was short, dumpy, wore blue spectacles, a green umbrella, a red and black shawl, worsted mittens and uncompromising boots. She had also the ringlets and other attractions with which French Art adorns its ideal Englishwoman.
At my request, I was introduced; but presently some thirty professors, six or seven senior dons, and a sprinkling of Heads of Houses in red and black sleeves came bounding out of University sermon, and gathered round the lovely Leonora. The master of St. Catherine"s was accompanied by a hitherto Unattached student, who manifestly at once fell a victim to Leonora"s charms.
This youth was of peculiar aspect. He was a member of the nearly extinct Boshman tribe of Kokoatinaland. His long silky hair, originally black, had been blanched to a permanent and snowy white by failures in the attempt to matriculate at Balliol. He was short--not above four feet nine--and was tattooed all over his dark but intelligent features.