Allan Quatermain

the High Priest Agon, who, as we had every reason to believe, was Sorais’s great ally, and the heart and soul of her party. This cunning and ferocious old man had not forgiven us for those hippopotami, or rather that was what he said. What he meant was that he would never brook the introduction of our wider ways of thought and foreign learning and influence while there was a possibility of stamping us out. Also he knew that we possessed a different system of religion, and no doubt was in daily terror of our attempting to introduce it into Zu-Vendis. One day he asked me if we had any religion in our country, and I told him that so far as I could remember we had ninety-five different ones. You might have knocked him down with a feather; and really it is difficult not to pity a high priest of a well-established cult who is haunted by the possible approach of one or all of ninety-five new religions.

When we knew that Agon was caught, Nyleptha, Sir Henry, and I discussed what was to be done with him. I was for closely incarcerating him, but Nyleptha shook her head, saying that it would produce a disastrous effect throughout the country. “Ah!” she added, with a stamp of her foot, “if I win and am once really Queen, I will break the power of those priests, with their rites and revels and dark secret ways.” I only wished that old Agon could have heard her, it would have frightened him.

“Well,” said Sir Henry, “if we are not to imprison him, I suppose that we may as well let him go. He’s of no use here.”

Nyleptha looked at him in a curious sort of way, and said in a dry little voice, “Thinkest thou so, my lord?”

“Eh?” said Curtis. “No, I don’t see what is the use of keeping him.”

She said nothing, but continued looking at him in a way that was as shy as it was sweet.

Then at last he understood.

“Forgive me, Nyleptha,” he said, rather tremulously. “Dost thou mean that thou wilt marry me, even now?”

“Nay, I know not; let my lord say,” was her rapid answer; “but if my lord wills, the priest is there and the altar is there”⁠—pointing to the entrance to a private chapel⁠—“and am I not ready to do the will of my lord? Listen, oh my lord; In eight days or less thou must leave me and go down to war, for thou shalt lead my armies⁠—and in war, men sometimes fall, and if so I would for a little space have had thee all my own, if only for memory’s sake;” and the tears overflowed her lovely eyes, and rolled down her face like heavy drops of dew down the red heart of a rose.

“Mayhap, too,” she went on, “I shall lose my crown, and with my crown my life and thine also. Sorais is very strong and very bitter, and if she prevails she will not spare. Who can read the future? Happiness is the world’s white bird, that alights seldom, and flies fast and far till one day he is lost in the clouds. Therefore should we hold him fast if by any chance he rests for a little space upon our hand. It is not wise to neglect the present for the future, for who knows what the future will be, Incubu? Let us pluck our flowers while the dew is on them, for when the sun is up they wither, and on the morrow will others bloom that we shall never see.” And she lifted her sweet face to him and smiled into his eyes, and once more I felt a horrible pang of jealousy and turned and went away. They never took much notice of whether I was there or not, thinking, I suppose, that I was an old fool, and that it did not matter one way or the other, and really I believe that they were right.

So I went back to our quarters, and ruminated over things in general, and watched old Umslopogaas whetting his axe outside the window, as a vulture whets his beak beside a dying ox.

And in about an hour’s time Sir Henry came tearing over, looking very radiant and wildly excited, and found Good and myself, and even Umslopogaas, and asked us if we should like to assist at a real wedding. Of course we said yes, and off we went to the chapel, where we found Agon looking as sulky as any High Priest possibly could; and no wonder. It appeared that he and Nyleptha had had a slight difference of opinion about the coming ceremony. He had flatly refused to celebrate it, or to allow any of his priests to do so, whereupon Nyleptha became very angry, and told him that she, as Queen, was head of the Church, and meant to be obeyed. Indeed, she played the part of a Zu-Vendi Henry VIII to perfection, and insisted that if she wanted to be married, she would be married, and he should marry her.¹⁹

He still refused to go through the ceremony, so she clinched her argument thus:

“Well, I cannot execute a High Priest, because there is an absurd prejudice against it, and I cannot imprison him, because all his subordinates would raise a crying that would bring the stars down on Zu-Vendis and crush it, but I can leave him to contemplate the altar of the Sun without anything to eat, because that is his natural vocation, and if thou wilt not marry me, O Agon! thou shalt be placed before the altar yonder, with naught but a little water till such time as thou hast reconsidered the matter.”

Now, as it happened, Agon had been hurried away that morning without his breakfast, and was already exceedingly hungry, so he presently modified his views and consented to marry them, saying at the same time that