She: A History of Adventure (Modern Library Classics) by H. Rider Haggard

Author:H. Rider Haggard [Haggard, H. Rider]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307808028
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

XV

AYESHA GIVES JUDGMENT

The next thing that I remember was opening my eyes and perceiving the form of Job, who had now almost recovered from his attack of fever. He was standing in a beam of light that pierced into the cave from the outer air, shaking out my clothes as a makeshift for brushing them, which he could not do because there was no brush, then folding them up neatly and laying them on the foot of the stone couch. This done, he took my leather dressing-case out of the travelling bag, and opened it ready for my use. First he stood it on the foot of the couch also, then, being afraid, I suppose, that I should kick it off, he placed it upon a leopard skin on the floor, and stepped back a pace or two to observe the effect. It was not satisfactory, so he shut up the bag, turned it on end, and, having stood it against the end of the couch, rested the dressing-case on it. Next he looked at the pots full of water, which constituted our washing apparatus. “Ah!” I heard him murmur, “no hot water in this beastly place. I suppose these poor creatures only use it to boil each other in,” and he sighed deeply.

“What is the matter, Job?” I said.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, touching his hair. “I thought you were asleep, sir: and I am sure you seem as though you want it. One might think from the look of you that you had been having a night of it.”

I only groaned by way of answer. I had, indeed, been “having a night of it,” such as I hope never to have again.

“How is Mr. Leo, Job?”

“Much the same, sir. If he don’t soon mend, he’ll end, sir; and that’s all about it; though I must say that that there savage, Ustane, do do her best for him, almost like a baptised Christian. She is always hanging round and looking after him, and if I ventures to interfere it’s awful to see her; her hair seems to stand on end, and she curses and swears away in her heathen talk—at least I fancy she must be cursing, from the look of her.”

“And what do you do then?”

“I make her a perlite bow, and I say, ‘Young woman, your position is one that I don’t quite understand, and can’t recognise. Let me tell you that I has a duty to perform to my master as is incapacitated by illness, and that I am going to perform it until I am incapacitated too,’ but she don’t take no heed, not she—only curses and swears away worse than ever. Last night she put her hand under that sort of nightshirt she wears, and whips out a knife with a kind of a curl in the blade; so I whips out my revolver, and we walks round and round each other till at last she bursts out laughing. It isn’t nice treatment for

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