SHE AND ALLAN

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 _Híya_, 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 Kôr 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 Kôr, 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.