Ziska
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Marie Corelli >> Ziska
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14 Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
ZISKA
THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED SOUL
BY
MARIE CORELLI
Other Books by the same Author
THE SORROWS OF SATAN BARABBAS A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS THE MIGHTY
ATOM, ETC., ETC.
TO THE PRESENT LIVING RE-INCARNATION OF ARAXES
ZISKA.
THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED SOUL.
PROLOGUE.
Dark against the sky towered the Great Pyramid, and over its apex
hung the moon. Like a wreck cast ashore by some titanic storm, the
Sphinx, reposing amid the undulating waves of grayish sand
surrounding it, seemed for once to drowse. Its solemn visage that
had impassively watched ages come and go, empires rise and fall,
and generations of men live and die, appeared for the moment to
have lost its usual expression of speculative wisdom and intense
disdain--its cold eyes seemed to droop, its stern mouth almost
smiled. The air was calm and sultry; and not a human foot
disturbed the silence. But towards midnight a Voice suddenly arose
as it were like a wind in the desert, crying aloud: "Araxes!
Araxes!" and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the deep
recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove
their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that
flitted out like a thin vapor from the very portals of Death's
ancient temple, and drifting forward a few paces resolved itself
into the visionary fairness of a Woman's form--a Woman whose dark
hair fell about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long-
buried corpse's wrappings; a Woman whose eyes flashed with an
unholy fire as she lifted her face to the white moon and waved her
ghostly arms upon the air. And again the wild Voice pulsated
through the stillness.
"Araxes! ... Araxes! Thou art here,
--and I pursue thee! Through life into
death; through death out into life again!
I find thee and I follow! I follow!
Araxes!..."
Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; and ere the pale
opal dawn flushed the sky with hues of rose and amber the Shadow
had vanished; the Voice was heard no more. Slowly the sun lifted
the edge of its golden shield above the horizon, and the great
Sphinx awaking from its apparent brief slumber, stared in
expressive and eternal scorn across the tracts of sand and tufted
palm-trees towards the glittering dome of El-Hazar--that abode of
profound sanctity and learning, where men still knelt and
worshipped, praying the Unknown to deliver them from the Unseen.
And one would almost have deemed that the sculptured Monster with
the enigmatical Woman-face and Lion-form had strange thoughts in
its huge granite brain; for when the full day sprang in glory over
the desert and illumined its large features with a burning saffron
radiance, its cruel lips still smiled as though yearning to speak
and propound the terrible riddle of old time; the Problem which
killed!
CHAPTER I.
It was the full "season" in Cairo. The ubiquitous Britisher and
the no less ubiquitous American had planted their differing
"society" standards on the sandy soil watered by the Nile, and
were busily engaged in the work of reducing the city, formerly
called Al Kahira or The Victorious, to a more deplorable condition
of subjection and slavery than any old-world conqueror could ever
have done. For the heavy yoke of modern fashion has been flung on
the neck of Al Kahira, and the irresistible, tyrannic dominion of
"swagger" vulgarity has laid The Victorious low. The swarthy
children of the desert might, and possibly would, be ready and
willing to go forth and fight men with men's weapons for the
freedom to live and die unmolested in their own native land; but
against the blandly-smiling, white-helmeted, sun-spectacled,
perspiring horde of Cook's "cheap trippers," what can they do save
remain inert and well-nigh speechless? For nothing like the cheap
tripper was ever seen in the world till our present enlightened
and glorious day of progress; he is a new-grafted type of nomad,
like and yet unlike a man. The Darwin theory asserts itself
proudly and prominently in bristles of truth all over him--in his
restlessness, his ape-like agility and curiosity, his shameless
inquisitiveness, his careful cleansing of himself from foreign
fleas, his general attention to minutiae, and his always voracious
appetite; and where the ape ends and the man begins is somewhat
difficult to discover. The "image of God" wherewith he, together
with his fellows, was originally supposed to be impressed in the
first fresh days of Creation, seems fairly blotted out, for there
is no touch of the Divine in his mortal composition. Nor does the
second created phase-the copy of the Divineo--namely, the Heroic,-
-dignify his form or ennoble his countenance. There is nothing of
the heroic in the wandering biped who swings through the streets
of Cairo in white flannels, laughing at the staid composure of the
Arabs, flicking thumb and finger at the patient noses of the small
hireable donkeys and other beasts of burden, thrusting a warm red
face of inquiry into the shadowy recesses of odoriferous bazaars,
and sauntering at evening in the Esbekiyeh Gardens, cigar in mouth
and hands in pockets, looking on the scene and behaving in it as
if the whole place were but a reflex of Earl's Court Exhibition.
History affects the cheap tripper not at all; he regards the
Pyramids as "good building" merely, and the inscrutable Sphinx
itself as a fine target for empty soda-water bottles, while
perhaps his chiefest regret is that the granite whereof the
ancient monster is hewn is too hard for him to inscribe his
distinguished name thereon. It is true that there is a punishment
inflicted on any person or persons attempting such wanton work--a
fine or the bastinado; yet neither fine nor bastinado would affect
the "tripper" if he could only succeed in carving "'Arry" on the
Sphinx's jaw. But he cannot, and herein is his own misery.
Otherwise he comports himself in Egypt as he does at Margate, with
no more thought, reflection, or reverence than dignify the
composition of his far-off Simian ancestor.
Taking him all in all, he is, however, no worse, and in some
respects better, than the "swagger" folk who "do" Egypt, or
rather, consent in a languid way to be "done" by Egypt. These are
the people who annually leave England on the plea of being unable
to stand the cheery, frosty, and in every respect healthy winter
of their native country--that winter, which with its wild winds,
its sparkling frost and snow, its holly trees bright with scarlet
berries, its merry hunters galloping over field and moor during
daylight hours, and its great log fires roaring up the chimneys at
evening, was sufficiently good for their forefathers to thrive
upon and live through contentedly up to a hale and hearty old age
in the times when the fever of travelling from place to place was
an unknown disease, and home was indeed "sweet home." Infected by
strange maladies of the blood and nerves, to which even scientific
physicians find it hard to give suitable names, they shudder at
the first whiff of cold, and filling huge trunks with a thousand
foolish things which have, through luxurious habit, become
necessities to their pallid existences, they hastily depart to the
Land of the Sun, carrying with them their nameless languors,
discontents and incurable illnesses, for which Heaven itself, much
less Egypt, could provide no remedy. It is not at all to be
wondered at that these physically and morally sick tribes of human
kind have ceased to give any serious attention as to what may
possibly become of them after death, or whether there IS any
"after," for they are in the mentally comatose condition which
precedes entire wreckage of brain-force; existence itself has
become a "bore;" one place is like another, and they repeat the
same monotonous round of living in every spot where they
congregate, whether it be east, west, north, or south. On the
Riviera they find little to do except meet at Rumpelmayer's at
Cannes, the London House at Nice, or the Casino at Monte-Carlo;
and in Cairo they inaugurate a miniature London "season" over
again, worked in the same groove of dinners, dances, drives,
picnics, flirtations, and matrimonial engagements. But the Cairene
season has perhaps some advantage over the London one so far as
this particular set of "swagger" folk are concerned--it is less
hampered by the proprieties. One can be more "free," you know! You
may take a little walk into "Old" Cairo, and turning a corner you
may catch glimpses of what Mark Twain calls "Oriental simplicity,"
namely, picturesquely-composed groups of "dear delightful" Arabs
whose clothing is no more than primitive custom makes strictly
necessary. These kind of "tableaux vivants" or "art studies" give
quite a thrill of novelty to Cairene-English Society,--a touch of
savagery,--a soupcon of peculiarity which is entirely lacking to
fashionable London. Then, it must be remembered that the "children
of the desert" have been led by gentle degrees to understand that
for harboring the strange locusts imported into their land by
Cook, and the still stranger specimens of unclassified insect
called Upper Ten, which imports itself, they will receive
"backsheesh."
"Backsheesh" is a certain source of comfort to all nations, and
translates itself with sweetest euphony into all languages, and
the desert-born tribes have justice on their side when they demand
as much of it as they can get, rightfully or wrongfully. They
deserve to gain some sort of advantage out of the odd-looking
swarms of Western invaders who amaze them by their dress and
affront them by their manners. "Backsheesh," therefore, has become
the perpetual cry of the Desert-Born,--it is the only means of
offence and defence left to them, and very naturally they cling to
it with fervor and resolution. And who shall blame them? The tall,
majestic, meditative Arab--superb as mere man, and standing naked-
footed on his sandy native soil, with his one rough garment flung
round his loins and his great black eyes fronting, eagle-like, the
sun--merits something considerable for condescending to act as
guide and servant to the Western moneyed civilian who clothes his
lower limbs in straight, funnel-like cloth casings, shaped to the
strict resemblance of an elephant's legs, and finishes the
graceful design by enclosing the rest of his body in a stiff shirt
wherein he can scarcely move, and a square-cut coat which divides
him neatly in twain by a line immediately above the knee, with the
effect of lessening his height by several inches. The Desert-Born
surveys him gravely and in civil compassion, sometimes with a
muttered prayer against the hideousness of him, but on the whole
with patience and equanimity,--influenced by considerations of
"backsheesh." And the English "season" whirls lightly and
vaporously, like blown egg-froth, over the mystic land of the old
gods,--the terrible land filled with dark secrets as yet
unexplored,--the land "shadowing with wings," as the Bible hath
it,--the land in which are buried tremendous histories as yet
unguessed,--profound enigmas of the supernatural,--labyrinths of
wonder, terror and mystery,--all of which remain unrevealed to the
giddy-pated, dancing, dining, gabbling throng of the fashionable
travelling lunatics of the day,--the people who "never think
because it is too much trouble," people whose one idea is to
journey from hotel to hotel and compare notes with their
acquaintances afterwards as to which house provided them with the
best-cooked food. For it is a noticeable fact that with most
visitors to the "show" places of Europe and the East, food,
bedding and selfish personal comfort are the first
considerations,--the scenery and the associations come last.
Formerly the position was reversed. In the days when there were no
railways, and the immortal Byron wrote his Childe Harold, it was
customary to rate personal inconvenience lightly; the beautiful or
historic scene was the attraction for the traveller, and not the
arrangements made for his special form of digestive apparatus.
Byron could sleep on the deck of a sailing vessel wrapped in his
cloak and feel none the worse for it; his well-braced mind and
aspiring spirit soared above all bodily discomforts; his thoughts
were engrossed with the mighty teachings of time; he was able to
lose himself in glorious reveries on the lessons of the past and
the possibilities of the future; the attitude of the inspired
Thinker as well as Poet was his, and a crust of bread and cheese
served him as sufficiently on his journeyings among the then
unspoilt valleys and mountains of Switzerland as the warm, greasy,
indigestible fare of the elaborate table-d'hotes at Lucerne and
Interlaken serve us now. But we, in our "superior" condition,
pooh-pooh the Byronic spirit of indifference to events and scorn
of trifles,--we say it is "melodramatic," completely forgetting
that our attitude towards ourselves and things in general is one
of most pitiable bathos. We cannot write Childe Harold, but we can
grumble at both bed and board in every hotel under the sun; we can
discover teasing midges in the air and questionable insects in the
rooms; and we can discuss each bill presented to us with an
industrious persistence which nearly drives landlords frantic and
ourselves as well. In these kind of important matters we are
indeed "superior" to Byron and other ranting dreamers of his type,
but we produce no Childe Harolds, and we have come to the strange
pass of pretending that Don Juan is improper, while we pore over
Zola with avidity! To such a pitch has our culture brought us!
And, like the Pharisee in the Testament, we thank God we are not
as others are. We are glad we are not as the Arab, as the African,
as the Hindoo; we are proud of our elephant-legs and our dividing
coat-line; these things show we are civilized, and that God
approves of us more than any other type of creature ever created.
We take possession of nations, not by thunder of war, but by
clatter of dinner-plates. We do not raise armies, we build hotels;
and we settle ourselves in Egypt as we do at Homburg, to dress and
dine and sleep and sniff contempt on all things but ourselves, to
such an extent that we have actually got into the habit of calling
the natives of the places we usurp "foreigners." WE are the
foreigners; but somehow we never can see it. Wherever we
condescend to build hotels, that spot we consider ours. We are
surprised at the impertinence of Frankfort people who presume to
visit Homburg while we are having our "season" there; we wonder
how they dare do it! And, of a truth, they seem amazed at their
own boldness, and creep shyly through the Kur-Garten as though
fearing to be turned out by the custodians. The same thing occurs
in Egypt; we are frequently astounded at what we call "the
impertinence of these foreigners," i.e. the natives. They ought to
be proud to have us and our elephant-legs; glad to see such noble
and beautiful types of civilization as the stout parvenu with his
pendant paunch, and his family of gawky youths and maidens of the
large-toothed, long-limbed genus; glad to see the English "mamma,"
who never grows old, but wears young hair in innocent curls, and
has her wrinkles annually "massaged" out by a Paris artiste in
complexion. The Desert-Born, we say, should be happy and grateful
to see such sights, and not demand so much "backsheesh." In fact,
the Desert-Born should not get so much in our way as he does; he
is a very good servant, of course, but as a man and a brother--
pooh! Egypt may be his country, and he may love it as much as we
love England; but our feelings are more to be considered than his,
and there is no connecting link of human sympathy between
Elephant-Legs and sun-browned Nudity!
So at least thought Sir Chetwynd Lyle, a stout gentleman of coarse
build and coarser physiognomy, as he sat in a deep arm-chair in
the great hall or lounge of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, smoking
after dinner in the company of two or three acquaintances with
whom he had fraternized during his stay in Cairo. Sir Chetwynd was
fond of airing his opinions for the benefit of as many people who
cared to listen to him, and Sir Chetwynd had some right to his
opinions, inasmuch as he was the editor and proprietor of a large
London newspaper. His knighthood was quite a recent distinction,
and nobody knew exactly how he had managed to get it. He had
originally been known in Fleet Street by the irreverent sobriquet
of "greasy Chetwynd," owing to his largeness, oiliness and general
air of blandly-meaningless benevolence. He had a wife and two
daughters, and one of his objects in wintering at Cairo was to get
his cherished children married. It was time, for the bloom was
slightly off the fair girl-roses,--the dainty petals of the
delicate buds were beginning to wither. And Sir Chetwynd had heard
much of Cairo; he understood that there was a great deal of
liberty allowed there between men and maids,--that they went out
together on driving excursions to the Pyramids, that they rode on
lilliputian donkeys over the sand at moonlight, that they floated
about in boats at evening on the Nile, and that, in short, there
were more opportunities of marriage among the "flesh-pots of
Egypt" than in all the rush and crush of London. So here he was,
portly and comfortable, and on the whole well satisfied with his
expedition; there were a good many eligible bachelors about, and
Muriel and Dolly were really doing their best. So was their
mother, Lady Chetwynd Lyle; she allowed no "eligible" to escape
her hawk-like observation, and on this particular evening she was
in all her glory, for there was to be a costume ball at the
Gezireh Palace Hotel,--a superb affair, organized by the
proprietors for the amusement of their paying guests, who
certainly paid well,--even stiffly. Owing to the preparations that
were going on for this festivity, the lounge, with its sumptuous
Egyptian decorations and luxurious modern fittings, was well-nigh
deserted save for Sir Chetwynd and his particular group of
friends, to whom he was holding forth, between slow cigar-puffs,
on the squalor of the Arabs, the frightful thievery of the Sheiks,
the incompetency of his own special dragoman, and the mistake
people made in thinking the Egyptians themselves a fine race.
"They are tall, certainly," said Sir Chetwynd, surveying his
paunch, which lolled comfortably, and as it were by itself, in
front of him, like a kind of waistcoated air-balloon. "I grant you
they are tall. That is, the majority of them are. But I have seen
short men among them. The Khedive is not taller than I am. And the
Egyptian face is very deceptive. The features are often fine,--
occasionally classic,--but intelligent expression is totally
lacking."
Here Sir Chetwynd waved his cigar descriptively, as though he
would fain suggest that a heavy jaw, a fat nose with a pimple at
the end, and a gross mouth with black teeth inside it, which were
special points in his own physiognomy, went further to make up
"intelligent expression" than any well-moulded, straight, Eastern
type of sun-browned countenance ever seen or imagined.
"Well, I don't quite agree with you there," said a man who was
lying full length on one of the divans close by and smoking.
"These brown chaps have deuced fine eyes. There doesn't seem to be
any lack of expression in them. And that reminds me, there is at
fellow arrived here to-day who looks for all the world like an
Egyptian, of the best form. He is a Frenchman, though; a
Provencal,--every one knows him,--he is the famous painter, Armand
Gervase."
"Indeed!"--and Sir Chetwynd roused himself at the name--"Armand
Gervase! THE Armand Gervase?"
"The only one original," laughed the other. "He's come here to
make studies of Eastern women. A rare old time he'll have among
them, I daresay! He's not famous for character. He ought to paint
the Princess Ziska."
"Ah, by-the-bye, I wanted to ask you about that lady. Does anyone
know who she is? My wife is very anxious to find out whether she
is--well--er--quite the proper person, you know! When one has
young girls, one cannot be too careful."
Ross Courtney, the man on the divan, got up slowly and stretched
his long athletic limbs with a lazy enjoyment in the action. He
was a sporting person with unhampered means and large estates in
Scotland and Ireland; he lived a joyous, "don't-care" life of
wandering about the world in search of adventures, and he had a
scorn of civilized conventionalities--newspapers and their editors
among them. And whenever Sir Chetwynd spoke of his "young girls"
he was moved to irreverent smiling, as he knew the youngest of the
twain was at least thirty. He also recognized and avoided the wily
traps and pitfalls set for him by Lady Chetwynd Lyle in the hope
that he would yield himself up a captive to the charms of Muriel
or Dolly; and as he thought of these two fair ones now and
involuntarily compared them in his mind with the other woman just
spoken of, the smile that had begun to hover on his lips deepened
unconsciously till his handsome face was quite illumined with its
mirth.
"Upon my word, I don't think it matters who anybody is in Cairo!"
he said with a fine carelessness. "The people whose families are
all guaranteed respectable are more lax in their behavior than the
people one knows nothing about. As for the Princess Ziska, her
extraordinary beauty and intelligence would give her the entree
anywhere--even if she hadn't money to back those qualities up."
"She's enormously wealthy, I hear," said young Lord Fulkeward,
another of the languid smokers, caressing his scarcely perceptible
moustache. "My mother thinks she is a divorcee."
Sir Chetwynd looked very serious, and shook his fat head solemnly.
"Well, there is nothing remarkable in being divorced, you know,"
laughed Ross Courtney. "Nowadays it seems the natural and fitting
end of marriage."
Sir Chetwynd looked graver still. He refused to be drawn into this
kind of flippant conversation. He, at any rate, was respectably
married; he had no sympathy whatever with the larger majority of
people whose marriages were a failure.
"There is no Prince Ziska then?" he inquired. "The name sounds to
me of Russian origin, and I imagined--my wife also imagined,--that
the husband of the lady might very easily be in Russia while his
wife's health might necessitate her wintering in Egypt. The
Russian winter climate is inclement, I believe."
"That would be a very neat arrangement," yawned Lord Fulkeward.
"But my mother thinks not. My mother thinks there is not a husband
at all,--that there never was a husband. In fact my mother has
very strong convictions on the subject. But my mother intends to
visit her all the same."
"She does? Lady Fulkeward has decided on that? Oh, well, in THAT
case!"--and Sir Chetwynd expanded his lower-chest air-balloon. "Of
course, Lady Chetwynd Lyle can no longer have any scruples on the
subject. If Lady Fulkeward visits the Princess there can be no
doubt as to her actual STATUS."
"Oh, I don't know!" murmured Lord Fulkeward, stroking his downy
lip. "You see my mother's rather an exceptional person. When the
governor was alive she hardly ever went out anywhere, you know,
and all the people who came to our house in Yorkshire had to bring
their pedigrees with them, so to speak. It was beastly dull! But
now my mother has taken to 'studying character,' don'cher know;
she likes all sorts of people about her, and the more mixed they
are the more she is delighted with them. Fact, I assure you! Quite
a change has come over my mother since the poor old governor
died!"
Ross Courtney looked amused. A change indeed had come over Lady
Fulkeward--a change, sudden, mysterious and amazing to many of her
former distinguished friends with "pedigrees." In her husband's
lifetime her hair had been a soft silver-gray; her face pale,
refined and serious; her form full and matronly; her step sober
and discreet; but two years after the death of the kindly and
noble old lord who had cherished her as the apple of his eye and
up to the last moment of his breath had thought her the most
beautiful woman in England, she appeared with golden tresses, a
peach-bloom complexion, and a figure which had been so massaged,
rubbed, pressed and artistically corseted as to appear positively
sylph-like. She danced like a fairy, she who had once been called
"old" Lady Fulkeward; she smoked cigarettes; she laughed like a
child at every trivial thing--any joke, however stale, flat and
unprofitable, was sufficient to stir her light pulses to
merriment; and she flirted--oh, heavens!--HOW she flirted!--with a
skill and a grace and a knowledge and an aplomb that nearly drove
Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle frantic. They, poor things, were
beaten out of the field altogether by her superior tact and art of
"fence," and they hated her accordingly and called her in private
a "horrid old woman," which perhaps, when her maid undressed her,
she was. But she was having a distinctly "good time" in Cairo; she
called her son, who was in delicate health, "my poor dear little
boy!" and he, though twenty-eight on his last birthday, was
reduced to such an abject condition of servitude by her
assertiveness, impudent gayety and general freedom of manner, that
he could not open his mouth without alluding to "my mother," and
using "my mother" as a peg whereon to hang all his own opinions
and emotions as well as the opinions and emotions of other people.
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