The Way of the Spirit

BY

H. RIDER HAGGARD
AUTHOR OF “JESS,” “STELLA FREGELIUS,” ETC.


“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth...and walk
in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine
eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will
bring thee into judgment.”

“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the
tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

LONDON
HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
1906


_Dedication_

MY DEAR KIPLING,—Both of us believe that there are higher aims in life
than the weaving of stories well or ill, and according to our separate
occasions strive to fulfil this faith.

Still, when we talked together of the plan of this tale, and when you
read the written book, your judgment thereof was such as all of us hope
for from an honest and instructed friend—generally in vain.

So, as you found interest in it, I offer it to you, in token of much I
cannot write. But you will understand.—

_To_ Rudyard Kipling, Esq.
Ditchingham, _14th August, 1905._

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I. THE VOICE OF THE SINGING SAND
CHAPTER II. TWO LETTERS
CHAPTER III. THE RETURN OF RUPERT
CHAPTER IV. A BUSINESS CONVERSATION
CHAPTER V. THE DINNER-PARTY
CHAPTER VI. RUPERT FALLS IN LOVE
CHAPTER VII. ENGAGED
CHAPTER VIII. EDITH’S CRUSHED LILIES
CHAPTER IX. RUPERT ACCEPTS A MISSION
CHAPTER X. MARRIED
CHAPTER XI. AN OFFERING TO THE GODS
CHAPTER XII. THE WANDERING PLAYERS
CHAPTER XIII. THE END OF THE FIGHT
CHAPTER XIV. MEA MAKES A PROPOSAL
CHAPTER XV. RUPERT MAKES OBEISANCE
CHAPTER XVI. MEANWHILE
CHAPTER XVII. WELCOME HOME!
CHAPTER XVIII. THE HAPPY, HAPPY LIFE
CHAPTER XIX. AFTER SEVEN YEARS
CHAPTER XX. REVELATIONS
CHAPTER XXI. ZAHED
CHAPTER XXII. EDITH AND MEA
CHAPTER XXIII. THE WHEEL TURNS
CHAPTER XXIV. RENUNCIATION




AUTHOR’S NOTE

This tale was written two years ago as the result of reflections which
occurred to me among the Egyptian sands and the empty cells of
long-departed anchorites.

Perhaps in printing it I should ask forgiveness for my deviation from
the familiar, trodden pathway of adventure, since in the course of a
literary experience extending now, I regret to say, over more than a
quarter of a century, often I have seen that he who attempts to step off
the line chalked out for him by custom or opinion is apt to be driven
back with stones and shoutings. Indeed, there are some who seem to think
it very improper that an author should seek, however rarely, to address
himself to a new line of thought or group of readers. As he began so he
must go on, they say. Yet I have ventured on the history of Rupert
Ullershaw’s great, and to all appearance successful Platonic experiment,
chiefly because this problem interested me: Under the conditions in
which fortune placed him in the East, was he right or wrong in clinging
to an iron interpretation of a vow of his youth and to the strict letter
of his Western Law? And was he bound to return to the English wife who
had treated him so ill, as, in the end, he made up his mind to do? In
short, should or should not circumstances be allowed to alter moral
cases?

The question is solved in one way in this book, but although she herself
was a party to that solution, looking at the matter with Mea’s eyes it
seems capable of a different reading. Still, given a sufficiency of
faith, I believe that set down here to be the true answer. Also,
whatever its exact cause and nature, there must be something satisfying
and noble in utter Renunciation for Conscience’ sake, even when
surrounding and popular judgment demands no such sacrifice. At least
this is one view of Life, its aspirations and possibilities; that which
wearies of its native soil, that which lifts its face toward the Stars.

Otherwise, why did those old anchorites wear the stone beds of their
cells so thin? Why, in this fashion or in that, do their successors
still wear them thin everywhere in the wide earth, especially in the
wise and ancient East? I think the reply is Faith: that Faith which bore
Rupert and Mea to what they held to be a glorious issue of their long
probation—that Faith in personal survival and reunion, without the
support of which in one form or another, faint and flickering, as it may
be, the happiness or even the continuance of our human world is so
difficult to imagine.

H.R.H.




THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

PROLOGUE

The last pitiful shifts of shame, the last agonised doublings of despair
when the net is about the head and the victor’s trident at the
throat—who can enjoy the story of such things as these? Yet because they
rough-hewed the character of Rupert Ullershaw, because from his part in
them he fashioned the steps whereby he climbed to that height of
renunciation which was the only throne he ever knew, something of it
must be told. A very little will suffice; the barest facts are all we
need.

Upon a certain July evening, Lord and Lady Devene sat at dinner alone in
a very fine room of a very fine house in Portland Place. They were a
striking couple, the husband much older than the wife; indeed, he was
fifty years of age, and she in the prime of womanhood. The face of Lord
Devene, neutral tinted, almost colourless, was full of strength and of a
certain sardonic ability. His small grey eyes, set beneath shaggy,
overhanging eyebrows that were sandy-coloured like his straight hair,
seemed to pierce to the heart of men and things, and his talk, when he
had anything to say upon a matter that moved him, was keen and
uncompromising. It was a very bitter face, and his words were often very
bitter words, which seems curious, as this man enjoyed good health, was
rich, powerful, and set by birth and fortune far above the vast majority
of other men.

Yet there were flies in his silver spoon of honey. For instance, he
hated his wife, as from the first she hated him; for instance, he who
greatly desired sons to carry on his wealth and line had no children;
for instance, his sharp, acrimonious intellect had broken through all
beliefs and overthrown all conventions, yet the ghost of dead belief
still haunted him, and convention still shackled his hands and feet. For
he could find no other rocks whereon to rest or cling as he was borne
forward by the universal tide which at last rips over the rough edges of
the world.

The woman, Clara, Lady Devene, was physically magnificent; tall, with a
regal-looking head, richly coloured, ivory-skinned, perfectly developed
in every part, except perhaps her brain: Good-natured, courageous after
a fashion, well-meaning, affectionate, tenacious of what she had learned
in youth, but impulsive and quite elementary in her tendencies and
outlook; one who would have wished to live her own life and go her own
way like an amiable, high-class savage, worshipping the sun and the
stars, the thunder and the rain, principally because she could not
understand them, and at times they frightened her. Such was Clara, Lady
Devene. She was not imaginative, she lived in the present for the
present. She never heard the roll of the wheels of Fate echoing, solemn
and ceaseless, through the thin, fitful turmoil of our lives, like the
boom of distant battle-guns that shape the destinies of empires
discerned through the bray of brass bands upon an esplanade.

No; Clara was not imaginative, although she had a heart, although, for
example, from year to year she could grieve over the man whom once she
had jilted or been forced to jilt (and who afterwards died of drink), in
order to take her “chance in life” and marry Lord Devene whom she
cordially disliked; whom she knew, moreover, to be self-seeking and
cross-souled, as each in his or her degree were all his race from the
first remembered Ullershaw down to himself and his collaterals.
Ultimately, such primitive and unhappy women are apt to find some lover,
especially if he reminds them of their first. Lady Devene had done so at
any rate, and that lover, as it chanced, was scarcely more than a lad,
her husband’s heir and cousin, a well-meaning but hot-hearted youth,
whom she had befooled with her flatteries and with her beauty, and now
doted on in a fashion common enough under such circumstances. Moreover,
she had been found out, as she was bound to be, and the thing had come
to its inevitable issue. The birds were blind, and Lord Devene was no
man to spread his nets in vain.

Lady Devene was not imaginative—it has been said. Yet when her husband,
lifting a large glass of claret to his lips, suddenly let it fall, so
that the red wine ran over the white table-cloth like new-shed blood
upon snow, and the delicate glass was shattered, she shivered, she knew
not why; perhaps because instinct told her that this was no accident,
but a symbol of something which was to come. For once she heard the boom
of those battle-guns of Fate above the braying of the brass band on her
life’s tawdry esplanade. There rose in her mind, indeed, the words of an
old song that she used to sing—for she had a beautiful voice, everything
about her was beautiful—a melancholy old song, which began:

“Broken is the bowl of life, spilled is its ruby wine;
Behind us lie the sins of earth, before, the doom Divine!”

It was a great favourite with that unlucky dead lover of hers who had
taken to drink, and whom she had jilted—before he took to drink. The
memory disturbed her. She rose from the table, saying that she was going
to her own sitting-room. Lord Devene answered that he would come too,
and she stared at him, for he was not in the habit of visiting her
apartments. In practice they had lived separate for years.


Husband and wife stood face to face in that darkened room, for the lamps
were not lit, and a cloud obscured the moon which till now had shone
through the open windows.

The truth was out. She knew the worst, and it was very bad.

“Do you mean to murder me?” she asked, in a hoarse voice, for the deadly
hate in the man’s every word and movement suggested nothing less to her
mind.

“No,” he answered; “only to divorce you. I mean to be rid of you—at
last. I mean to marry again. I wish to leave heirs behind me. Your young
friend shall not have my wealth and title if I can help it.”

“Divorce me? You? _You?_”

“You can prove nothing against me, Clara, and I shall deny everything,
whereas I can prove all against you. This poor lad will have to marry
you. Really I am sorry for him, for what chance had he against you? I do
not like to see one of my name made ridiculous, and it will ruin him.”

“He shall not marry me,” she answered fiercely. “I love him too well.”

“You can settle that as you like between you. Go back to your reverend
parent’s house if you choose, and take to religion. You will be an
ornament to any Deanery. Or if you do not choose—” and with a dim,
expressive gesture, he waved his hand towards the countless lights of
London that glimmered beneath them.

She thought a while, leaning on the back of a chair and breathing
heavily. Then that elementary courage of hers flared up, and she said:

“George, you want to be free from me. You noticed the beginning of my
folly and sent us abroad together; it was all another plot—I quite
understand. Now, life is uncertain, and you have made mine very
miserable. If anything should chance to happen to me—soon, would there
be any scandal? I ask it, not for my own sake, but for that of my old
father, and my sisters and their children.”

“No,” he replied slowly. “In that sad and improbable event there would
be no scandal. Only foolish birds foul their own nests unless they are
driven to it.”

Again she was silent, then drew back from him and said:

“Thank you, I do not think there is anything to add. Go away, please.”

“Clara,” he answered, in his cold, deliberate voice, “you are worn
out—naturally. Well, you want sleep, it will be a good friend to you
to-night. But remember, that chloral you are so fond of is dangerous
stuff; take enough if you like, but not too much!”

“Yes,” she replied heavily, “I know. I will take enough—but not too
much.”

For a moment there was deep silence between them in that dark room. Then
suddenly the great moon appeared again above the clouds, revealing their
living faces to each other for the last time. That of the woman was
tragic and dreadful; already death seemed to stare from her wide eyes,
and that of the man somewhat frightened, yet remorseless. He was not one
of those who recoil from their Rubicon.

“Good-bye,” he said quickly; “I am going down to Devene by the late
train, but I shall be back in town to-morrow morning—to see my lawyer.”

With a white and ghost-like arm she pointed first to the door, then
through the window-place upwards towards the ominous, brooding sky, and
spoke in a solemn whisper:

“George,” she said, “you know that you are a hundred times worse than I,
and whatever I am, you have made me, who first forced me to marry you
because I was beautiful, and then when you wearied of me, treated me as
you have done for years. God judge between us, for I say that as you
have had no pity, so you shall find none. It is not I who speak to you
from the brink of my grave, but something within me.”


It was morning, and Rupert Ullershaw stood at the door of the Portland
Place house, whither he had come to call upon Lady Devene, to whom he
brought a birthday gift which he had saved for months to buy. He was a
somewhat rugged-faced lad, with frank grey eyes; finely built also,
broad-shouldered, long-armed, athletic, though in movement slow and
deliberate. There was trouble in those eyes of his, who already had
found out thus early in his youth that though “bread of deceit is sweet
to a man, afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.” Also, he
had other anxieties who was the only son and hope of his widowed mother,
and of a father, Captain Ullershaw, Devene’s relation, whose conduct had
broken her heart and beggared her of the great fortune for which she had
been married. Now Rupert, the son, had just passed out of Woolwich,
where, when his feet fell into this bitter snare, he had been studying
in the hope of making a career for himself in the army.

Presently the butler, a dark, melancholy-looking person, opened the
door, and Rupert saw at once that the man was strangely disturbed;
indeed, he looked as though he had been crying.

“Is Lady Devene in?” Rupert asked as a matter of form.

“In, sir, yes; she’ll never go out no more, except once,” answered the
butler, speaking with a gulp in his throat. “Haven’t you heard, sir,
haven’t you heard?” he went on wildly.

“Heard what?” gasped Rupert, catching at the door frame.

“Dead, Mr. Ullershaw, dead—accident—overdose of chloral they say! His
lordship found her an hour ago, and the doctors have just left.”


Meanwhile, in the room above, Lord Devene stood alone, contemplating the
still and awful beauty of the dead. Then rousing himself, he took the
hearth-brush, and with it swept certain frail ashes of burnt paper down
between the bars of the low grate so that they crumbled up and were no
more seen.

“I never believed that she would dare to do it,” he thought to himself.
“After all, she had courage, and she was right, I am worse than she
was,—as she would judge. Well, I have won the game and am rid of her at
last, and without scandal. So—let the dead bury their dead!”


When Rupert, who had come up from Woolwich that morning, reached the
little house in Regent’s Park, which was his mother’s home, he found a
letter awaiting him. It had been posted late on the previous night, and
was unsigned and undated, but in Clara’s hand, being written on a plain
sheet and enclosed, as a blind, in a conventional note asking him to
luncheon. Its piteous, its terrible contents need not be described;
suffice it to say that from them he learned all the truth. He read it
twice, then had the wit to destroy it by fire. In that awful hour of
shock and remorse the glamour and the madness departed from him, and he,
who at heart was good enough, understood whither they had led his feet.

After this Rupert Ullershaw was very ill, so ill that he lay in bed a
long time, wandered in his mind, and was like to die. But his powerful
constitution carried his young body through the effects of a blow from
which inwardly he never really quite recovered. In the end, when he was
getting better, he told his mother everything. Mrs. Ullershaw was a
strong, reserved woman, with a broad, patient face and smooth, iron-grey
hair; one who had endured much and through it kept her simple faith and
trust in Providence—yes, even when she thought that the evil in her
son’s blood was mastering him, that evil from which no Ullershaw was
altogether free, and that he was beginning to walk in the footsteps of
his father and of that ill guide and tempter, his cousin, Lord Devene.
She heard him out, her quiet eyes fixed upon his face that was altered
almost into age by passion, illness and repentance—heard him without a
word.

Then she made one of the great efforts of her life, and in the stress of
her appeal even became eloquent. She told Rupert all she knew of those
brilliant, erratic, unprincipled Ullershaws from whom he sprang, and
counted before his eyes the harvest of Dead Sea apples that they had
gathered. She showed him how great was his own wrong-doing, and how
imminent the doom from which he had but just escaped—that doom which had
destroyed the unhappy Clara after she was meshed in the Ullershaw net,
and corrupted by their example and philosophy which put the pride of
life and gratification of self above obedience to law human or Divine.
She pointed out to him that he had received his warning, that he stood
at the parting of the ways, that his happiness and welfare for all time
depended upon the path he chose. She, who rarely spoke of herself, even
appealed to him to remember his mother, who had endured so much at the
hands of his family, and not to bring her grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave; to live for work and not for pleasure; to shun the society of
idle folk who can be happy in the midst of corruption, and who are rich
in everything except good deeds.

“Set another ideal before your eyes, my son,” she said, “that of
renunciation, and learn that when you seem to renounce you really gain.
Follow the way of the Spirit, not that of the Flesh. Conquer yourself
and the weakness which comes of your blood, however hard that may be.
Self-denial is not really difficult, and its fruits are beautiful; in
them you will find peace. Life is not long, my boy, but remorse may be a
perpetual agony. So live, then, that having obtained forgiveness for
what you have done amiss, it may not be there to torment you when you
come to die.”

As it chanced, her words fell in a fruitful soil well prepared to
receive them—a strong soil, also—one which could grow corn as well as
weeds.

“Mother,” Rupert answered simply. “I will. I swear to you that whatever
it costs me I will,” and stretching out his wasted arms he drew down her
grey head and kissed her on the brow.

This history will show how he kept that sick-bed promise under
circumstances when few would have blamed him for its breach. Romantic as
Rupert Ullershaw’s life was destined to be, thenceforward it was quite
unstained.




CHAPTER I.

THE VOICE OF THE SINGING SAND

More than eleven years have gone by, and the scene upon which our
curtain rises again is different indeed to that upon which it fell. In
place of that little London house where Rupert had lain sick, behold the
mouth of a cliff-hewn temple, and on the face of it, cut from the solid
rock, four colossal statues of an Egyptian king, nearly seventy feet
high each of them, that gaze for ever across the waters of the Nile and
the desert beyond—that unchanging desert whence for three thousand five
hundred years, dawn by dawn, they have greeted the newly-risen sun. For
this place is the temple of Abu-Simbel below the Second Cataract of the
Nile in the Soudan.

It is afternoon in the month of September, of the year 1889, and beneath
one of the colossi near to the entrance of the temple is seated a
British officer in uniform—a big, bearded, rugged-faced man, with clear
grey eyes, and an expression that at this moment, at any rate, would
have impressed an observer as remarkable for intensity and power.
Indeed, in this respect it was not unlike that stamped upon the stone
countenances of the mighty statues above him. There was in it something
of the same calm, patient strength—something of that air of contemptuous
expectancy with which the old Egyptian sculptors had the art of clothing
those effigies of their gods and kings.

It would have been hard to recognise in this man the lad whom we left
recovering from a sore sickness, for some twelve years of work, thought,
struggle, and self-control—chisels, all of them, that cut deeply—had
made their marks upon him. Yet it was Rupert Ullershaw and no other.

The history of that period of his life can be given in few words. He had
entered the army and gone to India, and there done very well. Having
been fortunate enough to be employed in two of our little frontier wars,
attention had been called to his conspicuous professional abilities. As
it chanced also he was a studious man, and the fact that he devoted
himself but little to amusements—save to big-game shooting when it came
in his way—left him plenty of time for study. A chance conversation with
a friend who had travelled much in the East, and who pointed out to him
how advantageous it might be for his future to have a knowledge of
Arabic, with which very few English officers were acquainted at the
time, caused him to turn his attention to that language. These labours
of his becoming known to those in authority, the Indian Government
appointed him upon some sudden need to a semi-diplomatic office on the
Persian Gulf. Here he did well, and although he never got the full
public credit of it, was fortunate enough to avert a serious trouble
that might have grown to large proportions and involved a naval
demonstration. In recognition of his services he was advanced in rank
and made a C.B. at a very early age, with the result that, had he wished
it, he might have entered on a diplomatic career with every hope of
distinction.

But Rupert was, above all things, a soldier, so turning his back upon
these pleasant prospects, he applied to be allowed to serve in Egypt, a
request that was readily granted on account of his knowledge of Arabic.
Here in one capacity or another he took part in various campaigns, being
present at the battles of El-Teb and Tamai, in the latter of which he
was wounded. Afterwards he marched with Sir Herbert Stewart from Dongola
and fought with him at Abu-Klea. Returning to Egypt after the death of
Gordon, he was employed as an Intelligence officer at Cairo, and finally
made a lieutenant-colonel in the Egyptian army. In this capacity he
accompanied General Grenfell up the Nile, and took part in the battle of
Toski, where the Dervishes were routed on 3rd August, 1889. Then he was
stationed at Abu-Simbel, a few miles away, to make arrangements as to
the disposal of prisoners, and subsequently to carry on negotiations
with certain Arab chiefs whose loyalty remained doubtful.

Such is a brief record of those years of the life of Rupert Ullershaw,
with which, eventful as they were, our story has nothing to do. He had
done exceedingly well; indeed, there were few officers of his standing
who could look to the future with greater confidence, for although he
appeared older than his years, he was still a young man; moreover, he
was liked and respected by all who knew him, and notwithstanding his
success, almost without enemies. It only remains to add that he had kept
the promise which he made to his mother upon his sick-bed to the very
letter. Ever since that sad first entanglement, Rupert’s life had been
spotless.

The sun was beginning to sink, and its rays made red pathways on the
flooded Nile, and bathed the desert beyond with a tremulous, rosy light,
in which isolated mountains, that in shape exactly resembled pyramids,
stood up here and there like the monuments of kings. The scene was
extraordinarily beautiful; silent also, for Rupert had pitched his camp,
and that of his small escort, half a mile away further up the river. As
he watched, the solemnities of the time and place sank into his heart,
stilling the transient emotions of the moment, and tuning his mind until
it was in key with its surroundings, an instrument open to the subtle
influences of the past and future.

Here in the shadow of the mighty works of men who had been dead for a
hundred generations, and looking out upon the river, the desert, and the
mountains, which to them must have seemed as unutterably ancient as they
did to him this day, his own absolute insignificance came home to Rupert
as perhaps it had never done before. He thought of his petty strivings
for personal advancement, and a smile grew upon his face like the smile
upon that of the god-king above him. Through the waste of all the weary
ages, how many men, he wondered, even in this desolate spot, had brooded
on the hope of such advantage, and gone forth, but few to triumph, the
most to fail, and all of them to learn within some short years that
failure and success are one when forgetfulness has covered them. Thus
the warning of the past laid its heavy hand upon him and pressed his
spirit down, and the sound of the Nile flowing on, flowing ever from the
far-off mountains of its birth through the desert to the sea, murmured
in his ear that like those of Job, his days were “swifter than a post,”
sung in his ear the song of Koholeth: Vanity of vanities: all is vanity.
Rupert grew sad as the shadow of the hills which gathered deep about
him, empty and desolate of mind as the vast, deserted temple at whose
mouth he sat, the fane of a faith that was more dead than were its
worshippers. Then suddenly he remembered how that morning at the dawn he
had seen those cups of shadow filled with overflowing light, and how by
it on the walls of that very temple he had read prayers of faith and
affirmations strangely certain, of the eternity of all good works and
the resurrection of all good men, in which they who carved them
five-and-thirty centuries before, believed as firmly as he believed
to-day.

Now it was the future that spoke to him as his heart took hope once
more. Oh! he knew full surely—it came upon him with a strange
conviction—that though many troubles and much bitterness might await
him, though he might be born to sorrows as the sparks fly upwards, yet
he should not live uselessly, or endure death in vain, that no life, not
even that of the ant which toiled ceaselessly at his side in the yellow
sand, was devoid of purpose or barren of result; that chance and
accident did not exist; that every riddle had its answer, and every pang
its issue in some new birth; that of the cloth of thoughts and deeds
which he wove now would be fashioned the garment that he must wear
hereafter.

Thus brooded Rupert Ullershaw after his fashion when alone, as indeed he
loved to be, for he was a man who faced things and found truth oftenest
in solitude.

Tired of these reflections, natural as they might be in such a time and
spot, at length he rose, went a few paces to look at the lonely grave of
a comrade whose working day was over, then with a sigh bethought him
that now the afternoon was cooler, he would take some exercise before
the darkness fell. Rupert loved all the sights and sounds of Nature, and
remembering that the sunset would be fine seen from the top of a cliff
behind him, he set to work to toil up the steep slope of sand, following
a little track made by the jackals from the river-bank to their holes in
the rocks, for he knew that these cunning animals would choose the
easiest path.

Reaching the crest at length, he paused a while to look at the endless
desert and the fiery ball of the sun sinking towards it so swiftly that
he could almost see it move, as it does, or seems to do in Egypt. It was
going down behind two distant, solitary mountains; indeed, for a few
seconds, perhaps a minute, its great red globe seemed to rest upon the
very point of one of these mountains. Contemplating it and them, he
recalled a legend which an old Arab had told him, that beyond those
mountains was a temple larger and finer than Abu-Simbel. He had asked
how far it was away and why no one went there, and learned that it was a
great distance off, deep in the desert, and that if anyone looked upon
it he died, for it was the home of magicians who did not call on Allah
and rejected his prophet. Therefore no one did look, only the legend
remained, which, the Arab had added, without doubt was true.

Forgetting the tale of this fabled temple, Rupert pursued his walk past
the graves of some of the Khalifa’s emirs who had been wounded in the
battle of Toski, a few miles away, and when they succumbed, hastily
buried where they died by their retreating comrades. He knew the man who
lay beneath one of the rough piles of stones—a brave Dervish of high
rank, who had very nearly put an end to himself and his earthly
adventures. He could see the fellow coming at him now, yelling his
war-cry and shaking his great spear. Luckily he had his revolver in his
hand and was able to shoot before that spear fell. The bullet struck his
enemy somewhere in the head, for he saw the blood appear and the man
reel off from him as though he were drunk. Then he lost sight of him in
the turmoil and slaughter, but afterwards was told that he died upon the
retreat, and was shown his grave by a prisoner who had helped to bury
him.

Whilst he was regarding it with the respect that one brave man has for
another, even though that other be a cruel and fanatical heathen, Rupert
became aware of a shadow falling upon him, which, from its long, ugly
shape, he knew must be cast by a camel. Turning, he perceived a white
dromedary bearing down upon him swiftly, its soft, sponge-like hoofs
making so little noise upon the sand that he had never heard it coming.
On the back of the camel sat an Arab sheik, who held three spears in his
hand, one large and two small. Suspecting a sudden attack, as well might
happen to him in that lonely place at the hands of a fanatic, he sprang
back behind the grave and drew his pistol, whereon the man called out to
him to put it up in the name of God as he came in peace, not war.

“Dismount,” answered Rupert sternly, “and throw down your spears.”

The Arab stopped his dromedary, commanded it to kneel, and slipping from
the saddle, laid down the spears and bowed himself humbly.

“What are your name and business,” asked Rupert, “and why do you come on
me thus alone?”

“Bey,” he answered, “I am Ibrahim, the Sheik of the Land of the Sweet
Wells out yonder. I came to your camp with my attendants, and being told
that you were here upon the hill-top, followed to speak with you, if it
pleases you to open your ears to me.”

Rupert studied his visitor. He was a very handsome but cruel-looking man
of about forty years of age, with flashing black eyes, a hooked nose,
and a short, pointed beard which had begun to turn grey.

“I know you,” he said. “You are a traitor to the Government of Egypt,
from which you have taken many benefits. You received the Khalifa’s
General, Wad en-Negumi, and supplied him with food, water, and camels.
Had it not been for you, perhaps he could not have advanced, and had it
not been for you, many more of his people must have been captured. How
dare you show your face to me?”

“Bey,” said the Sheik humbly, “that story is not true. What I did for
Abdullah’s soldiers, I did because I must, or die. May his name be
accursed!” and he spat upon the ground. “Now I come to seek justice from
you, who have power here.”

“Go on,” said Rupert, “you shall have justice, I promise you—if I can
give it.”

“Bey, a detachment of the Egyptian troops mounted upon camels have swept
down upon me and robbed me. They have taken away all my sheep and most
of the dromedaries, and killed three of my people who strove to protect
them. More, they have insulted my women—yes, they, those dogs of
Fellaheen. In the name of Allah, I pray you order that my property
should be restored, or if you cannot do so, write to Cairo on my behalf,
for I am a true man, and the Khedive is my lord and no other.”

“Yet,” answered Rupert, “yet, Sheik Ibrahim, I have seen a certain
letter written by you to the impostor, Abdullah, the Khalifa, in which
you offer him assistance, should he invade Egypt and take the road that
runs past the Sweet Wells.”

Ibrahim’s face fell. “That letter was forged,” he said sullenly.

“Then, friend, how comes it that you know anything about it?” asked
Rupert. “Get you back to your tribe and be thankful that, now the
Khedive is victorious, his soldiers did not take you as well as your
sheep. Know that you are a man with a mark against his name, and bear
yourself more faithfully, lest this should be your lot”—and with his
foot he touched the grave of the emir across which they talked.

The Sheik made no answer. Going to his dromedary, he climbed into the
saddle, bade the beast rise, and rode off a little way. At a distance of
about forty yards, which doubtless he judged to be out of revolver shot,
he halted and began a furious tirade of abuse.

“Infidel dog!” he shouted, with some added insults directed against
Rupert’s forbears, “you who stand there with your defiling foot upon the
grave of the true believer whom you killed, hear me. You refuse me
justice and accuse me of having helped the Khalifa. Be careful lest I
should help him, I who am the Sheik of the Territories of the Sweet
Wells, the road whereby he will come to take Egypt with fifty thousand
dervishes at his back, who will not be fool enough to march down the
river-bank and be shelled by your guns from steamboats. My tribe is a
strong one, and we live in a mountainous country whence we cannot be
hunted, though your hounds of Fellaheen took us unawares the other day.
Oh! be careful lest I should catch you, white Bey, whose face I shall
not forget. If ever I do, I will pay you back for the affront you put
upon me, a true man. I swear it by my father’s head. Yes, then you shall
choose between the faith and death; then you shall acknowledge that
Mahomet is the prophet of Allah, you Cross-worshipping infidel, and that
he whom you name an impostor shall drive you and all your foul race into
the sea.”

“You forget yourself, Sheik of the Sweet Wells,” answered Rupert
quietly, “and forget also that the future is the gift of God and not
shaped by man. Begone, now! Begone at once, lest I, too, grow angry and
summon my soldiers to take you and throw you in prison where you deserve
to be. Off, and let me see your face no more, you who dare to threaten
your sovereign, for I think that when we meet again it will be the
herald of your death.”

Ibrahim sat up upon his camel and opened his mouth to answer, but there
was something in the stern, fateful bearing of the Englishman which
seemed to quiet him. At any rate, he turned the beast and urging it to a
trot, departed swiftly across the desert.

“A very dangerous man,” reflected Rupert. “I will report the matter at
once and have him looked after. I wish they had left his sheep alone and
taken him, as no doubt he knows I said that they ought to do. Somehow, I
don’t feel as though I had seen the last of that fellow.” Then
dismissing the matter of this rebel sheik from his mind, he continued
his walk and crossed the mountain plateau.

Presently Rupert came to the path by which he intended to descend. It
was a strange one, none other indeed than a perfect waterfall of golden
sand set at so steep an angle that the descent of it appeared dangerous,
if not impossible, as would doubtless be the case had that slope been of
rock. Being of sand, however, the feet of the traveller sink into it and
so keep him from slipping. Then, if he is fortunate, for this thing does
not always happen, he may enjoy a curious experience. As he moves
transversely to and fro across the face of the slide, all about him the
sand begins to flow like water, till at length it pours itself into the
Nile below and is swept away. More, as it flows it sings, a very wild
song, a moaning, melancholy noise that cannot be described on paper,
which is caused, they say, by the vibration of the mountain rocks
beneath the weight of the rolling sand. From time to time Rupert paused
in his descent and listened to this strange, thrilling sound until it
died away altogether, when wearying of the amusement, he scrambled down
the rest of the hill-side and reached the bank of the Nile.

Here his reflections were again broken in upon, this time by a woman.
Indeed he had seen her as he descended, and knew her at once for the old
gipsy who for the past year or two had lived in a hovel close by, and
earned, or appeared to earn her living by cultivating a strip of land
upon the borders of the Nile. As it chanced, Rupert had been able a
month or so before to secure repayment to her of the value of her little
crop which had been eaten up by the transport animals, and the
restoration of her milch goats that the soldiers had seized. From that
moment the old woman had been his devoted friend, and often he would
spend a pleasant hour in talking to her in her hut, or while she
laboured in her garden.

To look at, Bakhita, for so she was named, was a curious person, quite
distinct from the Egyptian and Soudanese women, being tall, thin, very
light-coloured for an Eastern, with well-cut features and a bush of
snow-white hair which hung down upon her shoulders. Indeed she was so
different from themselves that she was known as the Gipsy by all the
natives in the district, and consequently, of course, credited with
various magical powers and much secret knowledge—with truth in the
latter case.

Rupert greeted her in Arabic, which by now he spoke extraordinarily
well, and held out his hand for her to shake. She took it, and bending
down touched it with her lips.

“I was waiting for you, my father,” she said.

“Supposing you call me ‘your son,’” he answered, laughing, with a glance
at her white locks.

“Oh!” she replied, “some of us have fathers that are not of the flesh. I
am old, but perhaps your spirit is older than mine.”

“All things are possible,” said Rupert gravely. “But now, what is the
business?”

“I fear I am too late with my business,” she answered. “I came to warn
you against the Sheik Ibrahim, who passed my hut a little while ago on
his way to visit you at your camp. But you have already seen him, have
you not?”

“Yes, Bakhita; but how do you know that?”

“Oh!” she replied evasively; “I heard his angry voice coming down the
wind from the top of yonder hill. I think that he was threatening and
cursing you.”

Rupert nodded.

“I am sorry. I have known this man from childhood and his father before
him, for he has done much hurt to my people, and would do more. That is
why I live here; to watch him. He is a very evil man, cruel and full of
the spirit of revenge. Also, it would have been well to speak him soft,
for his tribe is strong and he may give trouble to the Government. It is
true, as he says, that the soldiers did handle him with roughness, for
one of them had grudges against him.”

“What is said, is said,” answered Rupert indifferently. “But tell me,
mother, how do you come to know so much—about many things?”

“I? Oh! I sit by the river and listen, and the river tells me its
tidings—tidings from the north, tidings from the south; the river tells
me all. Although you white men cannot hear it, that old river has a
voice for those whose ears are opened.”

“And how about tidings from east and west where the river does not run?”
asked Rupert, smiling.

“Tidings from the east and west? Oh! thence and thither blow the winds,
and those whose eyes are opened, see more in them than dust. They have
their voices too, those old, old winds, and they tell me tales of the
kings of my people who are dead, and of the loves and wars of long ago.”

Rupert laughed outright.

“You are a very clever woman, mother,” he said, “but be careful that
they don’t arrest you as a Mahdist spy, for you won’t be able to call
the Nile and the Campsine wind as witnesses.”

“Ah! you laugh at me,” she answered, shaking her old head, “but you
wonderful white folk have still much to learn from the East that was
grey with time when the first of your forefathers yet lay within the
womb. I tell you, Rupert Bey, that all Nature has its voices, and that
some of them speak of the past, some of the present, and some of the
future. Yes; even that moving sand down which you climbed but now has
its own voice.”

“I know that well enough, for I heard it, but I can’t explain to you the
reason in Arabic.”

“You heard it; yes, and you would tell me that it is caused by sand
rubbing up against rocks, or by rocks singing to the sound of the sand
like a harp to the wind, and so, without doubt, it is. You heard the
voice, wise white father, but tell me, did you understand its talk?
Listen!” she went on, without waiting for an answer, “I, seated here
watching you as you climbed, I heard what the sand said about you and
others with whom your life has to do. Oh, no; I am not a common
fortune-teller. I do not look at hands and make squares in the dust, or
throw bones and pebbles, or gaze into pools of ink. Yet sometimes when
the voice speaks to me, then I know, and never so well as of him whose
feet are set upon the Singing Sand.”

“Indeed, mother; and what was its song of me?”

“I shall not tell you,” she answered, shaking her head. “It is not
lawful that I should tell you, and if I did, you would only set me down
as a common cheat—of whom there are many.”

“What had the song of the sand to say of me?” he repeated carelessly,
for he was only half-listening to her talk.

“Much, Rupert Bey,” she answered; “much that is sad and more that is
noble.”

“Noble! That should mean the peerage at least. Well, everything
considered, it is a pretty safe prophecy,” he muttered to himself, with
a laugh, and turned to leave her, then checked himself and asked: “Tell
me, Bakhita, what do you know of the lost temple in the desert yonder?”

Instantly she became very attentive, and answered him with another
question:

“How can I know anything of it, if it is lost? But what do you know?”

“I, mother? Nothing; I am interested by the story and in old temples,
that is all, and I was certain that a person who can interpret the
voices of the river, the winds, and the sands, must know all about it.”

“Well, perhaps I do,” she answered coolly. “Perhaps I would tell you
also to whom I am so grateful. Come to my hut and we will see.”

“No,” he said, “not to-night. I must go back to my camp; I have letters
to write. Another time, Bakhita.”

“Very well, another time, and afterwards perhaps we may visit that
temple together. Who can say? But I think that you will have letters to
read as well as to write this evening. Listen!” and she held up her hand
and bent her head towards the river.

“I hear nothing except a jackal howling,” he answered.

“Don’t you? I hear the beat of a steamer’s paddles. She will be moored
by Abu-Simbel in just three hours.”

“Nonsense!” said Rupert. “I don’t expect her for a week.”

“People often get what they don’t expect,” she answered. “Good-night,
Rupert Bey! All the gods that ever were in Egypt have you in their
keeping till we meet again.”

Then she turned without more words, and by the light of the risen moon
began to pick her way swiftly among the rocks fallen from the cliff
face, that lay on the brink of the flooded Nile, till half a mile or so
further north she passed through the fence of her garden and came to her
own mud hut.

Here Bakhita sat down on the ground by its door, and was very thoughtful
whilst she awaited the coming of the steamer, of which either her own
ears or perhaps some traveller had warned her. For Bakhita also expected
a letter, or, at any rate, a message, and she was thinking of the writer
or the sender.

“A mad whim,” she said to herself. “Had not Tama wisdom enough of her
own, which comes to her with her blood, that she needs must go to learn
that of these white people, and to do so, leave her high place to mix
even with the daughters of Fellaheen, and hide her beauty behind the
yashmak of a worshipper of the false Prophet? Surely the god of our
fathers must have struck her mad, and now she is in great danger at the
hands of that dog Ibrahim. Yet, who knows? This madness may be true
wisdom. Oh! there are things too high for me, nor can my skill read all
her fate. So here at my post I bide to watch and learn as I was bidden.”




CHAPTER II.

TWO LETTERS

When Rupert reached his camp beyond the great temple, he asked the
sergeant of his guard whether the Sheik Ibrahim had been there with his
servants. The soldier answered that he had seen no sheik.

“He must have been watching to find me alone; lucky I had my pistol with
me,” thought Rupert to himself.

Then he ate his dinner, and afterwards sat down and wrote a report of
this and other matters to his superiors in Cairo. As he finished copying
the paper, to his surprise he heard a steamer hoot, and next minute his
orderly informed him that a boat coming up stream was making fast
opposite to the temple.

“So old Bakhita was right, after all. What long ears she must have,”
thought Rupert, as he started to board the steamer.

She proved to be a Government boat from Assouan, carrying a company of
Egyptian troops under the command of a brother-officer of his own, who
brought him despatches and private letters. Though one of the latter was
in the handwriting of his mother, from whom he was most anxious to hear,
as no letter of hers had reached him for some time, it was
characteristic of Rupert that he read the despatches first. Amongst
other things, these contained an order that he should proceed at once to
Cairo, there to advise with his chiefs on certain matters connected with
the state of affairs in the Wady-Halfa district. They informed him also
that the officer who brought them would stay to carry on his work at
Abu-Simbel.

As the boat was to start down Nile at dawn, Rupert spent most of the
night in making arrangements with his successor, and in instructing him
as to the political position. When this duty was finished, and the
company of soldiers had been disembarked and camped, his own packing
claimed attention, so that, in the end, he did not get aboard the
steamer till nearly four o’clock in the morning—that is, about an hour
before she cast off. Going at once to his cabin, Rupert opened his
mother’s envelope, to find that the letter within was written with
pencil, and in a very shaky hand. Consumed by anxiety, he began to read.
It ran as follows;—

My Dearest Son,—My last letter to you was that which I wrote to say how
thankful I was to hear that by God’s mercy you had safely passed the
great dangers of the battle of Toski, and the delight with which I saw
you so favourably spoken of in the official despatches reporting the
victory.

That was five weeks ago, and I have not written since because, dear
Rupert, I have been somewhat seriously ill and was not able to do so.
Nor would I let anyone else write lest you should be frightened. One
night, Rupert, whilst reading my Bible before going to bed, a very
strange feeling suddenly came over me, and I remember no more for two
days. When I recovered consciousness the doctor told me that I had had a
stroke, I could not quite make out of what kind, nor does it matter. He
added, not then but afterwards, that for a while my condition was
precarious, and intimated to me that although all danger had passed for
the present and I might live for years, this was without doubt a
warning. Of course I understood what he meant and asked no more.

My dearest boy, as you know, I do not fear death, especially if it
should come in so merciful a form. But on the other hand, I do not wish
to die without seeing you again. So, if it is possible, and your career
will not be greatly injured thereby, I write to ask you to come to
England as soon as you can, for, Rupert, it is now well over eleven
years since you left home, during all which time I have not seen your
face except in dreams.

I cannot write much, for my left arm is paralysed, and all that side of
my body very stiff and helpless, which makes it difficult for me to sit
up, so I am asking your cousin, Edith Bonnythorne, to tell you what news
there is. One piece, however, I must mention, since a young woman might
not like to speak of it in writing to a gentleman.

There has been another of those sad disappointments in Lord Devene’s
family, the sixth, I think, since his remarriage. This time the child, a
boy, was born at seven months. Every possible effort was made to save
his life; indeed I am told that the poor little thing was put into a
kind of incubator, the latest invention, which is said to be very
successful in such cases. But it was of no use, the child died. So,
although I know you care nothing about it, you are once more his heir,
and I think likely to remain so.

Poor Lady Devene has been to see me. She is a good sort of woman,
although very narrow in her religious views, I think she calls herself a
Calvinist (fancy _his_ marrying a Calvinist!). She grieves more over the
fact that the child was not christened than because of its sad death.
Indeed, speaking half in German and half in English, as is her way when
moved, she said right out that she believed it died because Lord Devene
would not have the ceremony performed lest it should catch a chill, and
added that she was sure no child of theirs would ever live unless her
husband abandoned his godless and free-thinking ways. Lastly, she
declared that she wished she had never married him, but supposed that it
was so ordained in punishment of her sins, the worst of which was that
being dazzled by the prospect of so brilliant a match, she had accepted
what he told her about his religious principles without satisfying
herself that he spoke the truth. I hear that there was a great quarrel
between them as to this matter of the christening, in which she seems to
have had the best of it, although he would not give way, for Tabitha
(that is her name) is very stolid and strong-willed when she likes. At
any rate, he lost his temper and became violent, saying he wished that
either she or he were dead, to which she answered that she did not take
chloral. I tell you all this because I think you ought to know. It is a
sad story, and I cannot help believing that there is something in what
poor Lady Devene says. Do try to come to see me, my dearest, dearest
Rupert.—Your ever loving mother,

MARY ULLERSHAW

Rupert was deeply moved by the contents of this letter. His mother was
the one being whom he really loved upon earth; and although of course he
always contemplated such a possibility in a vague fashion, the fact that
she might die at any moment, that she had indeed been very near to
death, absolutely overwhelmed him. He had never taken any leave
heretofore: first, because he shrank from returning to England and the
inevitable meeting with Lord Devene, and secondly, for the reason that
his career had moved forward so rapidly from point to point and from
place to place, that at no given time had it been convenient so to do
without the loss of some considerable opportunity.

Now he knew that in this matter he had been wrong and selfish, also that
it might be too late to repair his fault. Rupert determined then and
there that he would sail for home by the first steamer, even if he had
to resign his commission in the Egyptian Army in order to do so. His
mind made up on this point, he took up the second envelope directed in
clear and fastidious-looking writing to Lieutenant-Colonel Ullershaw,
C.B., D.S.O., etc., etc., Egyptian Army.

“Well, she has got it all in—just like Edith,” he thought to himself, as
his eye fell upon this somewhat elaborate superscription. Then he opened
and read the letter.

Like all that came from her—and he received several every year, since it
seemed that Edith Bonnythorne did not wish her absent relative to forget
her—it was long, well-balanced and worded, giving the idea that it had
been carefully composed and perhaps copied. It began with warm
congratulations to her dear Cousin Rupert upon his escape from harm in
the battle of Toski, of which she said she had read the accounts with
her heart in her mouth, and on the credit that he had won, which, she
added, made her even prouder of him than she had been before.

Then it told him all the details of his mother’s illness, whereof the
issue, she said, had been awaited with the greatest anxiety, since, for
a few hours, it was thought that she must die.

Next she passed on to general news, informing him that horse-racing,
gambling debts and general extravagance had involved Dick Learmer, who
was a cousin of both of them, in such difficulties that bankruptcy
proceedings had been commenced against him. In the end, however, Lord
Devene had come to the rescue and compounded with his creditors.
Moreover, he had appointed him his private secretary, with good pay—for
he earned nothing at the Bar—and as he was a capital speaker and
popular, talked of putting him up to contest, in the Liberal interest,
that division of the county in which the Devene estates were situated,
as he disliked the sitting member, a Conservative, and wished to oust
him.

“So,” added Edith, “Dick has fallen on his feet again when it seemed all
over with him. I confess that I am glad both for his own sake and
because these family scandals are very disagreeable.”

Lord Devene himself, she continued, was in a dreadful state of mind over
the death of the baby boy. Indeed she could never have believed that
anything would have moved him so much. Also, his domestic relations
appeared to be very unhappy, as he and his wife constantly quarrelled
over religious questions. What was more, on the whole she had the best
of it, since his gibes and sarcasms took not the slightest effect upon
her and she seldom lost her temper. What would be the end of it Edith
could not guess, but he was growing to look quite old and ill. The
letter ended by imploring Rupert to come home to visit his mother, whom
otherwise he might not see again, and to rest a little while after so
many years of hard work. Further, it would, she was sure, be to his
interest to make the acquaintance of the leading people in London, who
were always ready to push on a successful man with good social and
professional prospects if only they remembered that he existed.

Rupert laid this letter down by that from his mother and began to think,
for he was too tired and excited with various emotions to be able to
sleep.

He remembered the last time that he had seen Edith Bonnythorne and Dick
Learmer. It was when he was lying ill after that terrible affair many
years before. They were both of them second cousins of his own and of
each other, being, like all the rest of the family, descendants by the
male or female side of the old Ullershaw who had married a brewer’s
heiress, and accumulated the vast fortune that was now in the possession
of Lord Devene. Edith was the daughter of a certain Mr. Bonnythorne, a
High-Church clergyman, who went over to Rome, into a monastery indeed,
and died there. The wife from whom he had separated some time before he
took this step, it was said because of her friendship with her relative,
Lord Devene, of whom Mr. Bonnythorne disapproved, was a woman of
extraordinary beauty, charm, and wit, but she also had died long ago.

Dick Learmer, the next heir to the entailed Devene wealth after Rupert
himself, though the title would not descend to him under the special
remainders of the original Patent, was the son of a Chancery barrister
of Spanish extraction, whose family, the real name of which was Lerma,
had been naturalised in England for some generations. This Mr. Learmer
had died young, leaving his wife, another of the Ullershaws, and his son
Richard well provided for, but no more. After her mother’s death, Edith
Bonnythorne, who had nothing, went to live with the widowed Mrs.
Learmer, and thus it came about that she and Dick were brought up very
much together. It was said, or so Rupert had heard, that the childless
Lord Devene wished to take her into his own house, but that his first
wife, Clara, refused to receive her, which was one of the causes of the
estrangement between her and her husband.

Rupert could recall, with great distinctness, the appearance of Dick
Learmer and Edith Bonnythorne as they had stood beside his bedside all
those years ago. At that time Dick was in his twenty-second year. First
he had intended to be a doctor, but after a while gave up medicine and
began to eat his dinners for the Bar, to which profession he now
belonged. He was then a dissipated and extravagant young man, but
singularly handsome, and very popular among women. Perhaps they admired
his fine dark and rather languid eyes, shaded by long lashes, his oval
face and richly-coloured complexion, and his curling chestnut hair, all
of which he had inherited with his Spanish blood. Or his somewhat
sentimental yet passionate disposition, and the readiness of his address
may have appealed to them. At any rate, they liked him, and his cousin,
Edith Bonnythorne, then still a school-girl, was no exception to this
rule, although even at that age she knew his faults and would lecture
him upon them.

She had been a beautiful child, this Edith, with her tall figure and
light, graceful carriage, so much so that people often turned to look at
her; very regular features, delicately-arched eyebrows, a broad
forehead, upon which the rippling hair of reddish gold grew low; large
dark blue eyes, somewhat heavy-lidded; a perfectly chiselled nose and
mouth, with red lips that opened a little over the white teeth when she
smiled; small feet and hands, tapering fingers and almond-shaped nails.
Such was Edith’s appearance as Rupert remembered her.

Well, he must go home; he must see all these people, which, with the
exception of his mother, was the last thing that he wished to do. Their
lives and his, which had diverged so widely, were about to cross again,
so, continuing this line of thought, he set himself to recollect what he
had heard of them of late years. After all, it was not much, for he had
never made any inquiries.

Lord Devene’s second wife, whom he married within ten months of Clara’s
death, was, he understood, a German of good family, who had filled the
place of companion to a dowager lady of title. He had married her, so
Rupert heard, on what he called scientific principles; in short, because
German women were supposed to be models of the domestic virtues. But why
she had married Lord Devene he had no idea, unless it were because he
was Lord Devene. The results had not been quite satisfactory; indeed, as
these letters showed, marriage on scientific principles had, in this
case, proved a dismal failure.

Of course all this was much to his own temporal advantage, but the fact
gave Rupert little joy; indeed, he would have been glad without
reservation if his cousin Devene were at that moment the father of a
flourishing family of sons. He did not want to succeed to the wealth and
title, should he live to do so; he had no liking for this kind of
inherited pomp which he had done nothing to earn, or for the life that
it would involve. With the mysterious sixth sense, which most of us have
in greater or less degree, he understood, indeed he was sure, that these
honours and riches would bring him no happiness; moreover, for reasons
that the reader can guess, he detested the very name of Devene. Still
this was the present situation, and he could only hope that it might
change.

For the rest, his cousin, the handsome, pleasure-loving,
sensuous-natured, and unprincipled Dick Learmer, of whom Edith spoke in
her letter, had so far closely followed the course which he would have
predicted for him. On his mother’s death he had come into his moderate
fortune of about £1,000 a year, and dissipated it with graceful ease.
Now he was hanger-on and head bottle-washer to Lord Devene, the worst
fate, Rupert reflected, that could befall most men, and one that was in
no way improved by the prospect of becoming a dummy member of
Parliament; a puppet who must dance in whatever fashion pleased his
patron and paymaster. Rupert remembered also that some years before he
had heard talk of an engagement between Dick and their cousin Edith. If
there was ever any truth in this rumour, evidently it had come to
nothing. Probably there was some truth once, for he remembered that even
when she was still a girl Dick always appeared to be attached to Edith,
an affection which she seemed to reciprocate. Doubtless if this surmise
were correct, she had shown her good sense by putting an end to the
affair when she came to know the man’s true character.

As for Edith herself, by an arrangement, of which he did not quite
understand the details, but that seemed to be convenient to them both,
financially and otherwise, for the last five years she had been living
in his mother’s house, whither she migrated on the death of Mrs.
Learmer. Although in her letters to him his mother never wrote of her
with enthusiasm, on the other hand, she never complained of her, unless
it were a complaint to say that Edith seemed dissatisfied with her
prospects and position in life, which, she added, was not wonderful when
her great beauty and considerable talents were taken into account. How
did it happen, Rupert wondered, that a person who was said to be so
lovely, and, to judge from her photographs, with justice; so clever
also, had reached her present age without marrying? Probably it was
because she had met nobody whom she cared about, and if so, this did
credit to her heart, as the breaking off of her relations with Dick, if
they ever existed, had done to her common-sense.

Well, doubtless he would soon find out all about these matters for
himself, and—the steamer was starting. With a sigh Rupert put his
letters into his pocket and went on deck. In the east the sun rose, a
huge, golden ball, and its straight, powerful rays struck full on the
colossi seated above the door of Abu-Simbel, and penetrated in spears of
light far into the temple’s mysterious and pillared depths. As they
smiled on him when first he saw them, so those solemn, stony giants
smiled on him in farewell. He wondered whether he would ever look on
them again, these hoary monuments that had stared their adieux to so
many generations of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Saracens, and
Christian men. He did not know, and yet again that sixth sense told him
that he would. So did old Bakhita, for when a few minutes afterwards
they steamed past her hut, she stood upon the bank and called to him:

“Farewell, Rupert Bey! farewell for a little while—till you come once
more!”

He waved his hand and watched her tall figure until a bend of the river
hid it, then, feeling drowsy at last, Rupert went into his cabin and lay
down to sleep.




CHAPTER III.

THE RETURN OF RUPERT

On one very dreary day in late September, Rupert, after an absence of
nearly twelve years, again set foot on English soil. His ship was due at
Plymouth early in the morning, and, as at about ten o’clock on the
previous night he had been engaged in watching the Ushant light blinking
fiercely upon the horizon until at last it went out like a dying lamp,
he expected to land there by nine o’clock at the latest. But although
the night seemed clear enough as he smoked his pipe before turning in
and counted the lamps, green and red, of the many vessels bearing down
this ocean highway to make Ushant, and passing some of them, within a
few hundred yards of the liner; afterwards in the mouth of the Channel
the fog came down.

Like most old travellers on the sea, at the change of speed of the
engines he awoke instantly. Then the syren began its melancholy hooting,
repeated at intervals of two minutes. Rising, Rupert looked through his
open porthole to find that they had run into a bank of dense fog through
which they must pass dead-slow for hours, screaming their apprehensions
into the white and woolly gloom, whence from time to time they were
answered by other vessels as frightened as themselves.

Although the sun showed through it like a yellow Chinese lantern, not
till ten o’clock in the morning did that mist lift, with the result that
it was four in the afternoon when they dropped anchor in Plymouth
harbour.

Two and a half more hours were taken up in transhipping baggage, silver
bullion, and passengers to the tug, and in passing the Customs, so that
the special train did not steam out of Plymouth Station until after
sunset. Rupert, a person quite regardless of appearances, and one to
whom money was valuable, took a second-class ticket, and, as a result,
found that he had a carriage to himself. Here, in the south of England,
the evening was mild, and letting down the window he looked out. A soft,
fast-falling rain gave to the autumn ruin of the landscape a stamp of
peculiar sadness. Melancholy cattle stood at the gates of sodden fields,
leaves fell from the trees beneath puffs of wind, women under umbrellas
hurried to their cottage homes, and, unlighted as yet by lamps, unwarmed
by the glow of fires, the grey stone farmsteads appeared deserted. To
one accustomed for years to the sun of the East, and to its solemn,
starry nights, the scene seemed desolate indeed, and its gloom sank deep
into Rupert’s heart.

He wished that he had not come to England. He wondered what awaited him
there, and whether his mother were alive or dead. It might well chance
that the latter was the case, for since the letter which he received at
Abu-Simbel, he had no tidings of her, and although he had telegraphed
his arrival from the steamer, of course there was no time for him to
receive an answer. He had hoped, indeed, for news at Plymouth, and had
stood twenty minutes waiting his turn at the purser’s window, only to be
told that there were no letters or telegrams for him.

At first Rupert was alarmed, then remembered that as he had neglected to
wire the name of his ship from Port Said, he could scarcely expect to
hear from his mother on board of her. Therefore, the absence of them
meant nothing. And yet he was frightened, he knew not of what, much more
frightened than ever he had been at the beginning of a battle, or when
entering on any other risky enterprise. Danger, real danger, seemed to
be nearer to him.

At Exeter Rupert bought some evening papers, the first he had seen for
years, and in reading them forgot his indefinite anxieties. So the time
went by somehow till at length, stretched out endlessly around him, he
saw the lights of the squalid suburbs of London whereof they do but seem
to accentuate the dreary sameness; a whole firmament of fallen stars
relieved here and there by the tawdry constellation of a gin-house.

Paddington at last! Into the great, empty station runs the
double-engined train. Still although it is half-past eleven at night a
number of people are standing upon one of the platforms, that at which
it halts. These are friends and relations who have come to greet sundry
of the passengers on their return to England. There, for instance, is a
young wife, who, catching sight of her husband’s face, runs along by the
carriage door heedless of the remonstrances of the porters with whom she
collides violently, until it comes to a standstill. Then in an instant
that long-divided pair are in each other’s arms again, and Rupert turns
his head away so as not to spy upon their happiness, muttering to
himself: “Lucky fellow, who has someone to care for him,” and descends
on to the platform, looking for a porter to help him with his hand
baggage. As it chances he has to wait a while, since all the men
available have gone to the aid of the first-class passengers, leaving
the few “seconds” to look after themselves.

While Rupert stood thus patiently he became aware of a tall lady wearing
a long cloak who was searching the faces of the crowd. Disappointed she
began to walk past him towards another group by a saloon carriage
further down the train, and their eyes met.

“Surely,” he said, starting and lifting his hat, “you must be my cousin
Edith grown up.”

“Oh, Rupert, there you are!” she exclaimed, in a low, pleasant voice and
holding out her slender hand. “Yes, of course it is I, grown up, and old
too.”

“One moment,” he interrupted, for her dark cloak and hat suggested to
him that she might have come to break bad tidings. “Tell me how—what is
the news of my mother?”

“She is much better and sends her love, but of course could not come to
meet you.”

The anxiety left Rupert’s face.

“Thank God!” he said, with a sigh of relief. “Ah! here’s a porter, now
let us see about the luggage.”

“I could not find you anywhere, although you are so big,” said Edith, as
having secured a four-wheeled cab they followed the man to one of the
vans. “Where did you hide yourself, Rupert? I thought that you were not
in the train at all.”

“Nowhere. I stood for nearly five minutes by those second-class
carriages.”

“Oh! I never looked there; I did not think—” and she checked herself.

“Hi! that’s one of mine,” exclaimed Rupert, pointing to a battered tin
case with Lieutenant R. Ullershaw, R.A., painted on it.

“I remember that box,” said Edith. “I can see it now standing in the
hall of your house with the name in beautiful, fresh, white letters. I
came to say good-bye to you, but you were out.”

“You are very observant!” he said, looking at her with curiosity. “Well,
it has seen some wear since then—like its owner.”

“Yes,” she said demurely; “only the difference is that the wear has much
improved _you_,” and she glanced at the tall, soldier-like form before
her with admiration in her eyes.

“Don’t pay me compliments,” Rupert replied, colouring. “I am not
accustomed to them; and if you do, I shall be obliged to return them
with interest.”

“You can’t,” Edith answered merrily. “There is nothing of me to be seen
in this cloak.”

“Except your face, which is beautiful enough,” he blurted out, whereat
it was her turn to colour.

“There,” he went on awkwardly, as at length the cab started, piled up
with luggage. “It was awfully kind of you to come to meet me, all alone
too, and so late. I never expected it, and I am most grateful.”

“Why, Rupert, how can you suppose that I should do anything else? Unless
I had broken my leg or something, I should have been there if it had
been three in the morning. It’s the greatest pleasure I have had for a
long while, and, Rupert, I—I mean we—are all _so_ proud of you.”

“Oh, please don’t, Edith,” he broke in. “I have done nothing more than
my duty, not very well always, and have been rewarded much above my
merits, while many better men were overlooked—perhaps because I am
supposed to have prospects. Say no more about it or we shall quarrel.”

“Then I won’t. I don’t want to quarrel, I want to be friends with you,
for I haven’t many. But you mustn’t be angry if I can’t help feeling
proud all the same that one among the lot of us has at last done
something worth the doing, instead of wasting his time and strength and
money in every sort of horrid dissipation, like horse-racing and
gambling.”

Rupert muttered something about such occupations always leading to
trouble.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered, “and you mustn’t think me a prig for
speaking like that, for I am not good myself a bit. I wish I were. But
we had such a lesson lately, with that wretched Dick with whom I was
brought up like a sister, you know, and scandals in the paper, and all
that sort of thing, that I can’t help feeling rather bitter, and glad
that there is one of us whose name appears in the papers in another
way.”

As she spoke the light of a passing carriage-lamp fell full upon her
earnest face and wide blue eyes, and Rupert understood how pure and
beautiful they were.

Certainly had she so designed it, Edith could have found no better way
and opportunity of making an excellent first impression upon the
somewhat simple mind of her cousin Rupert.

At length the growler lumbered up to the well-remembered door of the
little house in Regent’s Park that he had left so many years ago.

“Go in, Rupert, go at once,” said Edith. “Your dear mother is wild to
see you. I’ll pay the cab.”

He hesitated a little, then muttering that it was very good of her, gave
way, and ran rather than walked up the steps and through the door which
the servant had opened at the sound of wheels, up the stairs also, to
the drawing-room on the first floor. And here at last, seated in an
invalid-chair, her stiff arms outstretched to clasp him, and words of
joy and blessing upon her pale lips, he found the beloved mother whom he
had not seen for so many years.

“Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen—”
she murmured presently, and broke off, for her tears choked her.

Rupert rose from his knees by her side, and turning his head away, said
in a gruff voice that he must go to see about the luggage. So down he
went to find Edith and the two servants struggling madly with his things
which the grumpy cabman had refused to bring in.

“Leave go, Edith,” he said angrily. “How can you? Why did you not call
me?”

“Because I wouldn’t interrupt you,” she gasped, “but oh, Rupert, do you
pack your boxes full of lead, or are all your savings in them?”

“No,” he answered, “only a couple of stone steles and a large bronze
Osiris—an Egyptian god, I mean. Go away, you girls, I will see about
them to-morrow; my night things are in the bag.”

They went readily enough, who desired no further acquaintance with the
Colonel’s boxes, one down to the kitchen, the other upstairs with the
bag, leaving Rupert and Edith alone.

“Imagine,” she said—“imagine a man who travels about with Egyptian gods
in his portmanteau instead of clothes! Well, Rupert, I have sacrificed
my best gloves on the altar of your gods,” and she held up her hand and
showed the kid split right across.

“I’ll give you another pair,” he ejaculated, still covered with
confusion, as they passed together into the dining-room where his supper
was waiting.

“Dear me,” said Edith, “this unwonted exercise has made me very hot,”
and she threw off first her long cloak, and then her hat, and stood
before him in the lamplight.

Oh, she was beautiful, beautiful! or so thought this dweller in deserts,
whose heart and mind were soft as wax with joy and thankfulness, and who
for years had scarcely spoken to English ladies.

Certainly the promise of Edith’s youth had been fulfilled. The perfect
shape, so light and graceful, and yet so tall, the waving hair of rich
gold that gleamed like a crown upon her white brow, the large, deep blue
eyes, the fine-cut features, redeemed from pride by the rounded cheeks
and chin; the gliding, measured movements; all these graces remarkable
enough separately, when considered as a whole, made of Edith a most
attractive and gracious, if not an absolutely lovely woman. Then and
there her charm went home to him; although as yet he did not know it,
then and there Rupert fell in love with her, he who had never thought of
any woman in such a sense since boyhood, and what is more, his
transparent eyes told her the story.

For a few seconds they stood looking at each other; then she said:

“Would you like to speak to your mother for a few minutes while the cook
sends up the soup? Oh, you must eat it, or she will be so disappointed,
and so shall I, for we have been making it all the afternoon.”

So he went. As the door closed behind him Edith sank into a chair like a
person who is suddenly relieved from some mental strain, and her face
became very thoughtful.

“That is over,” she said to herself, “and far better than I expected. He
does not care for anybody, I am sure, and—the question is—do I like him?
I don’t think so, although he is handsome in his way, and a man. There
is still a wall between us as in childhood—we are different. No, I don’t
think that I care for him,” and she shivered a little. “Also there is
that wretched Dick to be considered now as always. Oh; Dick, Dick! if I
don’t take this chance it is the third I shall have thrown away for you.
You worthless Dick, who are yet the only man who does not make me
shiver. But I am not sure. He is good; he is distinguished; he will
almost certainly be Lord Devene, and beggars can’t be choosers. Well,
there is plenty of time to think, and meanwhile I will try to make him
thoroughly in love with me before he meets other women.”

Then the door opened, and the maid came in with the soup.

Such was the home-coming of Rupert Ullershaw.




CHAPTER IV.

A BUSINESS CONVERSATION

Edith, who was not an early riser, breakfasted in her own room. At
half-past nine on the morning following Rupert’s arrival the maid as
usual brought up her tray, a newspaper—the _Morning Post_—and three
letters. Two of these were of a sort with which she was very familiar,
unpaid millinery bills, but the third was addressed in Lord Devene’s
unmistakable handwriting, that was of as hard and uncompromising an
appearance as his own face. Throwing aside the bills with a shrug of her
rounded shoulders, she opened her noble relative’s epistle. It was brief
and to the point:

Dear Edith,—Come round after breakfast if you can. I shall be in till
10.45, and wish to speak to you.—

Yours,

Devene.

“Bother!” she said, as she laid it down. “I shall have to scurry through
my dressing and take a cab. Well, he must pay for it. I wonder what he
wants.”

Lord Devene now lived at Grosvenor Square. Even in the minds of the most
progressive latter-day agnostics primeval superstitions are apt to
linger. Perhaps it was some sentiment of the sort which causes an
African savage to burn the hut where a death has occurred and build
himself a new one, that induced Lord Devene to sell the Portland Place
house after the tragic decease of his first wife, at far below its
value, and buy himself another, though it is fair to add that the reason
he gave for the transaction was the state of the domestic drains.
However this may have been, Lady Devene Number Two never slept in the
haunted chamber of Lady Devene Number One.

At 10.46 precisely Edith paid off her cab at the spacious steps of the
Grosvenor Square mansion.

“Is Lord Devene in?” she asked of the butler, the same quiet, dark
individual who had filled the office years ago in Portland Place.

“Yes, Miss Bonnythorne,” he answered respectfully; “but I was just
brushing his hat,” and he glanced doubtfully at the clock.

“Show me in, Talbot; he wishes to see me,” she said, and Talbot bowed in
acquiescence.

Although no orders had been given to that effect, it was understood in
this establishment that what Miss Bonnythorne desired was to be done.

A few seconds later she was ushered into the long library behind the
dining-room, at the end of which Lord Devene was engaged in stamping a
letter on a beautiful buhl writing-table near the window.

“Ah! my dear Edith,” he said, in his hard, clear voice, as she glided
slowly towards him, “you are only just in time. Another half-minute and
I should have been gone.”

“Half a minute is as good as a century,” she answered. “Lots of things
can happen in half a minute, Cousin George. One might die in it, for
instance.”

“Yes,” he replied, “or be born, which is worse, or commit a murder, or
engage oneself to be married, or as you justly remark, do lots of
things. Life is made up of half-minutes, isn’t it—most of them very bad
ones,” and he looked at her and smiled that peculiar smile of his which
never seemed to get away from the region of his mouth. Pleasant-natured
people generally smile with their eyes, others of a different character
from their lips alone, like a dog, which is apt to give a sarcastic air
to that variable and modified expression of inward satisfaction.

Lord Devene had changed a good deal since last we met him. Then he was
sandy-coloured, now he had become grey; indeed his peaked beard was
quite white. The wrinkles upon his face also had deepened very much, and
even in that not over-lighted room black crow’s-feet were visible
beneath his quick, restless eyes. Advancing age had laid its hand upon
him although he was barely sixty-three. Also, he had lost something of
his old defiant air; his iron will and resolution seemed to have
weakened beneath the attacks of circumstance. He hesitated sometimes and
looked at the other side of an argument; he was less sure of his deduced
facts, less resolute in their application to his private affairs.

“You look tired,” said Edith, as he came forward and kissed her cool,
pink cheek.

“Tired!” he exclaimed, with something like a groan and sinking into a
chair. “Would you not be tired if you had scarcely closed your eyes for
three nights? Edith, I can’t sleep, and I don’t know what is to be the
end of it, I don’t indeed.”

She threw an anxious glance at him, for these two, notwithstanding the
difference of their age and sex, were bound together by strong ties of
sympathy, and she was really grieved that he should be ill.

“I am so sorry,” she said, in a gentle voice. “Insomnia is a terrible
nuisance, but don’t trouble yourself too much about it, the fit will
pass off.”

“Yes,” he answered grimly, “it will pass off, because I shall take drugs
this evening. I always do the fourth night, though I hate them.”

“Those stuffs sometimes lead to accidents, Cousin George,” replied
Edith, pretending to be absorbed in tracing the flowers of the carpet
with the point of her umbrella, but really watching his weary face from
beneath her long eyelashes.

“Yes, they sometimes lead to accidents,” he repeated after her, “as I
have good reason to know. But after all, accidents are not always
undesirable. I daresay that life still seems a very pleasant thing to
you, Edith, yet others may think differently.”

“You ought not to, Cousin George, with your position and wealth.”

“I am old enough to know, Edith, that position and wealth, which you
rate so highly, do not necessarily spell happiness, or even content.
After all, what am I? A rich peer at whose name old women and clergymen
turn up their eyes, they don’t quite know why, and whom men are afraid
of because I can say sharp things—just one of the very common crowd of
rich peers, no more. Then for my private life. Nothing interests me now;
like the Roman Emperor I can’t find a new excitement, even horse-racing
and high stakes bore me. And at home, you know what it is. Well, I am
not the first man who has bought a cow and found that she can butt—and
bellow.”

Edith smiled, for the vigour of the allusion tickled her.

“You know my one hope,” he went on, almost with passion, “or if you
don’t, you are old enough and have brains enough to understand. I wanted
sons sprung from a quiet, solid stock, sons who could make some good use
of all this trash of titles and of riches which it is too late for me to
do myself; men who would bear an honourable name and do honourable
deeds, not fritter away their youth in pleasures as I did, or in what I
took for pleasures, their manhood in the pursuit of idle philosophies
that lead nowhere, and the accumulation of useless cash, and their old
age in regrets and apprehensions. I wanted sons, it was my one ambition,
but—” and he waved his hand through the empty air—“where are my sons?”

Now Edith knew Lord Devene to be a hard man where his interests were
concerned, wicked even, as the word is generally understood, as for
instance, Mrs. Ullershaw would understand it. Thus he would gibe at
morality and all established ideas, and of every form of religion make
an open mock. Yet at this moment there was something so pathetic, so
tragic even, about his aspect and attitude, that her heart, none of the
softest, ached for him. It was evident to her that his cold, calculated
system of life had utterly broken down, that he was exceedingly
unhappy—in fact, a complete failure; that although, as he had so often
demonstrated, there exists nothing in the world beyond the outward and
visible, of which our brain and bodies are a part, yet strong as he was
that nothing had been too much for him. He was conquered by a shadow,
and in its effects at least that shadow seemed very like the real and
solid thing which some folk call Fate, and others the Hand of God. The
idea disturbed Edith, it was unpleasant, as sickness and the thought of
death are unpleasant. Therefore, after the fashion of her nature, she
fled from it, and to turn the subject put the first question that came
into her mind:

“How is Tabitha to-day?”

Instantly all pathos, with the touch of dignity that was bred of it,
left him and he began to sneer.

“Thank you; that noble and exalted haus-frau appears to be very well.
Having paid her morning visit to the kitchen and scolded the cook for
extravagance until, I regret to say, she gave notice, she is now seated
in her dressing-gown reading a holy German work upon predestination,
from which she has been so good as to translate to me some passages that
appeared to her to bear directly upon my spiritual future. But I didn’t
send for you to talk about my wife and her grotesque views. Rupert
Ullershaw is back, is he not?”

She nodded.

“Tell me about him. What is he like?”

“Tall, strong, handsome in a kind of way, except for his untidy hair and
the lines upon his brow, which make him look as though he had been
trying to solve an acrostic for ten years, old looking for his age,
awkward in his manner and slow of speech.”

“A good portrait,” he said approvingly, “of the outside. Now for the
in.”

Edith rubbed her forehead, as was her manner when deliberating.

“That’s hard,” she answered, “for how can one describe what one doesn’t
understand? But I’ll try just to get him into my mind as I see him. I
think—well, I think that he is very much the sort of man you said just
now you would like your sons to be, if you had any.”

Lord Devene started as though something had pricked him.

“I beg pardon,” Edith added hurriedly. “I mean that he is thoroughly
industrious, conscientious, religious, and all the other good ‘ouses.’
Would you believe it? After he had gone to bed last night, he came
downstairs in an old ulster and undid a great box with a rope round it
in order to get a Bible out. I heard the noise, and thinking one of the
servants must be ill, or something, went to see what was the matter.
There at 2.30 a.m. I met him on the stairs in that costume, and a queer
couple we must have looked. I asked him what on earth he was doing with
the luggage. Thereon he calmly explained that by mistake he put his
Bible into the trunk he had in his cabin, and that as he did not like to
disturb me to borrow one at that time of night he had to go to find it,
and he showed me a large, frayed book which had been rebound, by himself
he remarked, with a deer’s skin. He added gravely that it was his custom
always to read a portion of the Scriptures—that’s what he said—before
going to bed, that he hadn’t missed doing so for years and wasn’t going
to now. I answered that was what I called true religion, and we parted.
I didn’t tell him how glad I was that he hadn’t knocked me up and asked
for a Bible, for upon my word, I don’t know where I should have found
one.”

Lord Devene laughed heartily, for Edith’s description of the scene
tickled his sense of humour.

“Why,” he said, “he ought to have married Tabitha,” “there would have
been a pair of them. I expect they will get on capitally together, as—”
and he checked himself, then added, “What an uncommonly queer fish he
must be, though he wasn’t always such a model youth. Well, whether
because of the Bible or in spite of it, Master Rupert has done very
well. He is a man with a career before him; there is no doubt of that—a
career, and in all probability,” and he sighed, “other things, for no
one can do without sleep for ever.”

She nodded her head again, but said nothing, seeing that there was more
to come.

“Is this military saint married by any chance?” he asked.

“Oh, no! certainly not.”

“Or engaged?”

“Not in the least, I imagine. I should say that he has scarcely spoken
to a woman for years. He seems so—so—”

“Is innocent the word you were looking for? Well, so much the better.
Look here, Edith, you’ve got to marry him.”

She made a droll little face and answered:

“This is very sudden—isn’t that the right thing to say? But might I ask
why?”

“For two reasons. Because it is to your interest, and, a better one
still, because I wish it.”

“Let me see,” said Edith. “What are you and I to each other? Second
cousins once removed, I think?”

“Yes; second cousins once removed, and more—friends,” he answered, with
slow emphasis.

“Well, has a second cousin once removed and a friend the right to tell a
woman whom she must marry?”

“Certainly, under the circumstances. This fellow will probably be my
heir; I must face that fact, for Tabitha will scarcely get over those
habits of hers now—at any rate, the doctors don’t think so. So I wish
him to marry someone for whom I have affection, especially as I expect
that notwithstanding his religious tomfooleries, etc., he is the sort of
man who makes a good husband.”

“And supposing the doctors are wrong about Tabitha?” asked Edith calmly,
for these two did not shrink from plain speaking.

“If so, you must still be provided for, and, my dear Edith, allow me to
remark that you are not quite a chicken, and, for some cause or other,
have not provided for yourself so far.”

“I don’t think I should live in any great luxury on Rupert’s pay,” she
suggested, “even if he were willing to share it with me.”

“Perhaps not; but on the day of your wedding with him I pay to the
account of your trustees £25,000, and there may be more, whatever
happens—when I get to sleep at last.”

“That is very kind and generous of you, Cousin George,” she answered,
with sincerity, “and I’m sure I don’t know why you should do it—for a
second cousin once removed. But why on my wedding-day with Rupert
particularly?”

“I have told you, because I wish it, and why not with him? Do you
dislike the man?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I have not fallen in love; I am not given
that way.”

He looked her straight in the eyes.

“No,” he answered, “because you have always been ‘in love,’ as you call
it, with that rascal Dick. Now, don’t trouble to fence with me, for I
know. Dick can be communicative at times—after dinner.”

Edith did not try to fence, only she said, with some bitterness and
colouring a little:

“Then that’s the worst thing I have heard about him yet, which is saying
a good deal.”

“Yes; never trust a man who brags of his conquests. Listen, Edith! I
help Dick because he amuses me, and is useful. That’s why I am going to
make him a member of Parliament. Now I can’t prevent your marrying him,
if you like, and are fool enough, which to me is inconceivable. But if
you do, out goes Dick, and there will be no £25,000 paid to your
trustees.”

“That’s rather hard, isn’t it, Cousin George?”

“No; it is merciful. Edith, I will not allow you to marry that
worthless, unstable scamp of a fellow if I can help it, and for your own
sake, because I am fond of you.”

“I never said I wanted to marry him.”

“No; but because of him you don’t want to marry anybody else, which
comes to much the same thing, so far as your future is concerned.”

She thought a little while, rubbing her forehead as before, then
replied:

“Well, all this is very clear and outspoken, but I suppose that you
don’t expect an answer at once. Remember that Rupert himself may have
views. He is quite the sort of man who will not marry at all, on
principle. Also, you only have my account to go on, you have not seen
him yet since he was a boy. When you have, you may cease to think this
proposed—arrangement—desirable.”

“Quite true,” he answered. “You have a very logical mind. Bring him to
dinner here to-night, and we will talk the matter over again in a few
days’ time.”

Edith rose to go, but he stopped her.

“How is your banking account?” he asked.

“For all practical purposes I believe it has ceased to exist,” she
answered gravely, for the matter was one which really troubled her.

He smiled, and taking his book from a drawer, filled in a cheque.

“There,” he said; “that may help to keep the wolf from the door for a
little while, and I daresay you want some dresses.”

Edith looked at the cheque; it was for £250.

“You really are very kind to me,” she said, “and whoever may dislike
you, I don’t. I love you.”

“Me or the money?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

“You, you,” she answered, then kissed him and went away.

“I think,” reflected Lord Devene to himself, as the door closed behind
her, “this is almost the first time for over twenty years I ever heard
anybody say that to me who meant it. She must marry Rupert; it is her
great chance in life, and hasn’t she as much right to these good things
as that pious bear.”




CHAPTER V.

THE DINNER-PARTY

When Edith reached home it was to find that Rupert had been engaged all
the morning in unpacking his baggage. Now he had just set up the two
steles, which, it may be explained for the benefit of the uninitiated,
are sepulchral tablets whereon the old Egyptians inscribed the records
of their lives, or sometimes prayers. They were massive articles, as
Edith had discovered on the previous night, most suitable to their
original purpose in a tomb, but somewhat out of place in a very small
London drawing-room, perched respectively on a piano and the top-shelf
of a Chippendale bookcase.

“Don’t they look well, mother?” he was saying.

“Yes, dear, yes,” answered Mrs. Ullershaw doubtfully; “but perhaps a
little solid and time-worn.”

“Time-worn! I should think they are,” he answered. “One of them is about
four, and the other three thousand years old, but the more recent—no,
not that of the man and his wife seated side by side—the other, is much
the more valuable. It comes from Tel-el-Amarna, which, as of course you
know, was the city built by the heretic king, Khuen-Aten, and was put up
in the tomb of one of the royal princesses. Look at her picture on the
top, with the globe of the sun above, and from it the rays ending in
hands all stretched out in blessing over her. I’ll translate it to you,
if you like.”

At this moment there was a most ominous crack, whereon Edith, who had
entered unobserved, remarked mildly:

“If I were you, Rupert, I should put it on the floor first, for that—Ah!
I thought so!”

As she spoke, the poor top-shelf buckled and broke, and down came the
monument with a crash. Rupert sprang at it, dumb with fear, lifting it
in his strong arms as though it were a toy.

“Thank Heaven!” he ejaculated, “it isn’t injured.”

“No,” said Edith, “but the bookcase is.”

Then he set to work to find another place for it, this time, at his
mother’s suggestion, on the ground. There remained, however, the Osiris,
a really magnificent bronze, between two and three feet in height, which
could not possibly be accommodated.

“I know,” said Rupert, and shouldering the god, he marched it off
downstairs.

“Do you think, Cousin Mary,” asked Edith, as she watched him depart with
this relic of the past, “that Rupert could be persuaded to remove those
two shabby tombstones also?”

Mrs. Ullershaw shook her head.

“No. Please don’t mention it, dear. He has set his heart on having them
here, and says he has been thinking how nice they would look in this
room for years. Besides, he would only take them into the dining-room.”

“Then let them stay,” answered Edith decidedly. “I can’t eat my dinner
before those memorials of the dead. I suppose he has not brought a mummy
too.”

“It seems that he had one, dear, but was obliged to leave it behind,
because they would not have it on board the ship unless he would pay for
it at what he calls ‘corpse-rate.’”

“There is always something to be thankful for,” said Edith, as she went
to take off her hat.

When, however, she came down to luncheon, and found the great bronze
Osiris standing among the plates on the sideboard, her sense of
gratitude was lessened, but as Rupert was delighted with the effect, she
made no comment.

Whilst they were at their meal a note arrived for Rupert, whose brow
puckered at the sight of the handwriting which he remembered well
enough.

“Who is it from, dear?” asked Mrs. Ullershaw, when he had read it.

“Lord Devene,” he answered shortly. “He wants Edith and myself to dine
this evening, and says that he has got the Under-Secretary for War, Lord
Southwick, to meet me. Of course I can’t go and leave you alone the
first night I am at home. I’ll write and say so.”

“Let me see the note first, dear. Edith, you read it; I have not got my
spectacles.”

So she read:

Dear Rupert,—Welcome home, and, my dear fellow, a hundred
congratulations! You have done splendidly. I hear your praises on all
sides, and I am very proud of you. But I want to tell you all this in
person. Come and dine to-night with Edith at eight. I have just met
Southwick, the Under-Secretary for War, at the club, and he is most
anxious to have a private talk with you before you report yourself, so
he has put off something or other in order to meet you. I took the
liberty of saying that he was sure to do this, as I knew that you could
not as yet have made any engagements.—

Your affectionate cousin,

DEVENE.

“I think that you must go, dear,” said his mother.

“But I don’t wish to,” Rupert answered, with energy. “I hate
dinner-parties.”

“Dear, sooner or later you will have to, so why not now? Also Edith
would be disappointed.”

“Yes, of course,” said that young lady. “I want to meet Lord Southwick.
They say he is the greatest bore in London; quite a curiosity in his own
line.”

Then Rupert gave way, and having sent a verbal acceptance by the
footman, for the rest of the luncheon was as solemn as the bronze Osiris
on the sideboard.

To a man like Rupert that dinner-party was indeed a terrible ordeal.
Time had scarcely softened his vivid recollection of that horror of the
past, over which he still mourned day by day with the most heart-felt
remorse. With a shuddering of the soul he remembered its last dreadful
chapter, and now almost he felt as though the book of some new tragedy,
in which he must play the leading part, was about to be opened in the
fateful company of Lord Devene. Most heartily did he wish himself back
in the society of old Bakhita, or even of the Sheik of the Sweet Wells,
in the Soudan, or in any other desolate place, so long as it was far
from Mayfair. He even regretted having come home; but how could he
refuse to do so at his mother’s prayer? Well, it must be faced; escape
was impossible, so he set his teeth and prepared to go through with the
thing.

“Great Heavens, what a man!” reflected Edith to herself, glancing at his
stern countenance, as he helped her from the cab that evening. “One
might think he was going to execution, not to dinner.”

The door—how grateful Rupert felt that it was a different door—opened,
and there his gratitude faded, for behind the footman stood that
identical spare, sombre-looking man who had told him of Clara’s death.
He had not changed in the slightest, Rupert would have known him a
hundred yards off; and what was more, it seemed to him that the
obsequious smile with which the butler greeted him had a special
quality, that the sight of him suggested interesting memories to the
smiler. What if this man—bah! the very thought of it made him feel cold
down the back.

Edith vanished to take off her cloak, and he, who must wait for her, was
left alone with that black, smiling demon.

“Glad to see you back safe and sound, Colonel,” he said, as he took his
coat.

“Wish I could say the same,” grunted Rupert involuntarily.

The butler thought a little, for this cryptic sentence puzzled him; then
taking the point, as he imagined, went on:

“Ah! I daresay you feel the changes, sir—in this establishment, I mean.
Well,”—and he glanced cautiously, first behind him and then at the
powdered footmen by the door, “I am sure you won’t betray me, sir, if I
say that so do we. Her second ladyship, sir, isn’t what her first
ladyship was,” and he sighed with genuine regret, for most of the
servants had been very fond of poor Clara, who always tried to shield
them from his lordship’s anger, and was generous. “Her present ladyship,
sir, preaches and drives, and makes us read tracts, sir,” he added, with
peculiar bitterness, “whereas we loved her first ladyship”—here his
voice sank to a whisper—“almost as much as you did, sir.”

At this moment, to Rupert’s intense relief, for really his head was
swimming beneath the horror of these confidences, the double front doors
were thrown wide, and through them walked a stiff, poker-like man
wearing an eyeglass, who, he gathered, was Lord Southwick. The butler,
whose somewhat saturnine appearance in truth covered an excellent heart,
and who really was delighted to see Rupert, if for no other reason,
because his late mistress had been so fond of him, was obliged to step
forward to take Lord Southwick’s coat. At this moment, too, Edith
arrived, looking radiant in a dress of black and silver, saying:

“Now, Rupert, I am ready.”

“So am I, I am sure,” he answered.

“Well, don’t be reproachful, I have not been very long,” and she fixed
her gaze upon his head.

“Is anything wrong with my hair?” he asked, becoming aware of it.

“I don’t know until you take your hat off,” she replied gently, but
wondering how long it might be since her distinguished cousin had gone
out to dinner.

Rupert snatched off the hat and thrust it into the unwilling hands of
one of the door footmen, for it was not his business to receive hats.
Then, piloted by other footmen who met them at intervals, at length Miss
Bonnythorne and Colonel Ullershaw were announced, in stentorian tones,
at the threshold of the great drawing-room.

On the further side of the apartment two men were leaning against a
marble mantel-piece, for the night was chilly, and a small fire burned
on the hearth; while at a little distance, engaged apparently in looking
straight before her, a placid, handsome-looking woman of stout
proportions, with great coils of hair wound about her head, sat upon an
Empire sofa, her hands folded upon her plain black dress, which was
unrelieved by any jewellery.

For a moment Rupert’s recognition of the men was merely automatic, since
all his attention was taken up by the splendid mantel-piece that he
remembered well, and on which he seemed to see the ghost of Clara
leaning as she was wont to do. Yes; it was the same that had stood in
her boudoir, moved here as too valuable to be left in the old mansion.
He could not mistake those statues which supported the shelf above. A
mist gathered before his eyes, and when it cleared he saw Lord Devene
advancing on him with outstretched hand, nodding affectionately to Edith
as he came.

The same man, he thought, only several degrees greyer in tone, and not
quite so firm in his walk. Then, in the actual presence of his enemy—for
so he felt him to be, now as always—the courage of the
conscience-haunted Rupert returned to him, and he determined to play his
part to the best of his ability.

As he approached, Lord Devene was thinking to himself: “Edith summed him
up very well, as usual—a bear, but a fine, right-minded bear who has
learnt his lesson once and for all. It is written on his face.” Then he
said in the most hearty fashion that he was able to command, though no
affectation of cordiality could altogether deaden the brassy ring of
that well-remembered voice:

“Ah! here you are, punctual as a soldier should be, and very welcome, I
can tell you, my dear Rupert. I am delighted to see you back safe and
sound, and bringing your sheaves with you in the shape of all sorts of
honours,” and taking Rupert’s great, sunburnt palm in his dry hand, he
shook it, adding: “Why, what a big fellow you have become in every sense
of the word. Don’t ask me to mount you this season.”

“Thank you,” said Rupert simply, then fixing on the allusion to his
personal appearance as easiest to deal with, went on. “Afraid one is apt
to grow stout in Egypt. Can’t get enough exercise, too much sun there.
How are you?”

Then he stopped, for another voice, also well-remembered, was addressing
him, and he turned to see his cousin Dick. Undoubtedly, even at that
moment he noticed it, for by constitution and training Rupert was
observant, Dick was a very handsome man. The dark and languid eyes
looked a little tired, it was true, and the oval face had lost some of
its colour. Still, it and the graceful, shapely form remained attractive
to behold—at least, so thought many women.

“How do you do, my hero of a hundred fights?” said Dick, in the
drawling, rather sarcastic voice which had always irritated his cousin
as a boy, and still irritated him to-day.

“Very well, thank you, Dick,” answered Rupert, “but I’m not a hero, and
I have not been in a hundred fights.”

“It’s near enough,” said Dick, shaking his hand in a somewhat weary
fashion. “A man is what people choose to think of him, the exact facts
don’t matter. We have called you the family hero for years, and as our
records reveal no other, of course we make the most of you.”

“Then please stop calling me so now, there’s a good fellow, for I don’t
like it. I am only a very ordinary officer in the Egyptian army.”

“The great were ever modest,” answered the exasperating Dick. “Why—” and
he fixed his eyes upon his cousin’s rather seedy dress-coat, “I hoped
that you would come with all your orders on. Well, we’ll get you to a
public dinner where you will have to wear them.”

“Stop talking nonsense, Dick,” said Edith sharply, for she saw that
Rupert was beginning to grow angry, and feared lest his cousin’s jealous
chaff should produce some explosion. “Here are Lord Southwick and the
other people at last. Come, Rupert; I want to introduce you to Lady
Devene.”

So Rupert was introduced to her ladyship, who, awaking from her private
meditations, held out her plump hand, looked him in the face with her
fine, china-blue eyes, and said, with a German accent:

“Ah! you are the Colonel Ullershaw of whom I hear so much, the soldier
who has been fighting bravely for the English. I am very glad to see
you. I like soldiers; my father was a soldier, but the French killed him
at Gravelotte. You are very welcome.”

Rupert bowed, and as he did so felt that this lady spoke the truth, and
that her greeting was cordial and without reservation. From the
beginning he conceived a regard for this German peeress, feeling her to
be sound and honest, according to her lights. Then Lord Devene brought
up Lord Southwick and introduced him, first to his wife and next to
Rupert. After this the other guests claimed attention, and Rupert was
able to retire and employ himself in examining the pictures until dinner
was announced.

To his delight he found that Edith was given to him as a partner.

“I am glad,” he said shyly, as they went together down the broad stair.
“I never hoped for such luck.”

She looked at him innocently and asked: “What luck?”

“Why, having to take you down instead of one of those strangers.”

“I am sure it is very nice of you to say so, Rupert, and I appreciate
it,” she answered, smiling.

“Yes,” said the voice of Dick behind them, “but, old fellow, you should
pay your compliments in a whisper. Sound travels up these London
staircases,” and he and his partner, a pretty and piquante heiress,
laughed merrily.

“Take no notice of that impertinent Dick,” said Edith as they entered
the dining-room; “it is only his way.”

“I don’t like his way; I never did,” grumbled Rupert.

Nor, to tell the truth, did Edith, who knew well that Dick was furiously
jealous, and feared lest he should go too far and show it openly.

At dinner Rupert found himself seated on the left of Lady Devene, who
was at the head of the table, and opposite to Lord Southwick, who had of
course taken her down. Next to Lord Southwick was the pretty heiress,
and by her Dick, who therefore sat almost opposite to Edith. With the
rest of the company we need not concern ourselves.

The dinner went on as dinners in big houses do. After he had drunk some
champagne, Dick began to flirt ostentatiously with the pretty heiress,
who appeared to be quite equal to the occasion; his object being, as
Edith was aware, to make her jealous, or at least angry. Lady Devene, in
her German accent, conversed with Lord Southwick about cooking—a subject
in which he did not seem to take the slightest interest; while Edith
drew on Rupert to tell her of the Soudan and the military operations
there in which he had shared. This subject suited him well, and Lord
Devene, watching the pair of them from the bottom of the table, soon
understood that he was talking in a manner that compelled the respect of
her intelligence, since she listened to him intently enough.

Although Rupert did not know it, Lord Southwick began to listen also,
and having exhausted the subject of entrées, so did Lady Devene.

“What was that you said about the advantages of the Suakim-Berber route,
Colonel Ullershaw?” asked Lord Southwick, presently fixing his eyeglass
upon him.

Rupert repeated his remarks.

“Hum,” commented Lord Southwick. “Wolseley thought otherwise.”

“I did not mean to set up my opinion against that of Lord Wolseley, my
lord,” answered Rupert, “it was only a private view I was expressing to
Miss Bonnythorne.”

“And a very sound view too, in my judgment,” said the Under-Secretary,
in the precise, official manner that rarely deserted him; “indeed,
events have proved it to be so. Moreover, Colonel Ullershaw, your
opinion is undoubtedly entitled to respect. I know it; for after hearing
that I was to meet you at dinner, I looked up your record at the War
Office and read a private memorandum, which you may remember writing for
the information of your superior officers, though perhaps you were not
aware that it was forwarded home.”

Rupert coloured and muttered that he was not.

“I wish that it had been acted on,” continued Lord Southwick, “but it
wasn’t, and there’s an end. By the way—it is rather unkind to speak of
it—but did you know, Colonel Ullershaw, that you were once recommended
for the V.C.—after Tamai where you were wounded?”

Rendered absolutely speechless, Rupert shook his head.

“Well, you were; and what’s more,” he went on, with a twinkle in his
eye, “you would have got it if your name hadn’t happened to begin with a
U. You see, the persons recommended of about equal merit or interest
were put down alphabetically; and as there were only a certain number of
crosses to be given, a fellow whose name began with T got one and you
didn’t. It wasn’t my system, I may add, but as the man who was
responsible for it is dead, and many things have happened since then, I
don’t mind telling the story.”

“I am very glad,” blurted out Rupert. “I never did anything to deserve
the V.C.”

Now this noble Under-Secretary who had been an official all his life—for
he succeeded to his peerage in an accidental fashion—who looked like a
ramrod, and who was reputed to be such a bore, was yet a man with a kind
heart, an appreciation of worth and a sense of justice. Perhaps it was
these qualities, or some of them, which caused him to answer:

“Well, you know best, and if so, it shows that the alphabetical system
works better than might have been expected. But now give me your
opinion, and you too, Lady Devene, on this case. An officer posted a
picket outside a square. The square was attacked, picket cut off. Result
of the attack indecisive, enemy being in possession of the bush about
the square. Officer who posted the picket rather badly hurt by a spear
through the shoulder—”

“I beg you,” broke in Rupert; but Lord Southwick went on imperturbably:

“A wounded man crept into the square at night saying that he had
survived the massacre of the picket and got through the enemy, but that
the sergeant who was stabbed through the leg lay in a clump of bush
about six hundred yards away, and had not yet been discovered by the
Arabs, who occupied a donga in great force between the camp and the said
clump of bush. It being impracticable to send a rescue party, the
wounded officer dresses himself up in the jibba and turban of a dead
Arab, and thus disguised, gets through the donga, finds the wounded man,
and a storm coming on, contrives somehow or other to lead, or rather to
carry him back to camp, doing the last hundred yards under a heavy fire
both from the Arabs and our own sentries. Now did that officer deserve
the Victoria Cross?”

“_Ach! mein Gott,_ I should think so,” said the phlegmatic Lady Devene,
with a force quite foreign to her nature as it was commonly understood
by her surroundings. “What was the name of that brave man? I should like
to know it.”

“I forget,” answered Lord Southwick, with a stony grin. “Ask Colonel
Ullershaw. He may remember the incident.”

“Who was it, Rupert?” said Edith, and the whole long table listened for
the reply.

Then was the Recording Angel forced to add another to the list of
Rupert’s crimes, for he lied, and boldly.

“I don’t know, I am sure. Never heard of the business; but if it
happened at all, I should say that the story has been greatly
exaggerated.”

A smile and a titter went round the table, and the Under-Secretary
grinned again and changed the subject.

For fully three minutes Lady Devene was lost in deep meditation. Then
suddenly, while her husband was telling some story of grouse-shooting on
a Scotch moor, from which they had just returned, she broke in in a loud
voice, thumping her heavy hand upon the table:

“_Himmel!_ I see it now. It is Lord Southwick’s little joke. _You_ are
that man, Colonel Ullershaw.”

Whereat the company broke into a roar of laughter, and Rupert nearly
died of shame.


The feast was over at last, and Lord Devene came into the hall to bid
his guests good-bye.

“Well,” asked Edith, as he helped her with her cloak, “you have seen
him. What do you say now?”

“Excelsior!” he said. “You must climb that difficult height. You must
marry him; that is, if you can, which I very much doubt.”

“Do you indeed?” answered Edith. “Almost am I minded to try—for the sake
of argument. Good-night!”

“Didn’t I tell you he was a hero?” sneered Dick, as he led her to the
cab. “Poor Edith! I pity you, exposed to the fascinations of such a
warrior.”

“Do you indeed,” she repeated. “Well, I admit they are rather
dangerous.”

Meanwhile Lord Southwick had button-holed Rupert by the front door.

“I shall expect to see you, Ullershaw, at the War Office, where I wish
to introduce you to the Secretary of State,” he was saying. “Would
to-morrow at half-past twelve suit you?”

Rupert, understanding that he had received an order, answered:

“Certainly, my lord, I will be there.”




CHAPTER VI.

RUPERT FALLS IN LOVE

The next morning Rupert attended at the War Office, and actually was
introduced by Lord Southwick to the Secretary of State. His conversation
with the great man was not long—three minutes must have covered it.
Still, even a person of Rupert’s rather unusual modesty could scarcely
fail to understand from its tone that he was looked on with favour in
high places. The Right Honourable gentleman went so far indeed as to
congratulate him upon his past services, of which he had evidently been
informed, and to hint that his future might be brilliant. He asked him
for how long he was on leave, and when he was told six months, smiled
and remarked that it was a long time for so active a soldier to remain
idle, adding:

“Now, if we wanted to send you anywhere before it expires, would you be
willing to go?”

“Certainly, sir,” replied Rupert, with enthusiasm, for already he seemed
to have had almost enough of London, and for the moment forgot about his
mother, forgot also that return to duty would mean separation from
Edith, whose society he had begun to find so agreeable.

“Very well, Colonel Ullershaw,” answered the Secretary of State.
“Remember about it, Southwick, will you? All sorts of things keep
cropping up out there in Egypt and the Soudan, and Colonel Ullershaw
might be the man to deal with some of them,” and he held out his hand to
show that the interview was over.

“You have made an excellent impression, I am sure,” said Lord Southwick
to him in the outer room. “Only let me give you a tip. Our chief is
rather arbitrary in his ways, and expects to find the promptness upon
which he prides himself reflected in others. If he should wish to employ
you, as is quite likely, don’t hesitate or ask for time to consider, but
fall in with his views at once. It will be better for you afterwards, as
if you don’t, you probably will not be asked again.”

Rupert thanked him for the hint and departed, reflecting that he was
scarcely likely to hear more of the matter, especially as there were
plenty of officers in Egypt capable of carrying out any mission or
special service for which occasion might arise. He forgot that he was
already considered successful; that he was, moreover, and probably would
remain the heir to a very wealthy peerage; in short, a person such as
those in authority like to employ, since unto him that hath shall be
given.

Soon Rupert discovered that this attitude towards himself was very
general; indeed, in a small way, he became something of a lion. In
addition to his other advantages, Lord Southwick’s Victoria Cross story,
of which he was known to be the hero, had got about, with various
embellishments, and excited curiosity, especially among women. When town
filled again, he was asked to public dinners, where, as Dick had
prophesied, he was obliged to wear his orders. The first two or three he
rather enjoyed, but at length there came one when, to his horror, in the
unexpected absence of some distinguished general, suddenly he found
himself obliged to return thanks for the army. In fact, he got through
it pretty well, as was testified by the cheers of a not too critical
audience, but convinced that his failure had been complete, he went home
in great trouble.

“What is the matter?” asked his mother, noting his gloomy face as he
stalked into the little drawing-room which he seemed to fill with his
uniform and decorations; and Edith added: “Why are you home so early?”

“I came away before the end,” he said solemnly; “they forced me to
speak, and I made a fool of myself.”

Knowing Rupert, they did not take this statement too seriously, though
Edith was somewhat relieved when, from the reports in the newspapers
next morning, and from private inquiry, she satisfied herself that he
had really done rather well.

However this might be, Rupert would go no more to public dinners,
dreading lest again he should hear that awful and inaccurate eulogium of
himself, and be once more requested to get up and give his views upon
nothing in particular. However, plenty of private entertainments
remained, and to these Edith saw that he did go, although it is true she
did not particularly enjoy exposing him to the fascinations of various
unengaged young ladies. But her cousin Devene’s strict injunction
notwithstanding, Edith had as yet by no means made up her mind to marry
Rupert herself. She was thinking the matter over, very closely, that is
all, and meanwhile had fully determined that he should marry no one
else. So she was jealous of him, not for affection’s sake, but for fear
lest she should be forestalled.

Of affection, indeed, she had none for Rupert; if anything, she shrank
from him personally—this big, rugged man—and his inner self she could
not understand at all. He would converse with her on Egyptology and the
art of war, and other subjects that bored her to death, not excluding
religion at times. He would be earnest and take solemn views of things,
conscientious also to an extent that was absolutely painful, even going
so far as to reprove her for trifling society fibs. They had nothing in
common—their two natures were as dissimilar as is the babbling stream
from the black and iron rock over which it runs. Edith lived in the day
for the day, to catch the sunlight, to flee from the shadow. Rupert
remembered always that the day would soon be done, and that then must be
rendered the account thereof; that the watchword of life should be Duty
and Self-effacement for the common good, the greatest gain of man.

At present, it is true, Edith had the art to hide these abysmal
differences from his somewhat innocent eyes, although he did now and
again wonder if she were not a little shallow. She listened to his
discourses on the Pharaohs; she suffered him to draw her plans of
battles which she was apt to look at upside down; she even took an
apparent interest in his rather alarming views of human
responsibilities, and his belief in redemption that must be earned by
sacrifice. But oh! it was pain and grief to Edith, and though she was
far too clever to show it in his presence, or even in that of his
mother, when he had gone she would rise and dance about the room in joy
at her deliverance; yes, and allow Dick to seek her out and even endure
his tiresome jealousy for the mere pleasure of that congenial
fellowship. But she never allowed him any more, being too wise to
compromise herself in such a fashion.

“Oh!” Edith reflected to herself again and again, “if these things were
done in the green tree, what would be done in the dry?” If Rupert was so
insufferable even as an admirer, what would he be like when he had
assumed what she felt sure he would call the “duties and
responsibilities of matrimony,” in which she would be expected to take a
daily and an ample part?

Meanwhile, her business was to make him fond of her—to persuade him that
she was absolutely charming and necessary to his existence. Nor did
Edith fail at the task. Gradually Rupert grew to adore her, till at
length, like a sudden light, there arose in his mind an appreciation of
the stupendous fact that, all unworthy as he was of such perfections, he
might dare to cherish the ambition of making her his wife.

After all, Rupert was very human, and one who had long acknowledged the
fact that though it may be salutary for his soul’s health, it is not
good for man to live alone. With that one unfortunate exception in his
early youth, he had fled from women, not because he did not like them,
who was no misogynist, but because he deemed it right. But now, when he
came to think of it, why should he not marry like other men, and be
happy in his wife’s love, and leave children—he who loved
children—behind him, like other men? It was a great idea, and with Edith
at his side, it grew upon him fast, unaware, as he remained, that the
suggestion was one which emanated from the said Edith—not in words, but
in a thousand acts and glances. He began to pay solemn court to her; he
was dreadfully respectful and considerate; he blushed if any word with a
double meaning were uttered in her presence, and when other men looked
at her with admiration—and many did—he felt furious.

He gave her gifts also. The first of them was a huge blue scarabæus, set
in gold, which, he informed her, he had himself removed from the breast
of a body, where it had rested for three thousand years. Edith loathed
that scarabæus, both for its associations and because it did not match
any of her dresses; also because it assured her that the day of decision
was drawing nigh: Yet she was obliged to wear it sometimes, until she
managed to let it fall upon the pavement, where it was broken to bits,
which bits she showed to Rupert, as it appeared to him, almost with
tears. He consoled her, though his heart was wrung, for the thing was
really good, and next week in triumph produced another and a larger one!

Such were the humours of the situation; its tragedies, very real ones,
were to come!

It happened thus: Lord Devene, both for change of air and because he
hated Christmas and everything to do with it, departed, as was his
custom at that time of year, to spend a month at Naples. Thereon Lady
Devene, as was her custom, migrated to Devene, the family place in
Sussex. Now although the estates here were not so very large, for most
of the Devene real property consisted of an acre or two of houses in
Shoreditch, a colliery, and the ancestral brewery, the house was
magnificent and extensive. To be there alone oppressed even Lady
Devene’s phlegmatic temperament, so she asked various people who were
more or less congenial to share her solitude. More especially did she
insist that Rupert and his mother should come, for she liked them both,
particularly Rupert. This involved the asking of Edith, whom she did not
like, while Dick Learmer would be present as a matter of course in his
capacity of secretary and factotum.

Rupert did not want to accept, although the shooting was excellent and
he was fond of shooting. Even when Edith said that she should go
anyhow—for in secret she longed for the relief of a little of Dick’s
society, in love as he was—he still hesitated. Then she remarked that it
would be scarcely kind of him to deprive his mother of her only outing,
since, if he stayed in London, she would stay also. So in the end Rupert
yielded, for circumstances were too much for him. Yet he hated being
obliged to accept this hospitality. Lord Devene might be absent, it was
true, but the saturnine if friendly butler, and many painful memories,
remained. Once before, when he was nineteen, Rupert had spent a
Christmas at Devene!

It was New Year’s Eve. That day, which was fine and frosty, was devoted
to the shooting of the home coverts, where, as they lay extremely well
upon the ridges of hills with little valleys between and not a pheasant
had as yet been so much as fired at in them, the sport was very fine.
Some of the ladies who were staying in the house, and amongst them
Edith, came out after luncheon to see the shooting of the last beat,
which was the great stand of the day, for it took over an hour to do,
and if the guns were good, generally between three and four hundred
pheasants were killed there. Here the woods ran down to a point, beyond
which lay a valley. The guns were posted close together on the further
side of this valley in a gorge that led to a covert called the
Wilderness, since, had they stood at the bottom, the pheasants would
have passed over practically out of shot. As it was, they all sped on
down the gorge, heading for the Wilderness a quarter of a mile away, and
still travelling at a great height. Indeed, it was a good shot who
brought down one in three of these pheasants at this time of year when
they flew so boldly.

Rupert’s place was at the centre of the gorge where the birds came
highest, and a little above him, about five-and-twenty yards to his
right, stood Dick Learmer, who, of course, arranged the shoot, and who
was what in sporting parlance is called an “artist” at driven birds,
though not so good when they had to be walked up, as he was easily tired
and put off his form. He had placed Rupert in this very difficult spot,
which was in full view of all the line of guns and one generally
reserved for some great performer, because he was sure that, being
totally unaccustomed to that kind of sport, he would make an exhibition
of himself, especially as he had only one gun which must soon get very
hot.

As it chanced, however, the young man who carried Rupert’s cartridges,
knowing this, lent him a thick dogskin glove for his left hand and
ventured to give him a little good advice, namely, to stick to cocks,
which were more easily seen, and of these only to fire at such birds as
were coming straight over him. Rupert thanked him and chatted with
Edith, who was his companion, until the sport began, remarking that it
was very kind of Dick to have given him such a good place, which should
have been occupied by a better man.

Presently the pheasants began to fly, and in that still air, cold with
coming frost, went straight as arrows for their refuge in the
Wilderness. The first cock came over at an enormous height.

“Fire ten yards ahead of it, sir,” said the wise young man “and chuck
back.”

Rupert obeyed, and as his cartridges chanced to be loaded with No. 4
shot, brought down the bird, which fell stone-dead far behind him.

“Bravo!” said the gun on his left, “that was a good shot,” and indeed
its unexpected success put Rupert into excellent spirits and made him
think that the thing was not so difficult after all.

Therefore, in the issue he did not find it difficult, for always
remembering the instructions of his mentor to fire ten yards ahead, and
never lifting his gun save at those cocks that came straight over him,
letting all hens and wide birds go by, his success, with the help of the
No. 4, was remarkable. Indeed, he brought down nearly as many birds with
his one gun as most of the other sportsmen did with two, greatly to the
delight of Edith, who from the beginning had fathomed Dick’s kind
intentions.

But Dick was not delighted, for this petty success of his rival
irritated him. Therefore, as the long drive went on, meanly enough he
set himself to disconcert him in a very unsportsmanlike manner. Noticing
that Rupert was firing at those cocks that passed right over his head,
neglecting his own birds whereof there were a plenty, Dick devoted
himself to Rupert’s, killing a number of them with long cross shots
before Rupert could get off his gun.

Rupert said nothing, for there was nothing to say, though he could not
help feeling a little annoyed, till at last he did speak—to Edith,
asking why Dick did not confine himself to his own pheasants.

“Oh!” she answered, shrugging her shoulders, “because he’s jealous even
about his wretched shooting.”

Then an accident happened, for one of the cocks, shot far forward by
Dick in this unlawful fashion, in falling, struck Edith on the shoulder
and knocked her straight backwards to the ground, where she lay quite
still for a few moments, then sat up crying with the pain and gasping:

“Oh, it has hurt me so!”

Now Rupert’s wrath broke out, and he shouted to Dick, who pretended not
to have seen what had happened:

“Stop shooting and come here.”

So Dick came.

“Look at the end of your infernal, unsportsmanlike tricks,” said Rupert,
his eyes blazing with anger. “You might have killed her.”

“I am dreadfully sorry,” answered Dick (and he was), “but really I don’t
see how I am responsible for the accident. It must have been your bird
that struck her.”

“It was not my bird, and you know it. Loader, who shot that pheasant?”

“Mr. Learmer, sir. It was coming over you very high, but Mr. Learmer
fired before you could, and killed it.”

Just then Edith staggered to her feet, looking very white.

“Go back to your stand, Dick,” she said, “Rupert will help me home. Give
me your arm, Rupert.”

So very gently, half-supporting her as he had done many a wounded man,
Rupert led her to the house, which was not far away, in his grief and
confusion speaking tender words to her as they went, even to the length
of calling her “dear” and “dearest.” Edith did not answer him, who had a
good excuse for keeping silent, although in reality she was much more
frightened than hurt. But on the other hand, neither did she attempt to
escape from the arm that was placed about her waist to bear her weight.

When she had reached her room, taken off her things and rubbed some
liniment on the bruise—for she refused to allow the doctor to be sent
for—Edith sat down in a chair before the fire and began to think. The
crisis was at hand, that bird from the skies had precipitated it. After
those words of Rupert’s, things could not stay where they were. He must
propose to her. But the question was—should she accept him? She had been
debating the point with herself that very morning, and practically had
answered it in the negative. Notwithstanding Lord Devene’s injunctions
and the money which depended upon her obedience, so consumedly had
Rupert bored her of late, so greatly did she dislike the idea of him as
a lover and a husband, so infinite was the distance between them
although his passion blinded him to the fact, that she had made up her
mind to take the risks and have done with it all, to tell him that she
had always looked upon him “as a friend and cousin,” no more. Of course,
under the circumstances, this would have been the kindest course towards
Rupert, but that was a matter with which Edith never troubled her head.
She looked at the question from the point of view of her own comfort and
advantage and no other.

Well, this was her conclusion of the morning. The problem was—did it
still hold good at the fall of night? She thought not. After all, Edith
had the instincts of a lady, and this incident of the shooting,
especially that of his pretending that it was not he who had shot the
bird, revealed to her very clearly that in addition to his worthlessness
and vices, Dick lacked those of a gentleman. That he was a coward also,
who feigned ignorance of her hurt because he feared Rupert’s anger,
although she knew well that he must have been longing to run to her,
whose one redeeming virtue in her eyes was that he worshipped the ground
she walked on. Now Rupert was a gentleman to his finger-tips, strong,
tender, and true, and with him she would be safe all her life. More, her
anxieties would be at an end; probably she would become a peeress, the
mistress of great rank and fortune, both of which she desired intensely;
at the worst, she would be provided for, and the wife of a distinguished
man who loved her, and who therefore would put up with much.

Yet Edith hesitated, for all these good things must be bought at the
price of Rupert’s constant company for years and years until one of them
deceased. She was very unhappy and—her shoulder hurt. She wished that
something would come to decide her doubts, to take the responsibility
out of her hands. Under the circumstances, many girls might have fallen
back upon petitions for light and guidance to the Power that they
believed to direct their destinies; but this was not Edith’s way. Lord
Devene’s teaching had sunk deep into her heart, and she lacked faith in
anything save the great blind, terrible, tumultuous world, whereon, born
as she thought, of the will of the flesh alone, she flittered from
darkness into darkness.

The maid brought up her tea, and on the tray was a letter which had come
by the second post. It proved to be from Lord Devene, and began by
giving her a sarcastic and amusing account of the humours of a Naples
hotel. Its ending showed, however, that this was not the object of the
epistle. It ran:

I hear that you are all at Devene, including the Family Hero, who, I
hope, has had his hair cut and bought himself a new hat. The party must
be amusing. Write and tell me how many of them come down to morning
prayers. Write and tell me your news also, my dear Edith, which I await
with anxiety. It is time that matter was settled, for if it is left too
long, R. may be sent spinning to the other end of the world, and be no
more heard of for years. I will not recapitulate my arguments. I, who
have your true interests at heart, wish it for good reasons, and that is
enough. Trust yourself to me in this matter, Edith; I take the
responsibility, who know more and see further than you do. Do not let
any foolish whims, any girlish weakness, stand between you and your
future. I have said; I beg of you to listen and obey.—

Your affectionate,

DEVENE.

Edith laid down the letter with a sigh of relief. The decision had been
made for her and she was glad. She would marry Rupert. It was certain
now that if they both lived she would marry Rupert as her cousin George
commanded her to do—for it was a command, no less. Yes; she was glad,
as, notwithstanding her hurts, she dressed herself for conquest,
determining to do the thing at once, and have that engagement scene a
bad memory behind her.

But if there is any vision, any knowledge among those who dwell beyond,
certain guardian angels upon this fateful night must have made up their
books sad-eyed and sore-hearted.




CHAPTER VII.

ENGAGED

Not wishing to meet Dick until his temper was more composed after that
day’s adventure, Rupert did not go into the smoking or billiard-rooms
before dinner, but retired to the library, purposing to spend there
those dreary three hours which, in a country house, must be got through
somehow between the advance of the mid-winter twilight and the welcome
sound of the dressing-bell. His intention was to read a commentary on
the Koran, if the somewhat agitated state of his mind would allow him to
do so, for he loved to acquire miscellaneous learning, especially if it
bore upon the East, its antiquities, religions, or affairs, a fact that
Edith had good reason to lament. As it happened, this laudable project
for the utilisation of spare time was frustrated by Lady Devene, who,
finding out his whereabouts from the gloomy butler returning with an
empty tea-cup, came to inquire of him the cause of Edith’s accident. He
told her the facts in his usual unvarnished style, minimising Dick’s
share in it as much as possible. But in spite of her phlegmatic
exterior, Lady Devene was a quick judge of truth and character.

“Ach!” she said, “it is Dick’s tricks again, and I do not like Dick; he
is a bad lot, vain of his face, throwing himself head down upon any
pleasure that comes, not working for himself; but what is the English
word? Ah! I have it—a cadger, a bit of bad money that looks all right
outside, no God-fearing man, in that way like his lordship” (she always
called her husband “his lordship”), “but without his brains; one wicked
by weakness, not by will.”

Rupert looked at her, not knowing exactly what to say.

“Ach!” she went on, “you stare at me; you who are his cousin think that
I, who am his wife, am hard upon his lordship, but, _mein Gott!_ who can
be hard upon iron? It is the iron is hardest, and hurts what hits it. I
say he is a terrible man.”

“Then,” asked Rupert solemnly, “why did you marry him?”

She looked up and down the great, lonely room lined with books, into
which none save the housemaids ever penetrated, and then at the closed
door behind her, and answered:

“I will tell you, Rupert, who are honest, who think as I do and believe
in a God and judgment. I am well born in my own country, very well born,
of an older and more distinguished family than any of you, who made your
money out of brewing but the other day. But after my father’s death in
the war we were poor, my mother and I, so when that rich old Lady
Hodgson, who was German born, you know, and a friend of our family,
asked me to come to live with her for eight months of every year, and
paid me well for it, why, I came. There I met his lordship, who found
out that I sent most of my salary home to my mother, and that I thought
otherwise than the fashionable English ladies about many
things—children, for instance, and after the death of her first ladyship
began to take much notice of me. At last one day he proposed, and I
said, ‘No,’ for I always doubted that man. Then, oh! he was clever. What
do you think he did? You see, he knew that I am brought up religious, so
he tells me that he is greatly troubled by doubts, and that the real
reason why he wants to marry me is that he thinks that I would be able
to give him peace of soul again, and to bring him back into the fold of
faith—yes, those were his words, ‘the fold of faith.’ Him! that black
lamb!” she added, with a gasp of indignation, while Rupert burst out
laughing.

“Ah!” she went on, “for you it is funny, but not for me. Well, he
over-persuades me, he tells me I shall be wicked if I turn a penitent
soul back from the door of life by refusing to have anything to do with
it, and so on, and so on, till, sheep’s-head that I am, I believe him:
Also my mother wish the marriage, and I liked to be noble in your
country as well as my own. So I marry him and find out. The fold of
faith! The door of life! Oh! the black goats live in that fold of
his—the black, left-hand goats—and the door he knocks at, it is the door
of hell. I find he believes in nothing, and when I reproach him, he
tells me that it was only his little joke—his little joke to make me
marry him, because he thought I should be a good, useful, domestic wife
and a fine, handsome mother for his children. Ach! _Mein Gott,_ he said
it was a little joke—” and rising from her chair in her woe and
indignation, Tabitha held up her hands and turned her fair face to
heaven, with a look on it like that of a saint who has just felt the
first stroke of martyrdom. Indeed it was a very strange scene, and one
that impressed Rupert deeply.

“And what has been the end about his children?” she went on
tempestuously. “I have had how many—six, seven—oh! I do my duty, I
promise and I pay, but these children they do not live. How can they
live with that wicked man for father? The last—it lived some time, and I
beg him to have it christened—yes, I crawl about on my knees on the
floor after him and beg him let it be made a Christian, and he mocked me
and my ‘silly superstitions,’ and he say he will not have it because the
child will catch cold. And the child it do catch cold, the cold of
death, and now that poor little soul of his it must live on unredeemed
for ever, and perhaps, oh, perhaps suffer terribly because of the sin of
that wicked man.”

“Don’t say that,” said Rupert, “it’s a hard creed, and I won’t believe a
word of it. The innocent can’t be made to suffer for the guilty.”

“Ah! but I do say it, and I do believe it, for I was so taught, and I
tell you it torments me, and, Rupert, no child of mine will ever live!
You will be the heir of all these lands and drink-shops and moneys, and
may they bring you joy. As for me, I wish I were where her first
ladyship is. Oh! I know they say he murdered her, that poor Clara, or
drove her to death, and I daresay when I have no more children he will
do the same to me. Well, I care nothing. And now I have told you and
eased my heart, who have no friend but God since my mother died, and I
thank you for listening so patient to my sad story, because I should
like one of you to know the truth after it is all over—the truth of what
comes to women who are led away by false words and the love of place and
riches;” and once more throwing up her arms, she uttered two or three
dry, hard sobs, then to Rupert’s infinite relief, turned and left the
room.

It seemed to be his fate to receive the confidences of the wives of Lord
Devene, and Heaven knows he did not desire this second edition of them.
Yet his heart bled for the poor German lady who had been beguiled to
fill a place which, for all its seeming grandeur, was to her a very
habitation in Purgatory, since day by day she saw her most cherished
convictions trampled upon and scorned; while the cruel articles of her
narrow creed bred in her mind the belief, or rather the mania, that the
sin of the father was wreaked upon the bodies of her children, and even
had power to pursue and torment their innocent souls. In its way, this
tragedy was as great as that of her whom she succeeded, the wretched
woman who, in her lawless search for relief from loveless misery, had
found but death. Yet, alas! upon the head of that one he had brought
down the evil, and the head of this one he was powerless to protect.

Nor, indeed, did Rupert wish to encourage such painful conversations,
confidences, and the intimacy that must result from them. Therefore he
was determined that he would get away from Tabitha’s house as soon as
possible. But first he must find an opportunity of speaking to Edith and
learn his fate. Indeed, after the words which had broken from his lips
that day, it was his duty so to do. If only it could be accomplished
this night, as it chanced he had a good excuse for departing on the
following morning, since he had received a telegram from an old
brother-officer, with whom he was engaged to stay in Norfolk, shifting
the date of the visit and begging him, if possible, to come down on the
morrow instead of that day week.


As Rupert reflected thus, staring at the fire before which he stood, he
heard the door open and close behind him, and turned round in alarm,
thinking that Lady Devene had come back again. But it was not Lady
Devene, it was Edith already dressed for dinner in a clinging robe of
some soft white material, high because of the bruise on her shoulder; a
bunch of forced lilies of the valley at her breast, her rich golden hair
rippling upon either side of her small head and twisted into a great
knot behind, and for ornaments a close-fitting necklace of fine pearls,
Lord Devene’s latest gift to her, and Rupert’s great blue scarabæus, a
single and imposing touch of colour in the whiteness of her dress.

“Oh,” she said, “I came to look for Tabitha. What an awful name that is,
it always sticks in my throat”—(this was a fib, because she had passed
Lady Devene on the stairs, but it served her purpose)—“not to disturb
your studies, my learned cousin. Don’t look so alarmed, I will go away
again.”

“Oh, please don’t,” he answered. “Sit down here, do, and warm yourself.
I was just—hoping to see you, and—behold! you glide into the room like,
like—an angel into a dream.”

“In answer to the prayers of a saint, I suppose,” she replied. “Really,
Rupert, you are growing quite poetical. Who taught you such pretty
metaphors? It must have been a woman, I am sure.”

“Yes,” he answered boldly, “that is, if it is pretty—a woman called
Edith.”

She coloured a little, not expecting anything so direct, but sat down in
the chair staring at the fire with her beautiful dark blue eyes, and
said, as though to turn the conversation:

“You asked about my shoulder, or if you didn’t, you ought to have done.
Well, there is a bruise on it as big as a saucer, all here,” and with
her first finger she drew a ring upon her dress.

“Confound him!” muttered Rupert.

“Him! Who? Dick or the cock-pheasant? Well, it doesn’t matter. I agree,
confound both of them.”

Then there came a pause, and Rupert wrung his hands as though he were
washing them or suffering pain, so that Edith could not help observing
how large and red they looked in the firelight. She wished that he were
wearing gloves, or would keep them in his pockets. It would make matters
easier for her.

“I’m awfully glad you have come,” he said awkwardly, feeling that if he
didn’t say something soon she would shortly go, “because I want to speak
to you.”

“What about? Nothing disagreeable, I hope. Has Tabitha been making
confidences to you? If so, please do not pass them on to me, for they
obliterate the romance and discredit the holy state of matrimony.”

“Confound Tabitha,” said Rupert again, “and her confidences!” for he was
quite bewildered, and uttered automatically the first words that came
into his mind.

“Again I agree, but soon we shall involve all our relatives in one
universal condemnation, so let us drop that topic.”

Then wearying of this fence, desiring to get the thing over, to have
done with it, to see the doubtful bond signed, sealed, and delivered,
suddenly Edith sat up in her chair and looked at him. The blue eyes
opened wide, and there came into them a light which he had never seen
before, a splendid, dazzling light as though some veil of darkness had
been withdrawn, revealing a hid glory; as though at last she suffered
him to behold her soul. The face changed also, upon it the mask of
coldness broke as ice breaks suddenly beneath the blaze of the sun and
the breath of the western wind, disclosing, or seeming to disclose, a
river of pure love that ran beneath. For one moment he resisted her as
sometimes a moth appears to resist the splendour of flame, not because
he desired to fight against his fate, but rather to let the wonder and
the mystery of this sudden change engrave themselves for ever on his
heart. Then as the white lids sank extinguishing those fires, till the
shadow of the long lashes lay upon her cheek, he spoke in a low and
hurried voice:

“I am all unworthy,” he said, “I am not fit to touch your hand; but I
cannot help it. I love you, and I dare to ask—oh, Edith, I dare to
ask!—that you will give your life to me.”

She sat quite still, making no motion of acceptance or dissent. It was
as though she wished to hear more ere she spoke. But he, too, was
silent—frightened, perhaps, by her stillness—finding no other words in
which to recast the truth that he had uttered once and for all. Again
the white lids were lifted, and again the wide eyes looked at him, but
this time with no syren glance, for they were troubled—almost tearful.
Then whilst he wondered how he should read their message, Edith rose
slowly, and with an infinite deliberation raised her hand and held it
out towards him. At length he understood, and taking that delicate hand,
he pressed his lips upon it, then, greatly daring, placed his arms about
her, drew her to him, and kissed her on the brow and lips.

“My shoulder,” she murmured faintly; “it hurts,” and full of contrition
he let her sink back into her chair.

“Do you love me? Say that you love me, Edith,” he whispered, bending
over her.

“Have I not said?” she answered, glancing at her hand. “Do women—” and
she ceased, and to Rupert this speech, and all that it conveyed, seemed
the most beautiful avowal that ever passed the lips of pure and perfect
maidenhood.

When the heart is too full for words, surely they are best left untried.
Another thought came to him—a painful thought—for he moved uneasily, and
turned red to the eyes, or rather, to the puckered brow above them.

“I must tell you,” he said presently; “it is only right, and after you
have heard you must finally decide, for I will not begin our engagement
by keeping back anything from you whom I worship. Only you will not ask
for names.”

She lifted her head, as though in remonstrance, then reflecting that it
is always well to know a man’s secrets, checked herself. Also she was
curious. What could this saint of a Rupert have done that was wrong?

“Once,” he continued, slowly and painfully, “I committed a great sin—a
love affair—a married woman. She is dead; it is all over, and, thank
God! I have nothing more to confess to you.”

Edith tried to appear grieved, but in reality, she was so intensely
interested—so astonished, too, that any woman could have betrayed Rupert
into an _affaire galante_—that to a dispassionate observer her effort
might have seemed unsuccessful.

“I don’t want to preach,” she said. “I have been told that men are very
different from what they expect us to be. Still, it was good of you to
tell me, and there is no more to say, is there, except—” and she clasped
her hands and looked up at him—“Oh, Rupert! I do hope that it was
not—lately—for I thought—I thought—”

“Great Heavens!” he said, aghast; “why, it was when I was a boy, years
and years ago.”

“Oh!” she answered, “that makes it better, doesn’t it?”

“It makes it less dreadful, perhaps,” he said, “for I lost my reason
almost, and did not understand.”

“Well, who am I that I should judge you, Rupert? Let us never speak of
it again.”

“I am sure I don’t want to,” he replied, with fervour; “but indeed you
are good and kind, Edith. I never expected it; I was afraid that when
you had heard you would turn your back upon me.”

“We are taught to forgive one another,” she answered, a little smile
that would not be suppressed trembling about the corners of her mouth;
and again she held out her hand—this time the left—and suffered him to
kiss it.

In fact, he did more, for drawing off the only ring he ever wore, an
ancient gold ring carved with a strange device—it was the throne-name of
a Pharaoh, which Pharaoh himself had worn for three thousand years
within the tomb—he put it on her third finger as a sign and a token for
ever.

“Another of those unlucky mummy things,” reflected Edith. “I wish I
could get clear of the Egyptians and everything to do with them. They
seem to haunt me.”

But she said nothing, only lifting the ring she touched it with her
lips, a sight that may have surprised the spirit of Pharaoh.

“Rupert,” she said, “don’t say anything of this to-night, except to your
mother, if you wish. You understand, Dick’s temper is so very
unpleasant, though,” she added, with emphasis, “I hope you understand
also that _I_ have no confessions to make to you about him or anybody
else. I can’t help it if he has always—pursued me.”

“He had better give up his pursuit now,” grumbled Rupert, “or there will
be trouble.”

“Quite so. Well, I have no doubt he will, when he comes to know, only,
to tell the truth, I would rather he didn’t know while you are here. I
don’t want a scene.”

“Well, if you like, dearest,” said Rupert, “although I hate it, I can go
away to-morrow morning, and meet you in a few days in London,” and he
told her of his shooting engagement.

“That will suit very well indeed,” she said, with relief, “although, as
you say, it is horrid under our new circumstances, especially as to
catch that train at Liverpool Street, you will have to leave by eight
to-morrow. Well, you will be back on Saturday, so we must make the best
of it. Good gracious, look at the clock, the dinner-bell will ring in
two minutes, and you are not dressed. Go at once, dear, or—it will be
noticed. There, that is enough. Go, darling, my lover who will be my
husband, go.”

And Rupert went.

“It was not so bad as it might have been,” thought Edith to herself, as
rubbing her face with her lace handkerchief the while, she watched the
door close behind him, “and really he is very nice. Oh, why can’t I care
for him more? If I could, we should be happy, whereas now, I don’t know.
Fancy his telling me that story! What a curious man! It must have been
Clara. I have heard something of the sort. Dick suggested as much, but I
thought it was only one of his scandals. That’s why Cousin George hates
him so—for he does hate him, although he insists upon my marrying him.
Yes, I see it all now, and I can remember that she was a very beautiful
and a very foolish woman. Poor innocent Rupert!”

Rupert came down to dinner ten minutes late, to find that everybody had
gone in. Arriving under cover of the fish, he took the chair which was
left for him by Lady Devene, who always liked him to sit upon her right
hand. Edith, he noted with sorrow, was some way off, between two of the
shooting guests, and three places removed from Dick, who occupied the
end of the table.

“Ach! my dear Rupert,” said Lady Devene, “you are terribly late, and I
could wait no longer, it spoils the cook. Now you shall have no soup as
a punishment. What? Did you go to sleep over that big book of yours up
in the library?”

He made some excuse, and the matter passed off, while he ate, or
pretended to eat his fish in silence. Indeed to him, in his excited
state of mind, this splendid and rather lengthy New Year’s feast proved
the strangest of entertainments. There was a curious air of unreality
about it. Could he, Rupert, after the wonderful and glorious thing that
had happened to him utterly changing the vista of his life, making it
grand and noble as the columns of Karnac beneath the moon, be the same
Rupert who had gone out shooting that morning? Could the handsome,
phlegmatic German lady who sat by him discoursing on the cooking be the
same passion-torn, doom-haunted woman, who told him how she had crawled
upon her knees after her mocking husband for the prize of her infant’s
soul? Nay, was it she who sat there at all? Was it not another, whom he
well remembered in that seat, the lovely Clara, with her splendid,
unhappy eyes full of the presage of death and destruction; those eyes
that he felt still watched him, he knew not whence, reproaching him,
warning him he knew not of what? Was the gay and beautiful lady yonder,
who laughed and joked with her companions, the same Edith to whom he had
vowed himself not an hour gone? Yes, it must be so, for there upon her
finger gleamed his golden ring, and what was more, Dick had seen it, for
he was watching her hand with a frown upon his handsome face.

Why, too, Rupert wondered, did another vision thrust itself upon him at
this moment, that of the temple of Abu-Simbel bathed in the evening
lights which turned the waters of the Nile red as though with blood, and
of the smiling and colossal statues of the first monarch of long ago,
whose ring was set upon Edith’s hand in token of their troth? Of the
dark, white-haired figure of old Bakhita also, who had not crossed his
mind for many a day, standing there among the rocks and calling to him
that they would meet again, calling to Dick and Edith also, something
that he could not understand, and then turning to speak to a shadow
behind her.


The meal ended at last, and as was the custom in this house, everyone,
men and women, left the table together to go into the great hall hung
with holly and with mistletoe, where there would be music, and perhaps
dancing to follow, and all might smoke who wished. Here were some other
guests, the village clergyman’s daughters and two families from the
neighbourhood, making a party of twenty or thirty in all, and here also
was Mrs. Ullershaw, who had dined in her own room, and come down to see
the old year out.

Rupert went to sit by his mother, for a kind of shyness kept him away
from Edith. She laid her hand on his, and with a smile that made her
grey and careworn face beautiful, said how happy she was, after so many
lonely years, to be at the birth of one more of them with him, even
though it should prove her last.

“Don’t talk like that, mother,” he answered, “it is painful.”

“Yes, dear,” she replied, in her gentle voice, “but all life is painful,
a long road of renunciation with farewells for milestones. And when we
think ourselves most happy, as I do to-night, then we should remember
these truths more even than at other times. The moment is all we have,
dear; beyond it lies the Will of God, and nothing that we can call our
own.”

Rupert made no answer, for this talk of hers all seemed part of his
fantastic imaginings at the dinner-table, a sad music to which they were
set. Yet he remembered that once before she had spoken to him of
renunciation when, as a lad, he lay sick after the death of Clara;
remembered, too, that from that day to this he had practised its stern
creed, devoting himself to duty and following after faith. Why, now on
this joyous night, the night of his re-birth in honest love, did his
mother again preach to him her stern creed of renunciation?

At least it was one in which that company did not believe. How merry
they were, as though there were no such things as sorrow, sickness, and
death, or bitter disillusionment, that is worse than death. Listen! the
music began, and see, they were dancing. Dick was waltzing with Edith,
and notwithstanding her hurt shoulder, seemed to be holding her close
enough. They danced beautifully, like one creature, their bodies moving
like a single body. Why should he mind it when she was his, and his
alone? Why should he feel sore because he whose life had been occupied
in stern business had never found time to learn to dance?

Hark! the sound of the bells from the neighbouring church floated
sweetly, solemnly into the hall, dominating the music. The year was
dying, the new year was at hand. Edith ceased her waltzing and came
towards Rupert, one tall, white figure on that wide expanse of polished
floor, and so graceful were her slow movements that they put him in mind
of a sea-gull floating through the air, or a swan gliding on the water.
To him she came, smiling sweetly, then as the turret clock boomed out
the hour of midnight, whispered in his ear:

“I whom you have made so happy wish you a happy New Year—with me,
Rupert,” and turning, she curtseyed to him ever so little.

In the chorus of general congratulations no one heard her low speech,
though Mrs. Ullershaw noted the curtsey and the look upon Edith’s
face—Rupert’s she could not see, for his back was to her—and wondered
what they meant, not without anxiety. Could it be—well, if it was, why
should the thing trouble her? Yet troubled she was, without a doubt, so
much so that all this scene of gaiety became distasteful to her, and she
watched for an opportunity to rise and slip away.

Meanwhile Rupert was enraptured, enchanted with delight, so much so that
he could find no answer to Edith’s charming speech, except to
mutter—“Thank you. Thank you.” Words would not come, and to go down upon
his knees before her, which struck him as the only fitting
acknowledgment of that graceful salutation, was clearly impossible. She
smiled at his embarrassment, thinking to herself how differently the
ready-witted Dick, whose side she had just left, would have dealt with
such a situation, then went on quickly:

“Your mother is preparing to leave us, and you will wish to go with her.
So good-night, dearest, for I am tired, and shan’t stop here long. I
shall count the days till we meet in London. Again, good-night,
good-night!” and brushing her hand against his as she passed, she left
him.




CHAPTER VIII.

EDITH’S CRUSHED LILIES

“Rupert,” said his mother, “I want you to give me your arm to my room, I
am going to bed.”

“Certainly,” he answered, “but wait one minute, dear. I have to take
that eight o’clock train to-morrow morning, so I will just say good-bye
to Tabitha, as I shan’t come back again.”

Mrs. Ullershaw breathed more freely. If there were anything in the wind
about Edith he would not be taking the eight o’clock train.

“Go,” she said; “I’ll wait.”

Lady Devene was by herself, since amongst that gay throng of young
people no one took much note of her, seated in a big oak chair on a
little dais at the end of the hall far away from the fire and hot water
coils, for she found the heat oppressive. As he made his way towards her
even the preoccupied Rupert could not help noticing how imposing she
looked in her simple black dress, which contrasted so markedly with her
golden hair and white and massive face, set up there above them all,
elbow on knee and chin on hand, her blue eyes gazing over their heads at
nothingness. In reality, the miserable woman was greeting the New Year
in her own fashion, not with gaiety and laughter, but with repentance
for her sins during that which was past, and prayers for support during
that which was to come.

“Ach, Rupert!” she said, rousing herself and smiling pleasantly as she
always did at him, “it is kind of you to leave those young people and
their jokes to come to talk with the German frau, for that is what they
call me among themselves, and indeed what I am.”

“I am afraid,” he said, “I have only come to say good-night, or rather
good-bye, for I must go to town to-morrow morning before you will be
down.”

She looked at him sharply.

“So I have driven you away with my tale of troubles. Well, I thought
that I should, and you are wise to leave this house where there is so
much misery, dead and living, for no good thing can happen in it, no
good thing can come out of it—”

“Indeed,” broke in Rupert, “that is not why I am going at all, it is
because—” and he told her of the visit he must pay.

“You do not speak fibs well like the rest of them, Rupert; you have some
other reason, I see it on your face, something to do with that dreadful
Dick, I suppose, or his—ach! what is the English word—his flame, Edith.
What? Has she been playing tricks with you too? If so, beware of her; I
tell you, that woman is dangerous; she will breed trouble in the world
like his lordship.”

Rupert felt very angry, then he looked at that calm, fateful face which
a few hours before he had seen so impassioned, and all his anger died,
and was replaced by a fear which chilled him from head to heel. He felt
that this brooding, lonely woman had insight, born perhaps of her own
continual griefs; that she saw deep into the heart of things. He who
understood her, who sympathised with, even if he did not entirely adopt
her stern religious views, who knew that prayer and suffering are the
parents of true sight, felt sure that this sight was hers. At least he
felt it for a moment, then the unpleasant conviction passed away, for
how could its blackness endure in the light of the rosy optimism of
new-risen and successful love?

“You are morbid,” he said, “and although I am sure you do not wish to be
so, that makes you unjust, makes you pass hard judgments.”

“Doubtless it is true,” she replied, with a sigh, “and I thank you for
telling me my faults. Yes, Rupert, I am morbid, unjust, a passer of hard
judgments, who must endure hard judgment,” and she bowed her stately,
gold-crowned head as before the appointed stroke of wrath, then held out
her hand and said simply: “Good-bye, Rupert! I do not suppose that you
will often come to see me more—ach! why should you? Still if you do, you
will be welcome, for on you I pass no hard judgments, and never shall,
whatever they say of you.”

So he shook her hand and went away saddened.

Giving his mother his arm, for she was very infirm, Rupert led her
quietly out of a side door and down the long passages to her room, which
was next to his own at the end of the house, for stairs being difficult
to her, she slept on the ground floor, and he at hand to keep her
company.

“Mother,” he said, when he had put her in her chair and stirred the fire
to a blaze, “I have something to tell you.”

She looked up quickly, for her alarm had returned, and said: “What is
it, Rupert?”

“Don’t look frightened, dear,” he replied, “nothing bad, something very
good, very happy. I am engaged to be married to Edith, and I have come
to ask your blessing on me, or rather on both of us, for she is now a
part of me.”

“Oh, Rupert, you have that always,” she answered, sinking back in her
chair; “but I am astonished.”

“Why?” he asked, in a vexed voice, for he had expected a flow of
enthusiasm that would match his own, not this chilly air of wonderment.

“Because—of course, nobody ever told me so—but I always understood that
it was Dick Learmer whom Edith cared for, that is why I never thought
anything of her little _empressé_ ways with you.”

Again, Rupert was staggered. Dick—always Dick, first from Lady Devene
and now from his mother. What could be the meaning of it? Then again
optimism came to his aid, he who knew full surely that Dick was nothing
to Edith.

“You are mistaken there for once, mother,” he said, with a cheerful
laugh. “I knew from the first what she thought about Dick, for she spoke
very seriously to me of him and his performances in a way she would
never have done if there were anything in this silly idea.”

“Women often do speak seriously of the bad behaviour of the man of whom
they are fond, especially to one whom they think may influence him for
good,” replied his mother, with the wistful smile which she was wont to
wear when thinking of her own deep affection for a man who had deserved
it little.

“Perhaps,” he said. “All I have to say is that if ever there was
anything—and I know there wasn’t—it is as dead as last month’s moon.”

Mrs. Ullershaw thought to herself that this simile drawn from the
changeful moon, that waxes anew as surely as it wanes, was scarcely
fortunate. But she kept a watch upon her lips.

“I am very glad to hear it,” she said, “and no doubt it was all a
mistake, since, of course, if she had wished it, she might have married
Dick long ago, before you came into her life at all. Well, dearest, I
can only say that I wish you every happiness, and pray that she may be
as good a wife to you as I know you will be husband to her. She is
lovely,” she went on, as though summing up Edith’s best points, “one of
the most graceful and finished women whom I have ever seen; she is very
clever in her own way, too, though perhaps not in yours; thoughtful and
observant. Ambitious also, and will therefore make an excellent wife for
a man with a career. She is good-tempered and kind, as I know, for we
have always got on well during the years we have lived together. Yes,
you will be considered very fortunate, Rupert.”

“These are her advantages, what are her drawbacks?” he asked shrewdly,
feeling that his mother was keeping something from him, “though I must
say at once that in my eyes she has none.”

“Which is as it should be, Rupert. Well, I will tell you frankly, so
that you may guard against them if I am right. Edith likes pleasure and
the good things of the world, as, after all, is only natural, and she is
extravagant, which perhaps in certain circumstances will not matter.
Again, I hope you will never fall ill, for she is not a good nurse, not
from unkindness, but because she has a constitutional horror of all
ill-health or unsightliness. I have seen her turn white at meeting a
cripple even, and I don’t think that she has ever quite liked sitting
with me since I had that stroke, especially while it disfigured my face
and made the lower eyelid drop.”

“We all have failings which we can’t help,” he answered; “natural
antipathies that are born in us, and I am glad to say I am fairly sound
at present. So I don’t think much of that black list, mother. Anything
to add to it?”

She hesitated, then said:

“Only one thing, dear. It does strike me as curious that such a girl as
Edith should be so attached to men like Dick Learmer and Lord Devene,
for she _is_ fond of them both.”

“Relationship, I suppose; also the latter has been very kind to her, and
doubtless she is grateful.”

“Yes, most kind; indeed, he was her guardian until she came of age, and
has practically supported her for years. But it isn’t gratitude, it is
sympathy between her and him. They are as alike in character, mentally,
I mean, as—as they are in face.”

Rupert laughed, for to compare the blooming Edith with the faded,
wrinkled Devene, or even her quick humour that turned men and things to
mild ridicule, with his savage cynicism which tore them both to pieces
and stamped upon their fragments, seemed absurd.

“I can’t see the slightest resemblance,” he said. “You are cultivating
imagination in your old age, mother.”

She looked up to answer, then thought a moment, and remarked:

“I daresay that you are perfectly right, Rupert, and that these things
are all my fancy; only, my dear boy, try to make her go to church from
time to time, that can’t do any woman harm. Now I have done with
criticisms, and if I have made a few, you must forgive me; it is only
because I find it hard to think that any woman can be worthy of you, and
of course the best of us are not perfect, except to a lover. On the
whole, I think that I may congratulate you, and I do so from my heart.
God bless you both; you, my son, and Edith, my daughter, for as such I
shall regard her. Now, dear, good-night, I am tired. Ring the bell for
the maid, will you?”

He did so, and then by an afterthought said:

“You remember that I have to go away. You will speak to Edith, won’t
you?”

“Of course, my love, when Edith speaks to me,” the old lady replied,
with gentle dignity. “But why, under the circumstances, are you going?”

At that moment the maid entered the room, so he gave no answer, only
made a few remarks about the manner of his mother’s journey back to town
and kissed her in good-bye.

When the maid had left again Mrs. Ullershaw, as was her custom, said her
prayers, offering up petitions long and earnest for the welfare of her
beloved only son, and that the woman whom he had chosen might prove a
blessing to him. But from those prayers she could take no comfort, they
seemed to fall back upon her head like dead things, rejected, or
unheard, she knew not which. Often she had thought to herself how happy
she would be when Rupert came to tell her that he had chosen a wife, yet
now that he had chosen, she was not happy.

Oh, she would tell the truth to her own heart since it must never pass
her lips. She did not trust this gay and lovely woman; she thought her
irreligious, worldly, and self-seeking; she believed that she had
engaged herself to Rupert because he was the heir to a peerage and great
wealth, distinguished also; not because she loved him. Although her son
was of it, she hated the stock whence Edith sprang; as she knew now,
from the first Ullershaw, who founded the great fortunes of the family,
in this way or that they had all been bad, and Edith, she was certain,
had not escaped that taint of blood. Even in Rupert, as the adventure of
his youth proved, it was present, and only by discipline and self-denial
had he overcome his nature. But Edith and self-denial were far apart.
Yes; a cold shadow fell upon her prayers, and it was cast by the
beautiful form of Edith—Edith who held Rupert’s destiny in her hands.

Within a few feet of her Rupert also offered up his petitions, or rather
his paean of thanksgiving and praise for the glory that had fallen from
Heaven upon his mortal head, for the pure and beautiful love which he
had won that should be his lamp through life and in death his
guiding-star.


A while after Rupert had gone, half an hour perhaps, Edith, noticing
that Dick had left the hall, as she thought to see off the last of the
departing guests, took the opportunity to slip away to bed since she
wished for no more of his company that night. Yet she was not destined
to escape it, for as she passed the door of the library on her way up
stairs, that same room in which Rupert had proposed to her, she found
Dick standing there.

“Oh,” he said, “I was looking for you. Just come in and tell me if this
belongs to you. I think you must have left it behind.”

Carelessly, without design or thought, she stepped into the room,
whereon he closed the door, and as though by accident placed himself
between it and her.

“Well, what is it?” she asked, for her curiosity was stirred; she
thought that she might have dropped something during her interview with
Rupert. “Where is it? What have I lost?”

“That’s just what I want to ask you,” he answered, with a scarcely
suppressed sneer. “Is it perhaps what you are pleased to call your
heart?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Edith interrogatively.

“Well, on the whole, you may have reason to do so. Come, Edith, no
secrets between old friends. Why do you wear that ring upon your finger?
It was on Ullershaw’s this morning.”

She reflected a moment, then with characteristic courage came to the
conclusion that she might as well get it over at once. The same instinct
that had prompted her to become engaged to Rupert within half an hour of
having made up her mind to the deed, made her determine to take the
opportunity to break once and for all with her evil genius, Dick.

“Oh,” she answered calmly, “didn’t I tell you? I meant to in the hall.
Why, for the usual reason that one wears a ring upon that finger—because
I am engaged to him.”

Dick went perfectly white, and his black eyes glowed in his head like
half-extinguished fires.

“You false—”

She held up her hand, and he left the sentence unfinished.

“Don’t speak that which you might regret and I might remember, Dick; but
since you force me to it, listen for a moment to me, and then let us say
good-night, or good-bye, as you wish. I have been faithful to that old,
silly promise, wrung from me as a girl. For you I have lost opportunity
after opportunity, hoping that you would mend, imploring you to mend,
and you, you know well how you have treated me, and what you are to-day,
a discredited man, the toady of Lord Devene, living on his bounty
because you are useful to him. Yet I clung to you who am a fool, and
only this morning I made up my mind to reject Rupert also. Then you
played that trick at the shooting; you pretended not to see that I was
hurt, you pretended that you did not fire the shot, because you are mean
and were afraid of Rupert. I tell you that as I sat upon the ground
there and understood, in a flash I saw you as you are, and I had done
with you. Compare yourself with him and you too will understand. And
now, move away from that door and let me go.”

“I understand perfectly well that Rupert is the heir to a peerage and I
am not,” he answered, who saw that, being defenceless, his only safety
lay in attack. “You have sold yourself, Edith, sold yourself to a man
you don’t care _that_ for,” and he snapped his fingers. “Oh, don’t take
the trouble to lie to me, you know you don’t, and you know that I know
it too. You have just made a fool of him to suit yourself, as you can
with most men when you please, and though I don’t like the infernal,
pious prig, I tell you I am sorry for him, poor beggar.”

“Have you done?” asked Edith calmly.

“No, not yet. You sneer at me and turn up your eyes—yes, you—because I
am not a kind of saint fit to go in double harness with this Rupert, and
because, not being the next heir to great rank and fortune, I haven’t
been plastered over with decorations like he has for shooting savages in
the Soudan because, too, as I must live somehow, I do so out of Devene.
Well, my most immaculate Edith, and how do you live yourself? Who paid
for that pretty dress upon your back, and those pearls? Not Rupert as
yet, I suppose? Where did you get the money from with which you helped
me once? I wish you would tell me, because I have never seen you work,
and I would like to have the secret of plenty for nothing.”

“What is the good of asking questions of which you perfectly well know
the answer, Dick? Of course George has helped me. Why shouldn’t he, as
he can quite well afford to, and is the head of the family? Now I am
going to help myself in the only way a woman can, by prudent and
respectable marriage, entered on, I will tell you in confidence, with
the approval, or rather by the especial wish of George himself.”

“Good Lord!” said Dick, with a bitter laugh. “What a grudge he must have
against the man to set you on to marry him! Now I am certain there is
something in all that old talk about the saint in his boyhood and the
lovely and lamented Clara. No; just spare me three minutes longer. It
would be a pity to spoil this conversation. Has it ever occurred to you,
most virtuous Edith, that whatever I am—and I don’t set up for much—it
is you who are responsible for me; you who led me on and threw me off by
fits, just as it suited you; you who for your own worldly reasons never
would marry, or even become openly engaged to me, although you said you
loved me—”

“I never said that,” broke in Edith, rousing herself from her attitude
of affected indifference to this tirade. “I never said I loved you, and
for a very good reason, because I don’t, and never did, you or any other
man. I can’t—as yet, but one day perhaps I shall, and then—I may have
said that you attracted me—me, who stand before you, not my heart, which
is quite a different matter, as men like you should know well enough.”

“Men like me can only judge of emotions by the manner of their
expression. Even when they do not believe what she says, they take it
for granted that a woman means what she does. Well, to return, I say
that you are responsible, you and no other. If you had let me, I would
have married you and changed my ways, but though you were ‘attracted,’
this you would never do because we should have been poor. So you sent me
off to others, and then, when it amused you, drew me back again, and
thus sank me deeper into the mud, until you ruined me.”

“Did I not tell you that you are a coward, Dick, though I never thought
that you would prove it out of your own mouth within five minutes. Only
cowards put the burden of their own wrong-doing upon the heads of
others. So far from ruining you, I tried to save you. You say that I
played with you; it is not the truth. The truth is, that from time to
time I associated with you again, hoping against hope that you might
have reformed. Could I have believed that you meant to turn over a new
leaf, I think that I would have risked all and married you, but, thank
God! I was saved from that. And now I have done with you. Go your way,
and let me go mine.”

“Done with me? Not quite, I think, for perhaps the old ‘attraction’
still remains, and with most women that means repulsion from other men.
Let us see now,” and suddenly, without giving her a single hint of his
intention, he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately.
“There,” he said, as he let her go, “perhaps you will forgive an old
lover—although you are engaged to a new one?”

“Dick,” she said, in a low voice, “listen to me and remember this. If
you touch me like that again, I will go straight to Rupert, and I think
he would kill you. As I am not strong enough to protect myself from
insult, I must find one who is. More, you talk as though I had been in
the habit of allowing you to embrace me, perhaps to pave the way for
demands of blackmail. What are the facts? Eight or nine years ago, when
I made that foolish promise, you kissed me once, and never again from
that hour to this. Dick, you coward! I am indeed grateful that I never
felt more than a passing attraction for you. Now open that door, or I
ring the bell and send for Colonel Ullershaw.”

So Dick opened it, and without another word she swept past him.

Edith reached her room so thoroughly upset that she did what she had not
done since her mother’s death—sat down and cried. Like other people, she
had her good points, and when she seemed to be worst, it was not really
of her own will, but because circumstances overwhelmed her. She could
not help it if she liked, or, as she put it, had been “attracted” by
Dick, with whom she was brought up, and whose ingrained natural weakness
appealed to that sense of protection which is so common among women, and
finds its last expression in the joys and fears of motherhood.

Every word she had spoken to him was true. Before she was out of her
teens, overborne by his passionate attack, she had made some conditional
promise that she would marry him at an undefined date in the future, and
it was then for the first and—until this night—the last time that he had
kissed her. She had done her best to keep him straight, an utterly
impossible task, for his ways were congenitally crooked, and during
those periods when he seemed to mend, had received him back into her
favour. Only that day she had at last convinced herself that he was
beyond hope, with the results which we know. And now he had behaved
thus, insulting her in a dozen directions with the gibes of his bitter
tongue, and at last most grossly by taking advantage of his strength and
opportunity to do what he had done.

The worst of it was that she could not be as angry with him as she
ought, perhaps because she knew that his outrageous talk and behaviour
sprang from the one true and permanent thing in the fickle constitution
of Dick’s character—his love for her. That love, indeed, was of the most
unsatisfactory kind. For instance, it did not urge him on to honest
effort, or suffice to keep him straight, in any sense. Yet it existed,
and must be reckoned with, nor was she upon whom it was outpoured the
person likely to take too harsh a view even of its excesses. She could
ruin Dick if she liked. A word to Lord Devene, and another to Rupert,
would be sufficient to turn him out to starve upon the world, so that
within six months he might be sought for and found upon the box of a
hansom cab, or in the bunk of a Salvation Army shelter. Yet she knew
that she would never speak those words, and that he knew it also. Alas!
even those insolent kisses of his had angered rather than outraged her;
after them she did not rub her face with her handkerchief as she had
done once that day.

Again, it was not her fault if she shrank from Rupert, whom she ought
to, and theoretically did, adore. It was in her blood, and she was not
mistress of her blood; for all her strength and will she was but a
feather blown by the wind, and as yet she could find no weight to enable
her to stand against that wind. Still, her resolution never wavered; she
had made up her mind to marry Rupert—yes, and to make him as good a wife
as she could be, and marry him she would. Now there were dangers ahead
of her. Someone might have seen her go into that library with Dick at
near one o’clock in the morning. Dick himself might drop hints; he was
capable of it, or worse. She must take her precautions. For a moment
Edith thought, then going to a table, took a piece of paper and wrote
upon it:

1st January. 2 A.M. To Rupert,—A promise for the New Year, and a
remembrance of the old, from her who loves him best of all upon the
earth.

E.

Then she directed an envelope, and on the top of it wrote that it was to
be delivered to Colonel Ullershaw before he left, and took from her
breast the lilies she had worn, which she was sure he would know again,
purposing to enclose them in the letter, only to find that in her
efforts to free herself from Dick, they had been crushed to a shapeless
mass. Almost did Edith begin to weep again with vexation, for she could
think of nothing else to send, and was too weary to compose another
letter. At this moment she remembered that these were not all the lilies
which the gardener had sent up to her. In a glass stood the remainder of
them. She went to it, and carefully counted out an equal number of
sprays and leaves, tied them with the same wire, and having thrown those
that were broken into the grate to burn, enclosed them in the envelope.

“He will never know the difference,” she murmured to herself, with a
dreary little smile, “for when they are in love who can tell the false
from the true?”




CHAPTER IX.

RUPERT ACCEPTS A MISSION

The interval between the 1st of January and the 13th of April, the day
of Rupert’s marriage, may be briefly passed over. All the actors are on
the scene, except those who have to arrive out of the Soudanese desert;
their characters and objects are known, and it remains only to follow
the development of the human forces which have been set in motion to
their inevitable end, whatever that may be.

The choosing of this date, the 13th, which chanced to be a Friday, was
one of the grim little jokes of Lord Devene, from whose house the
marriage was to take place; a public protest against the prevalence of
vulgar superstitions by one who held all such folly in contempt. To
these Rupert, a plain-sailing man who believed his days to be directed
from above, was certainly less open than most, although even he, by
choice, would have avoided anything that might suggest unpleasant
thoughts. Edith, however, neglectful as she was of any form of religion,
still felt such ancient and obscure influences, and protested, but in
vain. The date suited him, said her cousin. There were reasons why the
marriage could not take place before, and on Saturday, the 14th, he had
to go away for a fortnight to be present in Lancashire at an arbitration
which would be lengthy, and held _in situ_ as to legal matters connected
with his coal-mines. So she yielded, and the invitations were issued for
Friday, the 13th of April.

Meanwhile things went on much as might be expected. Rupert sat in
Edith’s pocket and beamed on her all day, never guessing, poor, blind
man, that at times he bored her almost to madness. Still she played her
part faithfully and well, paying him back word for word and smile for
smile, if not always tenderness for tenderness. Mrs. Ullershaw, having
shaken off her preliminary fears and doubts, was cheerful in her
demeanour, and being happy in the happiness of her son, proclaimed on
every occasion her complete contentment with the match. Lord Devene
appeared pleased also, as indeed he was, and lost no opportunity of
holding up Rupert as a model lover, while that unfortunate man writhed
beneath his sarcasms.

Thus once—it was after one of those Grosvenor Square dinners which
Rupert hated so heartily, he found a chance of pointing a moral in his
best manner. Rupert, as usual, had planted himself by Edith in a corner
of the room, whence, much as she wished it, she could not escape, making
of her and himself the object of the amused attention of the company.

“Look at them,” said Lord Devene, who had unexpectedly entered, with a
smile and a wave of the hand that made everybody laugh, especially Dick,
who found their aspect absurd.

“Rupert, do get up,” said Edith; “they are laughing at us.”

“Then let them laugh,” he grumbled, as he obeyed, following her
sheepishly to the centre of the room.

While they advanced, some new sally which they could not hear provoked a
fresh outburst of merriment.

“What is it that amuses you?” asked Rupert crossly.

“Ach, Rupert,” said Lady Devene, “they laugh at you because you do like
to sit alone with your betrothed; but I do not laugh, I think it is
quite proper.”

“Tabitha puts it too roughly,” broke in Lord Devene. “We are not making
fun of beauty and valour completing each other so charmingly in that far
corner, we are paying them our tribute of joyous and respectful
admiration. I confess that it delights me, who am getting old and
cynical, to see people so enraptured by mere companionship. That, my
dear Rupert, is what comes of not being blasé. With the excellent
Frenchman, you can say: ‘J’aime éperdument et pour toujours car je n’ai
jamais éparpillé mon cœur; le parfait amour c’est la couronne de la
vertu.’ Now you reap the rich reward of a youth which I believe to have
been immaculate. Happy is the man who, thrusting aside, or being thrust
aside of opportunity, reserves his first great passion for his wife.”

A renewed titter greeted this very elaborate sarcasm, for so everyone
felt it to be, especially Rupert, who coloured violently. Only Lady
Devene came to his aid and tried to cover his confusion.

“Bah!” she said, “your wit, George, seems to smell of the lamp and to
have a nasty sting in its tail. Why should you mock at these young
people because they are honest enough to show that they are fond of each
other, as they ought to be? Pay no attention and go back to your corner,
my dears, and I will come and sit in front of you; or at least tell them
they should be sorry they cannot say _they_ have not scattered their
hearts about; that is what the French word means, doesn’t it?”

Then in the amusement that was caused by Lady Devene’s mixed metaphors
and quaint suggestion that with her ample form she should shelter the
confidences of Rupert and Edith from prying eyes, the joke was turned
from them to her, as she meant that it should be, and finally forgotten.
But neither Rupert nor Edith forgot it. Never again did they sit close
together in that Grosvenor Square drawing-room, even in the fancied
absence of Lord Devene, a result for which Edith, who hated such public
demonstrations, was truly grateful.

For a while after the announcement of the engagement Rupert and Dick had
seen as little of each other as was possible, the former, because he had
not forgiven Dick’s conduct at the shooting party, which impressed his
mind far more than the vague talk about him and Edith in the past. In
this, indeed, he had never believed, and his nature being utterly
unsuspicious, it was now totally forgotten. As for Dick, he had his own
reasons for the avoidance of his successful rival, whom all men and
women united to honour. By degrees, however, Edith, who lived in
perpetual fear of some passionate outburst from Dick, managed to patch
up their differences, at least to the outward eye, for the abyss between
them was too wide to be ever really bridged. Indeed, her efforts in this
direction nearly resulted in what she most wanted to avoid, an open
quarrel.

It came about in this fashion. The opportunity which had been foreseen
arose; the sitting member for that county division in which Lord Devene
lived had retired, and Dick was put up to contest the seat in the
Radical interest against a strong and popular Conservative candidate.
His chances of success were fair, as the constituency was notoriously
fickle, and public feeling just then was running against the Tories.
Also Lord Devene, although as a peer he could take no active part in the
election, was using his great wealth and interest in every legitimate
way to secure his nominee’s return.

When the contest, with the details of which we need not concern
ourselves, drew near its close, Dick himself suggested that it might
help him, and give variety to one of his larger meetings, if Rupert
would come and talk a little about Egypt and the Arabs with whom he had
fought so often. He knew well that although country people will attend
political gatherings and shout on this side or on that according as they
think that their personal advantage lies, all the best of them are in
reality far more interested in exciting stories of fact from someone
whom they respect, than in the polemics of party politicians.

When the suggestion was made to him, needless to say, Rupert declined it
at once. Theoretically, he was a Liberal; that is to say, like most good
and earnest men he desired the welfare of the people and the promotion
of all measures by which it might be furthered. But on the other hand,
he was no bitter Radical of the stamp of Lord Devene, who wished to pull
down and burn for the sake of the crash and the flare; and he was, on
the other hand, what nowadays is called an Imperialist, believing in the
mission of Britain among the peoples of the earth, and desiring the
consolidation of her empire’s might because it meant justice, peace, and
individual security; because it freed the slave, paralysed the hands of
rapine, and caused the corn to grow and the child to laugh.

Now Rupert did not consider that these causes would be promoted by the
return of Dick to Parliament, where he would sit as a mouthpiece of Lord
Devene. Then Edith intervened, and dropping Dick out of the matter,
asked him to do this for her sake. She explained that for family reasons
it would be a good thing if Dick won this seat, as thereby a new career
would be open to him who sadly needed one; also that Dick himself would
be most grateful.

The end of it was that Rupert consented, forgetting, or not being aware,
that as an officer on leave he had no business to appear upon a party
platform, a fact of which Dick did not think it necessary to remind him.

The meeting, which was one of the last of the campaign, took place in
the corn-hall of a small country town, and was crowded by the supporters
of Dick and a large contingent of his opponents. The candidate himself,
who spoke glibly and well enough, for as Edith and others had often
found out, Dick did not lack for readiness, gave his address, which was
cheered by his friends and groaned at by his foes. It was of the
stereotyped order—that is to say, utterly worthless, a mere collection
of the parrot platitudes of the hour by which the great heart of the
people was supposed to be moved, but for all that, well and forcibly
delivered.

Then followed a heavy and long-winded member of Parliament, at whom,
before he had done, the whole room hooted, while some of the occupants
of the back benches began to sing and shuffle their feet. Next the
chairman, a prosperous local manufacturer, rose and said that he was
going to call upon Colonel Ullershaw of the Egyptian army, Companion of
the Bath, member of the Distinguished Service Order, and of the Turkish
Order of the Medjidie (he called it “Gee-gee,” or something like it),
and the possessor of various medals, to say nothing of his being the
relative and present heir of their most esteemed friend and neighbour,
the noble Lord Devene, and therefore intimately connected with every one
of them, to address them. The gallant Colonel would not make them a
political speech, as they had had enough of politics for that night (at
this the audience enthusiastically shouted, _Hear, hear!_), but he would
tell them about the wars in Egypt which, although many of them did not
approve of those wars, were still interesting to hear about as at any
rate they paid for them (more _hear! hears!_). He might well call him
gallant, as they would say also when he told them the following story,
and to the absolute horror of Rupert, who was literally writhing on a
back seat behind this dreadful man, and to the amusement of Edith
sitting at his side, he proceeded to give a highly-coloured and garbled
version of the exploit that did _not_ win him the Victoria Cross,
whereon a voice shouted:

“That’s all true. I was there. I saw the Colonel come in with the man.”
(Renewed and tempestuous cheers.)

There being no help for it, Rupert rose, and was warmly greeted. He had
never given his mind to public speaking, and although his voice was good
and resonant, it cannot be said that at the beginning his remarks
compelled attention. Indeed, after five minutes of them, Dick and his
agent, counting him a failure, began to consult as to how they could get
him down, while Edith felt mortified. Then, as he wandered on with a
long and scientific account of the Egyptian campaigns, someone shouted:
“Stow all that history book, and tell us about Gordon.”

Instantly Rupert took fire, for Gordon was his favourite hero, the man
whom he had known, loved and revered above all other men. He began to
tell them about Gordon, about his glorious and desperate enterprise
undertaken at the request of the Government, about his splendid fight
against overwhelming odds, whilst sick at heart he awaited the relief
which was sent too late; about that journey to save him in which he,
Rupert, had shared, about the details of his martyr-death. Then, quite
forgetting the occasion and whom he had come to support, he broke into a
really eloquent tirade against those whom he considered to be
responsible for the desertion of Gordon.

To finish up with, in answer to the suggestion of a voice in the
audience that Gordon was not really dead, he actually quoted some
well-known lines of poetry which he had by heart:

“He will not come again, whatever our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed
From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings,”

and then suddenly sat down amidst a tempest of cheers, mingled with
cries of “Shame!” in which the whole room joined.

“Great Heavens!” said Dick fiercely, to his agent, “I believe that
speech will lose us the election.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” answered the agent grimly. “Whatever did you get him
here for? Better have stuck to the party patter.”

Meanwhile a man, standing on a form, bawled out:

“And is them the beggars as you wishes us to vote for, master?”

Whereon followed what the local paper (luckily for Rupert his remarks
were reported nowhere else) described as “great confusion,” which
culminated in something like a free fight.

In the midst of all this tumult, Dick, who was beside himself with
passion, forced his way to Rupert, and almost shaking his fist in his
face, shouted at him:

“Damn you! You did that on purpose. You’ve lost me the seat, but sooner
or later I’ll be even with you, you canting hypocrite—”

He got no further, for next instant Rupert’s heavy right hand fell upon
his shoulder and forced him to a chair.

“You don’t know what you are saying,” he said; “but speak like that
again, and I’ll throw you off the platform.”

Then Dick, feeling that iron grip still upon his shoulder, was silent.

Here we may close the account of this curious scene, which once more
showed the undesirability of invoking the aid of inexperienced and too
honest persons at party meetings. To Dick the matter was serious enough,
but to Edith’s surprise, Lord Devene, whom she had thought would be
angry, was intensely amused. Indeed, he went so far as to say that
whether Dick got in or not, that one delightful story was worth the cost
of the entire campaign.

When Rupert came to understand what he had done, needless to say he
showed much penitence, and wrote a letter of apology to Dick, in which
he “regretted having spoken the truth about Gordon in the excitement of
the moment,” and gave him leave, if he wished, “to publish this letter.”
Of this kind offer Dick did not avail himself. Under advice, however, he
wrote back, saying sarcastically that the fault was his, who should have
remembered that “distinguished men of action were rarely adepts at
public speaking, and could not be expected to understand the exigencies
of party affairs, which seldom made it desirable to drag the last veil
from Truth, however pure and beautiful she might be.” He concluded by
apologising, in his turn, for any words that _he_ might have spoken “in
the excitement of the moment.”

Thus, outwardly, at any rate, matters were patched up between them;
still Dick did not forget his promise to be even sooner or later, or
indeed the weight of Rupert’s hand, of which his shoulder showed traces
for many a day.

As for the end of the contest, the Devene money and interest prevailed
at last, Dick being returned triumphantly with a small but sufficient
majority of fifteen votes, reduced to thirteen on a recount. A few days
later he took his seat in the House, where he was enthusiastically
received by his party, to which the winning of this election was of
consequence.

Dick had not very long to wait for his first opportunity of “coming
even” with Rupert. As it chanced, on the 11th of April, two days before
the marriage, he met and fell into conversation with Lord Southwick in
the lobby of the House.

“By the way,” said his lordship, “rather a pity that Ullershaw is just
going to be married; we have got a job that would exactly suit him.”

“What is that?” asked Dick, pricking up his ears.

“Oh! a man is wanted who knows those rascally Arab sheiks who live about
the frontier at Wady-Halfa—secret service mission, to get round them
privately, you know; I can’t tell you the details, not that I think you
would give me away to your people. The officer sent must be thoroughly
acquainted with Arabic, and with the beastly manners and customs of the
natives. Ullershaw’s name came up at once as the very man, but I said
that I was going to his wedding in two days, so as we couldn’t think of
anyone else, the matter was left over till to-morrow afternoon.”

“When would he have to start?” asked Dick.

“At once, the thing is urgent; on Friday by the Brindisi mail, about
seven o’clock in the evening, and you see he is to be married that
afternoon. It’s a thousand pities, as it would have been a great chance
for him and for us too.”

Dick thought a moment and light came to him.

“My cousin Ullershaw is a curious fellow,” he said, “and I am not by any
means certain that he would let his marriage stand in the way of duty,
if it were put to him like that. How long would this mission take?”

“Oh! he could be back here in three months, but—er—you know—it would not
be entirely devoid of risk. That’s why we must have someone whose nerve
can be really relied on.”

“Ullershaw likes risks. As you say, it would suit him down to the
ground. Look here, Lord Southwick! why don’t you give him the chance? It
would be kind of you. It’s a shame to take away a fellow’s opportunities
because he commits the crime of getting married, and matrimonial bliss
will generally keep three months. Send for him and ask him. At any rate,
he will appreciate the compliment.”

“Don’t think I should if I had only been married an hour or two,” said
Lord Southwick. “However, the public service must be considered, so I
will hear what my chief says. Where will a wire find him?”

Dick gave the address, and as an afterthought added that of Lord Devene
in Grosvenor Square, where it occurred to him that Rupert would very
likely be on the following afternoon, suggesting that it would be wise
to send any telegram in duplicate.

“Very well,” said the Under-Secretary, as he made a note of the
addresses. “I will settle it one way or another to-morrow afternoon;
shan’t get the chance before,” and he turned to go.

“One word,” broke in Dick. “I shall take it as a favour if you don’t
mention my name in connection with this matter. Of course I want to do
him a good turn, but there is no knowing how the lady will take it, and
I might get wigged afterwards.”

“All right,” answered Lord Southwick, with a laugh, “I’ll remember.”

“I don’t think that Edith would see spending her honeymoon amongst the
savages of the Soudan,” reflected Dick to himself, with a crooked little
smile, as he made his way into the House. “‘Not devoid of risk.’ Yes,
Rupert’s friend, Gordon, went on a special mission to the Soudan, and
did not come back.”


On the following afternoon about four o’clock, as Rupert was leaving his
mother’s house to see Edith in Grosvenor Square, where she had taken up
her abode, a messenger put a telegram into his hand, which read:

Come to the War Office at once. Must speak with you upon very important
business. Will wait here till five.


SOUTHWICK.

Wondering what he was wanted for, Rupert told his cabman to drive to
Pall Mall, and within half an hour of the receipt of the telegram sent
in his card. Presently he was shown, not to the Under-Secretary’s room,
but into another, where he found the Secretary of State, and with him,
Lord Southwick.

“Prompt, very prompt, I see, Colonel Ullershaw,” said the former, “an
excellent quality in an officer. Now sit down and I will just go over
the main points of this business. If you undertake it, Lord Southwick
will explain the details afterwards. You know the Wady-Halfa district
and the Shillook Arabs and their headmen, don’t you, and you can speak
Arabic well, can’t you? Also you have had diplomatic experience, haven’t
you?”

“Yes, sir, to all four questions,” answered Rupert.

“Very good. These Shillooks have been giving a lot of trouble, raiding
and killing people about Abu-Simbel and so forth. According to our
reports, which you can see afterwards, they have been stirred up by a
rascal called Ibrahim, the Sheik of the Sweet Wells. Do you know him?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Rupert, with a little smile, “he threatened to
murder me the other day.”

“I can quite believe it. Now see here. We are advised that several of
these Shillook chiefs, including the one who has the most influence, are
getting tired of the Khalifa and his little ways, and are, in short,
open to treat, if only they can be got at by someone whom they know and
have their palms well-greased. Now, for various reasons, the Egyptian
Government does not wish to send an embassy to them, or any officer who
is at present on the spot. You see the Khalifa would hear of it at once
and might come down on them. What is wanted is an envoy travelling
apparently on his own business, or if it is feasible, disguised as an
Arab, who will slip through to them quietly and arrange a treaty. I need
not say that, whoever did this satisfactorily, would earn the gratitude
of the Egyptian Government, and would not be overlooked at the proper
time. Now, Colonel Ullershaw, it has occurred to us that you are the
very man for this affair, especially as you would take our complete
confidence with you.”

“I am much honoured,” said Rupert, flushing at the compliment. “I should
like the mission above all things, especially as I understand these men,
one or two of whom are rather friends of mine. Indeed, the most
influential of them accompanied me on a shooting expedition, and if
anyone can move him, I think I can.”

“There would be risks,” put in Lord Southwick meaningly, for under the
circumstances his kind heart misgave him.

“I don’t mind risks, or, at least, I am accustomed to them, my lord,”
said Rupert quietly.

“There is another point,” went on Lord Southwick. “Supposing that you
were to fail—and failure must be contemplated—it might be needful, as no
forward policy has been announced at present, for those in authority not
to take any official notice of the affair, which would possibly be used
as a handle for attack upon them. You would, therefore, receive no
written instructions, and the necessary money would be handed to you in
gold.”

“I quite understand,” answered Rupert, “and so long as I am not thought
the worse of in such an event, or made to suffer for it, it is all the
same to me. Only,” he added, suddenly remembering his forthcoming
marriage, “when should I have to start?”

“By the evening mail to-morrow,” said the Secretary of State, “for the
conditions may change and will not bear delay.”

Rupert’s jaw fell. “I am to be married to-morrow at half-past two, sir.”

The Secretary of State and Lord Southwick looked at each other; then the
former spoke.

“We know that, Colonel Ullershaw, especially as one of us is to have the
pleasure of attending your wedding. Still, in your own interests and
what we are sure you will consider much more, in those of your country,
we felt it right to give you the first offer of this delicate and
responsible mission. Situated as you are, we do not urge you to accept
it, especially as in the event of your refusal, for which we shall not
in the least blame you, we have another officer waiting to take your
place. At the same time, I tell you candidly that I do not think you
will refuse, because I believe you to be a man who sets duty above every
other earthly consideration. And now, sorry as I am to hurry you when
there is so much to be considered on both sides, I must ask for your
decision, as the other gentleman must absolutely have twenty-four hours
in which to make his preparations.”

Rupert rose and walked twice up and down the room, while they watched
him—Lord Southwick very uneasily. At the second turn, he halted opposite
to the Secretary of State.

“You used the word duty, sir,” he said, “and therefore I have little
choice in the matter. I accept the mission with which you have been
pleased to honour me.”

Lord Southwick opened his mouth to speak, but the Secretary of State cut
him short.

“As Colonel Ullershaw has accepted, I do not think we need waste further
time in discussion. Colonel Ullershaw, I congratulate you on the spirit
that you have shown, which, as I thought it would, from your record and
the judgment I formed of you at our previous interview, has led you to
place your duty to your Queen and country before your personal happiness
and convenience. I trust—and indeed I may say I believe—that our
arrangement of this afternoon may prove, not the starting-point, it is
true, but a very high step in a great and distinguished career.
Good-day; I wish you all success. Lord Southwick will join you in his
room presently and settle the details.”

“It seems a little rough,” said Lord Southwick, as the door closed
behind Rupert, “on his marriage day and so forth. Supposing he got
killed, as he very likely will.”

“Many men, as good or better, have come to grief in doing their duty,”
answered his chief, a pompous individual who modelled himself upon the
Spartans, at any rate where other people were concerned. “He must take
his chance like the rest. Give him the K.C.B. and that sort of thing if
he gets through, you know.”

“K.C.B.s aren’t much use to dead men, or their widows either,” grumbled
Lord Southwick. “I rather wish we hadn’t talked to him about duty; you
see, he is a quixotic sort of fellow, and really, as he isn’t even to
have a commission, there can’t be any duty in the matter. He’s only a
kind of volunteer on a second-class, forlorn hope, to prepare the way by
bribes and otherwise for an advance about which nothing is to be said,
with the chance of being repudiated as having exceeded his instructions
if anything goes wrong.”

“Really, Southwick,” said his chief uneasily, “it is a pity all this
didn’t occur to you before you urged his employment—on the
representations of his family, I understood. Anyway, it’s settled now,
and we can’t go back on it. Besides, from a public point of view, it was
important to get Ullershaw, who really is the only man, for that Major
What’s-his-name is an ignorant and conceited fellow, with nothing to
recommend him except his knowledge of Arabic, who would have been sure
to make a mess. With the example of what has happened in the past before
our eyes, we can’t commit ourselves in writing over a job of this sort.
If he gets killed—he gets killed, and we are not to blame. If he comes
through, he is made a K.C.B., and enjoys his honeymoon all the more. So
don’t let’s bother about him. Is there anything else? No. Then good-bye;
I’ll be off to the House.”




CHAPTER X.

MARRIED

Rupert left the War Office a very thoughtful man. He had spent nearly an
hour with Lord Southwick, going into the details of his mission, of
which he now realised the danger and complexity, for it was one of those
fantastic embassies which seem easy enough to men in authority at home
who are not called upon to execute them in person. All this he did not
mind, however, for it appealed to his love of adventure; moreover, he
had good hopes of bringing the thing to a successful issue, and
understood the importance of its object, namely, to facilitate an
ultimate advance against the Khalifa, and to help to checkmate Osman
Digna, the chief who was making himself unpleasantly active in the
neighbourhood of Suakim.

But what would Edith say? And on the very day of their marriage. The
luck was hard! He drove to Grosvenor Square, but Edith was trying on her
wedding dress and would not see him. She sent down a note to say that it
would be most unlucky, adding that she had waited for him an hour and a
half, and at last was obliged to go upstairs as the dressmaker could not
stay any longer.

So he went on home, for he had to change his clothes and escort his
mother to Grosvenor Square where, somewhat against her will, she was to
dine and sleep. It was not till they were in the carriage that he found
an opportunity of telling her what had occurred.

Mrs. Ullershaw was dismayed: she was overwhelmed. Yet how could she
blame him? All she could say was—that it seemed very unfortunate, and
she supposed that instead of going to Paris, Edith would accompany him
to Egypt. Then they arrived at Grosvenor Square, and further
conversation became impossible.

They were early, and Rupert sent a message to Edith to say that he
wished to speak to her in Lady Devene’s boudoir. Presently she arrived
beautifully dressed, and began at once to reproach him for not having
called in the afternoon as he promised.

“You will forgive me when you know why,” he answered and blurted out the
whole story.

She listened in astonishment, then said:

“Am I to understand that you are going off to the Soudan to-morrow,
three hours after our marriage?”

“Yes, yes, dear. I had no choice; it was put to me as a matter of duty,
and by the Secretary of State himself. Also, if I had refused, I am sure
that it would have been remembered against me; and as you know, it is
important now that I should get on, for your sake.”

“Men are generally supposed to have duties towards their wives,” she
answered, but in a softer tone, for his remark about his career appealed
to her.

He was right. Edith considered it very important that he should get on.

Also, now that she came to think of it, this swift and sudden separation
would, after all, be no overwhelming blow to her. She seemed to have
seen plenty of Rupert lately, and was quite willing to postpone that
continual and more intimate relationship which it is the object of
marriage to establish. Had she been what is called in love, it would
doubtless be different, but Edith’s bosom glowed with no such ardours,
of which, she reflected, Rupert had enough for both of them. The obvious
conclusion was that it is quite as easy to respect, admire, and even
sympathise with a spouse in the Soudan as with one living in London.
Then as she was preparing herself to admit, as grudgingly as possible,
that this change might be for the best, however much it tore her
feelings, a new idea occurred to her. Probably Rupert expected that she
would accompany him at twenty-four hours’ notice.

“It is dreadfully sad to be separated so soon,” she said, with a little
sob. “I suppose that I could not come with you?”

Rupert’s face brightened.

“Well,” he said, “you could, but of course there are difficulties; not
much time to get ready; hot season beginning and the cholera outbreak
that is really bad in Cairo and Alexandria, at one of which I should
have to leave you.”

“I can’t pretend, Rupert dear, that heat agrees with me, or that I
should enjoy getting the cholera, which I am sure I should, for I always
catch things, but at the same time,” Edith answered, looking at him with
her sweet eyes, “I am perfectly willing to take the risk if you think I
could be the slightest comfort or help to you.”

“Comfort, yes; help, no, rather in the way,” he muttered more to himself
than to her.

For a struggle was going on in Rupert’s mind. He positively could not
bear the idea of parting with his wife almost at the church door. It was
a bitter disappointment to him, as it must be to any man who marries
from motives of affection, and the very thought of it caused his heart
to ache physically. At the same time, he knew that Edith did feel heat,
for his mother had told him this, and the cholera was so virulent that
he heard by letter from Cairo that every European there, also at Port
Said and Alexandria, especially women and children, who could afford or
contrive to get away, had done so. Could he take this utterly
unacclimatised English lady thither at such a time, just out of
selfishness, and at the beginning of the hot weather? Supposing she fell
ill! Supposing anything happened to her! He turned white at the mere
thought of such a thing, and said:

“Edith, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I think you had better not
come till the summer is over and we are clear of the cholera. Then you
can join me in Cairo, or more probably I shall be able to fetch you.”

“It must be as you wish, dear,” she answered, with a sigh, “for I can’t
set up my opinion against yours. I would offer to come out with you, at
any rate as far as Egypt, only I am afraid it would be a quite useless
expense, as I am such a miserable traveller that even the train makes me
sick, and as for the sea—! Then there would be the returning all alone,
and no arrangements made about your mother into the bargain. However,
don’t you think I might try it?”

“Yes—no, I suppose not, it seems absurd. Oh, curse the Secretary of
State and Lord Southwick, and the whole War Office down to the cellars,
with all the clans of the Shillooks thrown in. I beg your pardon, I
shouldn’t speak like that before you, but really it is enough to drive a
man mad,” and yielding for once to an access of his honest passion,
Rupert swept her up into his strong arms and kissed her again and again.

Edith did not resist, she even smiled and returned about one per cent.
of his endearments. Still this tempestuous end to that fateful
conversation did nothing to make her more anxious to reverse the
agreement at which they had arrived, rather the contrary indeed. Yet,
and the conviction smote her with a sense of shame as it came suddenly
home to her, the worst of it was, she knew that if Dick had stood in
Rupert’s place, and Dick had been unexpectedly ordered to Egypt, not the
sea, nor the heat, nor even the cholera which she feared and loathed,
would have prevented her from accompanying him.

At dinner the whole thing came out, except the details of Rupert’s
mission, which, of course, were secret, and it cannot be said that the
news added to the gaiety of the meal. Although his appetite did not seem
to be affected, Dick was most sympathetic, especially to Edith. Lord
Devene said little, but looked vexed and thought the more; Edith sat
_distraite_ and silent; Rupert was gloomy, while Mrs. Ullershaw, who
felt this upset keenly for her own sake as well as her son’s, seemed to
be nigh to tears. Only Tabitha was emphatic and vigorous, for no one
else seemed to have the heart to discuss the matter. Like Rupert she
objurgated the War Office, and especially the man, whoever he might be,
who had conceived the idea of sending him at such a time. “A schemeful
wretch”—“One without shame,” she called him, translating, as was her
custom, from the German in which she thought. Nor was the definition
inaccurate, while the vigour with which she launched it caused Dick to
hope sincerely that Lord Southwick would remember his promise to conceal
his private but important share in the transaction.

“Ach! my dear Edith,” she went on, “it is awkward for you also, for
however will you get ready to start for the East by to-morrow night?”

This was a bomb-shell, and its explosion nearly shook Edith out of her
wonted composure.

“I am not going,” she said, in a hesitating voice, “Dick does—”

“Dick! What has Dick to do with it?” exclaimed her ladyship, pouncing on
her like a heavy cat on a mouse.

“Nothing, I assure you,” broke in Dick himself, in alarm. “She meant
Rupert.”

“Ach! I am glad to hear it. It does seem to me that there is too much
Dick about Edith, even when she is getting married; yes, and
everywhere.”

“I really think that Tabitha is right; there is too much Dick,”
reflected her husband, but aloud he said nothing, only sipped his
champagne and watched the play.

Nor, although he looked daggers, did Dick say anything, for he was
afraid of Lady Devene, and respected the acumen which was hid beneath
her stout and placid exterior. Then with his usual chivalry, Rupert,
ignoring the Dick side of the business, came to the rescue and explained
that he, and he alone, was responsible for Edith’s stopping in England,
giving the reasons with which we are acquainted.

Lady Devene listened patiently as she always did to Rupert while he
blundered through his story.

When it was finished, Edith, who had found time to collect herself, said
in a somewhat offended voice:

“You see now you were unjust to me, Tabitha. I—I wished to go.”

Next moment she wished something else, namely, that she had remained
silent, for Lady Devene answered with calm conviction:

“Indeed—is it so? Then I am sorry you have not more influence with him.
It would have been better that you should go. Why did you tell him that
you were afraid of the hot sun and of the cholera sickness? He would not
have thought of it himself, who is afraid of nothing. Come, the subject
is unpleasant; let us go upstairs and talk of the wedding presents.”

So they went and not too soon, for what between doubt, anger, and a
guilty conscience, Edith was on the verge of tears.

That night after Rupert had departed Edith and Lord Devene spoke
together in the library.

“What is the meaning of all this?” he said to her. “First, tell me, who
engineered this mission of Rupert’s? Did you?”

“No, indeed,” she answered, with passion, filled for once with conscious
innocence. “How can you accuse me of such a thing?”

“I am glad to hear it,” he replied, taking no notice of her indignation.
“Then, as I thought, it was Dick. Be quiet and listen! Rupert’s
employment was suggested more than a week ago. I heard about it in the
House of Lords and put a stopper on it. I know that Dick saw Southwick
yesterday, because the latter mentioned it in a note to me, since which
time the idea has revived. You can form your own conclusions.”

“It is impossible,” broke in Edith. “He would never be so mean.”

“You have a high idea of your cousin, whom, for my part, I think capable
of anything low. Well, it does not matter, it is done and cannot be
undone. Now of course Tabitha was right. I admire her power of getting
to the heart of things. Whatever may have passed between you, it was you
who would not go to Egypt, not Rupert who would not take you. You know
well enough that you could have made him take you; you could have
refused to be left behind; but you talked about sea-sickness and heat
and cholera—he let it all out at table.”

Edith sat silent. As other women had found before her, it was useless to
argue with this remorseless man, especially when he had truth upon his
side.

“Now,” he went on, “why did you refuse to go? Oh, pray save yourself the
trouble of invention. I will tell you. As Tabitha says, because there is
still too much Dick. You do not like the man who is going to be your
husband, Edith; you shrink from him; oh, I have seen you clench your
hand and set your lips when he touched you. You are glad of this
opportunity to postpone your married life. It has even occurred to you,”
and he bent over her and looked her in the eyes, “that from such
missions as this, men often do not come back, as it has occurred to
Dick. They pass away in a blaze of glory and become immortal, like
Gordon, or they vanish silently, unnoted, and unremembered, like many
another man almost as brave and great as he.”

Edith could bear it no longer, but sprang to her feet with a cry of:
“Not that! Not that!”

“Not that, as yet, but all the rest, eh?”

“If so, am I responsible?” she answered. “Did I make my own heart, and
who forced me into this marriage?”

“Oh, please understand me, Edith. I do not in the least blame you for
disliking Rupert; indeed it is a sentiment in which you have my hearty
sympathy, for no one can dislike him more than I do, or, I may add, with
better cause. As for the rest, I suggested the marriage to you, I did
not force you into that marriage. I still suggest it for the most
excellent reasons which far over-ride petty personal likes or dislikes,
but still I do not force you. Make this mission of Rupert’s an excuse
for postponing it if you will, after which it can quietly drop out of
sight. Only then, remember, that a document which I have signed to-day
goes into the fire, or rather two documents, a settlement and a will.
Remember that Dick goes out of this house, and as a consequence, out of
the House of Commons also and into the gutter which Nature has fitted
him to adorn. And lastly, remember that henceforth you make your own way
in the world and provide for your own necessities. Now you will
understand that I force you to nothing, for where that precious organ
which they call their hearts are concerned, high-minded women—like
yourself—will not let such material trifles weigh with them.”

Edith stood still as a statue. Then drawing the rose from her bosom she
began to tear it to pieces, petal by petal. Lord Devene lit a cigarette,
and waited till the rose was stripped down to its calyx.

“Well,” he asked, “does the oracle declare itself? I daresay it is as
likely to be correct as any other,” and he glanced at the petals on the
floor and the stalk in her hand.

“Why are you so cruel to me?” Edith moaned, thereby acknowledging that
she had found her master, and letting the stalk fall. “It is not manly
to mock a defenceless woman who has many troubles.”

A shade of compunction passed across his steely face, of affection even.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I do not wish to hurt you, but we are people of
the world, and have to deal with facts, not with sentiments and fancies.
I put the facts clearly, that is all.”

“What are your facts?” went on Edith. “That I am in love with Dick
Learmer. I deny it. I am not, and never have been; but this is true,
that he does in some way attract me, one side of me, even when with my
mind I dislike and despise him. That I detest Rupert whom I am going to
marry. I deny it; but it is true that he repels me, one side of me, even
when with my mind I appreciate and honour him, who is worth all of us,
except perhaps Tabitha. As a father or a brother I should adore Rupert
Ullershaw. Now you think that I am going to marry him for the money and
the prospects, and from fear of your anger—it is not altogether so. I do
not know if you will understand me, or even if I can make myself
intelligible. But I tell you that although it would ruin me, for I know
you keep your word, I would do what you suggest and postpone this
marriage as a preliminary to breaking it off, were it not for one thing.
It is this. I feel as though that personal aversion which I have is but
accidental and temporary, that a time may and must come when it will
break down and vanish, and that then I shall love him as I desire to do,
with my heart, my body, and my soul.”

Lord Devene stared at her.

“Curious and most interesting,” he said. “No; that is not satire. I
quite believe you, and I think it very likely that what you feel in
yourself will come about—probably too late. Meanwhile, to deal with the
evil of the present day, are you going to accompany him to Egypt or will
you await the coming of this—this psychological change of the inner
woman?”

Edith evidently had no spirit left to enable her to reply to this barbed
shaft. She only said:

“I will offer again to go to Egypt with him. Indeed now I wish to go,
away from all of you. And I wish, too, that I might die there, even of
that horrid cholera,” she added fiercely. “But I tell you that I know
Rupert, and that it is now, as you say, too late. After that wretched
scene at dinner he will never take me, because he will think that to do
so would be to cast a reflection upon me, and to admit that it was I who
did not wish to accompany him, not he who did not wish to take me.”

“Possibly,” answered Lord Devene. “I have always found the loosing of
knots very difficult; the wise people are those who do not tie them.”

Then she crept away to bed broken and sore-hearted. After she had gone
Lord Devene smoked two more cigarettes. Next he sat down and drafted a
letter with great care, which ultimately he copied out, directed to
Colonel Ullershaw, and put away.

Here it may be stated that Edith proved to be absolutely right. Although
he would have given nearly all he had to take her with him, when it was
put to him on the morrow in the presence of Lord Devene, in spite of
everything that Edith could say, Rupert positively refused to consent to
her coming, and for the exact reasons which she foresaw would sway him.
He was too loyal to do anything which he thought would in the smallest
degree asperse her. When Lord Devene intervened, moreover, he only
answered haughtily that he was the best judge of the matter which
concerned his wife and himself alone.

Thus, then, this question was finally decided.


The impression left upon Rupert’s mind by his wedding was hazy and
tumultuous. Most of that morning he had been obliged to spend at the War
Office arranging the details of his mission. Thence he rushed home to
finish his packing, dress, and convey his luggage to Charing Cross,
finally arriving at St. George’s, Hanover Square, only a few minutes
before the bride.

The best man, his old Indian friend whom he had gone to stay with on the
day after his engagement, hustled him into a pew, scolding him for being
late, telling him to put on his gloves and asking him what he had done
with the ring, which was only discovered after great difficulty. Vaguely
Rupert noticed that the place was crowded with fashionable-looking
people, who all seemed to be staring at him, as he thought, because his
hair was untidy, which it was. Then the organ began to play, and the
fashionable congregation turned and stared down the aisle, while his
friend trod on his foot, poked him in the ribs, and adjured him in a
loud whisper to wake up and look alive, as the bride was coming.

He looked, and there, followed by her train of bridesmaids—tall, pale,
lovely—white and wonderful in her shimmering satin and pearls, Edith
floated towards him up the aisle like a vision out of heaven. From that
moment Rupert saw nothing else, not even Lord Devene, who gave her away.
The brilliant congregation, the robed bishop and clergymen, the fussy
and ubiquitous best man, the smiling bridesmaids, the stony Lord
Southwick, all vanished into space. Nothing remained save the pale,
earnest face of Edith in which the eyes shone like stars at dawn.
Nothing did he seem to hear save her whispered “I will.”

It was over; he remembered signing a book, kissing his wife and his
mother, and driving with the former in a fine carriage to Grosvenor
Square. She asked him whether he had got his luggage safely to the
station, and then it seemed that of a sudden, before he had even time to
answer, they arrived at the house, where policemen were keeping a
passage clear beneath an awning. As he helped Edith to descend from the
carriage an old woman remarked audibly:

“Pore fellow, he don’t know what he’s in for!” which struck him as an
unkind saying.

Then came the reception, a long, long ceremony, remarkable for the
multitude of strange faces and for a room set out with wedding gifts
which were “numerous and costly.” Champagne was drunk also, and the
bride’s health proposed by Lord Southwick, who described her as one of
the loveliest and most charming young ladies in London, a truth at which
everyone cheered, for it was obvious. He ended with a panegyric on
Rupert himself, briefly recapitulating his services and the distinctions
which he had won, which were, he was convinced, only earnests of those
greater distinctions that remained for him to win. Finally, he regretted
that the call of duty, to which this gallant officer had never been able
to turn a deaf ear, forced him to separate, he was glad to say for but a
short while only, from his beautiful and new-wed wife.

Rupert replied, thanking the proposer and the company for their good
wishes. He added that there were trials which all men had to face
unexpectedly, and this early and sudden separation was one of the
greatest that had come to him, especially as it had obliged him to
refuse his wife’s first request, that she might be allowed to accompany
him to Egypt, which he was forced to do because of the cholera that was
raging there.

Then he stopped, and Edith thanked him for his words with a grateful
smile while the guests began to melt away. Dick sauntered up,
beautifully arrayed, and remarking sympathetically that they had only
three hours before the departure of the train, asked, in a voice loud
enough to attract general attention, where they had finally decided to
spend their honeymoon.

Edith drew herself up and answered: “Here in London when Rupert returns
from the Soudan, or perhaps in Egypt,” after which public announcement,
until they were together in the carriage going to the station, her
husband found it impossible to secure even a private word with her.
Again the subtle Dick had succeeded in adding one more course to the
wall which it was his evil aim to build between Rupert and his wife.

The one thing which always stood out in Rupert’s mind above the level of
the grey and dim confusion of this marriage, like a black mountain-point
from an evening mist, was his farewell to his mother. While he made his
last preparations for his journey, finding that Edith was not with him,
she came timidly to the room and sat by his side. Mrs. Ullershaw was
sad, but strove to conquer her mood, or at any rate, to hide it,
speaking cheerfully of the honour that had been done him by the
Government and the advantage that he might hope for as a consequence.
Rupert, too, strove to be cheerful, though the frost of gloom that fell
on him, colder and yet more cold, nipped his heart and killed all joy.
She felt it, and at length, poor, loving woman, her grief got the better
of her and she burst into tears.

“Oh, why does not Edith accompany you?” she said. “I cannot bear to
think of your going out there alone within three hours of your marriage.
If only I could have had a little more time, ill and feeble as I am, I
would have come with you as far as Cairo, for, my boy, my boy! how can I
know that I shall ever see you again?”

Then after his manner Rupert turned and faced the situation, simply and
plainly.

“You can’t know, dearest mother,” he said, “neither of us can know; but
what does it matter? Sooner or later that separation must come, but
fortunately we are both of us convinced that it will be the last. Even
to-day when I should be so happy, I cannot pretend that the world
satisfies me; indeed it seems as full of pains and troubles as ever, for
things have gone wrong and my anxieties are increased. Well, very soon
the world will pass from beneath our feet, and then, as you have taught
me and I am sure, the true life begins. This I promise, as I promised
you years ago, that while I live I will try to be honest and upright as
you are, so that at the last we may be together again. If you go first,
then wait for me, as, if I should be called away, I will wait for you.”

She turned her streaming face towards him and smiled and there was
something in the smile that frightened and thrilled him, for it was not
altogether of the earth.

“I know it,” she whispered—“all, all. It is true, and I bless God who
has tied us together everlastingly. They are calling you. Go, Rupert.
No, I cannot come, I do not wish those people to see my grief. Go; and
God’s blessing and mine go with you, as they shall,” and she laid her
trembling hand upon his head in benediction while he knelt beside her.

Then he kissed her and they parted.

In the hall they were all waiting, Edith in the charming
travelling-dress which she had designed for her going away. He said
good-bye to them, Lord Devene remarking with a smile that he was afraid
he was already beginning to find out that even matrimony, though it was
said to have descended from on high, could not escape its share of
shadow. Dick congratulated him warmly upon things in general and wished
that he had his chance which, he was sure, would bring him every sort of
good fortune, whereon Lady Devene muttered, “_Unberufen!_” and looked
indignantly at Edith, and the saturnine butler, who, thrusting aside the
footman, showed him to the carriage—for he was really attached to
Rupert—muttered that he only hoped that he “should see him back alive
out of them there savage parts.”

The door of the carriage slammed, the footman, with his wedding favour
still upon his breast, touched his hat and sprang to the box, the
coachman waved his white beribboned whip, and the horses started forward
into the gloom, for rain was falling heavily. So at last he was alone
with Edith—for about ten minutes.

She took his hand affectionately, more she could not have done had she
wished, since the passers-by stared idly at the blazoned,
aristocratic-looking carriage and the horses and servants decked with
wedding favours. She reminded him how they had driven together from the
station when he arrived from the East, and said how strange it was that
now she should be driving with him to the station as his wife to see him
off again to the East. Indeed she talked far more than he did whose
heart felt too full for words, and who had looked forward for months to
a very different departure with his bride. Suddenly he remembered that
he had not given her the address to which she must write to him in
Cairo, and the rest of their brief journey was occupied in his efforts
to put it down as well as the jolting of the carriage would allow.

Then came the confusion of the station, where porters, thinking that
they were a couple going away upon their honeymoon, and finding out his
name from the coachman, rushed after him calling hi! “Colonel,” or
sometimes “My lord,” and were ultimately much astonished to discover
that he was travelling alone by the Brindisi mail. Everything was
arranged at last, and the pair stood together forlornly at the door of
his smoking carriage in which there were two other passengers. Then as
the guard called to him to take his seat, the footman stepped forward,
touched his hat again, and handed him a letter with the message that it
was from his lordship, who said that there was no answer. Rupert thrust
it into the pocket of his ulster, embraced his wife, who wiped her eyes
with her handkerchief and tried to smile, and after another long minute
which seemed an eternity of time, the great engine whistled and the
train moved forward into the rain and the darkness.

Rupert sat still for a little, while the image of Edith standing alone
upon the platform faded from his sight, waiting for the confusion of his
mind to clear. Then he put his hand into his pocket to find his pipe,
more from habit than from any desire to smoke, and in doing so, found
something else—Lord Devene’s letter, which he had forgotten.

What was _he_ writing to him about, he wondered, as he broke the seal of
many quarterings and began to read. This was the letter:

My Dear Rupert,—When you told me that you had insured your life for
£10,000 and settled the amount upon Edith, I intimated to you that I
also proposed to make her a wedding present in money. (“So he did,”
thought Rupert, “I had forgotten all about it.” ) I now write to say
that I have carried out this arrangement. Under deed I have paid to her
trustees, and settled to her separate use, the capital sum of £25,000,
of which the interest will be paid to her quarterly, she having the
right to dispose of the _corpus_ by will in favour of anyone whom she
may wish. In the event of her having children, however, it is to be
divided in equal shares among them at her death.

“That’s a lot,” thought Rupert to himself. “I wonder why he gave her so
much. Well, it will make her life easier.” Then he went on with the
letter and found the answer to his question.

Perhaps you will wonder why I am so liberal, so I may as well tell you
at once what possibly you have guessed; what, indeed, although _she_
does not know it, you must learn sooner or later. Edith is my daughter.

These words seemed to stun Rupert. He felt the weight of the blow
without appreciating its significance. Three times did he re-read them.
Then at last their full meaning came home to him, and with it a
knowledge that he must control himself, that he must say or do nothing
violent, show no strong emotion even, for those two other men in the
carriage, whose curiosity, it was clear, had been deeply excited
concerning him, were watching him over the tops of their newspapers. He
would read on and think afterwards.

It is very possible that my late wife Clara, with whom you will remember
you used to be friendly in your youth, may have expressed to you, as she
often did to others, her jealousy and hatred of Marian Bonnythorne. It
was well-founded, though Clara, from whom I was practically separated
for many years before her death, had no real cause to complain of the
matter. Nor indeed had Bonnythorne, who, after a long course of neglect,
deserted his wife to go into a monastery, leaving her to me to support.
You will not wish for details, as my present action will assure you of
the truth of what I write. Nor do I intend to make any excuses. I look
back to my intimacy with Marian Bonnythorne, of whom I was truly fond
and who was fond of me, as the pleasantest episode in an existence that,
notwithstanding my worldly advantages, I have not found delightful. I am
very glad that Edith was born, as it is probable that she will prove the
only issue whom I shall leave, and the fact of her illegitimacy does not
in the least affect me, who have no high opinion of our matrimonial
system. I regard Edith, indeed, with as much affection as though I could
acknowledge her to be my child before the world, which, for her sake, I
cannot do.

To proceed. It will now be clear to you why I forwarded this marriage
between you and my daughter by every means in my power; why also I have
kept the truth from both of you, fearing lest, did you know it, some of
the absurd notions of which I observe you to be a victim, might lead you
to be mean enough to break your engagement.

I have no reason, Rupert, to hold you in special regard. Of one matter I
will not speak; indeed, though not of your own will—if you had one in
those days—you did me a good turn there. I bear you no grudge, as I
trust you will bear me none when you fold up this letter. But there is
another cause for our want of sympathy. I have earnestly desired to have
sons of my own, an inbred weakness which I confess has become almost a
mania, but when I look for those sons, in their place I see _you._ You
will inherit the rank and great wealth which should have belonged to
them. It is therefore obvious and natural that I should wish my only
child to share these with you, and her children to take them in their
turn. One word more.

I respect you. I think you have grown into a good man according to your
lights, although they are not mine, and you have done what none of us
have succeeded in doing before, earned yourself an honourable position
by your own exertions. Therefore I can with confidence and satisfaction
leave Edith in your hands, especially as you have chanced to become
earnestly attached to her, and as otherwise she would in all probability
have fallen into those of that scamp, Dick Learmer, a man of whom I warn
you to beware.—

Very truly yours,

DEVENE.

P.S. I am exceedingly sorry that this contretemps about your being
ordered to Egypt should have happened at such a moment. You should have
insisted upon Edith accompanying you, for _carpe diem_ and its joys is
an excellent motto, and it is unwise to leave behind you a wife who is
only so in name. But as usual, your own obstinacy and quixotic notions
have stood in your way, since when Edith offered to go this morning, you
forbade her to do so in my presence. I could say no more, and you must
abide the issue. Believe me, I earnestly wish your safe return for both
your sakes.

D.

Rupert replaced the letter in its envelope and thrust it into his
pocket. There was nothing to be said; nothing to be done. Fate had him
in its net. But oh! how would it all end? He asked it of the night; he
asked it of his own heart; but no answer came. Only the beat of the
wheels as they rushed forward shaped themselves to words and said to
him:

“You have married Devene’s daughter. Poor man! Poor man! Poor man!”

That was their song through England, France, and Italy. Then the
thudding of the screw took up its burden, and chanted it until he saw
the low coasts of Egypt outlined before him and set his face to duty
once again.




CHAPTER XI.

AN OFFERING TO THE GODS

About six weeks after he had said farewell to Edith at Charing Cross
Station, Rupert found himself once more upon the banks of the Nile and
staring by the light of the full moon at the colossal statues that sit
upon the façade of Abu-Simbel. So much had happened to him since last he
contemplated their gentle, stony smile that its unvarying sameness
struck him as irritating and almost strange. Somehow, he expected that
they would look different.

Certainly Rupert looked different; so much so, that if they had been
endowed with remembrance, the statues would scarcely have known him
again, for now he was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab sheik.
These could not, as he knew, suffice to disguise his Western origin.
Still, in a desert land, devastated by war, through which few travelled,
they might, he hoped, render him less conspicuous to the keen eyes of
wandering Arabs, or even of spies surveying his little caravan from the
shelter of a bush or the top of a sand-hill a mile or two away.

For the rest, it was his intention, if accused, to declare himself a
European, of the German race, making a journey to sell merchandise to
certain sheiks whom he had been informed were anxious to buy at good
prices. For this purpose he had a licence to trade, signed by the
authorities at Cairo, in favour of one Mahommed, a German who had turned
Mussulman, and whose European name was Carl Gottschalk. This merchandise
of his, which was loaded upon eight camels, consisted of cotton goods,
sugar, copper wire, and oddly enough, a certain quantity of guns and
ammunition, also what was a strange possession for a trader setting out
upon a trip, about £1,000 in gold. All these things, it is scarcely
necessary to explain, were in reality designed to be used as presents to
propitiate the wavering frontier chiefs, to whom he was the accredited
envoy, and to dispose them to assist instead of opposing the forward
movement which was then in contemplation as a first step in the
re-conquest of the Soudan.

He had started some days before from Derr, opposite to Korosko, with his
caravan of about thirty camels and some five-and-twenty trained and
trusted men, most of them Soudanese, all of whom had seen military
service, although they were disguised as drivers and attendants. At
Abu-Simbel he was to receive certain reports from spies, who had been
sent on to collect information, and then to strike out into the desert
to fulfil the object of his mission.

In order that he might be able to think over the hazardous details of
the work before him in quiet—for even at night the grumbling of the
camels about his camp, which was pitched a few hundred yards away,
disturbed him—Rupert entered the hypostyle hall of the rock-hewn temple
and seated himself upon the dry sand that had drifted into it, resting
his back against the third of the northern row of the huge effigies of
Rameses II., which are clothed in the wrappings of Osiris and bear his
crook and scourge. Here the darkness was relieved only by a faint ray of
moonlight, which crept up the solemn, central aisle, and the silence was
that of a tomb.

When he had been in the place for half an hour or so, weary with
thinking, Rupert began to doze, but was awakened suddenly by the sound
of feet moving over sand, and looking up, saw two figures glide past
him, one of them somewhat taller than the other, to vanish into the
recesses of the temple so quietly that they might well have been ghosts
of its ancient worshippers. For a while he remained still, wondering who
these were, and what they could be doing in such a place at midnight, or
near it, when all men slept.

At first he thought that he would follow them, then remembered that he
was not seeking adventures, and that, after all, it was no business of
his to interfere with them, so long as they left him alone. Therefore,
being now wide awake again, he pursued his cogitations, purposing to
rise presently and return to his camp to sleep. A few minutes later, ten
perhaps, chancing to glance up the great temple, Rupert perceived far,
far away, a tiny star of light. From where he was it looked no stronger
than that of a distant planet in a cloudy sky, or of a glow-worm amongst
the tall grasses of a bank. This light roused his curiosity, as he
guessed that it must have to do with the figures that had passed him.
Probably they were treasure-seekers, he reflected, engaged in digging in
the sanctuary, which in the day-time they did not dare to do. They might
even have found the secret of the crypt that he always believed to exist
under Abu-Simbel, wherein very possibly its gold and silver treasures
were still hidden from the eyes of men. The thought excited him who, as
Edith had good cause to know, was an ardent Egyptologist.

For a moment Rupert hesitated, then remembering that there were but two
of them and that he was armed, yielded to impulse, or to the pressure of
Destiny, and began very cautiously to creep towards that light. Down the
long hall he went, feeling his way from column to column, through the
doorway to the smaller hall, and guided by the star of flame, down that
also into a narrow transverse chamber that gives access to the central
sanctuary and the apartments on its either side. At the entrance of the
holy place he stopped, and cautiously looked round the projecting rock
that once had supported its massive door. Then—for this sanctuary is not
large—he saw a very strange and interesting sight.

On the square, solid altar where, for more than a thousand years,
offerings had once been made to the gods of Egypt, and to the great
Rameses, who, when he hewed this temple, placed himself among their
number, stood a lamp, having at the back of it a piece of rock fallen
from the ceiling, and set edgeways in such a fashion as to throw the
most of its light forward. This light struck upon the shattered, seated
figures of the four gods that were worshipped here, and still remain
staring down their desolated shrine: Ptah, Ammon-Ra, Rameses himself,
and Harmachis, god of Dawn, crowned with the emblem of the disc of the
sun. Also they struck upon what, under the circumstances, seemed more
wonderful even than they are, the figures of two women standing face to
face on either side of the line of gods, to whom they appeared to be
making invocations.

Rupert knew one of them at once—it was the old gipsy Bakhita, of whom,
until he passed her house that afternoon and noticed some fine white
dromedaries tethered by it, he had not thought for months, not since the
night of his betrothal indeed, when she thrust her shadow among the
company gathered at Devene to welcome the New Year. She was clothed in a
dark, clinging gown, with a close-fitting wimple upon her head, that
gave her the air of a priestess, which, indeed, as he guessed at once,
was the part she played. But on her Rupert’s glance did not linger long,
for it flew to her companion and there remained.

She was a young woman—perhaps two- or three-and-twenty years of
age—small, delicate, slender, but beautifully fashioned, and so light in
colour as to be almost white. For dress she wore thin draperies—so thin
that her rounded shape and limbs were visible through them, and so white
that they gleamed like snow. About her waist was a girdle of silver, and
set upon the dark, curling hair that rested stiffly on her shoulders,
like that of some sculptured Egyptian queen, a circlet of gold, from
which rose the symbol of the sun’s disc, and in front of it the hooded
asp.

Rupert saw these things and gasped, as well he might, for unless his
eyes deceived him or he dreamed, he beheld what no man had seen for more
than a thousand years—one of the royal race of Egypt making offering to
her gods. There could be no doubt about it. The dress, though
simplified, was the same, and the _uræus_ on her brow—which none that
were not of the direct family of the Pharaohs, or tied to him as lawful
wife, would have dared to wear—told their own tale. Moreover, in one
hand she held a bowl of glass, and in the other a jar of alabaster, and
from the jar she poured a libation into the bowl and offered it to
Harmachis, saying, in a sweet voice, and in Arabic, Bakhita prompting
her to the words:

“Grant, I pray thee, O thou clothed with the sun, which is the symbol of
the spirit, a safe journey to me, by blood the last of thy priestesses,
and to this woman, thy worshipper, who is of my kin!”

As she spoke she turned her head, and the light of the lamp fell full
upon her face, and it was lovely as a flower, clothed with a kind of
beauty that was new to Rupert, for never had he seen its like. The large
eyes—dark, liquid, and lustrous—the broad and noble brow, the lips
somewhat full and red, in type purely Eastern, the fine-cut nose
spreading a little at the nostrils, the rounded, childish cheeks, the
firm yet dimpled chin, were all set like a framed picture in the
straight-trimmed, formal masses of that curling hair. Taken separately,
there was nothing wonderful about these features, but together, animated
and illumined by that sweet, slow smile and the tremulous mystery of the
proud yet pleading eyes, ah! who had ever seen their fellow?

In his anxiety to witness more of this most fascinating spectacle,
Rupert thrust himself further forward. In so doing the hand that
supported the weight of his body slipped on the rock, against which his
signet-ring grated, making a loud noise in the utter silence of that
dead place.

Bakhita, whose ears were quick as those of any fox, heard it, and
wheeling round, sprang to the lamp, snatched it from the altar, and
rushed to the doorway. Rupert attempted to retreat across the corridor,
purposing to take refuge in one of the side-chambers which open out of
the inner hall. It was too late. She was on him, so realising the danger
of leaving his back exposed, he turned, and they came face to face.

“Bakhita,” he said, “it is I,” for already a knife flashed in her hand.

She let her arm fall and scanned him.

“Rupert Bey!” she exclaimed. “So you are back again. Well, I have heard,
also I always knew that you would come. But what do you here disguised
as an Arab sheik? And why do you spy upon us at our rites? Oh! I tell
you that had you not been Rupert Bey, by now you were a dead man.”

Meanwhile, the younger woman, who had followed Bakhita, not knowing the
cause of the disturbance, actually stumbled against him, then recoiling,
stood still, and in her amazement slowly let her hand sink, thereby
emptying upon his feet the contents of the bowl she held.

It was a very curious sight—this big Englishman in his Arab robe,
standing quite still and upright, lest any show of fear should bring
about a knife-thrust, and the beautiful Eastern woman in her sacred but
diaphanous garb, wearing the disc and the imposing emblem of Egyptian
royalty, and slowly pouring her involuntary libation upon his feet. Its
setting also was strange. All around were the great columns and carven
walls, and staring down at them from beyond the altar those mutilated
but still awful gods.

“Put up that knife,” he said, “and come into this side-chamber and I
will tell you.”

Bakhita stooped, and lifting a dark, camel-hair cloak from where it lay
on the floor near to the altar, threw it about the shoulders of her
companion, drawing its hood over her head. Then taking her by the hand,
she said to Rupert:

“We follow!” and led the way between the columns to the first chamber
that opened on their right. It was a rough place, which probably in past
ages had served as a storeroom of the temple, peopled with many bats
that flittered to and fro unceasingly, uttering thin cries. Setting down
the lamp upon one of the stone benches or tables with which it was
furnished on either side, she said: “We are your servants, Rupert Bey,”
adding, with her grim smile: “Have we not poured a libation to you?” and
she looked at his feet wet with the contents of the glass bowl.

“It was not to me that you came here to pour libations,” he answered,
laughing. “Now tell me, friend. What was this lady doing?” and he bowed
towards the younger woman, “for never have I been more curious to learn
anything upon earth.”

“Tell us first what you were doing, Rupert Bey? Nay, not about your
business—I know all that—but why you followed us into the sanctuary?”

“For the same reason that you followed me into the temple—by pure
accident. I was seated at the feet of one of the columns when you passed
me, though who you were I did not guess. Afterwards, seeing the light, I
came to look. That is my story; now for yours.”

“Mea,” she said, “tell him what you will. He has seen; but he is a true
man, and I think will keep our secrets if he promises, especially as he
knows that if he does not, then I will do my best to kill him.”

Rupert laughed, for he was not frightened at Bakhita’s threats.
Meanwhile the lady called Mea was searching his face with those wondrous
eyes of hers. Then she spoke in a low, rich voice and in English, not
Arabic.

“Will you promise to be true to me, Gentleman?” she asked, in a curious
idiom and speaking with a strong accent.

“If you mean not to tell your secrets, certainly!” he answered, smiling.

“My secrets, they are very little ones, only babies so high,” and she
held her hand near to the floor. “You see, Bey, I live far out in the
desert, and my people and I, we still old Egyptians though we cannot
read their writings, and only remember a little—a very little, about the
gods and what they mean. Now, dressed like my mothers when they pray, I
come here to-night with Bakhita, my aunt, your friend, to make offering
to that god with the sun upon his head, because I in much danger and
wish to ask him to bring me safe back to my own place.”

“Where, then, do you come from, lady?”

“I? I come from school—Mission School at Luxor. I tired of living in the
stupid dark, so I go there two year ago to learn all about the white
people, and the English talk, and—” she added with triumph, “you hear, I
learned him.”

“Yes,” he said, “you learned him very well. And what else did you
learn?”

“Much. Reading, writing, ’rithmetic, gography, history of U.S.A.,
British Empire, and old Egypt, especially old Egypt, because I one of
him, though they no know that who think me common girl, no one know that
but you, Bey, who catch me in act of worship. I learn religion too, and
think it very good, much the same as mine, only different.”

“Are you a Christian, then, lady?” asked Rupert again.

She shook her head, causing the disc and little golden snake she wore to
glisten in the lamp-light.

“No, not quite Christian, only half, not baptized. I afraid if baptized,
make old fellows—” and she pointed towards the gods in the sanctuary,
“angry and bring bad luck.”

“I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious,” said Rupert,
quoting aloud to himself.

She looked puzzled, then her face brightened as the meaning of the last
word came home to her.

“No,” she said, “not superstitious like beastly Mahommedan, only afraid.
That why I come here in not decent night-dress,” and she held out her
little foot naked except for the sandal, and again shook her head as
though in regret for a state of affairs over which she had no control.

Rupert laughed loudly, causing the bats which had settled to flitter
from the roof again, and Mea, who seemed to be a merry little soul,
joined in his laughter. This made old Bakhita angry, and she reproved
them both in a stern voice.

“Do not cackle here,” she said, in Arabic, “in the very house of the
gods, though it is true that to one of you they are no gods, and already
the other has a foot set in that same path,” and she glanced wrathfully
at Mea. “Listen, Bey! I make a request of you. I do not ask for myself,
who am old and ugly, but for this lady. I have heard that you ride
to-morrow at night-fall. Now our road is yours, for I know the sheiks to
whom you go. Give us and our two servants leave to ride with you. We
have good camels of our own,” and she looked at him with anxious eyes.

“Why do you want my escort, and whither?” he asked doubtfully.

“Why? For this reason. Do you remember the Sheik Ibrahim, he of the
Sweet Wells? Yes, I see you do. Well, he is an old enemy of our house.
He asked for the lady here in marriage, and was refused. Yes, the dog,
he dared to ask that after once, by ill chance, he had seen her beauty.
Now he has found out that we are going to make this journey, and his
plan is to take her as already he has tried to take her at Luxor. But if
we were with you, that he would not dare to do, for he has prostrated
himself to the Government since you were away, and will not touch one
whom he knows to be their envoy, although you may call yourself
Mahommed, and be dressed like an Arab.”

“I am not sure of that,” answered Rupert. “Friend Ibrahim does not love
me.”

“No; but he fears you, which is better. With you we should be safe.”

“How long do you wish to travel with me?”

“Two days only, till you come to the pass in the Jebal Marru. There you
will follow along the mountains, but we cross them, and go on into the
desert that is called Tebu till we come to more mountains and a certain
secret oasis among them, which we name Tama, where no white man has ever
set his foot. A while ago, Bey, you asked me of the lost temple. It
stands there in our home, and I promise you this—let us ride in your
shadow, and whenever you have leisure I will show you that temple in
payment. Yes; and the wonders of the burying-place of the kings of the
desert who once ruled there, and whose child, the lady Tama, stands at
your side. Refuse, and I swear that you shall never see them.”

“The bribe is great,” said Rupert, “but, mother, I must not take
bribes.”

“No,” she answered, “it is your business to offer them, is it not, else
why do you carry so much gold in your baggage? Ah! you see I have good
spies.”

“So good,” he said, “that evidently on this point they have misinformed
you,” for he was sure that she was but guessing. “Well,” he repeated, “I
must not be bribed, and pleasant as would be the company of both of you,
I have other game to hunt.”

Mea drew herself up, looking wonderfully dignified notwithstanding her
lack of height, and said in Arabic:

“My aunt, our request is refused; it is not seemly that we should ask
again. We will go down the Nile a little, and hide till our messengers
bring us an escort. Let us bid this Bey farewell; we keep him from his
sleep.”

“Perhaps the Bey has not done speaking,” said Bakhita, who saw that
Rupert had but paused in his words.

“You are right, mother, as usual,” he went on, “and you know so much
that I do not mind telling you a little more. It is my object to travel
as a merchant; in fact,” he added, “I have taken to that business which
is more profitable than fighting.”

Bakhita waved her hand to indicate that to attempt to throw dust in her
eyes was mere waste of time, and he continued, smiling:

“Now merchants often take women with them, calling them their wives or
daughters, purposing to sell or to make gifts of them to great emirs or
sultans, whereas soldiers never do. Therefore, perhaps if you were in my
company I should look more like a merchant, so I think that if you wish
it I will take you. No, no, do not bow to me, for my own sake, not
yours, especially as we are not sure of the way to the Jebal Marru, and
doubtless you can guide us. Also have no fear; all that I have seen and
heard is secret, though one day I hope that you will show me that temple
in the oasis. Now I ride to-morrow at moonrise as I wish to pass the
Sweet Wells the next night when men are asleep. You and your two
servants can meet me where the path joins the road beyond the hill.”

Bakhita seized his hand and kissed it. Evidently her mind was much
relieved, and she was very grateful. Fearing lest her companion should
follow her example, Rupert, who disliked such displays, said to her:

“Now that this is settled, are you not going to finish pouring your
libations on the feet of the god yonder?”

Mea shook her head and answered:

“That I no can do; the libation is all poured on the feet of the man. I
hope the god will not be, what you call it, jealous, and make you pay,”
and lifting the alabaster vessel she turned it upside down to show that
it was empty.

“Then I will say good-night,” said Rupert, “as perhaps it is best that
we should not leave this place together. To-morrow, half an hour after
moonrise, at the cross-paths, unless you should change your minds and go
alone. Remember, I cannot wait,” and bowing to Mea he left the chamber
and groped his way down the hall towards the faint light that flowed
through the door-place of the temple.

When he had gone the two women looked at each other.

“My aunt,” said the younger, “have we done well? Shall we not bring that
Bey into danger at the hands of the cursed Ibrahim?”

“Perhaps,” answered Bakhita coolly. “If so, he takes us for his own
sake, not for ours; you heard his words.”

“Yes; but I do not believe them. It is for your sake that he does this
because he thinks that you are his friend. If Ibrahim knows that we are
with him, he will attack him and then—”

“And then,” answered Bakhita; “well, I am told that Rupert Bey fights
very well, and his men are brave and trained to war. Also it is
necessary for us to find an escort. Had you come when you said you would
a hundred of your own tribe would have brought you safely across the
desert, but being frightened because Ibrahim tried to steal you at
Luxor, you chose otherwise, and now it is not safe for you to bide here
till we can send for them. Still, if you do not wish to travel with this
Englishman, put on a blue robe and a yashmak and go to his tent
to-morrow as if to sell corn, and tell him so, for I will not.”

Mea thought a while, then looked up and said:

“Nay; I do wish to travel with him, for Fate made me pour the libation
of the god upon his feet, and therefore is it that I wish to travel with
him.”




CHAPTER XII.

THE WANDERING PLAYERS

The moon was up, and Rupert, in his Arab garb and mounted on a
dromedary, rode at the head of his caravan towards the district called
Sheb, in which the Sweet Wells were situated. A few miles from
Abu-Simbel, where the paths crossed, his head-man, a sergeant named
Abdullah, drew his attention to four figures on white camels who
appeared to be waiting for them, and asked if he should go forward to
learn their business. Rupert answered no, as they were only two women
and their servants to whom he had promised escort as far as Jebal Marru.
The man saluted and said nothing. Presently the four joined the caravan,
two veiled bundles, in whom indeed it would have been difficult to
recognise Bakhita and Mea, placing themselves beside him and the men
falling behind.

“So you have come,” said Rupert, saluting them.

“Bey, we have come,” answered Bakhita. “What else did you expect?” and
without more words they rode forward across the desert.

Presently, in the midst of the intense silence, far away as yet, they
heard a sound of wild music that grew clearer as they advanced. It was a
very thrilling music, shrill and piercing and accompanied by the roll of
drums.

“What is it?” asked Rupert of Bakhita.

“The Wandering Players,” she answered, “and I wish that we had not met
them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they bring ill fortune, Bey.”

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “You mean that they want baksheesh.”

“Then offer it to them and see,” she said.

Now they were passing a fold in the sand-hills, and on the crest of one
of these hills, that to the right, Rupert perceived the Wandering
Players. There were five of them, all seated upon the sand, and all so
wrapped up that nothing could be seen of them, at any rate, in that
light. The three who faced the caravan were playing upon bell-mouthed
pipes, and the two who squatted opposite to them kept time upon drums
which they beat with wonderful rapidity. As the caravan approached, this
savage music grew very weird and moving; indeed its quality was such
that once heard it could scarcely be forgotten. It seemed to cry and
wail, yet there were notes in it of surprising sweetness.

“Give those players ten piastres for their trouble,” said Rupert to his
sergeant, Abdullah; and muttering something, the man guided his camel up
the slope towards them, then offered them the money.

They took not the slightest notice of him, only played on more wildly
than before, till at length he threw the coins upon the ground and left
them.

“I think they are ghosts, not men,” he reported to Rupert, “since there
are no people in this country who will not take baksheesh.”

“Ripe fruit does not remain unplucked,” answered Rupert, in the words of
the Arab proverb, “and that which falls the children gather.”

Still, he wished that he had gone to look at the people himself, if only
to discover what tribe it was that produced such remarkable players.
Then they rode forward, and for some furlongs the penetrating sound of
those pipes and the gusty rolling of the drums seemed to keep time with
the swinging step of their camels, till at last the music grew fitful
and faint and died away in the distance.

When the moon was down, about three hours before the dawn, they halted
by a well and slept till daylight, Bakhita and Mea occupying a little
tent apart, which their servants pitched for them, and the camels
grazing upon the desert scrub. While the sky was still grey, Rupert
drank the coffee that had been made for him, and sent two pannikins of
it, with some biscuits, to the women’s tent. One was kept and one
returned untouched.

“Who does not drink?” he asked idly.

“Bakhita, Bey. She says she touches no white man’s liquor.”

“So you know her?” said Rupert.

“Oh, yes, Bey,” answered the man sulkily, “and we shall all of us know
her better before we part, for she is a gipsy from the far desert, and
has the evil eye. I felt cold all down my back when we met her last
night—colder even than when that music played which is made by ghosts
out of the tombs.”

“Those who remain silent cannot speak folly,” said Rupert, in another
proverb, and dismissed the man.

Then they marched on, camping again in the afternoon until the moon
should rise. That night, about one o’clock, they came to the Sweet
Wells, and stopped to give the camels drink and to fill their
water-bags. Rupert had arranged to arrive here at this hour when he
thought that the sheik Ibrahim would be asleep and not likely to oppose
their passage. For the same reason, he kept as far as possible from the
town, if it could be so called, but soon saw that his progress was being
watched, since men were sitting about on sand-heaps and in the shadow of
thorn trees. Indeed, one of these rose unexpectedly before them and
asked who they were and why they passed through the territory of his
chief without offering a present.

By Rupert’s direction the sergeant, Abdullah, answered that they were a
trading party who hoped to see Ibrahim on their return, when they would
make him a good present. He did not add, however, that it was Rupert’s
wish to avoid meeting this truculent and treacherous man until he had
bound over the powerful sheiks who lived beyond him to the interests of
the Government, when, as he knew, he would have nothing to fear from the
chief of the Sweet Wells and his handful of fighting men.

The sentry answered that it was well, especially as he could not now see
Ibrahim, who had gone away with a number of his tribe, having ridden
towards Wady-Halfa that very day. Then staring hard at the two veiled
women upon their camels, he asked whether the gipsy, Bakhita, and her
daughter were travelling with them. Abdullah hastily answered no, adding
that the two women were his relations whom he was taking to visit their
families. The man said no more, so with the usual salutations they
passed on.

“Why did you say that, Abdullah?” asked Rupert.

“Because, Bey, had he known who these female bringers of ill-luck are,
we should soon have had the whole tribe of them about us. It is said
everywhere that Ibrahim wishes to take the young one, who is a great
chieftainess, for a wife, and that he had sworn to do so.”

“Lies are stones that fall on the head of the thrower,” replied Rupert,
for he was troubled and uneasy, and now wished sincerely that he had
refused to escort Bakhita and her beautiful niece who made offerings to
Egyptian gods to secure a safe journey across the desert.

He sent for Bakhita and the girl, who guided their camels alongside of
his.

“Tell me,” he said, “what is this story about the lady here and the
sheik Ibrahim, who, it seems, is really looking out for her?”

“What I told you, Bey,” Bakhita answered. “In old days, when Ibrahim’s
tribe was the stronger, our people fought him and drove him back over
the Jebal Marru—that was more than a hundred years ago. In the summer
before last, when my lady of Tama and I, with a large escort, were
coming from our home to the Nile, we camped at the Sweet Wells and
accepted a present of food from the sheik Ibrahim. In the morning before
we marched he visited us, and by misfortune saw Mea unveiled and was set
on fire by her beauty, so that at once he asked her in marriage, the dog
of a Prophet-worshipper. Having many men with us, I answered him as he
deserved, whereon, growing angry, he replied that that which was refused
could still be taken, but since we had eaten his salt, it must be done
another time. So we parted, for we were too strong to be attacked. Now
through his spies at Luxor and along the Nile he has learned that Mea is
come back, which she did hurriedly when not expected, because he tried
to kidnap her in Luxor itself. So it came about that I had no escort
ready for her. Nor did I dare to stop at Abu-Simbel, for I heard that he
proposed to attack us there so soon as you were gone, and there was no
steamer by which she could descend the Nile again, whereof his people
watch the banks. Therefore we sought your merciful protection.”

“I think that before all is done you are likely to need it,” said
Rupert, “and were I what I seem that would not trouble me, but now I am
afraid.”

“Let us leave the Bey and take our chance,” said Mea, speaking across
him to her aunt in Arabic. “It is not right that we should bring him
into danger. I told you so from the first.”

“Yes,” answered Bakhita briefly, “if the Bey so wishes.”

Rupert glanced at Mea, who had drawn her veil aside, perhaps that she
might see him better. The moonlight shone upon her sweet face, and he
perceived that her eyes were full of fear. Evidently she dreaded the
sheik very much indeed, who knew that in this lawless land where might
was right, he could take her without question if he were able, and force
her into his harem.

“The Bey does not so wish,” he said. “You are with me; bide with me.
Often the thing we fear does not happen, my lady Tama.”

With a grateful glance and a sigh of relief, Mea let fall her veil
again, and both of them dropped back into their accustomed place in the
caravan. At their next halt Rupert noted that one of Bakhita’s two
attendants remounted his swift dromedary, after it had been watered and
allowed to feed a while, and started forward at a trot. Again he sent
for Bakhita and asked where the man had gone. She answered that he had
been despatched as a messenger to their tribe in the hope that he would
get through the mountains unmolested. His orders were that, could he
succeed in this, he was to collect a hundred men as soon as possible and
bring them to meet their lady.

As it appeared, however, that the oasis which was Mea’s home could not
be reached by the swiftest camel under several days’ journey, Rupert did
not concern himself further about the matter. Only Abdullah grumbled,
saying that he believed the man was a spy who had gone forward to make
trouble. For Abdullah, who had discovered that Bakhita and her three
companions were neither Christians nor Mahommedans, was full of
suspicion, especially as he and the rest of Rupert’s escort were
convinced that the old woman was a witch with the evil eye and probably
in the pay of the Khalifa. Such, indeed, had been her reputation at
Abu-Simbel, to which Bakhita’s curious knowledge of events and private
histories, together with her very remarkable powers of observation, gave
much colour.

On the night following that of these events, the party camped by some
water at the foot of the rugged and barren range of hills known as Jebal
Marru, in the very mouth of the pass, indeed, through which ran the only
practicable road, that was used, though rarely, by travellers journeying
from one desert to the other. At its entrance this path was very narrow,
a mere cleft in the rock, not more than fifty or sixty feet wide, and
flanked on either side by sheer cliffs. Here Rupert and Bakhita and her
companions were to part, for his road to the village of the first sheik
whom he was going to visit ran along the foot of the hills, whereas
theirs passed through them. At the earliest dawn they struck their camp,
which they could not do before, since the road was too rough to attempt
in the dark, and Rupert having seen that everything was in order for the
march, went to bid good-bye to Bakhita and her niece.

While they were thanking him very heartily for his escort in the fine
language common to Orientals, which on this occasion was meant earnestly
enough, Abdullah hurried up and announced, in an alarmed voice, that a
band of over a hundred men, mounted on camels and horses, was advancing
upon them. He added that he believed them to be the chief Ibrahim and
his followers. Instantly Rupert ordered that all the camels should be
driven into the mouth of the pass, and that the men, with their rifles
and a good supply of ammunition, should take refuge behind the boulders
that were strewn about, in case an attack was contemplated. Then turning
to Bakhita, he said quickly:

“Your camels are good and fresh. If you take my advice you will be gone.
Probably they will not get through us for some time.”

Bakhita said the counsel was wise, and ordered the camel, upon which she
was already seated, to rise; but the girl seemed to hesitate. Stepping
to Rupert as he turned away, she seized his hand and pressed it against
her forehead, murmuring in her peculiar English:

“This trouble not my fault, all old woman Bakhita’s fault, who think of
nobody but me, not of you at all. I—I think much of you, my heart sick,
I cry my eyes out. Good-bye! God bless you and damn Ibrahim.”

Even then Rupert could not help smiling at this peculiar valedictory
address. At that moment a man came and spoke to him, and when next he
looked, Bakhita, Mea, and their servant were already vanishing round the
bend of the pass. Now, as he wished to show no fear, he ordered his men
to sit about as though they were still camping, but to keep their rifles
ready, and accompanied by Abdullah and another soldier, went to a large
rock in front of them, sat down, lit his pipe and waited.

By this time the band was quite close and had halted. Presently two men
rode out from among them, in whom Rupert recognised his old acquaintance
the sheik Ibrahim, and the sentry with whom they had spoken near the
Sweet Wells. Ibrahim rode up, and from a distance asked if he had peace.

“Those who bring peace find it,” answered Rupert.

Then Ibrahim dismounted and walked forward alone, leaving his servant to
hold his horse. Rupert also walked forward until they met and exchanged
salutations.

“Bey,” said Ibrahim, surveying Rupert’s garb with his flashing eyes,
“you have changed your dress since last we spoke yonder on the hill
above Abu-Simbel. Tell me, have you changed your heart also and become a
servant of the Prophet whom I can greet as brother?”

“You had other names for me than brother at Abu-Simbel,” answered Rupert
evasively. “What is your business, Sheik Ibrahim, with the merchant
Mahommed, who, by the way, offers you his congratulations, having
learned that now you also are a servant of the Government.”

“My business, Bey,” he replied, “has nothing to with the Government, or
with you. Two women are travelling with you who are my property. Hand
them over to me.”

“Two free women were travelling with me, Sheik, but I cannot give them
to you as they are gone.”

“Whither?” asked Ibrahim.

“Really, I do not know, it is their own affair,” said Rupert calmly.

Now the sheik’s evil temper began to get the better of him.

“You lie,” he said. “I will search your camp, for they are hidden
there.”

“If you wish to find rifle bullets, search,” replied Rupert
significantly. “Listen, Ibrahim! I am camped here, and here I shall stay
until you go, since I do not trust you and will not expose myself to
attack upon the road. If you venture on violence, it is possible that
you may succeed, since my mission is peaceful and I have but few men.
But then the Khedive, your lord, will stamp you out, you and your tribe,
and so there will be an end of an evil and dangerous man. I have spoken,
go in peace.”

“By Allah! no,” shouted the Arab, “I come in war, for besides that of
these women there is an old account to settle between you and me, who
caused my town to be raided by the Government of Egypt, my women to be
insulted, and my herds to be taken. Choose now. Hand over to me your
camels, your merchandise and your arms, and of my mercy I will let you
go. Resist, and I will take them all and offer to you, infidel, the
choice between death and Islam.”

“Empty drums make a loud noise,” replied Rupert contemptuously, whereon
the Arab, lifting the spear which he carried, hurled it at him.

Rupert sprang to one side, so that the weapon missed him by a
hair’s-breadth.

“Now,” he said, “I can shoot you if I wish; but I will not forget my
honour because you forget yours. Dog! God will avenge your treachery on
you.”

“By my beard!” roared the Arab, “I will avenge Allah on you—yes, your
infidel lips shall kiss his holy name.”

Then Rupert walked towards his men, who were running out to his
assistance.

“Back,” he said, “and take cover. Ibrahim is about to attack us.”

So they went back and, since flight seemed utterly impracticable, having
hastily tethered the camels in a recess of the cliff out of reach of
rifle fire, lay down, every man behind a rock. Here Rupert addressed
them, telling them what had passed, and saying they must either fight or
be robbed and made prisoners, which would probably mean their death,
since Ibrahim would not dare to allow any of them to live and be
witnesses against him when he was brought to account for this great
crime. Therefore, though they were but few, as they, mounted on camels,
could not run from horsemen, it was wise that they should do their best.

The soldiers, who were all of them brave men, answered that it was so,
they were few, still they would fight and try to beat off these Arabs.
Only Abdullah looked downcast, and added that this trouble came upon
them through the women, and that it would have been good to give them to
Ibrahim.

“Would you think so if they were your wives or daughters?” asked Rupert
scornfully. “How could I surrender them who had eaten of my bread and
salt? Also they have gone. But if you are afraid, Abdullah, do you take
a camel and follow them. The rest of us will hold the pass and give you
time to get away.”

Now some of the servants began to mock Abdullah and to call him “woman”
and “coward.”

So the man grew ashamed and said that he would show them that he was as
brave as they.

Then a rifle bullet, evidently aimed at Rupert, who was standing up to
address the soldiers, whistled past his head and flattened on the rock
behind. The fight had begun.

Rupert saw the man who had fired the shot from the back of his camel
about two hundred yards away, for the smoke hung over him. Snatching up
the Winchester repeating rifle which he carried, he set the sight
rapidly, aimed and fired. He was an excellent game and target shot, nor
did his skill fail him now. Almost instantly they heard the clap of a
bullet and saw the Arab—it was that very sentry with whom they had
spoken at the Sweet Wells—throw up his arms and pitch heavily from the
saddle to the ground.

The soldiers shouted, thinking this a good omen, and at once opened
fire, killing or wounding several of their enemies, whereon the Arabs
hastened to take shelter, sending their horses and camels out of reach
of the bullets.

The mouth of the pass was strewn with large stones, and creeping from
one to another of them, the Arabs advanced slowly, pouring in a heavy
fire as they came. As it chanced, this did but little damage, for
Rupert’s cover was good, while as they moved forward his rifles found
out several of them. Thus things went on for a full hour, till at length
Rupert saw the head of a soldier near him, who had incautiously exposed
himself, drop forward on to the rock. He was shot through the brain, and
immediately afterwards one of his comrades, who rose to lift him,
thinking that he might be only wounded, received a bullet in the
shoulder.

So the fight stood for all that live-long day. No more men were hit, for
after this lesson they dared not show themselves, and unless they did
so, the enemy did not fire. There they lay, cramped up behind their
stones and baked in the burning sun. Of food they had plenty, but as it
happened the water, of which there was none here, was scarce, for they
had used nearly all of it on the previous night, expecting to be able to
refill their bags at a well a little further along the mountains.
Although it was husbanded, soon the last drop had been drunk, so that
towards evening they began to suffer from thirst.

At length the sun sank and the darkness came.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE END OF THE FIGHT

Now during all these weary hours Rupert had been taking counsel with
himself. He was skilled in Arab warfare, and guessed that Ibrahim’s plan
was not to attempt to rush him in the daylight, which at best would cost
him many more men and might mean defeat, but to get among his little
band with the spear under cover of the night, or perhaps just at the
break of dawn. Utterly outnumbered as they were, to such a move as this
there could be but one end—annihilation. It was, however, possible that
it would not be made; that the Arabs would be content to continue their
present tactics, knowing that Rupert had no hope of succour, and that
soon or late thirst must conquer him. Therefore it would seem that he
was driven to choose between two alternatives—surrender or retreat. He
gathered his men together and addressed them through the darkness, not
hiding from them how desperate he thought their plight.

Under the circumstances, he said, if they wished to surrender he would
not forbid them, only then he believed that whatever promises were made,
they would all be killed, or at the best taken away and sold as slaves
to the Khalifa, or his emirs, with whom, doubtless, Ibrahim was in
league. For himself, however, he should certainly not surrender, but
choosing the best place he could find, fight on till he was killed like
Gordon.

With one voice the soldiers said they would not suffer this; their
business was to die with their captain, not desert him: they were
Soudanese and men, not Fellaheen.

He thanked them simply, and put before them the second alternative—that
of retreat. The pass behind them was open, though none of them had ever
travelled it, and a map he had showed a water-hole about some thirty
miles away in the desert beyond, which they might reach. Or failing
that, when they were clear of the pass they could turn and skirt along
the mountains, taking their chance of water and of safety. Or they could
try to cut their way back to Wady-Halfa, a thing however that seemed
hopeless, since if they got through, they would be overtaken, surrounded
and picked off in the open desert.

Having discussed the matter among themselves the men announced their
decision that flight was best. For the rest, they said, they resigned
themselves to _el Mektub_ which means “to that which is written”; or in
other words, to Destiny. Then Rupert called the roll to see that all
were present. Two did not answer to their names—the dead man and the
sergeant Abdullah. At first it was thought that the latter had been
killed also, till someone remembered that early in the afternoon he had
gone to tend and feed the camels, since when he had not been seen.
Afterwards it was discovered that, anticipating his commander’s plan, he
had already retreated—with the best camel—an act of cowardice which, it
will be seen, produced very grave results to Rupert, and indeed
profoundly influenced his subsequent career. For here it may be said at
once that Abdullah got back to the Nile in safety by skirting round the
mountains, and needless to add, made his own report to the authorities,
which, as it happened, there was no one to contradict.

Now, their counsel taken, the little band set themselves to carry it out
as best they could without delay, since they knew not at what moment the
attack might be delivered. First they built a fire of whatever material
they could collect and lit it, so as to suggest to the Arabs that they
remained in camp there. Also, having said the prayers for the dead over
him, they set their fallen companion behind a stone, above which one
hand and his rifle projected, in such a position that the light of the
fire fell upon them. Two of the worst camels also they left behind, that
their roaring might deceive the enemy into the belief that the caravan
had not moved. This done they started as noiselessly as possible, only
to find that their task was more difficult even than they thought.

The moon not being up, the darkness in that narrow gorge was intense;
moreover, the pass was strewn with boulders and pitted with holes washed
out by water, in one of which a camel soon broke its leg and had to be
killed with a knife and left with its valuable load. Not half a mile
further on another camel fell over a bank or precipice—they could not
tell which—and vanished, while a man twisted his ankle, and a second,
stumbling, struck his forehead against a stone and cut it badly. After
this Rupert ordered a halt till the moon rose since to proceed was
practically impossible. At length the moon came, but the sky was cloudy,
also she was on the wane; so they found themselves but little better off
in that deep gulf. Still they struggled on, praying for daylight, and
taking comfort from the thought that if the Arabs followed, matters
would be equally bad for them.

The sky turned grey, the dawn broke, and then with the startling
suddenness that will be familiar to all travellers in the Egyptian
desert, the sun rose, and by its light they pushed forward. For a mile
or so all went well till they came to a place where the pass opened out,
and its sides, no longer precipitous, were clothed with scrub and
boulders. Then suddenly from behind one of these boulders rang out a
rifle shot. A few yards ahead, in the centre of the valley, was a little
hill or kopje, also boulder-strewn, and understanding at once what had
happened, namely, that the Arabs, foreseeing this retreat, probably on
the previous afternoon, had sent most of their force over the mountains
to waylay them, Rupert shouted to his band to make for this kopje and
hold it.

They did so under a fierce fire, but as the Arab shooting was bad and
the mist still hung at the bottom of the valley, without much loss. On
the kopje were two or three of the enemy’s marksmen whom they dislodged
and killed. Then taking the best positions they could find, the little
company prepared itself to inflict all the damage it could upon its foes
before it met its inevitable doom. Although a man fell now and again
this was delayed for several hours, until at length the rest of the
Arabs, who had followed them down the pass, arrived.

Then came the last bitter struggle. Such things sound heroic to tell
of—the forlorn stands of the few against the many always do—but in
practice they are only dreadful; the glory is naught but a residuum
deposited in the cauldrons of their sanguinary and seething horror by
the powerful precipitants of distance, romance, and time.

Thus this last desperate fight of a few wearied men against many may be
noble to read of, but in fact it was merely hideous. Brave things were
done by these black Soudanese, who, if they are well led and trust their
leader, will not surrender with a loss of about five per cent in killed
and wounded; indeed surrender was talked of no more. But though it was
emphasised thereby, who could think of gallantry when a man shot through
the bowels lay writhing on the ground beside him, cursing and praying by
turns, but still loading his gun, and, in the pauses of his paroxysms,
bringing other men to their death. When the tongue is hanging from the
jaws with thirst, when the brows throb with fatigue and pain, and the
heart is well-nigh bursting with rage, grief for those who will be seen
no more, and apprehensions of the dreadful end, who can think of the cup
and chaplets of fame, and the empty trappings of honour?

At least Rupert could not. He fought on grimly; he did his best. Two
rushes he repelled, for now that their fire slackened, the Arabs were
trying to make an end of them with the spear. In the intervals that
followed these rushes Rupert thought of Edith. He wondered what she was
doing, and remembered that without doubt she would be comfortably in bed
and asleep, dreaming no dreams of him and his sore plight. He wondered
if when he died, as he must do in a few minutes, it would wake her, or
whether she would still sleep on as his spirit passed. Then he
remembered the other woman, that strange, high-bred native girl, and it
came into his mind that _she_ would wake however sound she slept, and
that there would be vengeance taken for this death of his, the wild
vengeance of the desert. Next he forgot all such things, and shook a
dying comrade by the hand.

“_Kismet!_” said the man, with a ghastly smile, “and we have killed more
of them than they can kill of us. The water of the Sweet Wells will be
bitter for a while. Allah is good and Paradise pleasant. Are you hurt,
Bey?”

“Not yet,” he answered, “but wait, I come presently. Ah! that got him
fair.”

“No, don’t come,” answered the man, “live on if you may. He who lives
long sees much, and amongst other things vengeance on his enemies. Live
on, and you will see the sheik Ibrahim hanging to the bough of a thorn.”

Then the soldier grunted, rolled on to his face, and was dead.


Puffs of smoke spurted from behind rocks; spears shone in the sunlight;
hoarse voices announced the fact which nobody contradicted—that Allah
was great and Mahomet was his prophet; here and there men fell forward
or backward, still declaring that Allah was great, and instantly
departed from the body to put the argument to proof. Blood ran in thin,
black streams, and was soaked up by the thankful soil; men died beneath
the hands of their fellow-men as in this devil-ridden world they have
done from the beginning, and will do till the end. Untouched by some
miracle, Rupert still fought on. His rifle was empty; a tall, bearded
Arab had fallen before its last shot. Then quite close to him he saw
Ibrahim, and remembering his revolver, drew it, when suddenly a heavy
blow from behind felled him to the ground.

Rupert came to himself again, and by degrees understood dimly that he
was not dead, since he lay where he had fallen, and all about him were
slain and wounded men. Near by, also, stood two of his own people,
captives, with their hands tied behind them. The sheik Ibrahim was
questioning them, promising them life if they would tell him where they
had hidden away the gipsy Bakhita and her companion, the lady Mea. They
answered that they accepted his terms, and would do so with pleasure.
They were hidden in the desert, whither they had departed before the
beginning of the fight, so if he wanted them he had best go look for
them there.

This answer seemed to infuriate the sheik, who called to some of his
people to kill “these dogs.” They came, whereon the two men, putting
down their heads, butted at them like rams, and knocking one of them
down, jumped and trampled on his face until the cruel swords did their
work with them and they died there. Then the wounded were killed also,
so that presently, of all his company, Rupert alone was left alive.

Now they caught hold of him and asked him questions about the women, but
he pretended not to be able to speak because of thirst, pointing to his
throat and mouth. The artifice succeeded, for they brought him water, of
which he stood in terrible need. The bowl was large, but he emptied all
of it, and felt his life come back to him. Now Ibrahim addressed him.

“Dog of an unbeliever,” he said, “you see that your cunning and courage
have not availed against the decrees of Allah who has destroyed all your
band!”

“It is so,” answered Rupert; “but he seems to have destroyed many of
yours also. Here I count over twenty of your dead, and thirty wounded.
Allah is just, and takes life for life.”

“Blaspheme not, dog! Of Allah I will speak to you afterwards. Tell
me—where are the women?”

“Those brave men whom you murdered after promising them their lives have
told you; they are in the desert. Go; search for them there. Come; I
tire of this talk. Murder me also, and begone to meet the doom that God
prepares in this world and the next for the traitor and the liar.”

“You wish to die, then?” asked Ibrahim, lifting his spear.

“Aye; why not? My people are slaughtered; I would join them. Also, I
must make report of you and your deeds, and prepare you a place.”

The Arab dropped his spear; Rupert’s words seemed to frighten him.

“Not yet, nor so swiftly,” he said. “Bind him and put him on a camel. He
shall see us catch these women, and after that we will judge him
according to the law.”

So they tied Rupert with ropes, and set him on his own dromedary.
Presently he started forward with the Arabs—about forty of them. The
rest were either dead or wounded, or had been left to convey the latter
and the rich booty, including the thousand pounds in gold, back to the
Sweet Wells. At the mouth of the pass, a few miles further on, they
searched, and in some soft soil found the spoor of the camels ridden by
Bakhita, Mea, and their servant, and seeing that it led out into the
desert beyond, followed swiftly. All that day they rode till they came
to the water-pool that was marked upon the map, and here, being very
weary after their desperate fight and long travelling, the Arabs would
go no further, although their sheik urged them to do so. So they camped
there by the water, and ate dates and cakes of flour, some of which were
given to Rupert.

Whilst they ate, an old man and two old women, one of them
blind—wanderers who were hidden in the scrub near the water—crept out
and begged for food. It was given to them, and when they had filled
themselves, Ibrahim asked them if two women and a man mounted on camels
had passed that way.

They answered, yes, about thirty hours before. By this time they must be
far away as, after only a short rest to water their camels and to eat,
they had departed very swiftly.

Now Ibrahim understood that his prey had escaped him. Indeed, the Arabs
refused to follow them any further into the desert, where they feared
they might be trapped by Mea’s people, and die like their brethren in
the pass. His rage knew no bounds, since he was well aware the booty
that he had taken could not in the least compensate for the death of so
many of his best men; whose loss in a private quarrel, moreover, would
be bitterly resented by the tribe, and especially by the women. He was
sure, also, that as Rupert had said, the Government would avenge this
great murder by sending an expedition against him, which could only be
avoided by his escaping with the remainder of his people to join the
Khalifa.

Lastly, all had been done in vain, since the woman, Mea, whom he desired
with the fierce intensity which is characteristic of the inhabitants of
the Soudan, had got away safely to her own land of Tama which was far
too strong for him to attack. All these ills and others had been brought
upon him, he reflected, by his old enemy, the English Bey, who had
protected Mea, and with his small band fought so stubbornly in the pass
that he had been unable to pursue and capture her. Hate of this dogged
infidel boiled up in Ibrahim’s black and cruel heart, till with a flash
of joy he remembered that at least he could make him pay for these
misfortunes.

Suddenly he gave orders that the prisoner should be led before him.
Accordingly he was brought to where Ibrahim sat near the cooking fire
under the shadow of an ancient and wide-spreading thorn.

“What is your pleasure with me, Sheik?” asked Rupert calmly. “Is the
appointed hour at hand? If so, be swift, for I am tired and wish to
sleep.”

“Not yet, dog,” answered Ibrahim; “and perhaps not at all, for I
remember the saying: ‘He is merciful who forgives.’ Though an infidel,
you are a brave man.”

“I do not ask your forgiveness; it is you who should ask mine, who have
again broken faith with your master the Khedive and murdered my people
without cause,” answered Rupert proudly.

“Nor do I offer it,” said Ibrahim; “but Allah offers, and I am his
servant. Once—do you remember?—I promised you that a day would come when
I should command you to make choice between death and Islam. It is here.
Choose now. Accept the faith publicly, which should not be hard to you,
seeing that already you wear the garb and travel under the holy name of
the Prophet; write it in a letter to your masters at Cairo that you
renounce them and are one of the faithful, and that you blame me not,
and go free. Or refuse and die an infidel. I have said.”

Rupert laughed in his face.

“Have done with such idle talk,” he answered. “Am I a child or a woman
that I should be frightened by death which I have faced a score of times
since yesterday? Traitor Ibrahim, you can bind my body, but not my
spirit. I have chosen.”

So he spoke and stood still, awaiting death. But it did not come.
Ibrahim turned aside and consulted with some of his people. Then with a
cruel smile he said:

“I will not be provoked. I will still show mercy and give your stubborn
spirit time for repentance, that it may not lose the joys of Paradise.
Throw him down.”

They obeyed, and as he lay on his back staring through the branches of
the tree at the tender sky above, Rupert saw one man, whom he had heard
speaking of himself as a butcher by trade, draw his sword, while another
heated the broad blade of a spear in the fire. Then for the first time
he felt afraid. Death he did not fear—but mutilation!


Fourteen hours had gone by and Rupert was still living. Yes, although
they had hacked off his right foot, and in the morning when again he
refused to accept the Koran, burnt out his left eye and scored his cheek
with a hot iron, being strong, he still lived. Now he was seated on the
saddle of a dromedary beneath the thorn tree, a noose about his neck,
the rope to which it was attached being thrown over a bough of the tree.
They were about to hang him, but first, again in the name of mercy, gave
him a little while to change his mind and accept the faith.

The agonies of his body and his soul were very great, but Rupert still
sat there proudly, the ruin of a man, uttering no complaint, making no
plea for pity. Only in his heart he wondered humbly what he had done
that these terrors should come upon him. Then he remembered that in this
blood-stained Soudan, the home of fanaticism and devilry, many a man as
good or better than himself—yes, and many a woman also, had been called
upon to suffer even worse things, and bowed his mangled head in
submission to the decree of Destiny. Never once during those long hours
of torment had he dreamed of purchasing its remission, as by a word he
could have done. For this he took no credit to himself, whose faith and
pride were both too deeply rooted to permit him even to entertain the
thought.

This world was ended for him; none would ever know even the hideous
fashion of his farewell to the sun. Now he had but one desire left—to
show no sign of pain or fear to his tormentors, and brave and loyal to
the last, to enter on the next. Even those heartless fiends marvelled at
his courage, and grew half ashamed of their red work. They wished to let
him go, but Ibrahim said nay, it was too late, he must die for their
safety’s sake. Indeed, even had Rupert been weak and entered Islam, it
was still his intention that he should die. Only the Arab wished to
break his spirit first as he had broken his body.

They had left him alone a while, knowing that he could not stir, and
were saddling their beasts. Now they came back, all of them, and stood
in front of him, watching him with curious eyes. God be thanked! the end
was at hand, and soon he would feel no more of those racking pains.
There they stood, grave and silent, pitying him in their hearts, all
except Ibrahim, who chose this moment to expound to his victim the
principal doctrines of the Koran, and to assure him that he must
certainly go to hell.

Rupert made no answer, only looked over the heads of his tormentors,
with the eye that was left to him, at the little slope of land opposite,
of which the crest ran not more than a hundred yards away. Was he mad,
or was he altogether blind, and did he perhaps see visions in his
blindness? If not, coming over the brow of that hill were horsemen,
armed with spears, and amongst them a woman, who also held in her hand a
spear. They looked, they halted, they spread out, but the murderers,
intent upon the face of the dying man, never heard the sound of them on
that soft sand and against the strong desert wind.

“It is without avail,” Ibrahim said. “The infidel dog rejects the cup of
mercy; let him die the death of a dog,” and he seized the rope.

“One moment,” broke in Rupert, in a thick voice, “that last point of
yours, Sheik, touches my reason; light breaks upon me from on high.
Repeat it, I pray you.”

Ibrahim smiled cruelly. He had triumphed, the gallant English chief
turned coward at the last. Then he began to repeat his argument.

The horsemen came on in a semi-circle, a hundred of them at least, or
Rupert dreamed that they did. No, by Heaven! it was no dream, for hark
now to that shrilling battle-cry of _“Tama, Tama!”_ and hark to the
thunder of the hoofs as the spurred horses sprang forward wildly and
galloped down upon them. The Arabs wheeled round and saw their doom.
With mad shouts of terror they fled this way and that, rushing towards
the camels. As he went, Ibrahim hurled a spear at Rupert, but again it
only grazed his head.

Then came the swift and sudden vengeance. Some were cut down and some
were captured, Ibrahim among them. In two minutes it was over. A horse
was dragged to its haunches almost in front of him, and from its back
leapt a woman—Mea. She cast down her spear, she ran to him and threw her
arms about him; she kissed him on the brow, and seeing what were the
nature of his hurts, wept and cursed in English and in Arabic. Then,
those soft eyes of hers flashing terribly, she turned and screamed an
order:

“Bring them hither, every one of them that lives.”

They haled them up, a score of them or more; yes, even the dying;
blood-stained, with rent garments and head-dresses gone, they dragged
them before her.

“Now,” she said, in a voice of icy fury, “do unto them as they have done
to the English lord, only from Ibrahim cut off both hands and both feet
before you hang him to the tree.”

The miserable men flung themselves upon the ground, pleading for mercy.
Yes, even Ibrahim prostrated himself at her feet and prayed to be slain
at once. As well might he have prayed to a stone idol of slaughter.
Indeed, drawn up to her full height, every nerve in her quivering, her
soft and lovely face alive with rage and horror, she looked more like a
goddess of vengeance than a woman.

“Spare them, lady,” said Rupert hoarsely; “they are but fanatic
barbarians. Spare them for my sake.”

She turned on him.

“Be silent, Bey,” she answered roughly. “Shall I not do vengeance for
your sake who were made thus for me?”

Then at length he swooned away, and when an hour later he came to
himself again to find his head lying on Mea’s lap, while Bakhita
doctored his hurts with cloths and ointments, he saw that the awful
decree had been executed, for there upon the thorns those murdering
Arabs hung, every one of them.




CHAPTER XIV.

MEA MAKES A PROPOSAL

That sight of the corpses of his tormentors hanging to the thorn trees
was the last that Rupert was destined to see for many a day. Indeed for
weeks, so far as any subsequent memory was concerned, he remained quite
unconscious. Unconscious they bore him in a litter across the desert to
the Black Pass of the further mountains where no white man had set foot,
and on through the heart of them to the hidden oasis around which they
stood like sentinels. Here placed by the waters, beneath the shade of
palms and near to the towering pylons of the ruined temple, stood the
town, Tama, over which by right of descent the lady Mea held her rule.
It was not a large town, for the tribe was small, not numbering more
than four hundred men who could bear arms for, proud of their ancient
blood and hating strangers, they would intermarry with no other folk,
and therefore the old race dwindled. But the land was very rich, and the
houses were well built and stored, since being so few in number there
was little poverty among the children of Tama.

Mea brought Rupert to her own home, which was large, comfortable and
built of stone taken from the ruined temple; surrounded also by gardens.
Here she and Bakhita nursed him as a man has seldom been nursed before.
There were doctors in the tribe who, as is sometimes the case among
African natives, had a certain rude knowledge of surgery.

These men drew the seared flesh over his severed bone so that in this
pure air, and kept clean with astringent ointment, it healed without
mortifying or other complications. They doctored his head also, but in
such matters their skill was little, nor could anything they were able
to do prevent the inflammation from spreading to the other eye. This
passed in time, but its sight was affected so much that when at length
Rupert woke up from his wanderings, he thought that it must be
night-time, for dense darkness hung before him like a veil.

For a long while he could not remember or guess where he was, but by
degrees recollection returned, only he thought it must be that left by a
nightmare.

It was Mea’s voice which in the end opened the closed doors of his
understanding. She had seen the change in Rupert’s face and trembled
with hope, believing that at last his reason had come back to him. For a
while she watched him as he groped about aimlessly with his hands until
she learnt that as they had feared, he was blind. At length, able to
bear the suspense no more, she spoke to him in her quaint English.

“You sleep very long, Rupert Bey. Now you awake, yes?”

He turned his head, listening intently, then said:

“Is that not Mea’s voice, the lady Mea who poured a libation to the gods
at Abu-Simbel?”

“Yes, yes,” she answered eagerly, “of course. No one else have voice
like Mea. All of them stupid and can’t talk English. But,” she went on,
again watching him, for she wished to know how much he remembered, “I
pour that cup over your feet, not over the god, and Bakhita say that why
everything go upside down, and you lose your poor foot.”

Her voice trembled as she spoke the words, and it was only with an
effort that she could add:

“But I think Bakhita silly old woman who talk confounded nonsense. Gods
only old stones, and which way cup tumbled nothing to do with luck.”

Even then and there Rupert laughed, and oh! how she rejoiced to hear
him. Then his poor twisted face grew grave and he said:

“Tell me, Mea, all about my foot and eyes, and what happened. Don’t be
afraid, I can bear it now.”

So she took his hand and told him everything, speaking in her rich and
native Arabic, for the resources of the English language, as she knew
it, were not equal to that tale. Yet in its essence it was short.
Bakhita and she and their attendant travelled the pass of Jebal Marru in
safety, and journeyed on at great speed, for their camels were as good
as any in the desert, pausing a little while at the wells, as the old
wanderers had said. When they drew near the Black Gate, as the gully was
called, by which they approached the oasis, to their joy they met a
hundred of their own men who, summoned by the messenger that they had
sent forward, were coming out to seek them.

At once they returned upon their tracks. Bakhita and the emirs had
wished her, Mea, to go on to her home, but this she refused to do.
Indeed she asserted her authority and took command, pushing back, almost
without rest as fast as the horses could travel, and thus arrived in
time. It seemed that they had seen the smoke of the cooking fire, and it
was this that made them approach the wells so quietly. She described to
Rupert what she felt when she perceived him sitting mutilated upon the
camel furniture with the noose about his throat.

“A flame burnt up within me, the air turned red, the sand of the desert
smelt of blood, and I swore to avenge you or die. Aye, and Rupert Bey, I
did avenge. Not one of them escaped, and with my own hand I drove my
spear through the heart of that dog, Ibrahim. Yes, I left him his eyes
that he might see the stroke. Oh, they never wrung a word from you, he
confessed it; but _he_ cried to me for mercy, and that was the best of
all. He cried to me for mercy, and I gave him the spear.”

Rupert shook her hand loose from his.

“You did wrong,” he answered, “you should have shown mercy. It is
written: ‘Love your enemies’; but I forget, you have never learned.”

“I have learned,” she answered, “but how could I pardon him who would
have forced me, Tama—(she pronounced it Támá as though the word were
spelt with two r’s)—me, born of the ancient blood, into his vile harem?
Nay, that perhaps I might have forgiven, but when I saw you, Rupert Bey,
with that rope about your neck, blinded and with your foot struck off,
all for me—all for me, a stranger to you, not of your family, not of
your house—oh! then I could not forgive. Nay, I wished that he had a
hundred lives that I might take them all, and—be not angry with me—I
wish it still. I am not unkind. Ask my people here if I have ever slain,
or even beaten one of them without a cause, but that sight, it made me
like a leopard whose cubs have been killed before her eyes. Think not
the worse of me. I will repent, I will learn better, but oh! I am glad
that I drove the spear through the heart of Ibrahim and watched him die.
And Bakhita is worse than I am, remember that, she wished to kill him
slowly.”

“What is done, is done,” answered Rupert. “This desert is a cruel place,
and God forgive us all for many things.”

Then he paused, nor did he resist her when timidly she took his hand
again, he who guessed that she had sinned for him.

“Tell me, Mea,” he said, “shall I always be blind as well as maimed?”

“I do not know,” she answered, with a sob. “Our doctors do not know. I
pray not. Oh, I wish that Ibrahim were alive again that he might go
blind for all his days. Nay, pardon me, pardon, but that deed of his was
evil, because you would not worship his accursed prophet, or so he said,
who hated you for other reasons. Now rest you, Bey, rest you; you must
not talk so much. I will sit at your side and keep the flies from off
your face. Rest, and I will sing you to sleep,” and she began to croon
over him some ancient song that may have come down from the days of the
Pharaohs, as a mother croons above a fevered babe.


This was the beginning of Rupert’s life at Tama. By degrees his strength
came back to him, but for three months he remained stone-blind, and
during all that time Mea’s hand was seldom out of his. With the help of
a little dog that he held by a string, she led him to and fro; she
nursed and doctored him; she watched his sleep. He remonstrated, he grew
angry even, and then for a while old Bakhita came, and he was left with
her and the little dog, but next morning it was always Mea’s soft hand
that he felt in his, and not Bakhita’s bony fingers. For a long while he
thought little of all this. Even in health and strength, Rupert was the
least vain of men, but broken, mutilated, scarred, blinded as he was, a
horror such as those that sit the streets of Cairo to beg for alms, it
never even occurred to him that a woman, lovely, and in her own world
high-placed as he knew Mea to be, would think of him as more than a
friend to whom she was grateful for service rendered. Yet at last he did
begin to have misgivings. He could not see her, but there was a note in
her voice when she spoke to him, there was something in her touch when
she took his hand, a kind of caress, which alarmed him.

He took occasion to talk to her about his wife in England, and even gave
her to look at the miniature of Edith, painted upon ivory which he had
in a gold locket. She studied it carefully, said that the lady was
pretty, but cold as the hour before a winter dawn, and then asked if she
were really his wife, or only called so, and she used a phrase that can
best be translated by the words, “for political reasons.”

“Of course,” answered Rupert. “Why do you ask such a question?”

“Because if she is your wife, why is she in England, not in Egypt? She
is not ill and she has no children to tend, is it so?”

Rupert was forced to answer that so far as he was aware, Edith’s health
was good, and of course there were no children. In order to explain her
absence, he added that she did not like heat.

“Ah!” replied Mea enigmatically, and in English, “in cold country, cold
wife; in warm country, kind wife; _that_ all right.”

Then finding further explanation difficult, Rupert called the little
dog, asked her to take him for a walk, and was tenderly led round the
garden.

As soon as his general health was a little re-established, as he could
not see to write, Rupert had dictated a letter to Mea addressed to the
Government in Cairo, and giving an account of the miserable end of his
mission. This letter was sent off by a messenger to Wady-Halfa, together
with another to Edith, also written by Mea. When in after days he saw
the postscript which she added, but had not thought necessary to read to
him, he was somewhat astonished. It ran:

To the white wife of Rupert Bey from Mea, lady of Tama.

Do not trouble for your lord; I look after him well, and love him with
all my heart. Why not? He massacred for me. I hope we not quarrel when
we meet. In England, you head. In Soudan, I head. That good plan; no
trouble at all. I give greetings, and make bow.—Your sister,

Mea.

As it happened, these epistles never reached their destinations, since
within a week the messenger returned saying that the whole country on
the other side of the Jebal Marru was in a ferment. It seemed that
Abdullah, Rupert’s sergeant, had escaped safely, and reported that
Rupert and all his people were killed. Thereon the Government had sent
an expedition against the remnant of the tribe of Ibrahim, sheik of the
Sweet Wells. These people, being warned of their fate, had appealed to
the Khalifa, with the result that several thousand of his adherents,
under a powerful emir, were despatched to their assistance, though
whether from the neighbourhood of Suakim or from the north, Rupert could
not discover. At any rate, they were too many to be attacked by the
little Government expedition, and for the while remained in possession
of the territory between the Jebal Marru and the Nile.

At first Rupert was inclined to believe that Mea had concocted this
story for her own purposes, but Bakhita assured him that it was not so.
She said, moreover, that the Black Pass by which alone the oasis could
be approached was watched day and night to guard against sudden attack
by those who wished to avenge the death of Ibrahim, and every possible
preparation made to fight to the last. No attack came, however, for the
oasis was looked upon as a haunted place among the neighbouring tribes,
who feared its inhabitants also as infidel wizards favoured by the
devil. Their treatment of the band of Ibrahim who had been found hanging
to the trees, and especially of that unlucky sheik himself, had not, it
seemed, lessened this impression.

Subsequently the letters were again despatched in the charge of two
messengers. In due course one of these brought them back for the second
time. He had fallen in with an outpost of the Mahdists and barely
escaped with his life, his companion being overtaken and speared.

After this Rupert abandoned his attempts to communicate with
civilisation. Plunged as he was in utter darkness of mind and body, his
days were sad enough. He had failed in his mission, and the very chiefs
whom he hoped to win over were, he learned, now firm adherents of the
Khalifa. His career was at an end, for he had lost his leg and his
sight, and worst of all, his wife must believe that he was dead. It tore
his heart to think of her and his mother’s distress and agony; but what
could he do except bow his head in patience before the Power that had
decreed these things, and pray that some of the burden might be lifted
from his back?

For he was not dead, nor like to die. Mea, who innocently enough had
brought all this trouble upon him, had saved his life by her sweet care,
as by her swift decision and fierce courage she saved him from the
noose. Rupert believed that he owed his reason to her also, for at times
in the beginning, when all the weight of his terrible misfortunes
pressed upon his brain and crushed him, it seemed like to fail. Then she
who watched him always would see and understand. And, since the customs
of the East are always the same, as “when the evil spirit from God was
upon Saul, David took an harp and played with his hand; so Saul was
refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him,” so did
Mea take her harp and play before Rupert and sing over him in that full,
sweet voice of hers, the old, old songs of Egypt, some of which she no
longer understood, till at length for a little while he forgot his
sorrows and was refreshed. Moreover, there came to him one happiness,
his sight returned.

He was lying on an angarib, or native bedstead, during the heat of the
afternoon in the large, cool room that had been given to him, since if
he sat up for long his mutilated leg still pained him, whilst over
against him, Mea sat upon a stool. She had been playing to him, singing
as she played; but now her harp-like instrument lay at her side and she
watched him in silence, her chin resting upon her hand. He knew that she
was looking at him, for he could feel her gaze, and was amusing himself
by trying to recollect the exact fashion of her beauty, which he had
really seen but thrice—in the temple at Abu-Simbel; when she bade
farewell to him in the pass; and lastly, when she appeared again at the
head of her charging regiment and decreed the doom of Ibrahim and his
brigands.

This last time did not count, however, for then she was quite changed, a
valkyrie, an animated Vengeance, not a woman. Now he amused himself by
attempting to reconcile these two countenances that both were hers, and
in wondering what sort of face she wore to-day. Useless as it was, from
old habit, he looked towards her through the pitchy, maddening darkness
that hemmed him in like a wall.

He looked, and lo! he saw. On that darkness there appeared something
soft and cloudy, and he knew that it was a woman’s outspread hair. Then
within the frame of hay arose a ghost-like face, and in it shining eyes,
from which tears ran down, and on it such a look of utter tenderness as
he never, never had beheld. Oh! it was beautiful, that face; always it
would have been beautiful, but to this man who, after those weeks of
utter blindness, beheld it first of anything, it was like a vision out
of heaven. And the look upon it! Surely that, too, had been borrowed
from some pitying angel in heaven. Rupert turned his head, then looked
again, thinking that it would be gone; but no, it still was there, and
now he could even see the hand beneath the chin and the quivering of the
lips which strove to stifle back a sob.

“Mea,” he said, in English, “why do you cry?”

She sprang up, dashing the tears from her eyes with the back of her
hand.

“I no cry,” she answered, in a merry voice. “Bey, you not hear me cry.”

“No, Mea; but I saw you. Your cheek was all wet, and you sat with your
chin upon your hand.”

She uttered some Arabic exclamation of joy, then snatched the linen veil
or wimple from her head and threw it over his face.

“Look no more,” she said, “not good for your eye to look too much or you
go blind again. Also,” she added, with a happy laugh, “great shame of
you to spy upon a lady when she no think you see. You should tell her
first you going look, then she put on proper face.”

“I don’t want to see any other,” answered Rupert gently. “At first I
thought that I dreamt, and that it was an angel, only angels don’t cry.”

“I think that angels cry always if they see down here—such a lot to cry
over, Rupert Bey.”

Then she tried to control herself for a moment, and failed miserably,
for she began to weep and sob outright. She threw herself upon her knees
beside him and said:

“You ask me why I cry, I _(sob)_ tell you _(sob)_ all the truth. Because
you made like that for me, and—I no can bear it, it break my heart, for
my heart love you very much, you want to die for me; I—I want to live
for you.”

Rupert sat up on the angarib, throwing the white veil from his head,
whereon, at once forgetting herself in the danger to his new-born sight,
she placed her little hand across his eyes, and held it there. The
crisis had come, and he knew it; but how to deal with it, he did not
know.

“Don’t do that, dear Mea,” he said, in a troubled voice. “If you think
the light will harm me, tie the veil over my eyes. Then we will talk.”

She came behind him and obeyed, while Rupert felt her hot tears falling
on his hair. It was an awful moment, but he sat still, holding the
bedstead with his hand and uttering no tender word of the many that
rushed unbidden to his lips.

“Now, Mea,” he said, “sit down; no, not on the angarib—there on the
stool.”

“I sit,” she answered humbly. “Talk on.”

“Mea,” he continued, with a desperate effort, “all this won’t do. You
are sorry for me, and it upsets you and makes you say things you must
not. Mea, I am married.”

He stopped, but she made no answer. He began to wonder what she was
doing, or if she had gone away and left him, as he devoutly hoped.

Unable to bear it any more he pushed the bandage from his forehead. No;
there she sat silent and pained.

“I am married,” he remarked again, not knowing what else to say.

Then she looked up and asked: “You hate me, Rupert Bey?”

“Of course not,” he answered indignantly; “very much the reverse.”

“I thank you. Then you think me not nice, ugly?”

“Indeed, no. You are one of the most beautiful women I ever saw.”

“I thank you,” she said again, “I like hear you say that though you no
mean it. Then you angry with me because you lose your foot and eye and
get your people killed, though that old Bakhita’s fault, not mine.”

“Please don’t think so, Mea. It was not you or Bakhita, it was what you
call Kismet.”

“Yes, I think it Kismet too. Kismet all round, Kismet here,” and she
laid her hand upon her bosom. “Well, then, you not hate, you not think
ugly, you not angry, and I—oh! I _love,_” and she put such tender
passion into the word that the room seemed full of it—“and I great lady
too in my own place, I, Tama, not dirt-born. Why you no take me? See
now!” and she stood up before him and turned slowly round, “I not
beautiful as you say, too small, too thin, but I not so bad! I make you
good wife, I give you children, I love you always till I die. My people
hate strangers, still they very glad you take me, they love you too,
they praise you much, they think you bravest man in world; my emirs ask
me this morning if I married to you yet as they want make feast.”

Rupert pulled down the bandage over his eyes again; he thought it best,
muttering something about the light hurting him.

“Mea,” he said, in despair, “don’t you understand that I am already
married?”

“What that matter?” she asked. “Man can have two wives, four if he
like.”

“He can’t,” answered Rupert. “I beg you—don’t go on. It is not right; it
is more than I can bear. By our English law, he can only have one wife,
no one else—no one at all. You must have heard it.”

“Oh, yes, I hear, there at Luxor, but I think that all silly missionary
talk. White people do many things they say they should not do—I see them
and make note. Who know how many wives you have? But if you no want me,
_mafeesh_—all done with. I not trouble you any more; I go and die, that
all.”

“Unless you stop soon, you will make me go and die,” he said faintly.
“Mea, it is cruel of you to talk like that. Listen now, and do not be
angry, do not think that I am treating you ill. Oh, my dearest friend,
sit there and listen!”

Then giving up English, in which she would have found it difficult to
understand his arguments, he addressed her in Arabic, expounding our
Western doctrines and showing her that what she thought right and
proper, in the West was held a crime; that he had passed his word, and
it could not be broken, that he would rather die than break it, that his
honour was on it, and that if he violated his honour, his soul would be
as scarred and mutilated as his body was that day.

Mea listened intently, and at last began to understand.

“Now are you angry with me?” he ended. “And do you still wish me to stay
here when I tell you that if I do there must be no more of this
love-talk between us which, in the end, might bring me to ruin? If that
is too much to ask, then to-morrow I go hence into the desert to—” and
he stopped.

“Nay,” she replied, in Arabic, “I am not angry with you, Rupert Bey. I
am angry with myself who tempted you to break your own law. Oh! you are
good, the best of men that I have known, and I will learn to be good
like you—only tell me not that I must cease to love you, for that I
cannot do; and oh! speak no more of going hence into the desert to die,
for then I should die also. Nay, bide here and be my friend and brother
since you may not be my husband. Stay and forgive me who am ignorant,
who have other customs, and was not taught thus. Say that you will
stay.”

“Yes,” he answered, in a hoarse voice, for he was more affected than he
dared to show, “I will stay till I can find an opportunity of going
home; and oh! Mea, do not suppose that I think the worse of you. I
honour you, Mea; next to my wife and mother, you are the dearest to me
of any in the world. While I live, I will remain your friend. See, this
is the token of it;” and leaning forward, he searched for her hand and
found it, then lifted it to his forehead and touched it with his lips.
Next instant he heard the rustle of her robes as she left the room.

Thus did Rupert keep the oath that he had sworn to his mother years
before and come out safely from the fires of a very fierce dilemma, and
thus did a star arise upon the twilight of Mea’s soul—a far, cold star,
that yet was destined to lead her on to wondrous heights, whence the way
of the flesh seemed very distant, and that of the spirit very near.




CHAPTER XV.

RUPERT MAKES OBEISANCE

For three days after the passionate scene that has been described,
Rupert saw no more of Mea. When he asked about her, not without anxiety,
Bakhita, who had taken her place as his nurse, informed him that she had
gone to a distant part of the oasis to inquire about her crops, and to
settle a dispute between two families as to some land. For some reasons
he wished that she would come back again, since during those days
Bakhita was very short with him; indeed, the word “harsh” would scarcely
have exaggerated her attitude.

“I know you are angry with me,” he said at last, “but you who are wise
and acquainted with our law, will understand.”

“I understand that you are a fool, Rupert Bey, like many of you white
men who think yourselves so good and clever. I wish you had never come
to Tama, for now my niece will go unmarried, and the ancient race must
die.”

“It is not my fault,” he answered humbly, “it is yours, Bakhita, who
would accompany me somewhat against my will, and thus have brought ruin
upon everybody.”

“Nay,” she answered crossly, “it was yours, who spied upon us in the
sanctuary at Abu-Simbel, and thus caused the libation to be poured
amiss. From that moment Tama became your slave, and the god grew jealous
and brought evil upon us all, especially upon you, Rupert Bey.”

He laughed a little and said:

“You don’t really believe all that, do you, Bakhita? Those old gods have
been dead for many an age.”

“I am not sure what I believe,” she answered, “but departed faiths still
haunt the blood of those whose fathers held them, and the ancient gods
live on in other forms. To-day none worship ours, save I, for Mea turned
from him to you, and the people have forgotten long ago. Well, I was
sure that ill-luck would come, and so it has. Still, I do not blame you,
Rupert Bey, who are brave and honest, and have dealt well by her whom
you might have betrayed and left. Nor,” she added, with a curious burst
of conviction, “nor am I sure that things will go so ill after all. You
said to us one day that the spirit is greater than the flesh, and that
those who follow the spirit win at last. Though you seem such a fool,
perhaps you are right, Rupert Bey. I think so at times, for, look you, I
also have put aside the flesh and followed the spirit all my life, and
learned much, for do they not call me wise and foresighted? Only,” she
added reflectively, “perhaps I have followed the false spirit, and you
follow the true. Perhaps the old gods are really dead at last, and new
ones rule the world. But if so, in the Soudan they are devils.
Meanwhile, Rupert Bey, deal gently with the flower whose stalk you have
broken in your clumsy hand, lest the air should soon lack its
fragrance.”

On the third day Mea reappeared, looking rather pale and red-eyed, but
outwardly, at any rate, in a cheerful mood. Not one word did she say
then or afterwards to Rupert about their great argument as to the
moralities of the East and West. For whether she had been visiting her
crops, or perchance lying weeping on her bed, at least it would seem
that she had conquered herself, and was determined to adapt her life to
the conditions upon which they had tacitly agreed. By now it was certain
that his sight would be restored to Rupert, and this joyful fact worked
wonders for them both. For instance, mounted on a quiet mule, which a
servant led, whilst others ran before, behind, and around him, and Mea
herself rode at his side, she conducted him about the oasis that was her
heritage.

It was a large place, thirty miles or more in length by perhaps fifteen
in breadth, which would have supported a great population, as once it
must have done, for its soil, washed down from the mountain-sides, was
of a marvellous fertility and very well-watered. The local methods of
cultivation, however, were primitive, and as the trade with outside
people was very small, its inhabitants had no incentive to grow more
than they could consume.

“If I had the management of this oasis for ten years,” said Rupert to
Mea, after he had inspected most of it, “I would make you the richest
woman in the Soudan.”

“Then stay and make me so,” she answered, smiling. But he felt that it
was not the riches which she desired.

What interested him even more were the ruins of the great temple which
had evidently been devoted to the worship of Ra—that is, the Sun as the
robe and symbol of Divinity. It was of a late period, Ptolemaic indeed,
and not of the best workmanship, and there were various passages in the
inscriptions which seemed to suggest that it was founded by some
Egyptian prince of the thirtieth dynasty, who fled hither after the
reconquest of Egypt by the Persians. It appeared that his descendants
for many generations kept a kind of royal state in this far-off oasis
where nobody thought it worth while to attack them. Indeed, on the
sarcophagus of one of them who died as late as the reign of Theodosius
four centuries after Christ, was an inscription pompously describing the
deceased as “Beloved of Ra, King of Tama and of Upper and Lower Egypt.”

The most impressive part of this temple, indeed, was the mausoleum of
the rulers of the oasis who had called themselves kings. Probably
because they could not afford to make for themselves great separate
tombs after the fashion of those in the Valley of Kings at Thebes, they
hollowed in the rock beneath the temple a vast crypt, from which opened
outside chambers like to those of the Serapeum, the burying-place of the
sacred bulls of Memphis. At the head of this crypt stood a huge and
solemn statue of Osiris in his mummy wrappings, but wearing the crown
and feathers of Amen-Ra, and at its entrance was a great underground
pool or cistern of water, across which the bodies of the dead were
ferried, in imitation, doubtless, of the last journey across the Nile.
Certain of the side-chambers were bricked up, but others were either
never closed, or had been opened, and there in their sarcophagi lay the
dead.

In a past age some of the granite coverings and coffin-lids had been
removed, but the mummies remained inviolate, even their golden ornaments
were not disturbed. Those of one young queen, or rather chieftainess,
who had died a few years before the birth of Christ were indeed of
remarkable beauty and great value, comprising a crown of gold filagree
and enamelled flowers of marvellous workmanship, inlaid pectoral and
bracelets and a sceptre of gold surmounted by a crystal symbol of the
sun. Mea took them from the body and arrayed herself in them and stood
before Rupert a queen of Egypt, as once he had seen her stand in the
sanctuary at Abu-Simbel. Very wonderful she looked thus with the
lamp-light shining upon her in that awesome, silent place.

“What are you doing?” he asked, for notwithstanding the bizarre beauty
of her decorations, it jarred upon him to see her ornamented with these
insignia of death.

“I try them on, Rupert Bey,” she answered. “As we cannot make such
things now I will borrow them from the lady, my long-ago grandmother, to
be buried in. Come here; I show you my tomb.”

Then she led the way past certain built-up chambers in which, she
informed him, her immediate predecessors lay uncoffined, to a recess
where was a magnificent sarcophagus of alabaster. It was graved about
with the usual texts from the Book of the Dead, but had several
peculiarities. Thus in its great interior were places for two bodies
with a little ridge of alabaster left to separate them. It was quite
empty, the massive lid which stood by its side never having been put on.
Also the spaces for the name, or names, of its occupants were left
blank, showing that those for whom it was prepared rested elsewhere.

“Where are they?” asked Rupert, as with the help of Mea and his crutch
he scrambled down from the pediment of the tomb.

“Don’t know,” she answered, “perhaps die somewhere else, or killed by
enemy; perhaps quarrel, and no wish to be buried together. I take their
house when my time comes; just fit me.”

“Then you mean your husband to lie there too?” blurted out Rupert,
without thinking.

Holding the lamp in her hand she turned and looked at him with steady
eyes.

“Understand, Rupert Bey,” she said, “I have no husband, never—never. All
day I work alone, when night come I sleep alone. Then my people build up
this place—all, all, for I the last and nobody ever come in here any
more. Yes, build it up with stone of the temple and make it solid like
the mountain, for I wish to sleep long and quiet.”

Such were the oasis Tama and its antiquities. Of its people there is
little to say, save that they were grave in demeanour, rather light in
colour and handsome in appearance, especially the women, looking much as
the last descendants of an ancient and high-bred race might be expected
to look. The men, as we have seen, were brave enough in war, suspicious
and exclusive also, but indolent at home, doing no more work than was
necessary, and for the most part lacking the energy to trade. Their
customs as regards marriage and other matters were those common to Nubia
and the Soudan, but although they talked of Allah they were not
Mahommedans, and if they worshipped anything, it was God as symbolised
by the sun. Indeed this was all that remained of their ancient faith,
with the exception of certain feasts and days of mourning, whereof they
had long forgotten the origin. Only a few of the old women before a
marriage or a burial, or any other event of importance, would
occasionally creep down to the vault and pour a libation to the statue
of Osiris that wore the crown and feathers of Amen-Ra, as, in an hour of
danger, Bakhita had made Mea do at Abu-Simbel.

This survival was interesting, but Rupert was never able to discover
whether it had descended from the ancient days, or whether they had
learnt the practice from the sculptures on the temple and the paintings
in the vault, which showed the departed rulers and their wives and
attendants pouring such libations before this very statue. At least, of
the old religion nothing else remained, nor could anyone in Tama read
the hieroglyphics. It was her desire to acquire this and other learning,
and to become acquainted with those men and the wonderful outside world,
whereof rumours had reached her in her isolated solitude, that had
caused Mea to disguise herself and spend two years at the school at
Luxor. Here, although, as she found to her disappointment, they did not
teach hieroglyphics, she had accumulated a considerable quantity of
miscellaneous knowledge of men and things, including a superficial
acquaintance with the English tongue, in which she loved to talk.

Now she insisted upon continuing her education under Rupert’s guidance,
and as they had only one book, the instruction took the form of lectures
upon history, literature, art, and everything else under the sun with
which he had the slightest acquaintance. It was a strange sight to see
them in one of the big rooms of her house, Mea seated at a little table
and Rupert limping to and fro upon his crutch, and holding forth on all
things, human and Divine, such as Egyptology—of which he really knew
something; modern political history, especially that of Africa, and
religion. Indeed, the last played a large part in their studies, for as
it happened among the few belongings that were saved from the
saddle-bags of his camel was Rupert’s Bible, that same skin-bound volume
which had excited Edith’s wonder and interest. Therefore it was out of
this Bible that he made her read to him, with the result that she
learned from it more than the letter. As he intended that she should,
soon she began to appreciate the spirit also, and in its light to
understand much that had puzzled her in Rupert’s conduct towards herself
and others. But the knowledge did not teach her to love him less, only
perhaps she honoured him the more.

So the weeks passed on, and strange as were the conditions of his life,
not altogether unhappily for Rupert. As yet it was impossible for him to
leave the oasis for the reasons that have been given, and sometimes with
a sudden sense of shame, he awoke to the fact that this detention was no
longer the agony to him that it had been at first; that now indeed he
could endure it with patience. Of course the truth was that we are all
of us very much the creatures of our immediate surroundings, and that
the atmosphere of this peaceful desert home had crept into his being,
bringing with it rest, if not content. He had suffered so much in mind
and body, and now he was not called upon to suffer. So skilful was she
in her dealings with him, so well did she veil her heart in its
wrappings of courtesy and friendship, that he ceased even, or at any
rate to a great extent, to be anxious about Mea.

He tried to forget that passionate scene, and when he did think of it
his modesty prompted him to believe that it really meant nothing.
Eastern women were, he knew, very impulsive, also very changeful.
Probably what had moved her, although at the time she did not know it,
was not devotion to a shattered hulk of a man like himself, but as she
had said at the beginning, pity for his sad state of which indirectly
she was the cause.

Al least he hoped that it was so, and what we hope earnestly in time we
may come to believe. So that trouble was smoothed away, or at any rate
remained in abeyance.

For the rest those palms and mountain-tops, those bubbling waters and
green fields, that solemn, ruined temple and those towering pylons, were
better than the parks and streets of London, or that hateful habitation
in Grosvenor Square where Lord Devene leant against his haunted marble
mantel-piece and mocked. Indeed, had it not been for Edith and his
mother, Rupert would, he felt, be content, now that his career had gone,
to renounce the world and live in Tama all his days. But these two—the
wife who must think herself a widow, and the mother who believed herself
sonless, he longed ceaselessly to see again. For their sakes, day by day
he watched for an opportunity of escape.

At length it came.

“Rupert Bey,” said Mea quietly to him one morning in Arabic as they sat
down to their usual lesson, “I have good news for you. By this time
to-morrow you may be gone from here,” and whilst pretending to look down
at the parchment upon which she was writing with a reed pen, as her
forefathers might have done twenty centuries before—for paper was scarce
with them—she watched his face from beneath her long lashes.

The intelligence stunned him a little, preventing—perhaps
fortunately—any outbreak of exuberant joy. Indeed, he only answered in
the words of the Arabic proverb:

“After calm, storm; after peace, war,” and the reply seemed to satisfy
Mea, although she knew that this proverb had an end to it “after death,
paradise—or hell.”

“How, Mea?” he asked presently.

“A big caravan, too strong to be attacked, is going to cross the Nile
above Wady-Halfa and pass through the Nubian desert to the shores of the
Red Sea beyond the country that is held by Osman Digna. Its chief, who
is known to our people, and a true man, makes the pilgrimage to Mecca. I
have sent messengers to him. He is willing that you should accompany
him, only you must not say who you are, and if they meet any white men
you must promise not to talk to them. Otherwise, you may bring him into
trouble for the befriending of a Christian.”

“I will promise that,” answered Rupert.

“Good! Then you leave here to-morrow morning at the dawn. Now, let us go
on with the lesson; it is my last.”

That lesson proved a very desultory performance; indeed, it consisted
chiefly of a compilation by Rupert of lists of books, which he
instructed Mea she was to send to Egypt to buy, as soon as there was an
opportunity, in order that she might continue her education by herself.
But Mea seemed to have lost all interest in the future improvement of
her mind.

What was the good of learning, she asked, if there was nobody to talk to
of what she had learned? Bakhita did not care for these things, and the
others had never heard of them.

Still she took the lists and said she would send for the books when she
could, that was, after the country grew quiet.

The rest of that miserable day went by somehow. There were meals to eat
as usual; also Rupert’s dromedary had to be got up, and a store of food
made ready for his journey. Mea wanted him to take money, of which she
had a certain amount hidden away—several thousand pounds indeed—the
products of her share of sales of horses and corn which the tribe
occasionally effected with travelling merchants, who bought from them
cheap and sold to the Egyptian Government, or others, dear. But this he
would not touch, nor did he need to do so, for in his clothes when he
was captured were sewn about a hundred pounds, some in gold and some in
bank-notes, which he thought would be sufficient to take him to England.


It was night. All was prepared. Rupert had said his farewells to the
emirs and chief men, who seemed very sorry that he was going. Mea had
vanished somewhere, and he did not know whether he would see her again
before he started at the dawn. The moon shone brightly, and accompanied
by the native dog that had led him when he was blind, and having become
attached to him, scenting separation with the strange instinct of its
race, refused to leave his side that day, Rupert took his crutch and
walked through the pylon of the temple, partly in the hope that he might
meet Mea, and partly to see it once more at the time of full moon, when
its ruin looked most beautiful.

Through the hypostyle hall he went where owls flitted among the great
columns, till he came to the entrance of the vast crypt, a broad
rock-slope, down which in old days the sarcophagi were dragged. Here he
stopped, seating himself upon the head of a fallen statue, and fell into
a reverie, from which he was roused by the fidgeting and low growlings
of the dog, that ran down the slope and returned again as though he
wished to call his attention to something below.

At length his curiosity was excited, and led by the dog, Rupert
descended the long slope at the foot of which lay the underground pool
of water. Before he reached its end he saw a light, and limping on
quietly, perceived by its rays Bakhita and Mea, the former bending over
the pool, and the latter wrapped in a dark cloak, seated native fashion
at its edge. Guessing that the old gipsy was celebrating another of her
ancient ceremonies, he motioned the dog to heel, stood still and
watched.

Presently he saw her thrust out from the side of the pool a boat about
as large as that which boys sail upon the waters of the London parks. It
was built upon the model of the ancient Egyptian funerary barges with a
half deck forward, upon which lay something that looked like a little
mummy. Also, it had a single sail set. Bakhita gave it a strong push, so
that it floated out into the middle of the pool, which was of the size
of a large pond where, the momentum being exhausted, it lay idly. Now
the old woman stretched out a wand she held and uttered a kind of
invocation, which, so far as he could hear and understand it, ran:

“Boat, boat, thou that bearest what was his, do my bidding. Sail north,
sail south, sail east, sail west, sail where his feet shall turn, and
where his feet shall bide, there stay. Boat, boat, let his Double set
thy sail. Boat, boat, let his Spirit breathe into thy sail. Boat, boat,
in the name of Ra, lord of life, in the name of Osiris, lord of death, I
bid thee bring that which was his, to north, south, east, or west, where
he shall bide at last. Boat, boat, obey.” *

* The Double and the Spirit here mentioned were doubtless those
constituent parts of the human entity which were known respectively
to the old Egyptians as the Ka (the Double), and the Khu (the Soul
itself). Of these, some traditional knowledge might very well have
descended to Bakhita.

She ceased and watched a little lamp which burnt upon the prow of the
boat, in front of the object that looked like a toy mummy. Mea also rose
and watched, while out of the darkness Rupert and the dog watched too.
For a little while the boat remained still, then one of the numerous
draughts that blew about these caverns seemed to catch its sail, and
slowly it drew away across the water.

“It goes west,” whispered Mea.

“Aye,” answered Bakhita, “west as he does. But will it bide in the
west?”

“I pray not,” answered Mea, “since ever from of old the west has been
the land of death, and therefore to the west of these waters lie the
sepulchres, and where the sun sets beyond the west bank of the Nile,
there for thousands of years our people laid their dead. Nay, boat,
tarry not in the west where Osiris rules, the cold and sorrowful west.
Return, return to the House of Ra, and in his light abide.”

Thus she murmured on, like one who makes a song to herself in the
Eastern fashion, all the while intently watching the little lamp that
showed the position of the boat. Having reached the western edge of the
pool, it seemed inclined to remain there, whereon Mea, turning to
Bakhita, began to scold her, asking her why she had brought her there to
see this childish play, and whether she thought that she, Mea, who had
been educated at Luxor and received many lessons from the Bey, believed
in her silly magic, or that a toy boat, even though it did carry a man’s
foot made up like a mummy, could possibly tell whither he would wander.

“If the boat sails right, then you will believe; if it sails wrong, then
you will not believe. That I expected, and it is best,” answered Bakhita
drily, and at that moment something happened to the little lamp that
stood before the mummy foot, for suddenly it went out.

Now Mea grew positively angry, and spoke sharp words to Bakhita as to
her methods of divination and the benighted and primitive condition of
her intelligence in general.

“Were I to accept the augury of your boat,” she said, “I must be sure
not only that he will stay in the west, but that he will die there, for
look, the light is out.”

“Other things die beside men’s bodies,” answered Bakhita, in her brief
fashion; “their hopes, or beliefs, or perhaps their good luck—who can
say?”

As she spoke, suddenly out from the darkness of the pool into the ring
of light cast by the lamp which Bakhita bore, that fairy boat came
gliding. The gust of wind blowing down the western sepulchres beyond the
pool, which extinguished its lamp, had also caught its sail and brought
it back, half filled with water shipped in turning; brought it back
swiftly, but sailing straight to where Mea knelt upon the edge of the
pool. She saw it, and with a little cry of joy, bent herself over the
water, and stretching out her rounded arms, caught the boat just before
it sank, and hugged it to her breast.

“Put the thing down,” said Bakhita. “You don’t believe in it, and it is
wet and will spoil your robe. Nay, the Bey’s foot is mine, not yours. I
brought it from the Wells.”

Then they began to quarrel over this poor mummied relic of which Rupert
thought that he had seen the last many a day before, while he took an
opportunity to beat his retreat. Bakhita and her ancient spells were, as
usual, interesting, though when they involved a lost fragment of himself
they became somewhat gruesome. But in such things he had no belief
whatsoever; they only attracted him as historical, or rather as
spiritual survivals. What moved him about the matter was Mea’s part in
it, revealing, as it did, that her interest in his future had in no way
abated. Indeed, he felt that it would be long before he was able to
forget the touching sight of this wayward and beautiful girl, this
desert-bred daughter of kings, snatching the sinking boat and its
grizzly burden from the water and pressing them to her breast as though
they were a living child. Meanwhile, the accident that he had seen it
did not make this farewell less difficult.

When at length he reached the house—for amongst the fallen stones of the
temple his progress with a crutch was slow—Rupert sat down upon its
steps, feeling sure that Mea would wish to see him, and that it would be
well to get that parting over. Presently the mongrel at his side began
to bark, and next minute he saw her walking slowly up the path towards
him, her cloak open and the breast of her robe still wet where she had
pressed the dripping boat against it. He struggled from the step to meet
her.

“Sit, Rupert Bey,” she said; “sit. Why trouble you to rise for me?”

“I cannot sit while you stand,” he answered.

“Then I sit also, on the other side of the dog. He look like the god on
the wall, does he not, what you call him—Anubis, brother of Osiris? No,
don’t growl at me, Anubis; I no hurt your master, you nasty little god
of the dead.”

“Where have you been, and why is your dress wet?” asked Rupert.

“Ask Anubis here, he wise, knows as much as his master. I been to the
burying-place and lean over holy water to look if I grow more ugly than
usual.”

“Stuff!” answered Rupert.

“You no believe me? Well, then, perhaps I thirsty and drink water. Much
weep make me thirsty. No believe still? Then perhaps I look in water and
see pictures there.”

“What pictures can you see in that dark place?”

“Oh, plenty, dark no matter. See things inside, like you when you blind.
I tell you what I see; I see you come back here, and so I weep no more.
I—I—happy. Make that dog go the other side, he want to bite me now, he
jealous because you look at me, not him.”

Accordingly the protesting Anubis was rearranged, and continued his
snarlings and grumblings from a safer distance.

“Some more of old Bakhita’s nonsense, I suppose,” said Rupert. “I
thought that you had given up believing in her myths and omens.”

“What mean myths and omens? No matter; Bakhita old fool, gods old
stones, believe in none of them. You say it, so all right. Believe in
you, and me—inside, what my heart tell me. My heart tell me you come
back. That why I happy.”

“Then I am afraid, Mea, that your heart knows more than I do.”

“Yes,” she answered, “think more; feel more, so know more. _That_ all
right; what do you expect?” Then suddenly dropping her jerky and
peculiar English, Mea addressed him in her solemn and native Arabic.
“Hark you, Rupert, guest of my home, guest of my heart, preserver of my
body, who shed your blood for me. You think me foolish, one who tries to
warm her hands at the fires of the marsh, one who plucks flowers that
fade, and believes them immortal stars fallen to deck her breast and
hair. Yet she finds warmth in the marsh fire, and in the dead flower’s
heart a star. I believe that you will come back, why or how it matters
not, but to make sure you shall swear an oath to me, you shall swear it
by the name of your Jesus, for then it will not be broke.”

“What oath?” asked Rupert anxiously.

“This: Sometimes lamps go out, and where we thought light was there is
great blackness. Sometimes hopes fail, and death stands where life
should have been. This may chance to you, Rupert Bey, yonder in the
cold, western land of the setting sun.”

“Do you mean that I shall find my wife dead?” he asked, with a quiver in
his voice. “Is that the picture you saw in your pool?”

“Nay; I saw it not; I do not know. I think she lives and is well. But
there are other sorts of death. Faith can die, hope can die, love can
die. I tell you I know not, I know nothing; I have no magic; I believe
in no divination. I only believe in what my heart tells me, and
perchance it tells me wrong. Still I ask you to swear this. If things
should so befall that there is nothing more to keep you in the West, if
you should need to find new faith, new hope, new love, then that you
will come back to Tama and to me. Swear it now by the name of your God,
Jesus; so I may be sure that you will keep the oath.”

“I do not swear by that name,” he answered. “Moreover why should I swear
at all?”

“For my sake, Rupert Bey, you will. Hear me and decide. I tell you that
if you do not come back, then I die. I do not ask to be your wife, that
does not matter to me, but I ask to see you day by day. If I do not see
you, then I die.”

“But, Mea,” he said, “it may be impossible. You know why.”

“If it is impossible, so be it, I die. Then it is better that I die.
Perhaps I kill myself, I do not know, at any rate I go away. I ask not
that you should swear to come, if it should make you break your oath to
others, only if there are no more oaths to keep. Now choose, Rupert Bey.
Give me life or give me death, as you desire. Make your decree. I shall
not be angry. Declare your will that your servant may obey,” and she
rose and stood before him with bent head and hands humbly crossed upon
her breast.

He looked at her. There could be no doubt she was in earnest. Mea meant
what she said, and she said that if he did not gratify this strange wish
of hers, and refused to give her any hope of his return, she would die,
or at least so he understood her; and was certain that if she had the
hope, she would not die and bring her blood upon his head. Rupert looked
at her again, standing there in the moonlight like some perfect statue
of humility, and his spirit melted within him, a blush of shame spread
itself over his scarred and rugged features, shame that this
loyal-hearted and most honoured woman should thus lay her soul naked
before him, saying that it must starve if he would not feed it with the
crumb of comfort that it desired. Then he hesitated no longer.

“Mea,” he said, in the kind and pleasant voice that was perhaps his
greatest charm—“Mea, my law says: ‘Swear not at all’; I read it to you
the other day. Now, Mea, will my word do instead?”

“My lord’s word is as other men’s oaths,” she answered, lifting her
humble eyes a little.

Then he bent forward, resting on his knee, not as an act of adoration,
but because it was difficult to him to rise without assistance, and
stretching out his hand, took her crossed hands from her breast, and
bowing himself, pressed them against his forehead, thus—as she, an
Eastern, knew well—prostrating himself before her, making the ancient
obeisance that a man can only make with honour to his liege sovereign,
or to one who has conquered him.

“My lady Tama,” he went on, “after one other my life is yours, for you
gave it back to me, and after her and my mother there lives no woman
whom I honour half so much as you, my lady and my friend. Therefore,
Mea, since you wish it, and think that it would make you happier, should
I perchance be left alone—which God forbid!—I promise you that I will
come to you and spend my life with you until you weary of me—not as a
husband, which you say you do not desire, which also might be
impossible, but as a brother and a friend. Is that what you wish me to
say?” and he loosed her hand, bowed to her once more in the Eastern
fashion, with his own outstretched, so that his fingers just touched her
feet, and raised himself to the step again.

“Oh!” she answered, in deep and thrilling tones, “all, all! More, by
far, than I had hoped. Now I will not die; I will live! Yes, I will keep
my life like a jewel beyond price, because I shall know, even if you do
not come, that you may come some time, and that if you never come, yet
you would have come if you could—that the marsh-light is true fire, and
that the flower will one day be a star. For soon or late we shall meet
again, Rupert Bey! Only, you should not have prostrated yourself to me,
who am all unworthy. Well, I will work, I will learn, I will become
worthy. A gift, my lord! Leave me that holy book of yours, that I may
study it and believe what you believe.”

He limped into the house and brought back the tattered old Bible bound
in buckskin.

“You couldn’t have asked for anything that I value more, Mea,” he said,
“for I have had that book since I was a child, and for that reason I am
very glad to give it to you. Only read it for its own sake—not for
mine—and believe for Truth’s sake, not because it would please me.”

“I hear and I obey,” she said, as she took the book and thrust it into
the bosom of her loose robe.

Then for a moment they stood facing each other in silence, till at
length, perhaps because she was unable to speak, she lifted her hands,
held them over him as though in blessing, then turned and glided away
into the shadows of the night.

He did not see her any more.




CHAPTER XVI.

MEANWHILE

It was the last day of the old year when, had there been anyone to take
interest in her proceedings among so many finer vessels going to or
returning from their business on the great waters, a black and dirty
tramp steamer, whose trade it was to carry coals to the East, might have
been seen creeping up the Thames with the tide. A light but greasy fog
hung over the face of the river, making navigation difficult, and
blurring the outlines of the buildings on its bank, and through it the
sound of the church bells—for it was Sunday—floated heavily, as though
their clappers had been muffled in honour of the decease of one of the
great ones of the earth.

In his cabin—for after the suns of the Soudan the winter wind was too
cold to face—sat Rupert Ullershaw, dressed in a mustard-coloured suit of
reach-me-downs, somewhat too small for him, and of a peculiarly hideous
cut and pattern, which he had purchased from a sailor. Physically he was
in good health, but his mental condition may best be described as one of
nervous irritability born of weeks and months of suspense. What news
awaited him on his arrival home, he wondered, and how would he, a
discredited and mutilated cripple, be received?

That he was discredited he knew already, for he had found an old paper
on board the ship, in which, on looking at it, his own name had leapt to
his eye. Someone had asked a question in Parliament concerning him and
his mission—why it had been sent, what were the facts of the rumours of
its annihilation, whether it was true that this disaster had been
brought about through the envoy, Lieutenant-Colonel Ullershaw, C.B.,
having mixed himself up in tribal quarrels over a native woman, and what
was the pecuniary loss involved to the country? Then followed the answer
of the Secretary of State, the man who had pressed him to go on the
grounds of duty and patriotism. It stated that Colonel Ullershaw had
been despatched to carry out certain confidential negotiations with a
number of sheiks on the borders of the Soudan. That according to the
report received from the Egyptian authorities, a native sergeant named
Abdullah, who accompanied him, had arrived at Cairo and informed them
that all the members of the mission, who were disguised as merchants,
had been attacked by a petty chief called Ibrahim and destroyed,
Abdullah alone escaping. That it appeared from this survivor’s evidence
that the attack was not political, but had its origin in Colonel
Ullershaw having unfortunately tried to protect two native women who
were travelling with him, one of whom, stated to be a young person of
some rank, was claimed by the sheik Ibrahim as a wife. That the loss to
the country, or rather to the Egyptian Government, amounted to about two
thousand pounds, of which one thousand was in cash.

Arising out of this were other questions, evidently framed to annoy the
Government upon a small matter, such as: Was it true that Colonel
Ullershaw had been chosen over the heads of more suitable persons,
because his great family influence had been brought to bear upon the War
Office? To this the answer was that the deceased officer’s record had
been very distinguished, and he was chosen because of his diplomatic
experience, his knowledge of Arabic and personal acquaintance with the
sheiks, with whom it was necessary to communicate: That, as the House
would be aware, his family influence as represented in that House, and,
he might add, in another place, was not likely to unduly influence Her
Majesty’s present advisers, of whom the gentlemen concerned were strong
and able opponents. (A laugh.)

The thirst for information not being yet appeased, an Irish member asked
whether it was true that a punitive expedition had been sent to kill the
chief whose wife Colonel Ullershaw had stolen—(laughter); and whether
the Government now regretted their choice of Colonel Ullershaw as the
head of this mission.

Answer: That such an expedition had been sent, but that it appeared that
Colonel Ullershaw and his party had made a very gallant fight before
they were overwhelmed, and that either he, or, as was stated by some
nomads, the lady, whom he had befriended, with the help of her tribesmen
had already killed the sheik Ibrahim and most of his men, whose corpses
had been seen by the nomads hanging to some trees: That the Government
admitted that their choice had not been justified by events, but that
he, the Secretary of State, deprecated the casting of slurs upon very
insufficient information upon the memory of a brave and devoted servant
of his country—(hear, hear!)—whose mistakes, whatever they might have
been, seemed to have sprung from the exaggerated chivalry of his nature.
(A laugh.)

Another Irish member: Was it true that Colonel Ullershaw had been
married on the day he left England to enter upon this mission? The
Speaker: “Order, order. This House has nothing to do with the domestic
concerns of the late Colonel Ullershaw.”

The Honourable member apologised for his question, remarking that his
excuse for it must be that the country, or Egypt, had to pay in lives
and money for the domestic entanglements of Colonel Ullershaw, in which
he became involved among the desert sands. (Much laughter and cries of
order.) He wished to ask the Right Honourable gentleman whether he was
sure that the gallant Colonel—(more laughter)—was really dead?

The Secretary of War: “I fear there is no doubt upon that point.”

The subject then dropped.


Turning over the paper in a dazed fashion—for the cruelty and injustice
of these questions and the insinuations so lightly made for party
purposes cut him to the heart—Rupert had come upon a sub-leader which
discussed the matter in a tone of solemn ignorance. Being an Opposition
organ, the leader-writer of the journal seemed to assume that the facts
were correctly stated, and that the unfortunate officer concerned
brought about the failure of the mission and lost his own life by a
course of action so foolish as to be discreditable, in which, as it
stated, “the ever-present hand of female influence can unfortunately be
traced.” It added that deeply as the death of a man who had served his
country well and gallantly in the past was to be regretted, perhaps for
Colonel Ullershaw it was the best thing that could have happened, since
it seemed probable that in any event his career would have been at an
end.

After reading this report and comment, Rupert’s common-sense and
knowledge of official ways assured him that, however unjustly, he was in
all probability a ruined man. On the charges about the lady in the
desert he might, it is true, be able to put a different complexion, but
it would be impossible for him to deny that the unfortunate presence of
Bakhita and Mea had been the immediate cause of his disaster, or indeed
that he had been spending several months as their guest. Beyond these
details, however, lay the crushing fact that he who had been expected to
succeed, had utterly and completely failed, and by failing, exposed
those who employed him to sharp criticism and unpleasant insinuations.
Lastly, the circumstance that he was now a hopeless cripple would of
course be taken advantage of to dispense with his further services.

So convinced was he of the desperate nature of his plight that he had
not even attempted to offer any explanation to the Egyptian Government,
as he saw that his only chance lay in influencing those at headquarters
and persuading them to order a further local inquiry in Egypt. Besides,
he was anxious to get home, and knew that if he had opened up the matter
in Cairo, he would probably be detained for months, and very possibly be
put under arrest pending investigations.

Rupert’s journey across the desert had been long, but unmarked by any
incident or danger, for they passed round Osman Digna’s hordes and
through country that was practically depopulated, meeting but few
natives and no white men. So far as Rupert was concerned it was
comfortable enough; since after the Arab caravan had started from the
neighbourhood of Tama, he found to his surprise that Mea had provided
him with a guard of twenty of her best men, who brought with them a tent
and ample provisions. He ordered them to return, but they refused,
saying that they had been commanded by their lady to travel with him to
the Red Sea as an escort to the dog Anubis that had insisted upon
following him from the town, which dog they were charged to bring back
safely when he parted with it at the water. Then understanding what Mea
meant by this Eastern subterfuge about the dog and fearing to hurt her
feelings, should he insist, he suffered the men to come with him, with
the good result that he found himself regarded as a great personage in
the caravan.

At length they reached a little port on the Red Sea whence the pilgrims
to Mecca proposed to proceed by dhow to Suez, and, as it chanced, found
there this English collier that was taking in fresh water. On her Rupert
embarked with the pilgrims, passing himself off as one of them, for the
captain of the collier was glad to earn a little by taking passengers.
The last that he saw of the desert was his Tama escort, who, having
kissed his hand and made their dignified farewells, were turning their
camels’ heads homewards, the poor cur, Anubis, notwithstanding his howls
and struggles, being secured in a basket which was fastened to the side
of one of the said camels. No; that was not quite the last, for as the
boat rowed out to the steamer which lay at a little distance, it passed
a jutting spit of land that gave shelter to the shallow harbour. Of a
sudden from this promontory there floated up a sound of wild, sad music,
a music of pipes and drums. Rupert recognised it at once; it was the
same that he had heard when he rode with Bakhita and Mea from
Abu-Simbel, the music of the Wandering Players, those marvellous men who
refused baksheesh.

As the morning mist lifted he saw them well, on the sandy beach within
twenty yards of the boat. There were the five muffled figures squatted
on the ground, three blowing at their pipes and two seated opposite to
them beating drums to time. As before they seemed to take not the
slightest notice of the passers-by, except that their music grew wilder
and more shrill. An English sailor in the boat shouted to them to stop
that funeral march and play something funny, but they never lifted their
heads, whereon, remarking that theirs was a queer way to earn a living,
caterwauling to the birds and fishes, the sailor turned his attention to
the tiller and thought no more about them. But even on the ship their
melancholy music could be heard floating across the water, although the
players themselves were lost in the haze. Indeed, it was while Rupert
read the report of what had passed in the House of Commons in the old
paper which he found in the deck cabin, that its last wailing burst
reached him and slowly faded into silence.

At Suez the pilgrims left the steamer, but as she suited him very well,
and the fare demanded did not make any big hole in his £100, he revealed
himself as an Englishman and booked a passage on to London. Now London
was in sight, yonder it lay beneath that dark mass of cloud, and—what
would he find there? He had not telegraphed from Suez or Port Said.

It was, he felt, impossible to explain matters in a cable, and what
could be the use, especially as then everything would get into the
Press? They thought him dead, or so he gathered from that paper,
therefore no one would incur extra suspense or sorrow by waiting for a
few more days, to find that he, or some of him, was still alive. He
longed to see his wife with a great longing; by day and by night he
thought of her, dreaming of the love and sympathy with which she would
greet him.

Yet at times doubts did cross his mind, for Edith loved success, and he
was now an utter failure, whose misfortunes must involve her also. Could
he be the same Rupert Ullershaw who had left Charing Cross railway
station nine months before, prosperous, distinguished, chosen for an
important mission, with a great career before him? Undoubtedly he was,
but all these things had left him; like his body his future was utterly
marred, and his present seemed almost shameful. Nothing remained to him
now except his wife’s love.

He comforted himself. She would not withhold that who had taken him for
better or worse; indeed it was the nature of women to show unsuspected
qualities when trouble overtook those who were dear to them. No; upon
this point he need not torment himself, but there were others.

Was he to tell Edith the dreadful secret of her birth which had haunted
him like a nightmare all these weary months? Sooner or later he supposed
that it must be done. And must he meet Lord Devene, and if so, what was
he to say when they did meet? Then Edith would want to know the truth of
this story of the lady in the desert, which, of course, she had a right
to learn in its every detail. There was nothing in it. Mea was no more
than a dear friend to him; indeed he had thought of her but little
lately, whose mind was so preoccupied with other matters. Yet he felt
that the tale of their relationship, told exactly as it occurred, and he
could repeat it in no other way, might be open to misinterpretation, as
the facts of his escort of her and her aunt across the desert had been
already.

Well, she would have to take his word for it, and even if she did not
estimate that quite as high as Mea had done, at least she knew that he
was no teller of lies. Then after these difficulties were overcome, how
was he to live? He had saved a little money, and perhaps as a wounded
man they might give him a small pension, out of which his heavy
insurance would have to be paid, if indeed it did not absorb it all.
There remained her father’s—he winced as the word came into his
mind—settlement upon Edith, but that income, personally, he would rather
starve than touch. Still his wife must be supported in a way
commensurate with her position. This outlook, too, was so black that he
abandoned its consideration and fell to thinking of the joy of his
meeting with his mother.

Here at least there were no ifs or buts. She would understand, she would
console; his misfortunes would only make him dearer to her. For the
rest, sufficient to the day was its evil—the morrow must take care of
itself. It was indeed sufficient.


Now while the old tramp lumbers up the Thames through the grey December
mist and sleet, let us turn for a few minutes to the fortunes of some of
the other personages in this history.

After her husband’s departure, Edith returned to live with Mrs.
Ullershaw, which was an inexpensive arrangement, and, as she explained
to Dick, the right kind of thing to do. Several letters arrived from
Rupert, the last written at Abu-Simbel the night before he began his
fatal journey, and some were sent in reply which he never received. Then
came the long silence, and after it the awful, sudden catastrophe of
which they learned first from a Cairo telegram in an evening paper.
Rupert was dead, and she, Edith, who had never been a wife, was left a
widow. The blow overwhelmed her. All her card castle came tumbling about
her ears. Now she could never be the partner in a brilliant and
successful career, and the husband whose virtues she recognised, and of
whom she would have been proud, was taken from her into the darkness of
a desert grave, he who in due course should have made of her one of the
richest peeresses in England. Yes, now those gay dresses must be
exchanged for a widow’s weeds. She was furious with a Fate that had
played such a trick upon her; even her tears were more those of anger
than of sorrow, though in her fashion she mourned him truly.

Dick came to console her; he came very soon. Already he had been at the
War Office and mastered the points of Abdullah’s garbled tale, which, as
though unwillingly, he told to Edith, leaving her to put upon it what
construction she chose.

“It is nonsense,” she said angrily, for in her heart she did not believe
it at all. “Poor Rupert would never have got into any silly mess with a
savage.”

“Of course it is nonsense,” he answered, taking her cue; “but it is not
a question of morality, it’s a question of wisdom. By mixing himself up
with these women he brought about the murder of the whole lot and the
utter failure of his mission. In a way, it is as well for him that he is
gone, poor dear fellow, for he had completely done for himself. Well, it
doesn’t matter now.”

“No,” she answered heavily, “it doesn’t matter now.”

Yet when Dick, as a relative, although of the other political party, was
confidentially consulted by the Secretary of State and Lord Southwick
before the former gave those answers in the House, he talked somewhat
differently, adopting the tone indeed of a tolerant man of the world.

“Of the facts,” he said, “he knew little more than they did; but of
course poor Ullershaw had his weaknesses like other men,” and he smiled
as though at amusing recollections, “and the desert was a lonely place,
and this Abdullah described one of the women as young and beautiful. Who
could say, and what did it matter?” and so forth.

But the Secretary of State, an austere man who did not like to see his
schemes wrecked, and himself attacked on account of such ‘weaknesses,’
thought that it mattered a great deal. Hence the tone of his answers in
the House, for it never occurred to him, or indeed to Lord Southwick,
that a relation would have said as much as Dick did, unless he was very
sure of his ground. In fact, they were certain that he was putting
forward the best version of the truth and of Ullershaw’s character that
was possible under the circumstances. Who would wish, they reflected, to
throw a darker shade upon the reputation of a dead man than he was
absolutely forced to do by the pressure of sure and certain knowledge?

As for Mrs. Ullershaw, when she was assured that this dreadful news was
incontrovertible, and that her only son was indeed dead, she said merely
in the ancient words: “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord,” and stumbled to the bed whence she
never rose again. Here a second stroke fell upon her, but still for many
weeks she lived on in a half-conscious state. It was during this time
that Edith left the house, saying that her room was wanted by the
nurses, and went into comfortable rooms of her own in Brook Street.

The fact was, of course, that she could no longer endure this atmosphere
of sickness. It was repugnant to her nature; the sound of her poor
mother-in-law’s stertorous breathing as she passed her door tore her
nerves, the shadow of advancing death oppressed her spirits which
already were low enough. So she went and set up a _ménage_ of her own as
a young widow had a right to do. As for Mrs. Ullershaw, by degrees she
sank into complete insensibility and so died, making no sign. A week
before Rupert reached England she was buried in Brompton Cemetery by the
side of the husband who had treated her so ill in life.

It was a little before this that an event occurred which indirectly
lessened Edith’s material disappointment, and consoled Lord Devene for
the death of Rupert that for his own reasons had grieved and
disappointed him much. To the astonishment of all the world, on one fine
autumn morning Tabitha presented him with a singularly healthy son.

“This one should do!” exclaimed the doctor in triumph, while Lord Devene
kissed it fondly.

But when they had left the room together, his wife bade the nurse show
her the child, and after she too had kissed it, said sadly:

“Ach! poor little lamb, I fear you will have no more luck than the rest.
How should you with such a father?” she added in German.

As for Dick Learmer, with the exception of the birth of this to him
inopportune child, which now stood between him and the Devene wealth,
his fortunes seemed to wax as those of his rival, Rupert, waned and
vanished. He was a clever man, with an agreeable manner and a certain
gift of shallow but rather amusing speech; the kind of speech that
entertains and even impresses for the moment, but behind which there is
neither thought nor power. These graces soon made him acceptable to that
dreary and middle-class institution, the House of Commons, where
entertainment of any sort is so rare and precious a thing. Thus it
happened that before long he came to be considered as a rising man, one
with a future.

Moreover, on one or two occasions when he addressed the House upon some
fiscal matter, he was fortunate enough to impress the public with the
idea that he possessed a business ability that in fact was no part of
his mental equipment, which impression was strengthened by a rather
clever article, mostly extracted from works of reference, however, that
he published in one of the leading reviews. The result was that soon
Dick found himself a director of several sound and one or two
speculative, but for the while prosperous, companies, which, in the
aggregate, to say nothing of the salary that he received from Lord
Devene, who also paid for his qualifying shares, furnished him with a
clear income of over £1,300 a year.

Thus was the scapegrace and debt-haunted Dick Learmer completely
white-washed and rehabilitated in the eyes of all who knew of his
existence, and thus did he come to be regarded as a political
possibility, and therefore worthy of the attention of party wire-pullers
and of the outside world at large.




CHAPTER XVII.

WELCOME HOME!

Dick Learmer, dressed in an irreproachable frock-coat which fitted his
elegant figure very well, and with a fine black pearl in his necktie, an
advertisement of his grief for the decease of his cousin Rupert, was
lunching _tête-à-tête_ with his cousin’s widow on that same Sunday and
at the very same hour that Rupert was indulging in the melancholy
cogitations which have been recorded while he munched some biscuits
washed down with a bottle of stout in his dirty cabin on board the tramp
steamer. The Brook Street landlady was a good cook, and Edith’s Chablis,
not to mention a glass of port, a cup of coffee, and a liqueur brandy
that followed, were respectively excellent. The warm fire in the pretty
little sitting-room and the cigarettes he smoked over it, also proved
acceptable upon this particularly cold and dreary Sabbath afternoon.
Lastly, the lovely Edith, dressed in very attractive and artistic
mourning, was a pleasant object to the eye as she sat opposite to him
upon a low chair screening her face from the fire with a feather fan
from the mantel-piece.

Dick, as we know, had always admired her earnestly, and now, whether the
luncheon and the port, or the charming black dress set off with its
white collar and cuffs, or the beautiful blue eyes and golden hair above
were responsible for the result, he admired her more than ever. There
was a pause in their conversation, during which she contemplated him
reflectively.

“You are getting to look dreadfully middle-aged and respectable, Dick,”
she remarked presently. “It’s almost oppressive to those who knew you in
your youth.”

“I am middle-aged, and certainly I am respectable, Edith. Who wouldn’t
be that had sat yesterday upon the Board of a Life Insurance Society
with five directors, none of whom were under seventy? What interest they
can take in life and its affairs, I am sure I don’t know.”

“Probably they are only interested in other people’s lives, or other
people are interested in theirs,” answered Edith carelessly.

“By the way,” said Dick, “there was a question before us yesterday about
poor Rupert’s insurance.”

Edith winced a little at the name, but only looked up in query.

“You know,” he went on, “it was a pretty heavy one, and he only paid a
single premium, a very bad job for the office. Well, you haven’t claimed
that £10,000, and the question was whether you should be communicated
with on the matter. They settled to leave it alone, and that old
death’s-head of a chairman remarked with a grin that he had never known
money which was due to remain unasked for. Why don’t you ask? £10,000 is
always handy,” he added, looking at her keenly.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Everybody assumes it, but I can’t see any
proof that Rupert is really dead.”

“Nonsense,” he replied, almost angrily, “he is as dead as Julius Cæsar.
He must be; that Egyptian sergeant, what’s his name, said that he saw
them all shot down, and then himself escaped.”

“It’s rather odd, Dick, that this sergeant should have escaped under the
circumstances. Why wasn’t he shot down too? His luck must have been
remarkably good, or his legs remarkably swift.”

“Can’t say; but fellows do have luck at times. I’ve met with some myself
lately. Also, men don’t live for months in a waterless desert.”

“He might have been rescued, by these women for instance. The man
Abdullah didn’t say so, but someone else did say that the sheik Abraham,
or whatever his name was, and his people were killed, for they were seen
hanging upon trees. Now who hanged them there? Rupert and his people
could not have done so if they themselves were already dead. Besides, it
was not in his line.”

“Can’t say,” answered Dick again, “but I am sure he is gone. Ain’t you?”

“No, not sure, Dick, though I think he must be. And yet sometimes I feel
as if he were near me—I feel it now, and the sensation isn’t altogether
pleasant.”

“Bosh!” said Dick.

“Yes, I think it’s bosh too, so let us talk of something else.”

Dick threw the end of his cigarette into the fire, and watched it
thoughtfully while it burnt away.

“You think that’s half a cigarette, don’t you, Edith?” he said, pointing
to it.

“It doesn’t look much like anything else,” she answered; “but of course
changing into smoke and ashes.”

“It is something else, though, Edith. I’ll tell you what, it is my
rather spotted past that is burning up there, turning into clean white
ash and wholesome-smelling smoke, like an offering on an altar.”

“Heavens! Dick, you are growing poetical. What can be the matter with
you?”

“Disease of the heart, I think. Edith, do you want to remain a widow
always?”

“How can I tell?” she answered uneasily. “I haven’t been one long—yet.”

“No, but life is short and one must look forward; also, the
circumstances are unusual. Edith dear, I want you to say that after the
usual decent interval you will marry—me. No, don’t answer yet, let me
have my innings first, even if you bowl me out afterwards. Edith, you
know that I have always been in love with you from a boy. All the queer
things I did, or most of them, were really because of you. You drove me
wild, drawing me on and pushing me off, and I went croppers to make
myself forget. You remember our quarrel this day year. I behaved badly,
and I am very sorry; but the fact is I was quite mad with jealousy. I
don’t mind owning it now the poor fellow is gone. Well, since I knew
that, I have been doing my very best to mend. I have worked like a horse
down in that beastly House, which I hate, and learned up all sorts of
things that I don’t want to know anything about. Also, I have got these
directorships, thanks to Devene, whose money was supposed to be behind
me, and they are practically for life. So I have about £1,500 a year to
begin with, and you will have nearly as much. That isn’t exactly riches,
but put together, it is enough for a start.”

“No,” said Edith, “it isn’t riches, but two people might manage on it if
they were economical.”

“Well,” he went on quietly, “the question is whether you will consent to
try in due course?” and he bent forward and looked at her with his fine
black eyes.

“I don’t know,” she answered doubtfully. “Dick, I am sorry, but I can’t
quite trust you, and if marriage is to be successful, it must be built
on other things than love and raptures; that is why I accepted poor
Rupert.”

“Why don’t you trust me?” he asked.

“Dick, is it true that you arranged this mission of Rupert’s in the hope
that what has happened—might happen?”

“Most certainly not!” he answered boldly. “I had nothing to do with his
mission, and never dreamed of such a thing. Who suggested that to
you—Lord Southwick?”

She shook her head.

“I never spoke to him on the matter; indeed, I haven’t met him since the
wedding, but it was suggested.”

“Devene, then, I suppose. It is just like one of his dirty tricks.”

But Edith only answered: “Then it is _not_ true?”

“I have told you; it is a damnable lie!”

“I am glad to hear it, Dick, for otherwise I could never have forgiven
you. To be quite honest, I don’t think I behaved well to Rupert in
letting him go out there alone, and if I were sure that it was through
you that all this was brought about for your own ends—and jealous men
have done such things since David, you know—why then—”

“Then what?”

“Then, Dick, we shouldn’t talk any more about the matter. Indeed, I am
not certain that we should talk at all, for at least he was an honest
man who loved me, and his blood would be on your hands, and through
yours on mine.”

“If that’s all, they are clean enough,” replied Dick, with a laugh which
some people might have considered rather forced; “almost as clean as
your own, Edith,” and stretching forward, he laid his hand by hers upon
her dress.

She looked at it, but did not move either her dress or her hand.

“It seems clean enough, Dick,” she said, “except where those old
cigarettes have stained your thumb and fingers. Now, I never smoked, and
mine are _quite_ white.”

He took the hand—uplifted now—and under pretence of examining it, drew
her fingers to his lips and kissed them. Edith did not protest; it
seemed that she was in a mood to be made love to by Dick, who,
consequently, like a good and experienced general, proceeded to press
his advantage. Dropping on his knees before her—an easy movement, for
his chair was close, and, like her own, not high—he encircled her with
his arm, drew down her golden head and kissed her passionately. “Dick,”
she said, “you shouldn’t do that;” but she did not resist, nor was there
anger in her voice as on a certain previous occasion.

“Very well,” he whispered, “kiss me once and I will stop.”

She drew her head back, and looked at him with her wonderful blue eyes
that seemed to have grown strangely soft.

“If I kissed you, Dick, you know it would mean more than your kissing
me,” she murmured.

“Yes, Edith; it would mean what I want it to mean—that you love me and
will marry me. So, dearest, kiss me and let us make an end after all
these years.”

For a little while she continued to look at him, then she sighed, her
breast heaved, and her eyes grew softer and more tender still.

“I suppose it must be so,” she said, “for I never felt towards any man
as I do to you,” and bending her head, she kissed him and gently thrust
him from her. Dick sank back into his chair and mechanically lit another
cigarette. “You soon go back to your old habits, Dick,” she said,
watching him. “No, don’t throw it away, for while you smoke you will
keep still, and I have something to say. There must be no word of this
to anyone, Dick—not for another six months, at least. Do you
understand?” He nodded. “It has come about a great deal too soon,” she
went on; “but you asked yourself to lunch—not I—and I felt lonely and
tired of my own thoughts. Mrs. Ullershaw’s funeral upset me. I hated it,
but I had to go. Dick, I am not happy as I ought to be. I feel as if
something were coming between us; no, it has always been there, only now
it is thicker and higher. Rupert used to talk a great deal about the
difference between flesh and spirit, and at the time it bored me, for I
didn’t understand him. But I think that I do now. I—the outward I—well,
after what has passed—you know, Dick, it’s yours, isn’t it? But the
inner I—that which you can’t admire or embrace, remains as far from you
as ever, and I’m not sure that it might not learn to hate you yet.”

“It’s rather difficult to separate them, Edith,” he answered
unconcernedly, for these subtleties did not greatly alarm him who
remembered that he had heard something like them before. “At any rate,”
he added, “I am quite content with your outward self,” and he looked at
her beauty admiringly, “and must live in hope that the invisible rest of
you will decide to follow its lead.”

“You are making fun of me,” she said wearily. “But I daresay you are
right for all that; I hope so. And now go away, Dick. I am not
accustomed to these emotions, and they upset me. Yes, you can come back
in a day or two—on Tuesday. No, no more affection, you are
smoking—good-bye!”

So Dick went triumphant, his luck was good indeed, and he was really
happy, for he adored Edith. She was the only thing or creature that he
did adore—except himself.


Once Rupert’s steamer had come safe to dock, which happened a little
after two o’clock, it took him but a short while to bid her farewell.
Nor was the examination of his luggage a lengthy process, consisting as
this did of nothing but a rough carpet-bag, in which were stuffed his
Arab garments and a few necessaries that, like the clothes he wore, he
had purchased from or through sailors on the ship. The officials, who
could not quite place him, for his appearance puzzled them, thought well
to turn out the bag whereof the contents puzzled them still more, but as
there was nothing dutiable in it they were soon thrust back again. Then
with some difficulty he found a hansom cab, and crawling into it, bade
the man drive to his mother’s house in Regent’s Park, a journey that
seemed longer to Rupert than all those days upon the sea.

At length they were there, and having paid the cabman, he took his
carpet-bag and turned to enter the little iron gate. He could not see
the house as yet, for the dusk was gathering and the fog obscured it.
Still it struck him as strangely silent and unfriendly. There was no
light in the drawing-room window as there should have been, for he
remembered that even when the curtains were drawn, they did not fit
close, as he had often noticed when returning home at night.

Some premonition of evil struck Rupert’s heart, but he repelled it, and
hobbling up the little walk and the steps beyond, found the bell and
rang. There was a long pause, until at last he heard somebody shuffling
down the passage, heard, too, the door being unlocked and the chain
unhooked. Then he grew terribly afraid until he remembered of a sudden
that it was quite possible that Edith and his mother were again spending
the New Year at Devene. Well, it would be a great disappointment, but on
the other hand, he would have a few hours to make himself more
presentable.

The door opened, and before him stood a stout, heavy-faced woman who
held a greasy tin candlestick in her hand.

“What do you want?” she said, surveying this rough figure and his crutch
and carpet-bag doubtfully, for her mind ran on tramps.

“I want to see Mrs. Ullershaw,” he answered, and his voice reassured her
somewhat.

“Mrs. Ullershaw? Which Mrs. Ullershaw?—for I’ve heard there was a young
’un as well as an old ’un. I ain’t the regular caretaker, you know, only
a friend what’s took her place while she spends New Year’s Day in the
country with her husband’s people.”

“Yes, quite so,” said Rupert. “I meant the old Mrs. Ullershaw—”

“Well, then, you had better go and call on her in Brompton Cemetery, for
I’m told she was buried there last week. My gracious! what’s the matter
with the man?” she added, for Rupert had dropped his carpet-bag and
fallen back against the doorway.

“Nothing,” he said faintly. “If I might have a glass of water?”

She shook her fat head wisely.

“No, you don’t go to play that glass-of-water trick upon me. I know; I
goes to fetch it, and you prigs the things for which I am responsible.
But you can come into this room and sit down if you like, if you feel
queer, for I ain’t afraid of no one-legged man;” and she opened the door
of the dining-room.

Rupert followed her into it and sank into his own chair, for the place
was still furnished. Indeed, there in the frame of the looking-glass
some of his invitation-cards remained, and on the sideboard stood the
bronze Osiris which he had given to Edith. In the turmoil of his dazed
mind, it brought back to him a memory of the crypt of the temple at Tama
and the great statue of that same god, which presided there over the
place of death. Well, it seemed that this also was a place of death.

“When did Mrs. Ullershaw die?” he asked, with an effort.

“About five days before she was buried. That’s the usual time, ain’t
it?”

He paused, then asked again: “Do you know where the young Mrs. Ullershaw
is?”

“No, I don’t; but my friend said that’s her address on the bit of paper
on the mantel-piece in case any letters came to forward.”

Rupert raised himself and took the paper. It was an envelope; that,
indeed, in which his last letter to Edith had been posted from
Abu-Simbel, and beneath her name, Mrs. Rupert Ullershaw, the Regent’s
Park address was scratched out, and that of the Brook Street rooms
written instead, in his wife’s own handwriting.

“Thank you,” he said, retaining the paper; “that is all I wanted to
know. I will go now.”

Next instant he was on the steps and heard the door being locked behind
him.

His cab was still standing a few yards off, as the man wished to breathe
his horse after the long drive. Rupert re-entered it, and told him to go
to Brook Street. There, in the cab, the first shock passed away, and his
natural grief overcame him, causing the tears to course down his cheeks.
It was all so dreadful and so sad—if only his mother had lived a little
longer!

Very soon they reached the number written on the old envelope, and once
more Rupert, carpet-bag in hand, rang the bell, or rather pushed the
button, for this one was electric, wondering in a vague way what awaited
him behind that door. It was answered by a little underling, a child
fresh from the country, for the head servant had gone for a Sunday jaunt
in the company of Edith’s own maid.

“Is Mrs. Ullershaw in?” asked Rupert.

“Yes, sir, I believe so,” she answered, curtseying to this great, dim
apparition, and striving to hide her dirty little hands under her apron.

Rupert entered the hall, and asked which was her room.

“Upstairs, sir, and the first door to the right;” for remembering the
scolding she had recently received from Edith when she showed up Sir
Somebody Something with her sleeves tucked above her thin elbows, as
they were just now, the girl did not wish to repeat that unforgiveable
offence. So having explained and shut the door, she promptly vanished.

Still carrying his carpet-bag, Rupert climbed the stairs till he came to
the room indicated. Placing his bag upon a butler’s tray outside, which
had not been removed since luncheon, he knocked.

“Come in,” said a voice—the voice of Edith, who thought that it was a
maid with some hot water which she had forgotten when she brought up the
tea.

He turned the handle and entered. Edith was standing on the other side
of the room near the fire with her back towards him, for she was engaged
in pouring herself out a cup of tea. Presently, hearing the _clump
clump_ of his wooden crutch upon the floor—for he advanced towards her
before speaking—she turned round wondering what could be causing that
unusual noise. By the light of a standard lamp, she perceived a tall
figure clad in a sailor’s pea jacket and mustard-coloured trousers, who
seemed to be leaning on a great rough stick, and to have a gigantic red
beard and long, unkempt hair which tumbled all over his forehead.

“Who on earth are you?” she exclaimed, “and what are you doing here?”

“Edith,” he answered, in a reproachful tone, “Edith?”

She snatched a candle from the tea-tray, and running rather than walking
to him, held it towards his face and looked. Next moment it was rolling
on the floor, while she staggered back towards the fire.

“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “Oh, my God! is it you, or your ghost?”

“It is I—Rupert,” he replied heavily, “no ghost. I almost wish I were.”

She collected herself; she stood upright.

“You have been dead for months; at least, they said that you were dead.
Welcome home, Rupert!” and with a kind of despairing gesture she
stretched out her hand.

Again he hobbled forward, again the rough-hewn thornwood crutch, made by
himself with a pocket-knife, clumped upon the carpeted floor. Edith
looked down at the sound, and saw that one leg of the mustard-coloured
trousers swung loose. Then she looked up and perceived for certain what
at first she had only half grasped, that where the left eye should have
been was only a sunken hollow, scarlet-rimmed and inflamed with scars as
of burning beneath it, and that the right eye also was inflamed and
bloodshot as though with weeping, as indeed was the case.

“What has happened to you?” she asked, in a whisper, for she could find
no voice to speak aloud, and the hand that she had outstretched dropped
to her side. “Oh, your foot and eye—what has happened to them?”

“Torture,” he answered, in a kind of groan. “I fell into the hands of
savages who mutilated me. I am sorry. I see it shocks you,” and he stood
still, leaning heavily on the crutch, his whole attitude one of despair
with which hope still struggled faintly.

If it existed, it was destined to swift doom.

Edith made no movement, only said, pointing to a chair by him, the same
in which Dick had smoked his cigarettes:

“Won’t you sit down?”

He fell on to, rather than sat in the chair, his heavy crutch clattering
to the floor beside him.

“Will you have some tea?” she went on distractedly. “Oh, there is no
other cup, take mine.”

“Thank you,” he answered, waving his hand in refusal. “I am drinking
from a cup of my own, and I find it bitter.”

For a few seconds there was silence between them, which she broke, for
she felt that it was driving her mad.

“Tell me,” she said—“tell me—dear—” the word stuck in her throat and
came out with a kind of gasp, “what does all this mean? You see I am
quite ignorant. I thought you dead; look at my dress.”

“Only what I have told you. I am an unfortunate man. I was set upon by
an overwhelming force. I fought as best I could, until nearly all my
people were killed, but unluckily I was stunned and taken prisoner.
Afterwards they offered me the choice of Islam or death. I chose death;
but they tortured me first, hacking off my foot and putting out my eye
with hot irons, and in the end, when they were about to hang me, I was
rescued.”

“Islam?” she broke in, shivering. “What is Islam?”

“In other words, the Mahommedan religion, which they wished me to
accept.”

“And you let them do—those dreadful things to you rather than pretend to
be a Mahommedan for a few days?”

“Of course,” he answered, with a kind of sullen pride. “What did you
expect of me, Edith?”

“I? Oh, I don’t know; but it seems so terrible. Well, and who rescued
you?”

“Some women in authority whom I had befriended. They came at the head of
their tribesmen and killed the Arabs, and took me to their home and
nursed me back to life.”

She looked up quickly.

“We heard about them,” she said; “one was young and beautiful; if a
savage can be beautiful, was she not?”

“Yes,” he answered indifferently, “I suppose that Mea was beautiful, but
she is not a savage, she is of much more ancient race and higher rank
than ours—the lady Tama. I will tell you all about her some time.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Edith, “but I don’t know that she interests me.”

“She ought to,” he replied, “as she saved my life.”

Then that subject dropped.

“Do you know,” she asked, “oh! do you know about your mother?”

“Yes, Edith, I drove to the house when I landed from the ship and heard.
It was there I got your address,” and thrusting his hand into the
side-pocket of the pea-coat, he produced the crumpled envelope. “I
suppose that you were with her?” he added.

“No, not at the last.”

“Who was, then?”

“No one except the nurse, I think. She had another stroke and became
insensible, you know. I had left a fortnight before, as I could do no
good and they wanted my room.”

Now for the first time resentment began to rise in Rupert’s patient
heart, stirred up there by the knowledge that his beloved mother had
been left to die in utter loneliness.

“Indeed,” he said, and there was a stern ring in his voice, “It might
have been kinder had you stayed, which, as my wife, it was your place to
do.”

“I thought that I was no longer your wife, Rupert, only your widow.
Also, it’s not my fault, but I cannot bear sickness and all those
horrors, I never could,” and she looked at his mutilated form and
shuddered.

“Pray then that it may not be your lot to suffer them some day,” he
said, in the same stern voice.

It frightened her, and she plunged into a new subject, asking:

“Have you heard that things have gone very badly for you? First, Lord
Devene has an heir, a strong and healthy boy, so you will not succeed.”

“I am heartily glad to hear it,” he said, “may the child live and
prosper.”

She stared at this amazing man, but finding nothing to say upon the
point that would sound decent, went on:

“Then you are almost disgraced, or rather your memory is. They say that
you caused your mission to fail by mixing yourself up with women.”

“I read it in the papers,” he replied, “and it will not be necessary for
me to assure you that it is a falsehood. I admit, however, that I made a
mistake in giving escort to those two women, partly because they were in
difficulties and implored my help, and partly because there are
generally some women in such a caravan as mine pretended to be, and I
believed that their presence would make it look more like the true
thing. Also, I am of opinion that the sheik Ibrahim, who had an old
grudge against me, would have attacked me whether the women were there
or not. However this may be, my hands are clean,” (it was the second
time this day that Edith had heard those words, and she shivered at
them), “I have done my duty like an honest man as best I could, and if I
am called upon to suffer in body or in mind,” and he glanced at his
empty trouser-leg, “as I am, well, it is God’s will, and I must bear
it.”

“How _can_ you bear it?” she asked, almost fiercely. “To be mutilated;
to be made horrible to look at; to have your character as an officer
ruined; to know that your career is utterly at an end; to be beggared,
and to see your prospects destroyed by the birth of this brat—oh, how
can you bear all these things? They drive me mad.”

“We have still each other,” he answered sadly.

She turned on him with a desperate gesture. She had never loved him, had
always shrunk from him; and now—the kiss of another man still tingling
upon her lips—oh! she loathed him—this one-eyed, hideous creature who
had nothing left to give her but a tarnished name. She could never be
his wife, it would kill her—and then the shame of it all, the triumph of
the women who had been jealous of her beauty and her luck in marrying
the distinguished heir of Lord Devene. She could not face it, and she
must make that clear at once.

“No, no,” she gasped. “It sounds hard, but I _must_ tell you. I can’t, I
can’t—be your wife.”

He quivered a little, then sat still as stone.

“Why not, Edith?” he asked, in a cold, unnatural voice.

“Oh! look in the glass and you will see—that horrible red hole, and the
other all red also.”

“I was totally blind for a while, and I’m ashamed to say it, but grief
for my mother has brought back inflammation. It may pass. Perhaps they
can do something for my looks.”

“But they cannot give you back your foot, and I hate a cripple. You know
I always did. Also, the thing is impossible now; we should be beggars.”

“What, then, do you wish me to do?” he asked.

“Rupert,” she replied, in an intense whisper, flinging herself upon her
knees before him, and looking up at him with wild, appealing eyes,
“Rupert, be merciful, you are dead, remain dead, and let me be.”

“Tell me one thing, Edith,” he said. “Did you ever love me?”

“No, I suppose not quite.”

“Then why did you marry me? For my position and prospects?”

“Yes, to some extent; also, I respected and admired you, and Lord Devene
forced me to it, I don’t know why.”

Again that slight shiver went through Rupert’s frame, and he opened his
mouth to speak, then closed it. Evidently she did not know the facts,
and why should he tell her of her own disgrace; he who had no wish for
vengeance?

“Thank you for being so plain with me,” he said heavily. “I am glad that
you have told me the truth, as I wish you well, and it may save you some
future misery, that of being the wife of a man whom you find hideous and
whom you never loved. Only, for your own sake, Edith, think a minute; it
is your last chance. Things change in this world, don’t they? I have
found that out. Well, they might change again, and then you might be
sorry. Also, your position as the wife of a man who is only supposed to
be dead will, in fact, be a false one, since at some future time he
might be found to be alive.”

“I have thought,” she answered. “I must take the risks. You will not
betray me, Rupert.”

“No,” he answered, in tones of awful and withering contempt. “I shall
not follow your example, I shall not betray you. Take what little is
mine, by inheritance or otherwise; it will prove to the world that I am
really dead. But henceforth, Edith, I hate you, not with a hate that
desires revenge, for I remember that we are still man and wife, and I
will never lift a finger to harm you any more than I will break the bond
that is and must remain until the death of one of us. Still, I tell you
that all my nature and my spirit rise up against you. Did you swear to
me that you loved me as much as once you said you did, I would not touch
your beauty with my finger-tips, and never will I willingly speak to you
again in this world or the next. Go your own way, Edith, as I go mine,”
and heaving himself out of the low chair, Rupert lifted his crutch from
the ground, and leaning on it heavily, limped from the room.

As he fumbled at the door-handle, Edith rose from her knees, where she
had remained all this time, and running after him, cried:

“Rupert!”

He took no heed, the veil of separation had fallen between them, a wall
of silence had been built; she might as well have spoken to the air.

She saw him lift the carpet-bag from the butler’s tray, then down the
stairs went that single, heavy footfall, and the clumping of the crutch.
The front door opened and closed again. It was done.


For a while Edith remained almost fainting, then she roused herself,
thought a little, and rang the bell. It was answered by the
parlour-maid, who had returned.

“Jane,” she said, “when you are out in future, will you be so good as to
tell that girl Eliza never to show a stranger up here again without
asking if I wish to see him? This afternoon she let in some kind of a
madman, who brought a bag of smuggled silks which he wished to sell me.
I could not get rid of him for nearly half an hour, and he has
frightened me almost out of my wits. No; I don’t want to hear any more
about it. Take away the things.”




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HAPPY, HAPPY LIFE

When Rupert left the house in Brook Street, he walked on aimlessly down
it, down Bond Street, across Piccadilly, where in the mist he was nearly
knocked over by a cab, down St. James’ Street to Pall Mall, and along it
till he came to the Army and Navy Club, of which he was a member. Here
he paused in front of the portico whither he had unconsciously directed
his steps, then remembering that he was dead and that it would never do
for him to enter there, turned round hurriedly and butted into a portly
general under whom he had served, who was about to go up the steps of
the club. The general, a choleric person, cursed him, then concluding
from his crutch and wretched appearance that he was a poor, homeless
cripple, felt ashamed of himself, and with some words of regret, thrust
sixpence into his hand.

“Pray don’t apologise, General,” said Rupert, “it was my awkwardness.”
Then he looked at the sixpence, and adding: “With your permission I will
pass it on,” he gave it to a hungry-looking crossing-sweeper who waited
hard by, and limped forward.

The general stood amazed, for he knew the voice, but could not put a
name to it.

“Hi!” he shouted, after the retreating figure, but Rupert realising his
danger, went on quickly towards the Athenaeum and was soon lost in the
mist.

“Devilish odd thing,” said the General, as he strolled up the steps.
“Whose voice was it? I know—Rupert Ullershaw’s!”

Then he ran to the porter’s box and asked: “Has Colonel Ullershaw been
in the club?”

“No, General,” answered the porter, “he isn’t a member now; he’s dead.
Killed in the Soudan, General, some months ago.”

“Oh, yes,” said the General, “I remember. He’s the fellow who made a
mess of things. Good man too, but there was a woman in it. Well, hang
me, if I haven’t seen his ghost without a leg and with a beard a yard
long. Can’t mistake that voice. Heard it right across the square at
Abu-Klea. Most astonishing thing.”

For years afterwards this meeting with the mutilated shade of Rupert
Ullershaw was the general’s favourite ghost story, especially in future
days when certain facts came to be common knowledge.

Rupert passed the Athenaeum. With some trouble, for they were slippery,
he negotiated the steps beyond the Duke of York’s column, then hurried
on past the Horse Guards and the Foreign Office, till at length he
reached the Embankment, and being very tired, sat down on a seat by the
river. Before long a policeman came and disturbed him, asking what he
was doing loitering there. He replied humbly enough that he believed it
was a public place, whereon the policeman stared at him as the general
had done, and went by. Still he rose and walked forward till he came to
where the shadows were deep between two lamps, for here the thickening
fog gave him privacy, and placing his bag by him, leaned upon the
parapet and listened to the murmur of the river beneath.

Then and there it was, now when the exertions of walking were done with,
that the whole weight of his miseries struck Rupert full. His soul
descended into hell; he saw and understood the awful truth. Wrecked
bodily, ruined in reputation, deserted by the world, scorned as
loathsome by Edith, Devene’s daughter, who had only married him for what
he had to give, there was no outcast in all that cruel London more
lonesome, more hopeless than he, who, not ten months before, had been
one of its fêted and sought-after favourites. It was that day
twelvemonth, New Year’s Eve, he remembered, that he had proposed to and
been accepted by Edith, remembered also the words spoken to him then by
Lady Devene and his mother, of which now he felt the full meaning,
although he had paid little attention to them at the time. Those women
understood; his love had blinded him.

What was there left for him to do—who had promised to “remain dead?” The
lapping of the water beneath seemed to shape an answer. It spoke to him
as the thud of the steamer and the beat of the train had spoken once
before, and well he understood its meaning. All his hopes lay buried
beneath that water of death, and there also were his mother and many a
good friend and comrade. Why should he not seek them? Edith would be
pleased, for then he would remain dead indeed. Yet it was a wicked act.
Well, sometimes circumstances outweighed scruples, and in that matter he
felt as though he must take his chance—like Edith. If there were any
worse place than this world in which, after all, with one exception, he
had done his best, it must be bad indeed. Here was a deep that could
have no depth below it, and therein he sojourned.

It would be easy. The wide handles of that accursed and weighty bag
would pass over his head, a very fitting brick to drown a dog that had
had its day. He was quite alone in the dreary place, where no one
lingered on such a night. Why should they, when Salvation Army shelters
were available? He could not go there, he could not go anywhere, he
would be found out or recognised. The Thames mud was the best bed for
him who felt so very tired.

Rupert leaned further over the parapet, nerving himself to the desperate
deed, he who was almost mad with shame and sorrow. Then it was in the
grey mist that lay upon the water, quite hiding it from his sight, that
he seemed to see something form which gradually took the shape of a
woman’s face, surrounded by cloudy, outspread hair. He could see it
clearly, and in it the tender, pitying eyes from which tears ran, so
clearly that at once he knew it for the face of Mea, as after all those
weeks of darkness it had first appeared to his returning sight. Yes, as
it had arisen then upon the blindness of his body with its assurance of
light renewed, so did it arise again upon the utter blackness of his
soul’s despair, a beacon of hope in the midst of that desperate
shipwreck, a token of love unchanging and unchanged above this seething
bitterness of scorn and hate.

Of a sudden, as the shadow passed, he remembered the promise which he
had made to Mea when she warned him that sometimes things went amiss. He
had thought it idle enough even then who only gave it to please her, and
since that day it had rarely crossed his mind. Now he knew, however,
that her true affection for him had endowed her with some strange
foresight of the woes about to fall upon his defenceless head, and
thereby, in a way unforeseen by herself or him, had provided him with a
door of escape from the dreadful habitations into which his spirit was
to be driven by Destiny. Mea would welcome back her friend who had no
other friend in all the world; moreover, in such an event as this he had
sworn that he would return to her.

Then, should he sink in that river, he would be a liar as well as a
coward. No, the river was done with. Mea had saved him from this sin, at
the very thought of which he felt even now that he would live to shiver
and be ashamed.

New life came back to Rupert, hope was born again, and its first
manifestation was of a very material nature. He felt hungry who had
eaten little that day and undergone much. Taking up the bag, which but a
few minutes before he had intended to put to such a dreadful purpose, he
lifted his crutch and made his way briskly across the Embankment, and
along one of the side streets into the Strand. Here he found a
modest-looking eating-house, and entering, ordered himself some food,
for which the waiter, noting his appearance, demanded payment in
advance. While he ate he bethought himself, and as a result, took up a
paper that lay near by and began to search the advertisements. Soon he
discovered what he wanted. On the following morning, Monday, a steamer
of one of the smaller and less known lines was advertised to sail for
Egypt and other places, leaving Liverpool at eleven o’clock a.m. Rupert
asked for an A.B.C. Railway Guide, and found that there was a train from
Euston about 10.30, which reached Liverpool in the early morning.

This train in due course he took, and on the next day, as soon as the
Liverpool office was open, booked a second-class passage to Egypt under
an assumed name.


It was spring in the oasis of Tama, where the crops were growing fast.

“Bakhita,” said Mea suddenly one afternoon, “I grow weary of this place.
To-morrow morning I ride down the Black Pass to look out at the desert
beyond, which now should be beautiful with flowers, for heavy rains have
fallen.”

“It is not flowers that you would look for in the desert, if indeed any
can be found there,” answered Bakhita, with her peculiar smile, and
shaking her white head. “Nor shall you enter on to that desert where the
Khalifa’s man-stealing savages roam in bands, yelling on Allah and
killing peaceable folk. Still, if you wish it—or if you have dreamed a
dream—you can ride down to the mouth of the pass with a suitable escort
of spearsmen, and stare at the desert till you are tired.”

“Bakhita, my aunt,” asked Mea angrily, “who is mistress in this land—you
or I?”

“Tama, my niece,” answered Bakhita calmly, “where you are concerned, I
am mistress. You set no foot in that desert.

“If you try to do so, I will order your own council of emirs to shut you
up. He can come to seek you if he wishes, you shall not go to seek him.”

“Bakhita, I spoke to you of flowers.”

“Yes, Mea, you did; but the flower you mean has a red beard; also, an
Arab has trodden on it and crushed it out of shape. Moreover, it grows
in another land, and if it did not, what use would it be to your
garden?”

“I am tired of this place and wish to look at the desert,” answered Mea.
“If you trouble me much more, I will cross it and travel to Egypt. Even
that school at Luxor is not so dull as Tama. Go; do my bidding.”

Then Bakhita went, full of her own thoughts, and ordered the emirs to
furnish an escort of a hundred spears as a devil had entered into their
lady, and she knew not where it would lead her. The emirs grumbled
because the crops required attention, and asked if the devil could not
be sent away for a little while, but Bakhita answered them in such
fashion that before the sun was well up on the following morning the
hundred horsemen were in attendance.

So they rode to the mouth of the Black Pass and camped there. The whole
of the next day Mea stared at the desert, in which, after all, there
proved to be few flowers. The captains of the escort, who were thinking
of the weeding of their crops, asked if they were to return on the
following morning. She answered no, the desert air was improving her
health. Next night they repeated their question. She answered no, her
health was being completely re-established by the desert air; but if
they wished, they could go home and leave her. This, however, they
declined to do, saying that if the crops suffered, it was bad, but if
anything happened to their lady, then they were disgraced men, and even
their women-folk would refuse them.

Another evening came on, and in the light of the setting sun appeared
far away one solitary man riding a very tired camel. In that vast plain
from the horizon of which he emerged, he looked an extraordinarily
lonesome object.

“What is that man?” asked Mea of Bakhita in a strange voice.

“A Bedouin thief, I suppose, a spy of the Khalifa’s. How should I know
what he is? Bid your people go to find out.”

“No,” answered Mea, “we will wait and see what the thief does. Let the
men keep hidden and be prepared to attack him.”

The thief or the spy continued to approach, till presently his camel
seemed to go dead-lame, and he was obliged to halt in a little clump of
bush about half a mile from the mouth of the pass.

“There is no moon, so he will have to sit there till morning,” said
Bakhita. “Well, it will be easier to capture him in the dark.”

The night fell swiftly.

“Now,” said Mea, “bring five men and let us go to take this spy. Anubis,
come hither, little dog, we are going to take a spy and a lame camel,
but, Anubis, do not bark, or you will betray us to his fury.”

So they went out through the gloom, and when they drew near the clump of
bush, dismounted and advanced on foot, Mea leading the dog Anubis by a
string. One of the men, who walked a little ahead, came back and
reported that the spy had lit a fire and hung a kettle over it to boil;
also that he was seated with his back to the fire and by its light
engaged in reading a book, which he thought a strange thing for a spy to
do.

Mea listened and said nothing. They were travelling up wind towards the
stranger, and now the dog Anubis began to sniff the air and grow
excited. Whether by design or by accident, Mea let one end of the fibre
string by which she held it slip, and away it bolted into the bush,
whence presently arose a sound of joyous yelpings, mingled with the deep
tones of a man’s voice.

“That dog is not angry,” said Bakhita.

Mea looked at her, a wonderful look. Then she, too, ran forward into the
bush more quickly even than the dog had run. Waving back the escort, for
now she was sure of the truth, Bakhita followed, and presently this was
what she saw. The man in Arab dress, with a book beside him, was seated
on the ground, while behind grazed the lame camel. In the man’s arms,
still yelping and licking every part of him that it could reach, was the
cur-dog Anubis, whilst standing in the shadow, as yet unseen by the man,
with that wonderful look still upon her face, was Mea. She advanced
silently, like a dream or a ghost, till she stood between him and the
fire. Feeling its heat cut off he ceased fondling the dog, and looked up
and round trying to see who it was, for no light fell on her. Then Mea
spoke in that rich and love-laden voice of hers which, to him at any
rate, differed from the voice of any other woman—spoke in her pretty,
broken English:

“Rupert Bey he know the nasty little dog Anubis which runs from his
mistress to him, but the mistress Mea, ah! he know her not.”

Next moment there was a great commotion. Poor Anubis rolled from
Rupert’s lap into the fire, where he burnt his tail, and then sat down
with a yelp and licked it, his eyes still fixed on Rupert, who snatched
his crutch and struggled from the ground. He was up, his arms were
outstretched; then suddenly he seemed to remember, for he let them fall
and with his right hand seized that of Mea and pressed it first to his
forehead and then to his lips.

“What a fool,” said Bakhita to herself in the background, “to kiss her
fingers when he might have kissed her face. I always thought that these
white people were mad, but this Bey is a saint as well. Poor Mea, who
has fallen in love with a holy man. Give me a sinner! say I.”

Meanwhile, Mea had returned the “holy man’s” compliment by kissing _his_
fingers, but to _herself_ she said: “So the woman with the snow face and
the sapphire eyes has only ill-treated him. It may be evil, but oh! I
wish that she were dead, for then he would not only love me, he would
say it also.”

“You have come!” she exclaimed, in Arabic. “Oh, my lord! did I not tell
you that we should meet again, and have I not felt you drawing near to
me, and therefore taken these people from their gardens and sat here for
three whole days?”

“Yes, Tama, I have come,” he answered, in a somewhat shaky voice.

“Is that all you say?” she went on, and there were doubt and fear in her
voice. “For how long have you come? Perhaps you do but sojourn for a
night or for a week. Oh! tell me quickly—for how long have you come?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “it depends on you. For all my life, I
think, if you will keep me as your servant.”

A great sigh of relief burst from Mea’s breast.

“Oh! stop for this life and the next, too, if you will. Stop till the
mountains melt into the desert and the Nile runs through Tama—that is,
if I may stop with you. But what mean you? How can you be my servant—you
who are—something else?” and she waved her hand upward.

“Mea,” he said, “I must make you understand. I—I am a poor man now; I
have nothing left in the world, or, at least, the little that I have I
cannot get, because I have promised to be dead to the world, and if I
asked for my money, why then, they would know that I am alive. Look!
that is all that I possess,” and putting his hand into his pocket, he
produced seven and a half piastres—“that, a gun, and a lame camel. I
have had to live hard to make my money last from London to Tama, and, as
you see, even to risk the desert alone. Well, I must earn my bread, and
I remembered your kindness, and your promise that I should be welcome,
so I thought to myself: ‘I will go back to the lady Mea, and I will ask
her to let me manage her lands, and in return to give me a house to live
in and some food, and perhaps if I can make them pay better than they
do, a little percentage of the profits to buy myself books and clothes.’
I don’t know if you think I am asking too much,” he added humbly.

“No,” answered Mea, “I do not think that you are asking too much, who
might have had more; but we will strike hands upon our bargain
afterwards. Meanwhile—my servant—I engage you for life, and as a
luck-penny will you give me some of that dinner which you are cooking in
the pot, for I am hungry? No,” she added, “I forget; it is I should give
the luck-penny, and Anubis, whom you love better, shall have your
dinner.”

Then she clapped her hands, and the five men advanced out of the
darkness, looking curiously at Rupert. She turned upon them fiercely.

“Are you stones of the desert or palms of the wood,” she cried, “that
you stand so still? Down, dogs, and make obeisance to your lord, who has
come back to rule you!”

They did not hesitate or wait to be told again, for something in Tama’s
eye informed them that prompt obedience was best. Nor, indeed, did they
grudge him fealty, for Rupert was loved by all of them as the great man
and the brave who had saved their lady’s life or honour. Flat they went
upon the sand, and in spite of his protests laid their hands upon his
foot and did him homage in the Eastern style.

“It is enough,” said Mea. “Back, one of you, to the camp, and bring my
mare for my lord to ride, and bid the emir turn out his men to greet
him.”

A man went like an arrow, while the others retreated to see about the
sick camel, and to lead it into camp.

“Mea, Mea,” said Rupert reproachfully, “you are putting me in a very
false position. I am nothing but a broken wanderer, and out of seven
piastres what gift can I give these men whom you force to do obeisance
to me as though I were a sultan?”

“You can give them the best of gifts, the gift you have given me, that
of your presence. Let us understand one another, Rupert Bey. You may
call yourself my servant if you will, I do not quarrel with the word,
for lack of a better. But with me you are my people’s lord, since, but
for you, I should not be here among them.”

“How can it be?” he muttered, “since I may not ask—” and the look upon
his face told her the rest.

Her hand shook a little. “She still lives?” she said, glancing at him.

He nodded.

“And you still hold yourself bound to her and her alone?”

“Yes, Mea, by my law and my oath, neither of which may be broken.”

She drew nearer and looked up into his face. “Do you still love her,
Rupert?”

“No,” he said shortly. “She has behaved cruelly to me; she is quite dead
to me.”

“Ah! And do you love any other woman?”

The great head drooped forward. “Yes, Mea.”

“So! Now what is her name?”

Rupert looked about him like a man who seeks escape from dangers and
finds none. Then he answered:

“Her name is yours—yours and no other’s. But oh! have pity on my
weakness. Remember that this lonely path is hard; do not drive me back
into the wilderness.”

She let her head fall a little, and when she lifted it again he saw by
the light of the fire and of the bright stars above, that her sweet face
shone with a great and abiding joy.

“Have no fear, Rupert,” she said. “Is my own path so easy that I should
wish to plant thorns in yours? I am well content; I tell you that I am
well content. This is the best and happiest hour of my life; it shines
bright above me as that star. I understand that you are great and noble,
who being a man that loves, yet deny your heart. Shall I then not deny
my heart also, or shall I seek to tarnish your honour in your own eyes?
Nay, may I perish first, or—worse still—be parted from you. What was our
compact? That we should be as brother and sister, having withal the love
of a hundred husbands and the love of a hundred wives. It stands, and it
shall stand, nor will I grow bitter or unkind. Only I fear me, Rupert,
that as my beauty wanes, you who are tied to me but by the spirit, you
who do not see me re-arise in children, may weary of this jealous,
half-wild daughter of the desert—for jealous I know I still shall be.”

Now it was his turn to say “Fear not, Mea, fear not; broken body and
broken spirit have come home together, have come home to you like a
swallow in the spring, and they will seek no other nest.”

“In the name of God, so be it,” she said.

“In the name of God, so it is,” he answered.

This, then, was their marriage, there amidst the desert sands and
beneath the desert stars, which they felt even then were less eternal
than the troth they plighted; as it proved, the strangest and yet the
happiest and most blessed marriage that ever was celebrated between man
and woman—or so they came to think.

For are we not perchance befooled and blind? Driven by impulses that we
did not create, but which are necessary to our creation, we follow after
the flesh, and therefrom often garner bitterness, who, were our eyes
opened, should pursue the spirit and win a more abiding joy which it
alone can give. Yet perhaps it was not decreed that this should be so;
perhaps in its day, for ends whereof we know nothing, the flesh was
meant to be our master, to rule us, as the spirit shall rule in its
appointed kingdom. Who can say?

At least, this is certain; these two escaped to the borderland of that
kingdom, though not without difficulty, backward looks, and struggling.
There, before the time, they dwelt together in such content and
satisfaction as are known to few, gazing forward, ever gazing forward,
to the day when, as they believed, they should enter hand-in-hand upon
an heritage glorious and eternal, and from the bitter seed of
self-denial, planted in pain and watered with secret tears, should reap
such a golden harvest and wreathe themselves with such white, immortal
flowers as the rich soil of passion cannot bear, nor can the flesh hope
to equal with its reward of fading, evil-odoured poppies.

For in that cruellest hour of his life, that hour of bereavement, of
spittings and of scourgings, when he looked with longing at the grey
waters of the river, and they showed him Mea’s face, though he did not
know it then, was born the pure happiness which Rupert had lived to
reach. Never was Edith so kind to him as in that last act of utter
faithlessness, for at her side all that was best in him must have
withered, all that was weak and worldly must have increased. She took
from him herself, but she gave him Mea. She deprived him of the world in
which he was bred, with its false glitter and falser civilisation, its
venomous strivings for victory bought with the heart’s blood of those
that fall, its mad lust for rank and wealth and precedence to be won by
any means and kept as best they might, till, like broken toys, Time
swept them and their holders to its dust-heap. But in place of these she
gave him the wilderness and its beaconing stars—she gave him what all of
us so sorely need, time to reflect upon the eternal verities of our
being, time to repent his sins before he was called upon to give account
of them. Yes, when Edith took from him the fever of the earth, she gave
to him a foretaste of the peace that passeth understanding.


Rupert was led to the camp in the mouth of the Black Pass, and there
received with waving of lances, with shoutings and with honour; very
different greetings, he could not help reflecting, to those that had
awaited him in his native city on the Thames, which is so mighty and
multitudinous that kings may pass and leave it untroubled; the city
where even the most distinguished human item hardly counts. That night
he ate with Mea and Bakhita, and after the latter had gone to see about
the setting of his tent, he told Mea all his story from the beginning,
keeping nothing back, not even his first fault as a lad, for he felt
that the confidence between them should be complete. She listened in
silence, till he came to the tale of all he had suffered upon that awful
Sunday in London, and of how his wife had rejected him, praying him to
“remain dead.” Then Mea’s indignation broke out.

“I ought to give her thanks,” she said, “yet here we should kill that
woman. Say now, Rupert Bey, had this other man you tell of, your cousin,
had he been with her?”

“How can I know?” answered Rupert. “But it is true that a glove such as
he used to wear lay upon the table, and a man had been smoking in the
room that day.”

“I thought as much,” she answered, “for otherwise she had spoken to you
differently; although, of course, you were no longer rich and great, and
with such women that changes the face of things.”

“My wife would not disgrace herself,” said Rupert proudly.

“Your wife had no husband then—you were a dead man,” she answered.

“Yes; dead as I am now.”

At this point Bakhita, who had been waiting outside for two hours in the
cold, entered and remarked sarcastically that Rupert’s tent was ready.
He took the hint at once and retired. The old lady watched him go, then
turned to Mea and said:

“Well, niece, what have you settled?”

Mea told her, whereon the grim Bakhita burst into a great laugh.

“Strange children you are indeed, both of you,” she said. “Yet who shall
say there is no wisdom in your childishness, who have learned that there
are other things beyond this passing show? At the least, you seem happy
in it—for the present.”

“I am happy for the present, for the future, and forever,” answered Mea.

“Then that is well, though it would seem that the old line must die with
you, unless you change your mind and, after all, marry some other man.”

“I marry no other man, Bakhita.”

“So be it. Why should not the old line die? Everything has an end, like
the gods of Egypt. If it were not so, new things could not begin. It
does not matter so long as you are happy. But though you have found a
new faith, laugh no more at my ancient magic, Mea. Did not the sinking
boat sail back to your arms that night?”

“It sailed back, Bakhita, and when it sails forth again mine sails with
it. I laugh at nothing. Old faiths and new, they are all shadows of the
truth—for those who believe in them, Bakhita.”


Oh! happy, happy was the life that began for these two this night. Soon
Rupert was installed in a little house not far from Mea’s, and the wide,
neglected lands were in his care. He worked early and late, and made
them to blossom like the rose, so that wealth began to flow into the
oasis of Tama. Then in the evenings when the work was done, he and Mea
would eat together, and talk together, and read and study together, and
together daily grow more changed and wise. But at an appointed hour they
shook each other by the hand and separated, and on the morrow that
blessed, peaceful round began again.

He was her world, her life, the very altar of her faith, whence the pure
incense of her heart went up in ceaseless sacrifice to Heaven. She was
his love, his light, his star—all this yet unattained—as stars must be.




CHAPTER XIX.

AFTER SEVEN YEARS

On the Tuesday after his Sunday luncheon with Edith, Dick called at the
Brook Street rooms as arranged, this time for afternoon tea. He found
Edith gloomy and upset, not at all in a mood indeed to respond to his
demonstrations of affection. He asked her what was the matter, but could
get no satisfactory answer out of her, and so at last went away in
disgust, reflecting that of all women whom he had known, Edith was the
most uncertain and bewildering.

Thus things went on for some time, interviews being alternated with
letters sufficiently compromising in their allusions to what had passed
between them, until, when actually forced into a corner, Edith informed
him that her change of conduct was owing to a dream that she had dreamed
in which she saw Rupert alive and well. Of course Dick laughed at her
dream, but still she made it serve her turn for quite another three
months. Then at length there came a day when he would be put off no
longer.

The six months of silence for which she had stipulated were, he pointed
out, more than gone by, and he proposed, therefore, to announce their
engagement in the usual fashion.

“You must not,” she said, springing up; “I forbid you. If you do so I
will contradict it, and never speak to you again.”

Now, exasperated beyond endurance, Dick’s evil temper broke out. Even to
Edith it was a revelation, for she had never seen him in such a rage
before. He swore at her; he called her names which she had not been
accustomed to hear; he said that she was a bad woman who, having married
Ullershaw for his rank and prospects, was now trying to break
his—Dick’s—heart for fun; that she had been the curse of his existence,
and he hoped that it would all come back upon her own head, and so
forth.

Edith, as a rule, was perfectly able to look after herself, but on this
occasion the man’s violence was too much for her who had never before
been exposed to rough abuse. She grew frightened, and in her fear
blurted out the truth.

“I can’t marry you,” she said, “and perhaps it is as well, as I don’t
wish to put up with this sort of thing.”

“Curse it all! Why not?” he asked. “Are you ill, or are you going into a
nunnery?”

She turned round upon him.

“No; for a better reason than either. Because a woman can’t have two
husbands. Rupert is alive.”

Dick’s rage vanished, his jaw fell and his face went white. “How do you
know that?” he asked.

“Because I have seen him here. He came not much more than an hour after
you had left that Sunday, on the 31st of December.”

“You mean your dream,” he said.

“No, I mean Rupert in flesh and blood, with his foot cut off and his eye
burnt out.”

“Then where is he now?” asked Dick, looking round as though he expected
to see him emerge from behind the curtain.

“I don’t know, I haven’t an idea. He may be in England, or he may be in
Egypt, or he may be at the bottom of the sea. We—don’t correspond.”

“I think you had better tell me all the truth if you can,” said Dick
grimly. “It will be best for both of us.”

So she did, repeating their conversation almost word for word. Dick’s
imagination was vivid, and easily pictured the scene there in the place
of its enactment. He saw the wretched, crippled man dragging himself
away upon his crutch out into the cold London night, away anywhere from
the cruel woman whom he had married in love and faith. It touched his
pity, he even felt remorseful for his share in the business.

“Poor devil!” he said aloud. “And, as an inducement to him to ‘remain
dead,’ did you tell him that you had just engaged yourself to another
man?”

“No,” she said furiously; “I told him nothing of the sort. I could not
bear the sight of him all mutilated like that; it made me sick.
Besides,” she went on, “what had he to offer? His reputation was gone,
and so have the rank and fortune which I expected.”

“That’s frank; but he is scarcely responsible, is he?” answered Dick
drily. “You see, poor Rupert was always an awful fool. It is even
conceivable that he may have believed that you married him for himself.
Really, it is a funny story. But I say, Edith, has it occurred to you,
being the kind of man he is, what an utter devil he must think you?”

“I don’t care what he thinks,” she said wildly. “The whole conditions
are changed, and I could not be expected to live with him as my husband;
indeed, we should have nothing to live on.”

“You think you don’t care now, but perhaps you will some day,” sneered
Dick. “Well, what’s the game? Am I to keep this dark?”

“I think you had better for your own sake,” she answered, and added
meaningly: “With Rupert dead, and dead I am sure he will remain, there
is only one child’s life between you and an inheritance of a million of
money, or its worth. But with him alive, it is another matter, so
perhaps you will do well not to resurrect him.”

“Perhaps I shall,” said Dick. “By Jove! Edith, you are a cool hand,” and
he looked at her, not without admiration. “And now please tell me
exactly what our relations are to be in the future? As I don’t want to
be mixed up with a bigamy case—for fellows like that have an awkward
trick of reappearing—marriage seems out of the question, doesn’t it?”

“Absolutely!” answered Edith.

“Then might I ask what is in the question?”

“Nothing at all,” replied Edith firmly. “Don’t suppose for one moment
that I am going to be involved in any wretched irregularity with its
inevitable end.”

“What’s the inevitable end, my dear?”

“Where men like you are concerned, desertion and exposure, I imagine.”

“You are not complimentary to-day, Edith, though perhaps you are right.
These hole-and-corner businesses always finish in misery; very often in
mutual detestation. But now, just see what a mess you have made by
trying to get everything. You married Rupert, whom you cordially
disliked, and won’t stick to him because somebody has cut off his foot
and Devene has got an heir. You engaged yourself to me, who, up to the
present, at any rate, you cordially liked, and now you won’t stick to
me, not from any motives of high morality, which one might respect, but
for fear of the consequences. So it seems that there is only one person
to whom you will stick, and that is your precious self. Well, I wish you
joy of the choice, Edith, but speaking as a candid friend, I don’t
personally know anyone who has held better cards and thrown them under
the table. Now the table is left, that is all, a nice, hard, polished
table, and you can look in it at the reflection of your own pretty face
till you grow tired. There is one thing, I shan’t be jealous, because
what applies to me will apply to any other man. As your own husband is
not good enough for you, you will have to do without the lot of us,
though whether you will have cause to be jealous of _me_ is another
matter. Do you see the point, dearest?”

“Do you see the door, Dick?” she answered, pointing towards it.

“Very well done,” he said, mocking her, “quite in our local leading
lady’s best tragedy manner. But I forgot, you have had practice lately
with poor old Rupert. Well, I will follow his example. Good-day, Edith!”
and with a most polite bow he went.

To say that he left Edith in a rage would be to put the matter too
mildly, for his bitter slings and arrows had worked her into such a fury
that she could only find relief in tears.

“If it hadn’t been for him,” she reflected to herself, when she
recovered a little, “I don’t think I should have turned Rupert away like
that, and this is my reward. And what’s more, I believe that I have been
a fool. After all, Rupert is a gentleman and Dick—isn’t. Those doctors
are so clever that they might have mended him up and made him look
respectable; the official business could have been explained, for I am
certain he did nothing he shouldn’t do, and perhaps he may still be Lord
Devene in the end. Whereas, what am I now? A young widow who daren’t
marry again, and who must starve for the rest of her life upon a
thousand a year. Why should I be so cruelly treated? Fate must have a
grudge against me. It is too bad, too bad, and as for Dick, I hate him
worse than Rupert.”

So she said and thought, yet during the years that followed, at any rate
outwardly, this pair made it up, after a fashion, as they always did. To
her determination to be involved in nothing compromising, Edith remained
quite firm, although Dick, in his role of a man of the world, did his
best to shake her scruples whenever he saw an opportunity, arguing that
Rupert must be really dead, and that it would even be safe for them to
marry. These, however, were, as it chanced, greatly strengthened by Dick
himself, who, as time went on, progressively disimproved.

To begin with, his good looks, which were so striking in his youth, had
entirely left him. He grew fat, and as is not uncommon with those in
whom the southern blood is strong, who sit up late at night, drink more
than is good for them, and in general live fast, Dick acquired also an
appearance that is best described as “greasy.” His rich colour departed,
leaving his cheeks tallow-like in hue, whereas beneath the eyes that
used to be so fine and eloquent appeared deep, black lines, while his
wavy, chestnut-coloured hair became quite dark, and on the top of his
head melted into baldness. In short, within seven years of the
conversation recorded above, Dick was nothing more than a middle-aged
gentleman of somewhat unpleasing aspect, who no longer appealed in the
slightest to Edith’s aesthetic tastes. Moreover, now again his
reputation was as seedy as his looks, for to those first-class companies
of which he was a director, in his desire for money to satisfy his
extravagant mode of life, he had added others of a more doubtful
character, his connection with one of which landed him in a scandal,
whence he only escaped by the help of Lord Devene. The House, too, to
which he still belonged had discovered that there was nothing in him
after all, and left him to sink to the level of an undistinguished
private member. Lastly, his health was far from good, and he had been
warned by the doctors that unless he entirely altered his way of life,
the liver attacks from which he suffered might develop into something
very serious. Meanwhile, they did not improve his temper.


More than seven years had gone by since that New Year’s Eve on which
Rupert, rejected by Edith, wiped the mud of London off his feet for
ever, when the terrible blow fell on Lord Devene which crushed out the
last sparks of his proud and bitter spirit. Of a sudden, his only
child—for no others were born to him—the bright and beautiful boy whom
he idolised, was seized by some sickness of the brain, which, in spite
of all that skill could do for him, carried him off within a week. Thus
it came about that once more Rupert, who was supposed to be dead, was
left heir-presumptive to the Devene title and settled property.

The mother accepted her loss with characteristic patience and courage.
She had never expected that the boy would live, and was not surprised at
his decease. But such a blow as this was more than Lord Devene could
bear. Here his philosophy failed him, and he had no other comfort to
which to fly. Moreover, now, the title would become extinct, and so much
of the property as he could not leave away must pass into the worthless
hands of Dick Learmer. Under these circumstances, his thoughts turned
once more to his natural daughter, Edith. He even sent for Dick, and
much as he despised and hated the man, suggested that he should marry
her, of course without telling him his real reason.

“It is time you settled yourself in life, if ever you are going to do
so,” he said, “and the same remark applies to Edith, who must have had
enough of being a widow. You will be a rich man when I am gone, and in
this pure and virtuous land it would be easy enough to purchase the
re-creation of the title. A matter of £50,000 judiciously spent on the
Party will do that in a year or so—even for you. What do you say?”

“Only that I have been trying to marry Edith for the last seven years
and she won’t have me,” answered Dick.

“Why not? I thought she was so fond of you.”

“Used to be, you mean. I don’t think she is now.”

“Ah! she may have heard of your way of life, you know, as many other
people have; but perhaps your new prospects”—and he winced as he said
the words, “may make a difference.”

“I doubt it,” said Dick. “She has got a craze in her head; believes that
Rupert may still be living.”

Lord Devene looked at him so sharply that next moment he was sorry he
had spoken the words.

“That’s a very odd craze, Dick,” he said, “after so many years. I should
not have thought Edith was a woman given to such fancies. I suggest that
you should try to disabuse her. See what you can do, and we will talk
over the matter again. Now good-bye; I’m tired.”

When the door closed behind Dick, Lord Devene began to piece together in
his own mind certain rumours that had reached him of late, but been
forgotten under pressure of his great grief. For instance, he had read
in a paper a paragraph about some white man, said to have been an
officer whose death was reported long ago, who in reality was still
living in a desert oasis which he ruled. Now, was it possible that this
white man could be Rupert? Was it possible that the letter which he had
sent him on the day of his marriage informing him of his wife’s true
parentage had so upset him that he determined never to return to her? It
was very improbable—but still—it might be worth while making a few
inquiries.

He ordered his brougham and drove down to a club where he often met Lord
Southwick at this hour of the day. As it chanced, in the smoking-room,
which was otherwise quite deserted, he was the first man whom he saw.
They had not spoken together since the death of his son, and Lord
Southwick took the opportunity to offer some condolences.

“Don’t speak of it, my dear fellow,” answered Devene; “it is very kind
of you, but I can’t bear the subject. All my hopes were centred on that
boy, and there’s an end. Had Ullershaw still been living now, it would
have been some consolation, but I suppose that he must be dead too.”

“Why do you say ‘suppose’?” asked Lord Southwick sharply.

“Well, if you want to know, because of certain fancies that have come
into my head. Now tell me, have you heard anything?”

“Yes, I have, and I was going to speak to you on the matter. Some queer
things have come to my knowledge lately. First of all, we have found out
that all that yarn with which Dick Learmer stuffed up my late chief is
nonsense, for that Egyptian sergeant, Abdullah, was mortally wounded a
few months ago, and before he died made a confession that he had told
lies, and that he ran away at the very beginning of the fight between
Ullershaw and those Arab rascals. So, of course, he didn’t see him
killed as he said he did.”

“Oh! But what yarn of Learmer’s do you mean?”

“Why, that Ullershaw had taken up with some pretty native woman and was
travelling with her. Learmer gave us to understand that he had private
confirmation of the fact, and, perhaps foolishly, we believed him, and
that’s what made my old chief so wild with your cousin. Now it appears
from Abdullah’s statement, which has just been forwarded home, as they
say out there, ‘to clear the shadow that has fallen upon the reputation
of a very gallant officer,’ all that Ullershaw did was to give escort to
two helpless females across the desert, partly from charity and partly
because he thought that their presence would make his caravan look more
like a trading expedition.”

“I see,” said Lord Devene; but to himself he added: “Dick again! What a
cowardly, black-hearted scoundrel! Well, is there any more?”

“Yes. You may remember it was stated in Parliament that this abortive
expedition had cost the authorities about £2,000. Well, within the last
year, £2,000 have been paid into the Treasury from a source that we
cannot trace, accompanied by a rather involved written message to this
effect: ‘That the money was to be applied to reimburse the costs
incurred in the diplomatic mission to certain chiefs on the borders of
the Soudan, in the fitting out and providing with funds of the
expedition under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Ullershaw,
C.B., by a person who desires to clear away the reproach that had been
laid upon him of having been the cause of a waste of public money.’ Now
did you, or his widow, do this?”

“Most certainly not!” answered Lord Devene, with a touch of his old
sarcasm. “Are either of us people likely to repay to Government money to
which they have no legal claim? How did the cash come?”

“Through a bank that would only say that it had been received from its
branch in Egypt. Further, reports have reached us that the Tama oasis,
which no one has visited for generations, is now virtually ruled by a
white man who is said to have been a British officer, although its real
chief is a woman. This woman, who is called the lady Mea, or after her
territory, Tama simply, has recently put herself in communication with
the Egyptian Government, demanding to be accorded its protection, and
offering to pay taxes, etc. The style of the letter made it certain that
it was never written by an Arab woman, so a political officer was sent
to see into the matter. He got to the oasis, and found that it is a
perfect garden, and very rich, having of late established an enormous
trade in dates, salt, horses, etc., with the surrounding tribes. Of the
white man, however, he saw nothing, his questions on the point being
politely ignored. Still he did hear by side winds that such a person
exists. That is all I can tell you about the thing, but it might be
worth your while to follow it up. I hope you will indeed, and still
more, that Ullershaw may prove to be alive. In my opinion, he has been a
cruelly-treated man, and it is just possible that a fellow of his
character, knowing this and not caring to defend himself, has chosen to
remain lost.”

“Thank you, I will,” said Lord Devene, and going home he wrote a note to
Edith telling her to come to see him.




CHAPTER XX.

REVELATIONS

As it happened, Edith had just left London for a week to stay with
friends in Cornwall, and therefore could not obey Lord Devene’s summons
till after her return. When at length she did arrive, she was shocked at
the change in his appearance.

“You think that I look ill?” he said, reading her mind.

“Yes, I must say that I do, Cousin George,” she answered, as she
contemplated his snow-white hair, shrunken figure, and thin face worn
with sorrow and weariness.

“Well, you see, I am no longer young. Threescore and ten are the full
years of man, and I have just completed them. But that’s not the worst
of it; the old sleeplessness is back upon me with a vengeance. I have
scarcely closed my eyes for six nights. This last job, the loss of my
poor boy, has finished me, and now I don’t care how quickly I follow him
into the dark; the sooner the better, I think; yes, the sooner the
better.”

“Don’t say that,” said Edith gently. “I hope that you have a good many
years before you.”

“No, no, nor months, nor perhaps weeks,” he added slowly. “My treadmill
is nearly finished, the accursed wheel is going to stop. But,” he went
on swiftly, as though to prevent her answering him, “I have sent for you
to talk about your affairs, not mine. Why will you not marry Dick
Learmer?”

“Do you consider him a desirable man for a woman to marry, Cousin
George?”

“No, I don’t. He has gone all to bits of late, and he doesn’t exactly
give off an odour of sanctity, does he? In fact, if you ask me my
private opinion as his relative, who has had the honour of supporting
him more or less for many years, I should say that he was about as big a
blackguard as you could find in London, and I have always wondered how
you could care twopence about him.”

“And yet you suggest that I should marry him.”

“Well, you know he is going to be a rich man, and you might as well have
your share. But I understand that you won’t.”

“No,” said Edith decidedly, “I won’t. He did fascinate me rather once,
but I have got over that, and now I dislike him. It is curious how we
change in these matters—only I wish I had seen the truth earlier.”

“Yes, so do I. If you had, perhaps you would have gone to Egypt when you
thought fit to stay at home. Well, if you won’t commit bigamy, which I
admit is an awkward thing to do, why not make it up with Rupert?”

Edith gasped and sank back in her chair.

“How do you—I mean, what do you know?” she exclaimed. “Has Dick told
you?”

“Ho!” said this wise old man, drawing his white eyebrows together, “so
Master Dick has a finger in this pie too, has he? He has not only
murdered Rupert; he has buried him also.”

“Murdered!”

“What else do you call it when _he_ got him sent off to Egypt on his
wedding day upon a particularly dangerous mission, and when, on the
failure of that mission and his reported death, _he_ even took the
opportunity to poison the minds of his chiefs and so blacken his
memory.”

“So he really did those things?” remarked Edith reflectively.

“Certainly; I will give you chapter and verse for it if you like. But
about Rupert.” He paused, and drew a bow at a venture. “What happened
when you saw him?”

“So Dick _has_ told you,” she said. “Well, if he will lie about one
thing, he will lie about another. But why force me to repeat the story?”

“Because I should like to hear it first-hand. What happened, and when?”

“Over seven years ago,” answered Edith hoarsely, “Rupert came back, on
New Year’s Eve, a Sunday, after Dick had been to lunch. He was dressed
in horrible rough clothes, and his hair was long and tangled like that
of a wild man. His foot had been cut off, and his left eye put out by
those savages there in the Soudan. They tortured him because he would
not become a Mahommedan.”

“Ah!” said Lord Devene, “personally I think that the Mahommedan religion
has points, but—plucky fellow, Rupert; it might have recommended him to
some women. Well?”

“Well, he was horrible to me. As a friend I could scarcely have borne
him, but as a husband—oh! you know.”

“I think you said that Dick had been to luncheon, did you not? Now, had
he perhaps suggested himself as what on a Board of Directors is called
an alternative?”

“He had asked me to marry him,” replied Edith, dropping her head.

“With the usual concomitants, I suppose, and perhaps had not been too
roughly rebuffed. He was better-looking then, wasn’t he? Well, under the
circumstances, no doubt, a mere martyr in badly fitting clothes, and
without a foot, would have seemed horrible to any refined young woman.
Husbands often assume that appearance to wives who chance to have
followed their finer instincts, and fallen in love with somebody else.
But what became of our martyr? Is he now preaching Christianity among
the benighted Mahommedans?”

“You are cruel to me,” said Edith, with something like a sob.

“Then learn patience from the example of the martyr, who seems to have
suffered much without complaining, for conscience’ sake—like you, dear
Edith, and—answer the question.”

“I told him,” she said, in a low voice, “that as he was dead, he had
better remain dead. He went away; I don’t know what became of him, or
whether he is alive or not.”

“Then allow me to reassure your anxious heart upon that point. To the
best of my belief, unless I am very much mistaken, the admirable Rupert
is at present living in an oasis called Tama, somewhere in the desert,
not far from the Soudan; I don’t know the exact locality, but doubtless
it can easily be ascertained. Moreover, he has prospered better than
most martyrs do, for with characteristic folly, he has paid back £2,000,
which he did not owe, to the Government, in some particularly stupid and
roundabout fashion. By the way, you never claimed his insurance, did
you? No. Well, that’s lucky, for you might have been prosecuted. To
return—in this happy oasis, as I believe, Rupert lives at ease,
assisting its fair ruler to govern some primitive community, who
apparently grow dates and manufacture salt for his and her benefit, for
he seems to have relaxed his iron principles sufficiently to allow
himself to contract a morganatic marriage, of which, under the
circumstances, you will be the last to complain.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Edith, with some energy. “It’s not like
Rupert to break his word.”

“It would be like a born idiot if he didn’t. Why should you have a
monopoly in that respect?” Lord Devene answered, with withering sarcasm.
“But perhaps the best thing to do would be to go and find out. Look
here, Edith,” he said, dropping his bitter, bantering tone, “I have
never set up for virtue; I hate the name of it as it is commonly used,
but I must tell you that I think you an exceedingly wicked woman. What
business have you to treat the man whom you had married in this way,
just because you had been philandering with that accursed Dick, and
because he had lost his leg and his prospects of a title? Well, his leg
won’t grow again, but the title is sprouting finely. Hadn’t you better
make haste and secure it? Lady Devene sounds better than Mrs. Ullershaw,
relict of a forgotten colonel in the Egyptian army. Also, perhaps you
would be happier as the wife of an honourable man than as the friend of
Dick Learmer.”

“I’m not his friend,” replied Edith indignantly, “—now after what you
have told me, for it was base to try to blacken the reputation of a dead
man. Also, I don’t like him at all; his ways of life and even his
appearance disgust me.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Lord Devene.

“As for your reproaches about poor Rupert,” she went on, “you find it
convenient to forget that it was you who forced me into that marriage. I
never pretended to be in love with him, although it is true that now,
when I am older, I see things in a different light, and have more regard
for him than ever I had before.”

“Now, when you have escaped from the blighting shadow of the other man’s
influence, you mean, Edith. But, whatever the reason, better late than
not at all. You blame me for having, by a gift of £25,000, etc.,
‘forced’ you into the marriage. Well, would you like to know why I did
so?”

“Yes; I should very much.”

“Then I see no reason why I should not tell you—now. It was because you
happen to be my daughter, Edith.”

She gasped again, then said: “Is that the truth, or one of your bad
jokes?”

“The truth. I would rather not enter on the subject with you, but you
can have your mother’s statement to read afterwards, if you like, and I
don’t know that the fact need distress you.”

“It distresses me very much,” answered Edith bitterly. “Hitherto I
always thought that my mother was honest, and that my father was a good
if a foolish man. Now those illusions have gone, like the rest, and now,
too, I understand where all that is bad in me came from, and that my odd
dislike of Rupert was inherited—for I have heard that story from Dick.”

Even the hardened Lord Devene winced a little beneath these bitter
shafts.

“It would seem, my dear Edith,” he said, “that your powers of offensive
speech are at least your own, since mine, which some people think
considerable, are put to the blush by them.”

“I pay you back in your own coin, that is all. For an hour you have sat
there mocking and insulting me, tearing me to pieces and stamping on me,
ending up with the information that I am—what I am. Do you wonder, then,
that I retaliate? Cousin—I beg your pardon, but how do you wish me to
address you in future? Well,” she went on, without waiting for an
answer, “I am glad that Rupert knew nothing about it, for at any rate,
as I think you once said, he was the only respectable man in the family,
and he might have felt aggrieved under all the circumstances.”

“It is highly probable that he did. Do you remember a letter which the
footman gave to him at the train when he was starting for Egypt after
your marriage? Yes? Well, that letter informed him of our exact
relationship, leaving it optional with him to pass on the facts to you,
or not, as he liked.”

“He never said a word,” exclaimed Edith. “No, not even in that scene
when we parted, and he might so easily have used what he knew to hurt
me. Oh! he is different to us all—he is different.”

“Quite so, and that is why I wished you to marry him. Also, then as now
he was going to get the title and the property, and, unnatural creature
though you think me to be, I had, as it happened, a wish that you should
share those temporalities. Indeed I have it still, and that is why I
desire and implore that you should make it up with Rupert if he is still
living. Listen, Edith!” he went on earnestly, “you are still a beautiful
and admired woman, but you are now well past your youth, and soon the
admirers will fall away and you haven’t many real friends, and can’t
marry anyone else to protect and look after you. So I suggest that for
your own sake you should take refuge with a husband in whom you yourself
admit that there is much to esteem. Edith, my days are almost done; it
is very probable that I shall have no further opportunity of talking to
you upon this or any other subject. I urge you therefore as one who,
being responsible for your presence in the world, has your welfare most
earnestly at heart, to promise me that you will make inquiries, and if
you find that Rupert is living, as I believe, that you will go to him,
for he will certainly not come to you, and ask his pardon for the past.
Will you do it?”

“I—think so,” she answered slowly, “and yet, after all that has been—oh!
how can I? And how will he receive me?”

“I am not sure,” answered Lord Devene. “Were I in his place, I know how
I should receive you,” he added, with a grim little laugh, “but Rupert
is a forbearing creature. The trouble is that he may have formed other
ties. All I can suggest is that you should be patient and try to work
upon his feelings and sense of duty. Now I have said all I can, and
shall say no more who have other things to think of. You have made your
own bed, Edith, and if you can’t re-make it, you must lie on it as it
is, that’s all. Good-bye.”

She rose and held out her hand.

“Before you go,” he said, with a nervous little clearing of the
throat,—“it seems weak I know, but I should like to hear you say that
you forgive me, not about the Rupert business, for there I am sure I did
the best I could for you, but for bringing you into this world at all.
So far, I admit, whoever’s the fault may be, you do not seem to have
made a great success of it, any more than I have. As you know, I am
troubled by no form of the common superstitions of our age, holding as I
do that we are the purest accidents, born like gnats from the
life-creating influences of sun and air and moisture, developed out of
matter and passing back into matter, to live again as matter, whereof
our intellect is but a manifestation, and no more. Still I cannot help
acknowledging, after many years of observation, that there does seem to
be some kind of fate which influences the affairs of men, and at times
brings retribution on them for their follies and mistakes. If that is
so, Edith, it is this fate which you should blame,” and the old man
looked at her almost appealingly.

“No,” she answered, in a cold voice. “Once I remember, when I did not
know that you were my father, I told you that I loved you—I suppose that
the kinship of our blood prompted me. Now when I know how close that
kinship is, and in what way it came about, by the disgrace of my mother
during the life-time of her husband, I love you no more. It is not the
fate that I blame, but you, you—its instrument, who were free to choose
the better part.”

“So be it,” replied Lord Devene quietly. “Apply those words to your own
life, Edith, and by them let it be judged as you have judged me.”

Then they parted.


Edith kept her promise. Going to a great lawyer, famous for his
investigations of difficult matters, she told him merely that rumours
had reached her to the effect that her husband, who for many years had
been supposed to be dead, was in reality alive in the Soudan, or in its
bordering desert, and suggested that he should put himself in
communication with Lord Southwick and the Egyptian authorities with the
object of ascertaining the truth, and if necessary send someone out to
Egypt. The lawyer made notes, said that the matter should be followed
up, and that he would keep her advised as to the results of his
inquiries. Thereupon Edith, who, after their last bitter and tragic
interview, did not wish to see anything more at present of the man whom
she must believe to be her father, left town, as indeed it was her
custom to do during the month of August, and went away to Scotland. When
she had been there nearly six weeks, she received one morning a telegram
from Lady Devene, which was dated from Grosvenor Square and read:

Come here at once. Your Cousin George is no more. I want your help.

Shocked by this news she managed to catch the midday train to London. At
Rugby she saw the placard of an evening paper. On it, among other news’
headings, was printed: “Sad death of a well-known peer.” She bought the
paper, and after some search found a short paragraph which said:

“We regret to announce that Lord Devene was found dead in bed at his
house in Grosvenor Square this morning. The cause of his death is not
yet known.” Then followed some biographical details and these words: “As
Lord Devene lost his only son some months ago, it is believed that the
peerage becomes extinct. The settled property, however, passes to his
cousin, Richard Learmer, Esq., M.P.”

From the station Edith drove direct to Grosvenor Square and was received
by Tabitha in the drawing-room. There she sat in her black dress,
sad-faced, calm, imposing, like an incarnation, Edith thought, of that
fate whereof her father had spoken to her at their last interview. They
embraced each other without warmth, for at heart these two women were
not friends.

“How did it happen?” asked Edith.

“He died as her first ladyship died,” answered the widow, “by an
overdose of chloral. You know he could never sleep.”

“How did he come to take an overdose?” asked Edith again.

“I do not know,” she answered meaningly; “perhaps the doctors they can
tell you. Would you like to see him?”

“No,” said Edith, with a shudder; “I had rather not.”

“Ach!” said Lady Devene, “I forgot; you did always run away from the
sick and fear the dead; it is your nature.”

“Are you sorry?” said Edith curiously, perhaps to change the
conversation.

“Yes; for his soul which goes to its reward I am sorry, for he did not
repent before he died, who had many things of which he should repent.
For myself I am not sorry, for I have done my duty by him, and now at
last the chains do fall off my neck and God has set me free to give me
time to make my peace with Him before I die also.”

Then saying that she must get some food, Edith left her, for she did not
wish to pursue this painful conversation.

If the doctors of whom Lady Devene had spoken suspected anything
unusual, they were singularly reticent upon the point. All they could or
would say was that Lord Devene, who for many years had been in the habit
of taking chloral to combat his constitutional sleeplessness, had on
this particular night taken too much. So the usual verdict was returned:
“Death from misadventure, the cause being an overdose of chloral,” and
many comments were made on the curious fact that Lord Devene and his
first wife should have come to a precisely similar end.

The will, which had been executed after the death of the little boy, was
found to be very short. It made no mention of the entailed property,
leaving the next heir to establish his claim, and after stating that the
testator’s wife was provided for by settlement, appointed Edith
Ullershaw residuary legatee without restrictions. This sounded simple
enough, but when matters came to be looked into it was found that Edith
took real and personal estate to the value of £200,000. Subject to the
life-interest of the widow, even the house in Grosvenor Square was hers,
so she was now a rich woman.

“Ach! my dear Edith,” said Lady Devene, when she learned that she had a
right to continue to live in the great mansion, “take it, take it at
once. I hate the place. Two thousand pounds a year, that is plenty for
me—£500 to live on, and £1,500 to give away. Yes, at last the poor shall
get some of all those monies which have been collected out of their toil
and their drink-vices.”

Needless to say, the exultant Dick swooped upon the settled property
like a famished hawk, demanding to be declared its rightful possessor.
But then arose a most unpleasant hitch, for just at this time there came
a letter to Edith from her lawyers, announcing that they had received
telegraphic advices from the agent whom they had despatched to Egypt,
informing them that it appeared to be almost certain that the white man
who was living in the oasis Tama was none other than that Colonel Rupert
Ullershaw who was supposed to have been killed many years before. The
lawyers added that, on their own responsibility, and on behalf of her
husband, whom they believed to be alive and the present Lord Devene,
they had made representations in the proper quarter, as a result of
which no one would be allowed to touch the settled property until the
matter was thoroughly investigated.

Of course all this strange story soon found its way into the newspapers,
and many were the rapturous congratulations which Edith received, even
from persons with whom she had the very smallest acquaintance. Meanwhile
the lawyers had again been in communication with their agent, who was
established at Wady-Halfa. A second telegram was received from this
capable and enterprising person, announcing that with great difficulty
he had succeeded in reaching the oasis, and in sending a message to
Colonel Ullershaw, informing him of his accession to the title, adding,
however, that all his lordship had replied was, that he did not want the
title, and refused to leave the place.

“It would appear,” went on their letter to Edith, covering this cable,
“that his lordship has suffered somewhat mentally from long confinement
among these savages, who, we are informed, have cut off his foot to
prevent his escaping, as they regard him as a god who has brought them
great prosperity which would vanish if he left them. We presume,
therefore, that your ladyship will proceed to Egypt as soon as possible
and use your personal influence to withdraw him from his unhappy
situation. We are informed that the people of the oasis are peaceable,
but, if necessary, that the authorities will give you any assistance
which may be required.”

Now the whole thing was out, and became a subject of general
conversation at a hundred dinner tables. Moreover, it was rumoured that
some years before Rupert Ullershaw had actually been seen in London.
General Sir Alfred Alltalk declared that he had met him upon the steps
of the Army and Navy Club, and a further ill-natured tale was whispered
that he had come to see his wife, who would have nothing to do with him,
because at that time he had ceased to be heir to the peerage. This
story, which Edith was not wrong in ascribing to the indiscreet or
malicious utterances of Dick, who was furious with disappointment and
thirsting for revenge, soon reached her ears. Of course she contradicted
it, but equally of course she had now no alternative but to go to Egypt.

“Ach!” said the Dowager Lady Devene, when Edith expatiated to her upon
the hardship and dangers of the journey which she must undertake
alone—“ach! if that is all, I will come with you as a companion. I am
not afraid, and I have always wished to see the land where Pharaoh
oppressed the Israelites. We will start next week, and in a month I hope
to see my dear Rupert again—almost as much as you do,” she added,
looking at Edith sideways.

Now as this speech was made before several other people, Edith had no
choice but to acquiesce, and indeed it had come to this—she also wished
to see Rupert. Even in her somewhat flinty heart remorse had been at
work of late years; also, she had wearied of her lonely life, and wished
to put a stop to the scandals that were floating about concerning her,
which, as she foresaw, would soon culminate in her being exposed to much
annoyance from Dick. In fact, he was already threatening to blackmail
her and making unpleasant remarks as to certain indiscreet letters that
she had written to him after Rupert’s visit to London, in which that
visit and other matters showing the extreme intimacy which existed
between them were alluded to not too obscurely. So she arranged to
depart for the East, accompanied by Lady Devene.

Before they sailed, she received a packet from the late Lord Devene’s
bankers, which, they stated by the mouth of a confidential clerk, they
had been directed to deliver to her one month after his death, and not
before. On opening it she found that it contained that statement
concerning herself made by her mother, to which Lord Devene had alluded.
Also, there were two letters from him, one addressed to her and the
other to Rupert, the latter being left open that she might read it.

That to herself was brief, and ran:

I have given you all I can. Accept this wealth as a make-weight to the
initial wrong I did to you by becoming your father. I was weak enough to
hope that when I revealed that fact to you, you would show some
affection towards a lonely and broken-hearted man. You, however, took
another view, irritated perhaps by our previous somewhat acrimonious
conversation. I grieve to say that on such argumentative occasions I
have never been quite able to master my tongue, and as you remarked, you
seem to have inherited the weakness. At least I have not cared to expose
myself to a second rebuff. I do not blame you, but it is true that from
that day forward I made up my mind to end an existence which has become
hateful to me. If its dregs could have been sweetened by the love of one
who is, after all, my child, I should probably have been content to
endure its physical and mental miseries whilst awaiting their natural
termination. But it has been destined otherwise, so like some of those
old Romans whom I so much admire, my day done, I go from this hated
scene out into the utter darkness whence I came. Good-bye! May you be
happier than your father,

D.

It was a horrible letter for a daughter to receive from the author of
her being, but fortunately it did not affect Edith so much as would have
been the case with many women. She felt that there was a certain
injustice about the thing. To begin with, her father had taken her at
her word after the incomprehensible male habit. Then she had spoken when
utterly irritated, first by his bitter gibes and sarcasms, and secondly
by being suddenly informed that she was quite another person than she
had supposed herself to be for over thirty years. Still, now when it was
too late, she felt grieved. It was generally Edith’s lot to be
grieved—too late. Yes, she was grieved, no more, when others might have
been paralysed with horror and unavailing remorse.

Afterwards, she took out of its envelope and read the letter to Rupert.
Here it is:

DEAR DEVENE,—For I give you the name which will be yours when you read
this, if you should ever do so.

I have learned all your story, or if not all of it, at least enough to
show me how accurate was the estimate which I formed of you long ago.
Had not fortune fought against you, you would have been a great man, if
such a creature really exists, which I doubt, since in nine hundred and
ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, ‘great’ is only a popular
translation of the vulgar word ‘successful.’

I write now to express the sincere hope that if, as I believe, you are
still living, you and Edith, forgetting your previous diversities, and
many another trouble and sorrow, will agree to live together in the
accustomed, time-hallowed fashion, and if possible leave children behind
you to carry on the race. Not that it is worth carrying on, except,
perhaps, for certain qualities of your own, but one must make sacrifices
upon the altars of habit and sentiment. For what other possible reason
can the populations of the earth be continued? Yet there is
one—Nature—(perhaps in the wilderness you have found out what that word
means)—commands what the good sense of her most cultivated children
condemns as entirely useless and undesirable. Perhaps there is some
ultimate object in this, though personally I can see none. To me it
appears to be nothing more than a part of the blind brutality of things
which decrees the continuance, at any rate for a little while, of the
highly nervous, overbred and unsatisfactory animal called Man. Well,
soon or late he will die of his own sufferings, that increase daily as
he advances in the scale of progressive degeneracy, which he dignifies
by the name of civilisation. Then perhaps Nature (God is your name for
it) will enjoy a good laugh over the whole affair, but as human tears
will have ceased to fall, what will that matter?

Edith will tell you of the fashion of my end; how, worn out at length by
grief—one of the worst gifts of the said civilisation, for the savage
feels little—and bodily weakness—the worst gift of our primeval state, I
have determined to put an end to both, though this is a fact which there
is no need for you to blazon abroad.

I can see you solemnly lifting your eyes and saying: ‘Lo! a judgment.
What the man drove that unfortunate woman to has fallen back upon his
own head. (Under the circumstances “unfortunate” is the exact word that
you will use, tempered by a romantic sigh, whereas, in fact, poor Clara
was but a very ordinary and middle-class kind of sinner, who did not
even shrink from the ruin of the boy whom she pretended to love.) How
wonderful is the retribution of Providence! The same death, the same
means of death!’

Well, you will be quite wrong. Whether one suffers from sleeplessness or
from the fear of intolerable exposure does not matter. One takes the
most convenient method to end it, and in this case they happen to be
identical. There is no Providence, no poetic justice about the business,
nothing but what novelists, or rather their critics, call the ‘long arm
of coincidence.’

Good-bye! I wonder what you have been doing all these years in the
Soudan. I should like to hear the story from you; I am sure that it must
be interesting. But I am quite convinced that I shall never have the
chance. Nothing is absolutely certain except the absolute nothingness
that awaits us all.—Believe me, my dear Devene, yours more sincerely
than you may think,

Devene.

“What an odd letter,” thought Edith, as she returned the sheets to their
envelope. “I don’t quite understand all of it, but I think that under
other circumstances my father might have been a very different man. I
wonder if we are quite responsible for what we do, or if the
circumstances are responsible? If so, who makes the circumstances?”




CHAPTER XXI.

ZAHED

Rupert was disturbed in his mind. No one was less superstitious. He had
advanced spiritually beyond the reach of superstition. He had grasped
the great fact still not understood by the vast majority of human
beings, that the universe and their connection with it is a mighty
mystery whereof nine hundred and ninety-nine parts out of a thousand are
still veiled to men. These are apt to believe, as Lord Devene believed,
that this thousandth part which they see bathed in the vivid, daily
sunlight is all that there is to see. They imagine that because only one
tiny angle of the great jewel catches and reflects the light, the rest
must be dark and valueless. They look upon the point of rock showing
above the ocean and forget that in its secret depths lies hid a mountain
range, an island, a continent, a world, perhaps, whereof this topmost
peak alone appears.

With Rupert, to whom such reflections were familiar, it was not so. Yet
perhaps, because he remembered that every outward manifestation, however
trivial, doubtless has its root in some hidden reason, and that probably
the thing we call coincidence does not in truth exist, it did trouble
and even alarm him when, riding one morning with Mea down a deep cleft
in Tama, he heard upon the cliff, to the right of them, the wild and
piercing music of the Wandering Players. Looking up, he saw upon the
edge of that cliff those strange musicians, swathed as before in such a
fashion that their faces were invisible, three of them blowing on their
pipes and two keeping time with the drums, for the benefit, apparently,
of the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, since no biped was
near to them.

He hailed them angrily from the valley, but they took not the slightest
notice, only blew more weirdly and beat the louder. He tried to get up
to them, but discovered that in order to do so he must ride round for
five miles. This he accomplished at last, only to find that they were
gone, having probably slipped down the slope of the mountain away into
their home, the desert. Indeed, it was reported to him afterwards that
some people, accompanied by two donkeys, had been seen in the distance
tramping across the sand.

“Why are you so vexed, Rupert?” asked Mea, when they descended the
cliffs again, after their fruitless search.

“I don’t know,” he answered, with a laugh, “but that music is associated
with disagreeable recollections in my mind. The first time we heard it,
you remember, was just before I lost my foot and eye, and the next time
was as I embarked upon the ship on my way to England, an unhappy
journey. What have they come for now, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, with her sweet smile; “but I at least have
no cause to fear them. After their first visit I saved you; after their
second you came back to me.”

“And after their third—?” asked Rupert.

“After their third I have said, I do not know; but perhaps it means that
we shall take a long journey together.”

“If that’s all, I don’t care,” he replied. “What I dread is our taking
journeys away from each other.”

“I thank you,” she answered, bowing to him gravely, “your words are
pleasant to me, and I bless those musicians who made you speak them, as
I am sure that our roads branch no more.”

So, still smiling at each other like two happy children, they rode on.
They visited the salt works which Rupert had established to the enormous
benefit of everyone in the oasis.

Passing through groves of young date-palms that he had planted, they
came to the breeding grounds of camels, mules, and horses, the last of
which had attained a great reputation, and having inspected the studs,
turned back through the irrigated lands that now each year produced two
crops instead of one.

“You have done well for us, Rupert,” said Mea, as they headed homewards.
“Tama has not been so wealthy since the days of my forefathers, who
called themselves kings, and now that the Khalifa is broken and the land
has become safe, this is but a beginning of riches.”

“I don’t know about that,” he answered, with his jolly laugh, “but I
have done very well for myself. Do you know that out of my percentage I
have saved more money than I can spend? Now I am going to build a
hospital and hire a skilled man to attend to it, for I am tired of
playing doctor.”

“Yes,” she answered, “I have thought of it before, only I said nothing
because it means bringing white folk into the place, and we are so happy
without them. Also, our people do not like strangers.”

“I understand,” he answered, “but the Europeans have discovered us
already. It is impossible to keep them out now that we pay taxes to the
Government. You remember that man a few months ago who came to tell me
that I am Lord Devene, and that since I became so my wife is making
inquiries about me. I would not see him, and you sent him away, but he,
or others, will be back again soon.”

“And then will you wish to leave with him, Rupert, and take your own
place in the West?” she asked anxiously.

“Not I,” he answered, “not if they offered to make me a king.”

“Well, why should you?” Mea said, with her sweet little laugh, “who are
already a king here,” and she touched her breast; “and there,” and she
nodded towards some people who bowed themselves before him; “and
everywhere,” and she waved her hand at the oasis of Tama in general.

“Well,” he answered, “the first is the only crown I want.” Then, having
no more words to say, this strange pair, divorced for the kingdom of
Heaven’s sake, yet wedded indeed, if ever man and woman have been, for
truly their very souls were one, looked at each other tenderly. They had
changed somewhat since we saw them last over seven years before. Their
strange life had left its seal upon them both. Mea’s face was thinner,
the rich, full lips had a little wistful droop; the great, pleading eyes
had grown spiritual, as though with continual looking over the edge of
the world; the air of mystery which her features always wore had
deepened; also, her figure was somewhat less rounded than it appeared in
those unregenerate days when she turned herself about before Rupert, and
assured him that she was “not so bad.” Yet she was more beautiful now
than then, only the beauty was of a different character.

Rupert, on the other hand, had greatly improved in looks. The eye that
remained to him was quite bright and clear, and the flesh had healed
over the other in such a fashion that it only looked as if it were shut.
The scars left by the hot irons on his face had almost vanished also.
The bleaching of the sun, combined with other causes, had turned his
hair from red to an iron grey, to the great gain of his appearance;
moreover, the wide, rough beard, which had caused Edith mentally to
compare him to Orson as pictured in the fairy books of her youth, was
kept short, square, and carefully trimmed. Lastly, his face, like Mea’s,
had fined down, till it resembled that of a powerful ascetic, which, in
truth, he was. Indeed, although they were so strangely different, they
had yet grown like to one another; seen in certain lights, and in their
Arab robes, it would have been quite possible to mistake them for
brother and sister, as their people called them among themselves.

For a long while, to these simple inhabitants of the desert, the
relations between the two had been a matter of mystery. They were unable
to understand why a man and woman, who were evidently everything to each
other, did not marry. At first they thought that Rupert must have taken
other wives among the women of the place, but finding that this was not
so, secretly they applied to Bakhita to enlighten them. She informed
them that because of vows that they had made, and for the welfare of
their souls, this pair had agreed to adopt the doctrine of Renunciation.

Bakhita spoke with some hidden sarcasm, but as that doctrine, at any
rate in theory, is, and for thousands of years has been familiar to the
East, her questioners grasped the sense of the saying readily enough,
and on the strength of it gave Rupert a new name. Thenceforth among them
he was known as _Zahed,_ which means the Renouncer—one who, fixing his
eyes upon a better, thrusts aside the good things of this world. It is
easy for a man who stands upon such a pedestal to be lifted a little
higher, at any rate amongst Easterns. Therefore it came about that very
shortly Rupert found himself revered as a saint, a holy personage, who
was probably inspired by Heaven.

As he had no vices that could be discovered; as he neither drank
spirituous liquors nor even smoked, having given up that habit; as he
lived very simply, and gave largely to the poor; as he was noted for the
great cures he worked by his doctoring; as he dispensed justice with an
even hand, and by his hard work and ability turned the place into an
Eden flowing with milk and honey; and lastly, as his military knowledge
and skill in fortification made the oasis practically impregnable to
attack, this reputation of his grew with a rapidity that was positively
alarming. Had he wished it, it would have been easy for Rupert to assume
the character of a Mahdi, and to collect the surrounding tribes under
his banner to wage whatever wars he thought desirable. Needless to say,
he had no yearnings in that direction, being quite sufficiently occupied
in doing all the good that lay to his hand in Tama.

Still, as he found that he was expected to address the people upon
certain feast days, generally once a month, he took the opportunity,
without mentioning its name, to preach his own faith to them, or at any
rate the morals which that faith inculcates, with the result that after
he had dwelt among them for five years, although they knew it not, the
population of Tama, being Coptic by blood and therefore already inclined
in that direction, was in many essentials Christian in thought and
character. This was a great work for one man to do in so short a time,
and as he looked around upon the result of the labours of his hand and
heart, Rupert in secret was conscious of a certain pride. He felt that
his misfortunes had worked together for good to others as well as to
himself. He felt that he had not lived in vain, and that when he died,
the seed which he had sown would bear fruit a hundredfold. Happy is the
man who can know as much as this, and few there are that know it.

It was the day of the new moon, and, according to custom, Rupert was
engaged in delivering his monthly address. There had been trouble in
Tama. A man who had met with misfortunes after great prosperity had
publicly cursed all gods and committed suicide; while another man,
cruelly wronged, had taken the law into his own hands, and murdered his
neighbour. On these sad examples Rupert discoursed.

Rupert and Mea, placed on this occasion upon the platform in the hall of
the ancient temple, where they were in the habit of sitting side by side
to administer justice, and for other public purposes, did not, as it
happened, know of the approach of a party of white travellers that
afternoon. It had been reported to them, indeed, that some Europeans—two
women and a man, with their servants—were journeying across the desert,
but as they did not understand that these wished to come to Tama, Mea
contented herself with giving orders that they should receive any food
or assistance that they needed, and let the matter slip from her mind.

Her servants and the guards of the Black Pass executed this command in a
liberal spirit, and when the party, through an interpreter, explained
that they wished to visit the oasis, having business with its sheik,
presuming that they were expected, they offered no objection, but even
conducted them on their way. Only the guards asked whom they meant by
the sheik, Zahed, or the lady Tama? as Zahed himself was not in the
habit of receiving strangers. They inquired who Zahed might be, and were
informed of the meaning of his name, also that he was a holy man, and a
great _hakim_ or doctor, and by birth an Englishman, who had been sent
by Heaven to bless their people, and who was the “lord of the spirit” of
their lady Mea.

Edith, from her high perch on the top of a tall camel, an animal which
she feared and loathed, looked down at Lady Devene, who, composed as
usual, but with her fair skin burnt to the colour of mahogany, sat upon
a donkey as upright and as unmoved as though that animal were her own
drawing-room chair. Indeed, when it fell down, as it did occasionally,
she still sat there, waiting till someone lifted it up again. Tabitha
was an excellent traveller; nothing disturbed her nerves. Still she
preferred a donkey to a camel; it was nearer the ground, she explained.
So, for the matter of that, did Edith, only she selected the latter
beast because she thought, and rightly, that on it she looked less
absurd.

“Tabitha,” she said, “what on earth do you make of all that? Rupert
seems to have turned prophet, and to be married to this woman.”

“I should not wonder,” answered Lady Devene, looking up at the graceful
figure on the camel. “He is good stuff to make a prophet of, but as for
being married, they said only that he is lord of the lady’s spirit.
Also, they call him the Renouncer, so I do not think that he is
married.”

Edith, who had gathered that this lady was still young and very
good-looking, shook her head gloomily, for already she who had so little
right to be so was jealous of Mea.

“I expect that only means she has made him renounce some other ones,”
she suggested. “Of course, it would seem wonderful to all these
creatures if a man had only one wife.”

“Ach! we shall see, but at any rate you cannot grumble. It is a matter
for his own conscience, not for you who turned the poor man out of
doors. Ach! Edith, you must have the heart of a nether millstone. But if
you want to know more, tell that wretched Dick to find out. He stopped
back to drink some whisky and soda.”

Edith opened her white umbrella, although at the moment the sun did not
reach her in the pass, and interposed it between Tabitha and herself to
indicate that the conversation was finished. She did not appreciate Lady
Devene’s outspoken criticism, of which she had endured more than enough
during the past six weeks. Nor did she wish to summon Dick to her
assistance, for she knew exactly what he would say.

Here it may be explained that Dick had not been asked to be a member of
this party, but when they embarked on the steamer at Marseilles, they
found him there. On being questioned as to the reason of his presence,
he stated quite clearly that his interests were too much concerned in
the result of their investigations to allow of his being absent from
them. So as they could not prevent him, with them he came, accompanied
by a little retinue of his own.

For the rest of that journey, when she was not stifled by the Campsine
wind, which followed them up the pass, or thinking about the joltings of
the camel, and other kindred discomforts, Edith remained lost in her own
meditations. Rupert was here, of this there could be no manner of doubt,
and considering the fashion of their last adieux, what on earth was she
to say to him when they met? Also, and this was more to the point, what
would he say to her? She was still a very pretty woman, and his wife;
those were her only cards; but whether Rupert would respond when she
played them remained more than doubtful. His last words to her were that
he hated her, that all his nature and his soul rose up in repugnance
against her; that even if she swore she loved him, he would not touch
her with his finger-tips, and that he would never willingly speak to her
again in this world or the next. This was fairly uncompromising, and was
it likely that Rupert, that patient, obstinate Rupert, who here, it
seemed, was adored by everybody, would of a sudden vary a determination
in which he had persisted for more than seven years? Heartily did Edith
wish that she had never come upon this wild errand.

But she had been forced into it. Dick, whom she now cordially detested
and feared, but who unfortunately knew her secrets, had put stories
about concerning her which made it necessary for her to act if she would
save her own good repute. Rich as she was and beautiful as she was, very
few respectable people would have anything to do with her in future, if
it became known as a certain fact that she had rejected her own husband
when he rose from the dead, merely because he was in trouble, had been
physically injured, and for the time lost his prospects of a peerage.
This would be too much even for a false and hypocritical world. But oh!
she wished that she could be conveyed to the other end of the earth,
even if she had to go there through the Campsine, and on this horrible,
groaning camel.

Their road took a turn, and before them they saw the ruins of a temple,
and behind it a prosperous-looking Eastern town surrounded by groves of
palms and other trees. Through these they rode till they came to the
surrounding brick wall of the temple, where the interpreter told them
that the guide said they must dismount, because Zahed was speaking, and
the people would beat them if they disturbed him.

So they obeyed, and the two of them, accompanied by the interpreter and
Dick, who had now arrived, were led through a door in the temple wall
into a side chapel, which about half-way down its length opened out of
the great hypostyle hall that was still filled with columns, whereof
most were standing. At the mouth of this chapel, in the deep shadow
behind a fallen column, whence they could see without being seen, they
were told to stand still, and did so, as yet quite unnoticed. The sight
before them was indeed remarkable.

All that great hall was crowded with hundreds of men, women, and
children, rather light in colour, and of a high-bred Arab stamp of
feature; clad, everyone of them, in clean and flowing robes, the men
wearing keffiehs or head-dresses of various colours, whereof the ends
hung upon their shoulders, and the women, whose faces were exposed,
wimple-like hoods. On a platform raised upon some broken columns at the
end of the hall were two figures, those of a man and a woman, between
whom sat a grey-snouted little dog, who looked in their direction and
snarled until the man reproved it.

With a kind of sudden pain, Edith recognised at the first glance that
this woman was extraordinarily beautiful, although in a fashion that was
new to her. The waving hair, uncovered by any veil, but retained in
place by the only emblem of her ancient royalty which Mea still used, a
band of dull gold whence, above her brow, rose the uræus, or hooded
snake, fell somewhat stiffly upon her shoulders, its thick mass trimmed
level at the ends. In it, as in a frame, was set the earnest, mysterious
face wherein glowed her large and lovely eyes. Placed there on high, her
rounded form wrapped in purest white did not look small, or perhaps the
dignity of her mien, her folded hands and upright pose in her chair of
state, seemed to add to its stature. She was smiling as she always
smiled, the coral-coloured lips were slightly parted, and in the ray of
sunlight that fell upon her from the open roof, Edith could distinguish
the rows of perfect teeth between them, while her head was turned a
little that she might watch her companion with those wonderful and
loving eyes. So this was the savage woman of whom she had been told,
this ethereal and beautiful being with the wild, sweet face like to the
face of an angel.

Mastering a desire to choke, Edith followed the woman’s glance to the
man at her side, for they sat together like the solemn, stately figures
of husband and wife upon the Egyptian stele which years ago Rupert had
brought from Egypt. Oh! it was Rupert, without a doubt, but Rupert
changed. Could that noble-looking chieftain in the flowing robes of
white which hid his feet, and the stately head-dress, also of white,
that fell upon his broad shoulders, be the same creature who, clad in
his cheap and hideous garments, she had dismissed from her drawing-room
in London as repulsive beyond bearing? Then his beard was fiery red and
straggling; now it was iron-grey, trimmed square, and massive like his
shoulders and his head. Then the eye that remained to him was red and
bloodshot; now it was large and luminous. The face also had grown
spiritual, like that of his companion, a light seemed to shine upon it
which smoothed away its ruggedness. If not handsome, he looked what he
was—a leader of men, refined, good, noble, a man to love and to revere.

All this Edith understood in a flash, and by the light of that
illumination understood also for the first time the completeness of her
own wicked folly. There, set above the common crowd, adored and
adorable, with his beauteous consort, was the husband whom she had cast
away like dirt—for Dick’s sake. He, Dick, was speaking in her ear, and
she turned her head and glanced at him. His heavy eyes were staring
greedily at the loveliness of Mea; his fat, yellowish cheeks lay in
folds above the not too well shaven chin. He wiped his bald head with a
handkerchief that was no longer clean, and smelt of cigarettes and
whisky.

“By Jingo!” Dick was saying, “that little woman is something like, isn’t
she? No wonder our pious friend stopped in the Soudan. You are
nice-looking, Edith, but you have all your work cut out to get him away
from that houri. You had better go home and apply for a divorce on the
ground of desertion, just to save your face.”

“Be silent,” she whispered, almost in a hiss, and with a fierce flash of
her eyes.

Must she listen to Dick’s ribaldry at such a moment? Oh! now she was
sure of it, it was he whom she hated, not Rupert.

Rupert was speaking in Arabic, and in a rich, slow voice that reached
the remotest recesses of that immemorial hall, emphasising his words by
quiet and dignified motions of his hands. He was speaking, and every
soul of that great company, in utter silence and with heads bent in
respect, hung upon his wisdom.

Tabitha poked the interpreter with the point of her white umbrella and
whispered.

“Tell me, Achmet,” she said, “what do his lordship say?”

Achmet listened, and from time to time interpreted the sense of Rupert’s
remarks in a low, rapid voice which none of the audience, who were
unaware of their presence, overheard.

“The noble lord, Zahed,” he informed them, “talks of gratitude to God,
which some of them have forgot; he shows them how they should all be
very grateful. He tells them his own story.”

“Ach! that is interesting,” said Lady Devene. “Go on, Achmet. I did
always want to hear that story.”

Achmet bowed and continued: “He says to his dear children that he tells
them this story that they may learn by that example how grateful all
people should be to Allah. He says that when he was a boy he fell into
deep sin, as perhaps some of them have done, but God saved him then, and
speaking by the voice of his mother, made him promise to sin no more in
that way, which promise he kept, though he had sinned much in other
ways. Then God lifted him up, and from a person of no estate made him
one of importance, and, God preserving him all the time, he fought in
battles and killed people, for which, although it was in the service of
his country, he is sorry now. Afterwards he went to his own land and
took a wife whom he loved, but before she came to his house he was sent
back to this country upon a mission, about which they know. The Sheik of
the Sweet Wells attacked that mission and killed all of them except one
Abdullah, their lady Tama here, Bakhita who sat below, and himself. Him
they tortured, cutting off his foot and putting out his eye, because he
would not accept Islam, the false faith.”

“It is so; it is so,” said the great audience, “we found you—but ah! we
took vengeance.”

“He says,” went on Achmet, “that of vengeance and forgiveness he will
talk to them presently. Their lady Tama here nursed him back to life,
and then he returned again to his own land.”

“Must I stay to listen to all this?” said Edith fiercely.

“No need,” answered Tabitha, “you can go back anywhere, but _I_ shall
stay to listen. Go on, Achmet.”

Edith hesitated a moment, then not knowing whither to retreat, and being
consumed with burning curiosity, stayed also.

“He returned,” continued Achmet, in his summary, “to find himself
disgraced, no longer a man in honour, but one in a very small position,
because he was supposed to have neglected his duty, and thereby brought
about the death of many, and rubbed the face of the Government in the
dirt. He returned also to find that the wealth and rank which would be
his by right of inheritance had passed away from him owing to an
unexpected birth. Lastly, he returned to find that his wife would have
nothing more to do with a man whom mutilations had made ugly, who was
poor and without prospects, and at the mention of whose name other men
looked aside. He sought his mother, and discovered that she was suddenly
dead, so that he was left quite alone in the world. That hour was very
bitter; he could scarcely bear to think of it even now.”

Here Rupert’s voice trembled, the multitude of his disciples murmured,
and the lady Tama, moved by a sudden impulse, bent towards him as though
to place her hand upon his arm in sympathy, then remembering, withdrew
it, and muttered some words which he acknowledged with a smile. Now
Rupert spoke again, and Achmet, who was a clever interpreter, continued
his rendering:

“Zahed says that bitterness overwhelmed him, that faith in God departed,
that his loneliness and his shame were such that he felt he could no
longer live, that he went to a great river purposing to destroy himself
by drowning.”

Again there was a murmur which covered up the speaker’s voice, and in
the midst of it Dick whispered to Edith:

“Rather rough on you to drop in for this yarn, but it is always well to
hear both sides of a case.”

She made no answer. Her face was like that of the stone statue against
which she leant. Again the unconcerned, brassy voice of the interpreter
took up the tale:

“Zahed says that while he prepared for death in the river, in the mist
above the water he saw a picture of their and his loved lady’s face, and
Allah brought into his mind a promise which he had made to her that if
the ties of his duty were broken, he would return to be her brother and
friend. Thus he was prevented from committing a great crime—a crime like
that the man they had been speaking of had committed, and he had
returned. As all there could bear witness, he, remembering the oaths
which he had sworn to the wife who had rejected him, had been no more to
Tama than a brother and a friend. This was not easy, since she and all
of them knew that he loved her well, and he believed that she loved him
well.”

“Aye, that I do,” broke in Mea, in a voice of infinite tenderness. “I
love him more than life, more than anything that is, has been, or shall
be. I love him, oh! I love him, as much as he loves me.”

“It is so, we see with our eyes,” said the multitude.

“Well, now, he came to the nut that lay hid in the rough stone of his
story. His lot had been hard. They would all of them think it hard that
because of their duty their lady and he must live as they lived, one,
yet separated, practising the great doctrine of Renunciation, having no
hope of children to follow after them.”

The audience agreed that it was exceedingly hard.

“They thought so, and so it had been at first, yet it had come to this,
they loved their state and did not wish to change it, they who looked
forward to other things, and to a life when the righteousness which they
practised here would bring them yet closer together than they had ever
been. They were quite happy who spent their days without remorse for the
past or fear for the future; they for whom death had no terrors, but was
rather a gate of joy which they would pass gladly hand-in-hand. That was
the nut of the story; bitter as it might be to the taste, it had in it
the germ of life. Lo! they had planted it on the earth, and yet even
here, although as yet they did not see its flower, it had grown to a
very pleasant tree under the shade of which they rested for a while and
were content. Let all of them there lay this poor example to their
hearts. Let them not be discouraged when God seemed to deal hardly with
them, like that poor man, their brother, who was dead by his own hand,
since if in their degree they also practised Renunciation, made
repentance, and for right’s sake abstained from sin, they would
certainly find a reward.

“Some of them had spoken of vengeance, that thirst for vengeance, which
the other day had caused another of them to commit murder. Let them flee
from the thought of it. Their lady here had practised vengeance upon the
bodies of those cruel Arabs who had slain his people and tortured
himself, but now neither he nor she were happier on that account. The
blood of those misguided men was on their hands, who, if they had left
them alone, would doubtless have been rewarded according to their deeds,
but not through them, or, what was far better, would have lived to
repent and find forgiveness. Forgiveness was the command of the merciful
God who forgave all that sought it of Him, and it should not be withheld
even by the best of them who still had so much to be forgiven.”

“Would you forgive that woman of yours who deserted you, Zahed?” cried
Bakhita from below.

“Surely I forgive her,” answered Rupert. “It would be strange if I did
not do so, seeing that by her act she has made me happier, I think, than
ever a man was before,” and he turned and smiled again at Mea, who
smiled back at him.

Then up in that audience stood a blind old teacher, a mystic learned in
the law, one who was beloved of the people for his wisdom and his good
deeds, and yet perhaps at heart somewhat jealous of the new white
prophet to whom they had turned of late.

“Hearken, Zahed!” he said. “I with the others have listened to your
address, and I approve its spirit as I deplore the crimes that were its
text. Yet it seems to me that you miss the root of the matter. Answer me
if I am wrong. God oppressed you; He tried you for His own reasons; He
rolled you in the mire; He brought down your soul to hell. The wife of
your bosom, she deserted you, when you were in trouble then she struck
as only a woman can. She said: ‘Beggar, be gone; remove your rags and
hideousness from before me. I will shelter with a richer lord.’ So you
went, and what did you? You did not bow yourself before the decree of
God, you did not say: ‘I rejoice in the tempest as in the sunshine; I
acknowledge that I have deserved it all, and I give thanks now that my
mouth is empty as I gave them when it was full.’ No; you said—be not
angry with me, Zahed, for a spirit is in my lips and I speak for your
instruction. You said: ‘I will not bear this pain. My soul is hot, it
hisses. I will quench it in the waters of death. I will drug myself with
death; I will go to sleep because God my Maker has dealt hardly with
me.’

“Then God your Maker bowed Himself down and spoke to you out of heaven,
by His magic He spoke to you; He showed you a face upon the waters, the
face of one who loved you still, and thereby saved you alive. You came;
you found the face which smiled on you; you kept the letter of your oath
to the false woman, but you broke its spirit. You loved her, our lady
Tama, and she loved you; you said, both of you: ‘We renounce because we
love so much. We are good lest in time to come our sin should separate
us. To gain much you gave a little, you whose eyes are opened, you who
see something of the truth, who know that this life is no more than the
oasis of Tama compared to the great stars above, those stars which you
will one day travel.’

“Listen to me, Zahed, I speak for your instruction. I do not blame you,
nor do I think God will blame you who made you of the mud beneath His
feet, not of the light about His head. He will have pity. He will say:
‘Mud, you have done well—for mud.’ But I am His advocate here, to-day it
is given to me to be His voice. Answer Him a question now if you can. If
not, remain silent and weep because you are still mud. You hold yourself
bound to this base woman, who should be beaten with rods, do you not?
You acknowledge it openly, who will not take another wife. You preach
the doctrine of forgiveness to us, do you not? You say that you forgive
her. Why? Nay, be silent, now the Voice is in my mouth—not in yours.
Speak presently when you have heard it. You forgive her because her
wickedness has worked your weal; because she has brought you to love and
to honour among men.

“Well, now; hear me and make answer. If that accursed woman, that
daughter of Satan, were to come hither to-day, if she were to say to
you: ‘I repent, who was wicked. I love, who hated. I put you in mind of
the oath you swore. I demand that you leave the sweet lady at your side
and the people who worship you, and the gardens that you have made and
the wells that you have digged, and return to live with me in a hell of
streets upon which the sun never shines, that I may give you children to
build up the pillars of your house, and that I may grow great in your
shadow.’

“Tell us now, what would you answer her? Would you say: ‘Is not my name
Zahed? Therefore I come, I come at once;’ and thereby show us that you
are perfect indeed? Or, would you say: ‘Woman, you built the wall, you
broke the bridge, you dug the gulf. I am lame, I cannot climb; I am
afraid, I dare not swim; I have no wings, I may not fly. I forgive you
afar; I do not forgive you at my side. I love you and all mankind, but I
will not touch your hand. I give to you the writings of divorce.’ Would
you speak thus, and let us see that you are still a man of mud? Answer
now the question that God puts to you through my lips, Zahed. Or if you
cannot answer, you who preach Renunciation and Forgiveness, here is mud,
smear it on your forehead and be silent.”

Now Mea had been listening, with a great and ever-growing indignation,
to this long address, designed to set out one of those test cases which
are so dear to Eastern religious thought and methods, and to force a
holy man to admit that, after all, he is full of error.

“I at least will answer,” she broke in, before Rupert could speak a
word. “Who is this jealous-hearted, white-headed fool that fills the air
with sand, like the Campsine blast; that stains the clear pool with
dirt, like a thirsty camel; that says the Spirit of God is in his lips,
those lips that utter wind and emptiness; that tries to convict of sin
where there is no sin, and to show one who is a thousandfold his better,
a new path to heaven? Did God then decree when a man has been rolled in
mire and washed himself clean again, that he should return to the mire
at the bidding of her who befouled him? Did God decree that a man should
leave those with whom he lives in innocence, to share the home of his
betrayer whom he hates? Is it virtue to be made vile? Is it righteous to
clothe oneself in the rags of another’s wickedness? Make reply, you
babbler, old in self-conceit, you who think to gain honour by defeating
your lord in words before his people. Make reply, you that wrap yourself
with words as with a garment, and sit upon pride as a sheepskin, and
say, wherefore should the true be thrust aside for the false? Wherefore
should my heart be widowed, that another who sowed thistles may pluck
flowers?”

Now the old teacher plucked his beard and began in wrath:

“Do I, a learned man, one who has thought and studied long, come here to
wrangle with a hungry woman who covets the fruit she may not eat?—”

“Silence!” broke in Rupert, in his great voice—“silence! Tama, give not
way to anger—it is not fitting, and you, my questioner and friend, speak
no more words against the lady whom in your heart you love and honour.
When that case of which you tell happens, as I pray it may not happen,
then I will take counsel with my conscience, and do as it shall bid me.
I have said.”

Now Rupert turned to Mea to soothe her, for this talk had made her more
angry than she had been for years, so angry that in the old days that
holy teacher’s life might well have paid its price; while the audience
fell to arguing the point among themselves and were so occupied, all of
them, that they never saw a woman with a shawl thrown over her head, who
thrust her way through them till she stood in front of the platform.




CHAPTER XXII.

EDITH AND MEA

Edith had heard it all. Not one bitter taunt, not one rough word had
that merciless interpreter glossed over. She had heard herself called “a
woman who should be scourged with rods” and “a daughter of Satan.” She
had heard herself, while Dick sniggered behind her, and Tabitha strove
to repress a smile that she felt to be unholy, compared to mire in
which, if a man rolled, he could never be clean again, and to a sower of
poisonous weeds, and this by that other hateful woman who had bewitched
her husband with her beauty. She could bear no more; for once her bitter
anger made her almost heroic. She would face them there and then. She
would demand an answer to the question urged in such forcible language
by that blind and sardonic Arab, whose pleasure it was to pick the
holiness of other men to pieces. She hid herself in the shawl. She
pushed herself through the crowd; she stood in front of the platform,
then suddenly unveiled.

Mea saw her first; some instinct of intense antipathy caused her to look
round and find her rival’s eyes. Suddenly she stiffened, falling into
that attitude which she assumed when, as judge, she passed sentence on a
criminal. Then she spoke in English, asking, although already her heart
knew the answer to the question, she who remembered well the picture in
the locket that Rupert used to wear:

“Stranger, who are you who creep into my house not asked? And what seek
you?”

Hearing her voice, Rupert looked round also. Next instant he was
clinging to the arms of his chair to prevent himself from falling out of
it, while over his face there spread a look of woe and terror, such as a
man might wear who suddenly thinks he sees a hated ghost come to summon
him to hell. His heart stopped, his sight grew dim, a cold sweat burst
out upon his forehead.

“I am the Lady Devene,” Edith answered, “and I am here to seek my
husband, Lord Devene, who sits at your side.”

By now Mea had recovered herself, for she felt the crisis of her life
had come, and her bold spirit rose to meet it. She grew quiet, quick,
resourceful.

“Is it so?” she said. “Then that old teacher, he must be, what you call
him, a prophet—or perhaps he hear you come. You want seek Lord Devene,
him whom you spit on when he was Rupert Ullershaw Bey? Yes? Well, Zahed
no look as though he wish to go away with you, his face all change,” and
she pointed to Rupert’s agonised countenance.

“I am speaking to my husband, not to you, woman,” said Edith.

Mea shook her beautiful head and smiled.

“Woman wrong word. I great lady here; lady whom he love but no
marry—till you die, alas!”

Rupert still seemed unable to speak, and Edith positively choked with
wrath, so, perhaps to prevent any awkward pause, Mea continued the
conversation.

“Who those?” she asked, pointing with her finger at Tabitha and Dick,
who, with the interpreter, were making their way towards the platform.
“Your mama come to look after you? And him? Oh! I know. That gentleman
you love. Him for who you turn Zahed into the street. Oh! I know, I
know. Old woman down there with white head,” and she pointed to Bakhita,
who was watching all this scene with the grimmest interest, “she have
magic; she show me his ugly face in water. He swim about in water with
the tail of a snake, head—man, heart—snake, you understand, yes? Bakhita
show you some magic, too, if you like.”

Now at last Rupert shook himself free from his faintness.

“Edith,” he said, “why have you come here?”

“Really I begin to wonder,” she answered, while she gathered herself
together, “for I don’t seem very welcome, do I? Also this place isn’t
pleasant, its inhabitants are too fond of personal remarks.”

Then she paused and presently flung her words at him, few and swift and
straight.

“I come, Rupert, to ask you to answer the riddle which that blind old
dervish has been amusing himself by putting to you at such length. Will
you return to your duty and your deserted wife? Or will you stop here,
as the—the friend of that shameless person and head-priest of her
barbarians?”

“Please, Edith,” said Rupert, “be a little milder in your language.
These people are peculiar, and my power here is limited; if you apply
such names to Tama, and they come to understand them, I cannot answer
for the consequences.”

“I did not ask you to answer for the consequences, I asked you to answer
my question,” replied Edith, biting her white lips.

“It seems to require some thought,” said Rupert sadly.

Then he lifted his hand and addressed the audience, who were watching
what passed with wondering eyes.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “a wonderful thing has happened. In
speaking to you to-day about the crimes that have been done in Tama, I
told you my own story for an example. Then the teacher yonder showed me
how weak and evil I really was, and put a question to me as to whether,
should she appear and ask it, I would take back the wife of that story,
she that had wrought me evil in the past. Now this wife stands before
me, and demands the decision which I said I would give when the time
came. It has come—that evil day has dawned upon me who never thought to
see it, forgetting that things have changed in the matter of my fortunes
across the sea. Yet, my brethren, shall I be wrong if I ask for a while
to think? If, for instance, I say that when we meet again as is our
custom on this same day of the next month, I then decide, and not
before?”

“No, no, you will be right, Zahed,” they murmured, the blind old mystic
leading them with his shrill voice. “We will have it so.” More, great
men among them stood up here and there and shouted that he should not
go, that they would gather their servants and guard the pass, and if
need be, keep him prisoner, or—and they looked viciously at Dick and his
companions.

Achmet translated their remarks, adding, on his own account: “This
people in damned nasty temper—very private people and very fierce who
love Zahed. You must not make them angry, or perhaps they kill us all. I
came here to interpret, not to have throat cut.”

Dick also seizing the situation with remarkable swiftness, was equally
urgent and out-spoken.

“Don’t show off any of your airs and graces here, Edith, please,” he
said, “I am not anxious to follow the example of our friend, the god
upon the platform, and renounce the world in a wider fashion. That
little tartar of a woman would jump at a chance of murdering us, and she
can do it if she likes.”

Only Tabitha, weary with standing, sank down on to a block of stone, and
incidentally into the lap of a native who already occupied it, and
scarcely heeding his wild struggles to be free, fanned herself with a
broad-brimmed hat and remarked:

“Ach! do not trouble. If they kill us, they kill us. It is very
interesting to hear them say their minds so well. I am most glad that we
came.”

“You hear their answer, Edith,” said Rupert, “and you must understand my
position. Have you any objection to make?”

“I understand your position perfectly, Rupert, and I am quite aware that
a man may find it difficult—most difficult, to escape from certain kinds
of entanglements,” and she glanced at Mea and paused.

“Wrong word again,” murmured that lady, with a sweet smile; “no what you
call it, no tangles, only one great rope of love, too thick to cut, too
strong to break—much!”

“As for objections,” went on Edith, without heeding this melodious and
poetic interruption, “I could make scores, but since we don’t wish to be
butchered by your amiable _protégés,_ perhaps I had better hold my
tongue and give you a month in which to come to your right mind. Only I
am by no means sure that I shall stop here all that time.”

“Don’t stop if you no like,” broke in Mea again. “Please not—the road it
always open, give you camel, give you soldiers, give you food, and write
you letter afterwards to tell you how Zahed make up his mind. I can
write very nice letter all in English, learn that at Luxor, or if you
rather, write in Arabic.”

At this sally Dick grinned, for it pleased his wounded soul to see Edith
getting the worst of it for once in her life, and Tabitha burst out
laughing. The general effect was to induce Edith to change her mind
rapidly.

“Yes, I shall stop,” she went on, as though she had never suggested
anything else, “because I suppose it is my duty to give him every
chance.”

“Glad you stop,” said Mea, “my humble people much honoured. Give you
nice house, high up there on the mountain since in this month you catch
great fever down here and perhaps stop too long,” and turning, she
issued a sharp and sudden order whereat men sprang up, bowed and ran to
do her bidding.

“What’s that?” asked Dick nervously.

“Nothing,” said Mea, “only tell them make ready house on the mountain
and take your things there and set guard about it so you no be hurt. Now
I go. Good-night!” whereon she rose, bowed to her people, bowed to her
guests, and then, making a deep obeisance to Rupert, lifted his hand and
with it touched her brow. After this she descended from the platform,
and at its foot was instantly surrounded by an armed guard, in the midst
of which, preceded by old Bakhita, Mea marched down the passage between
the central columns of the great hall, while to right and left, as was
their custom on these days of ceremony, her people prostrated themselves
as she passed, shouting: “Tama! Tama!”

“Himmel,” said Tabitha. “Himmel, she is charming! No wonder Rupert do
love her, like all her folks. Look how they bow. Achmet, where is my
photograph thing? I wish to take them quick.”

“Mustn’t take photograph here,” answered Achmet gloomily; “they think
that bad magic, great big evil eye. No photograph, please.”

But Tabitha had already forgotten her intention and was advancing
towards Rupert.

“My dear Rupert,” she said, as climbing the platform she dropped into
the throne-like chair vacated by Mea, and then bending forward, solemnly
kissed him upon the brow. “My dear Rupert, oh! I am glad to see you, I
cannot say how glad.”

“I am glad to see you also, Tabitha,” he answered, “though I wish we
could have met under more pleasant circumstances.”

“Ach! you are in a deep hole,” she said, “down at the bottom of a well,
but there is light above, and who knows, you may come out again.”

“I don’t see how,” he answered sadly.

“No; but God sees. Perhaps He will pull you out. I am sorry for you,
dear. I have no patience with Edith, and that Dick, I hate him now and
always.”

“Tell me a little about things,” he said; “we may not have another
chance.”

So she told him all she knew. Dick and Edith had vanished back through
the side door; the audience for the most part had melted away, only a
few of them remaining at the far end of the hall. As she spoke rapidly,
mixing German and English words together, although his intelligence
followed her, Rupert’s mind wandered, as was its ancient fashion. He
recalled, for instance, how Tabitha and he had once sat together upon
another dais in a very different hall far away in England.

“You remember,” he said suddenly, “that New Year’s Eve at Devene, the
night I got engaged, and what you told me then?”

She nodded.

“You said she would breed trouble,” he went on; “you said she was very
dangerous. Well, it is so, and now—what am I to do?”

“Nothing at all, just wait,” she answered. “You have a month, and during
that time you need only see her in public. In a month many things may
happen. Indeed, I do think that things will happen,” and once again that
fateful look crept over the strong, solid face and into the quiet eyes,
the same look that he had noted years ago when she sat with him on the
dais in the hall at Devene. “God He does not desert men like you,
Rupert, who have suffered so cruelly and behaved so well,” she murmured,
gently pressing his hand. “Look! Dick has come back and is calling me.
When shall we meet again?”

“To-morrow,” he said, “I cannot see her to-night. I will not see her
privately at all till the month is up. You must make her understand.”

“Oh! she understands well enough, and so does Dick, and so do I. But are
they safe here?”

“Safer than in London, only they must not speak ill of the lady Tama.
Good-night!”

“Good-night, dear Rupert,” she said, and went away, leaving him seated
there alone upon the platform.

That night Tabitha and Edith slept in the house which Mea had assigned
to them. It was situated upon a mountain-crest over two miles from the
town of which it formed part of the fortifications, was cool, and
commanded a beautiful view. To Dick Learmer was given a similar but
somewhat smaller house belonging to the same chain of defences, but
about five hundred yards away. Both of these houses were provisioned,
and both of them guarded day and night, that no harm might come to the
guests of the tribe.

So angry was Edith that for a long while she would scarcely speak to
Tabitha, who, their meal finished, sat upon a kind of verandah or
outlook place, a shut Bible upon her knees, looking at the moonlit
desert upon the one hand, and the misty oasis on the other. At this game
of silence her patient, untroubled mind was far stronger than that of
Edith. At length the latter could bear it no longer; the deep peace of
the place, which should have soothed, only exasperated her raw temper.
She broke out into a flood of words. She abused Tabitha for bringing her
here and exposing her to such insults. She named Mea by ill names. She
declared that she would go away at once.

“Ah!” asked Tabitha at last, “and will you take Dick with you?”

“No,” she answered; “I never want to see Dick or any of you again.”

“That is unlucky for me,” said Tabitha; “but since I have reached this
nice place, I shall stay here the month and talk with Rupert. Perhaps if
he and that pretty lady will have me, I shall stay longer. But I, too,
do not want the company of Dick. As for you, dear Edith, if you wish to
go, they told you, the road is open. It will save much trouble to
everybody.”

“I shall not go,” exclaimed Edith. “Why should I leave my husband with
that woman who has no right to him?”

“I am not so sure,” answered Tabitha thoughtfully. “If my little dog is
caught in a trap and is ill, and I kick it into the street, and leave it
there to starve, and some kind lady comes and takes my little dog and
gives it a good home for years, can I say that she has no right to it
just because I find out, after all, that it is a valuable little dog,
and that I am—oh! so fond of it?”

“Please stop talking nonsense about little dogs, Tabitha. Rupert is not
a dog.”

“No; but then why should he have been treated as one? If such a dog
would have learned to love its new mistress, is it wonderful that he
should do the same? But have you learnt to care for him at last, that
you should want him back so much, he who lives here good and happy?”

“I don’t know,” snapped Edith; “but I won’t leave him with that other
woman if I can help it; I don’t trust all that Platonic nonsense. I am
going to bed;” and she went.

But Tabitha still sat for a long time and gazed at the moonlit desert,
there making her accustomed prayers.

“Oh! God in heaven,” she ended them, “help those two poor people whom
Thou hast tried so sorely,” and as she spoke the words a conviction came
into her mind that they would be heard. Then, feeling comforted, she too
went to her bed.

In the morning Edith received a note from Rupert; it was the first time
that she had seen his handwriting for many a year. It ran:

Dear Edith,—I will not debate the strange circumstances in which we find
ourselves, and I write to ask that during the ensuing month you will
avoid all allusion to them. The facts are known to us both, to discuss
them further can only lead to unnecessary bitterness, and perhaps
prevent a peaceful solution of the trouble. If you agree to this, I
write on behalf of the lady Tama and myself to say that we are ready to
enter into a like undertaking, and that we shall be happy to see you
here whenever you wish.

If, on the other hand, you do not agree, then I think that we had best
keep apart until the day when I have promised to give an answer to your
question. A messenger will bring me your written reply.

Rupert.

Edith thought a while, then she took a piece of paper and wrote upon it
with a pencil:

I agree.

EDITH.

P.S.—I enclose a letter which I have for you. He wrote it shortly before
he died. Also, there are some from the lawyers.

“After all,” she reflected to herself, as she saw the runner depart
swiftly, carrying her packet on the top of a cleft stick, “it will give
me a little time to look round in peace. Rupert is right, it is no use
wrangling. Moreover, he and that woman are masters here, and I must
obey.”

Within an hour the runner returned again, bearing another note from Mea,
which, in very queer English, asked them both to honour them with their
company at the midday meal. They went, and on the way met Dick, who had
received a similar invitation. On arriving at the town, they found
Rupert seated beneath the verandah of his house, and squatted upon the
ground around him a considerable number of people, all of them suffering
from various complaints, together with some women who held sick children
in their arms. He bowed to them, and called out in a cheerful voice:

“Forgive me for a little while. I have nearly finished my morning’s
doctoring, and perhaps you had better stand back, for some of these
ailments are infectious.”

Edith and Dick took the hint at once, riding their animals into the
shade of a tree a little way off. Not so Tabitha. Descending from her
donkey with a bump, she marched straight to Rupert and shook his hand.
Two minutes later they perceived that she was helping him to bandage
wounds and dispense medicines.

“How she can!” exclaimed Edith, “and the worst of it is she is sure to
bring some filthy disease back with her. Just think of Rupert taking to
doctoring all those horrid people!”

“They say he is uncommonly clever at it,” answered Dick, “and will ride
for miles to see a sick person. Perhaps that is why they are so fond of
him.”

“Why don’t you go to help him?” asked Edith. “You studied medicine for
two years before you went to the Bar.”

“Thanks,” he answered, “I think it is pleasanter sitting under this tree
with you. At present I am not a candidate for popular affection, so I
don’t see why I should take any risks.”

“Rupert doesn’t mind risks,” said Edith.

“No,” he said, “one of his characteristics always was to like what is
disagreeable and dangerous. In that fact lies your best chance, Edith.
He may even make up his mind to abandon an existence which seems to suit
him exactly and return to the joys of civilisation.”

“You are even ruder than usual, Dick,” she said. “Why did you come here
at all? We never asked you.”

“You cannot pretend, Edith, that gentleness has been your prevailing
note of late. For the rest, considering that on the results of this
inquiry depended whether I should be one of the richest men in England
or a beggar, it is not strange that I came to look after my own
interests,” he added bitterly.

“Well, you know now,” she answered, “so why don’t you go away? Rupert is
alive, therefore the property is his, not yours.”

“Quite so; but even Rupert is not immortal. He might contract one of
those sicknesses, for instance.”

“No such luck for you, Dick,” she said, with a laugh, “he is too much
accustomed to them, you won’t get rid of him like that.”

“I admit it is improbable, for he looks singularly healthy, does he not?
But who knows? At any rate, he is a good-natured fellow; I may be able
to come to some terms with him. Also,” he added, in another voice,
“please understand once and for all that I am going to see this play
out, whatever you or anybody else may say or do. I was in at the
beginning, and I mean to be in at the death.”

Edith shrugged her shoulders, turning away, for there was a very
unpleasant look upon Dick’s face, and just at that moment they saw
Rupert, who had washed his hands and changed his robe, riding towards
them upon a white mule by the side of which walked Tabitha. He could not
take off his hat because he wore a keffieh, but he saluted Edith by
placing his fingers upon his forehead; and then stretched out his hand
to her and to Dick.

“Forgive my dismounting, Edith,” he said, in a pleasant voice, “but you
remember what a dreadful cripple I am, and I haven’t been able to grow a
new foot, or even to get an artificial one here. I did send for the
article, but it must have been made for a lady; at any rate, it was
three sizes too small, and now adorns a black old beggar woman.”

Edith laughed; somehow the thought of Rupert’s mutilated state no longer
filled her with horror.

“Mea is expecting you all to luncheon,” he said, “if I may so call our
unconventional meal. Will you come?”

She nodded, making a funny little face, and rode away towards Mea’s
house at Rupert’s side.

“Did you get my note,” she said suddenly, “and the enclosures?”

“Yes,” he answered, “his letter is very painful—very painful indeed, and
the others are interesting. But we have agreed not to talk about those
things, haven’t we, until the month is up?”

“Certainly, Rupert,” she answered, in a gentle voice. “So far as I am
concerned, the past is all gone. I am here now, not to consider myself,
but to do what you desire. I only wish to say that I am sorry if I spoke
as I should not yesterday—and for many other things also, Rupert, but
really it was hard to have to listen to all those bitter words, even if
I deserved them.”

“I understand—very hard,” he said, flushing, “and now for the next month
it is settled that we are going to be just friends, is it not?”

“Yes, Rupert, as you have ordered it,” she whispered, and glancing at
her, he saw that there were tears standing in her blue eyes.

“This business is going to be even harder than I thought,” reflected
Rupert to himself, and in another moment Mea, clad in her spotless
white, was receiving them with gracious smiles and Oriental courtesy.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WHEEL TURNS

This meal in Mea’s house proved to be the beginning of a very curious
existence for the four persons chiefly concerned in our history. Every
day, or almost every day, they met, and the solemn farce was carried on.
Mea and Rupert played their parts of courteous hosts, Edith and Dick
those of obliged and interested guests, while Tabitha watched them all
with her quiet eyes and wondered what would befall when the truce came
to an end. Soon she and Mea were very good friends, so good that from
time to time the latter would even lift a corner of the veil of Eastern
imperturbability which hid her heart, and suffer her to guess what pain
and terrors racked her. Only of these matters they did not speak; not to
do so was a part of the general conspiracy of silence.

Edith was with Rupert as often as possible; she even took long rides
which she hated, in order to share his company, whilst with a feverish
earnestness he discoursed to her of all things in heaven and earth,
except those things which leapt to the lips of both of them. She watched
him at his work, and learned to understand how great that work was and
how well it had been done. She perceived that he was adored by all, from
Mea herself down to the little children that could hardly walk, and
began to comprehend the qualities which made him thus universally
beloved. More—the truth may as well be told at once—now, for the first
time in her life, they produced a deep impression upon her.

At last Edith began to fall in love with, or if that is too strong a
term, at any rate really to admire her husband, not his nature only, but
his outward self as well, that self which to her had once seemed so
hateful, especially when she compared him with another man. Now, by some
strange turn of the wheel of her instincts, it was that other man who
was hateful, from whom she shrank as once she had shrunk from Rupert,
taking infinite pains to avoid his company, and still more the
tendernesses which he occasionally tried to proffer; he who also had
grown very jealous. The fact of Mea’s obvious adoration of Rupert may,
of course, in the case of a character like Edith’s, have had much to do
with this moral and physical _volte-face,_ but it was by no means its
only cause. Retribution had fallen upon her; the hand of Fate had
pressed her down before this man’s feet.

Yet the worst of it was that she made no real progress with him. Rupert
was most courteous and polite, very charming indeed, but she felt that
all these things were an armour which she could not pierce, that as he
had once said, his nature and his spirit rose in repugnance against her.
Twice or thrice she took some opportunity to touch him, only to become
aware that he shrank from her, not with the quick movement of a man who
desires to avoid being betrayed into feeling, or led into temptation,
but because of an unconquerable innate distaste—quite a different thing.
She remembered his dreadful words of divorce, how he had said that
henceforth he hated her, and that even should she in the future swear
that she loved him, he would not lay a finger-tip upon her. Why should
he indeed when another woman, more faithful, more spiritual—and yes, she
must admit it, more lovely, was the companion of his every waking
thought and hour.

See Edith now after she has spent fourteen days in her husband’s
company. She is tired with the long ride she has taken in the hot sun
just to be with him, feigning an interest in things which she did not
understand, about the propagation of date-palms, for instance, as though
she cared anything whether they grew from seed or offshoots. Tired, too,
with her long, unceasing effort to show him her best side, to look cool
and attractive in that heat and mounted on a skittish horse which
frightened her. (How, she wondered, did Mea contrive never to seem hot
or to lose her dignity, and why did her hair always remain so crisp and
unruffled even beneath her white head-dress?) Annoyed also by Dick, who
had accompanied her home and showed his ever-growing jealousy in a most
unpleasant fashion, firing arrow after arrow of his coarse sarcasm at
her, even reminding her of that afternoon years ago when her husband was
supposed to be dead and she became engaged to him. She had scarcely
replied; it did not seem worth while, only in her heart she vowed that
should she ever have an opportunity, she would be rid of Dick once and
for all. Yes, she did not care what he might say or what letters he
threatened to publish, she would face it out and have done with him, as
she wished that she had found courage to do long ago.

Now she was in her own room, and stretched face downwards upon her
angarib or native bedstead, she sobbed in the bitterness of her soul.
All her wiles, all her charm could not prevail against that small but
royal-looking Eastern woman with the ready wit, the single aim, the
mysterious face and the eyes like Fate, who had risen up against her and
taken with gratitude the man whom she had once rejected, contented if
only she might own his heart. Had it been otherwise, quarrels might have
arisen, or he might have wearied of her; but that was the worst of it,
where there was no marriage there could be no wearying. Always she
stretched before him a garden of Eden, a paradise from which he was
turned back by the flame-sworded angels of his own strict righteousness
and oath. And into the rival garden which she, Edith, had to offer,
whereof the gates, once so locked and barred, now stood wide, he showed
no wish to wander.

What would be the end of it, when, at the expiration of the month again
she faced that alien multitude with their stony, contemptuous eyes? Oh!
surely then she would hear that he had taken counsel with himself and
that conscience of his; that he found no law which forced him to return
to a woman who had spurned him; that he offered her his title and his
wealth and wished her well, but that himself he would bide where he was
and discuss philosophy, and doubtless other things, with his lady Tama,
the beautiful and perfect.

It was too much. Edith gave way to grief uncontrolled, her sobs echoed
in the empty room so loudly that Tabitha heard them through the thin
partition wall and came in to see what was the matter.

“Are you ill?” she asked.

Edith in her night-dress sat up on the angarib, her face wet with tears,
her hair falling about her shoulders.

“I suppose so,” she answered. “At least I am unhappy, which is the same
thing.”

“What about? Has that Dick—?”

“Oh! never mind Dick; I am tired of Dick.”

“What is it, then? Rupert?”

“Yes, of course. Are you blind, Tabitha?”

“Ach! I think I see as far as most. But why should you weep over Rupert
so loudly that I can hear you through a wall? He is very kind to you.”

“Kind, kind, kind?” answered Edith, increasing her emphasis upon each
repetition of the word. “Yes, he is kind as he would be to any
troublesome woman who had wandered here. I do not want his kindness.”

“What, then, do you want? His anger?”

“No; I want—his love.”

“You can’t buy that for less than nothing, especially when there is
another merchant in the market,” remarked Tabitha thoughtfully.

“I don’t know what you call for less than nothing, Tabitha. Is
everything that I have to give less than nothing?”

“Mein Gott! I see. You do mean that you are in love with him yourself?”

“Yes, I suppose that is what I mean. At any rate, he is my husband—I
have a right to him.”

Again Lady Devene reflected, then said:

“I always did wonder if it would end so. If you can come to care, pity
it was not long ago. Why have you put it off so long, Edith? Now I think
that perhaps it will be too late. What’s your English proverb?—one day
behind the fair.”

“If that is all you have to say, you might have stopped in your room,”
answered Edith, between her sobs.

“Himmel! what more can I say than the truth? I did not cook this
pudding, Edith. You cook it, and you must eat it. What is the good to
cry out that it is nasty now. Still I am sorry for you, my poor Edith,
who find out that if you throw enough stones into the air, sometimes one
fall upon your head.”

“Go away, please,” said Edith; “I don’t want to be pitied, and I don’t
want to be lectured. Leave me alone to eat what you call my pudding.”

“Very well,” answered Tabitha quietly, “but you take my advice, you ask
God to make it sweeter, which you always forget to do.”

“I have forgotten too long, I am afraid,” said Edith, throwing herself
down again on the angarib and turning her face to the wall.


There were other sore hearts in Tama that night. For instance, Rupert
could not fail to see, if not all, at any rate a great deal of what was
passing in his wife’s mind. He understood that she was earnestly sorry
for what she had done and heartily wished it undone. He was sure, also,
from his knowledge of their previous close relations, from the by no
means obscure hints that she gave him, and from what he observed of them
when they were together, that throughout she had acted under the
influence of Dick, who had made love to her both before their marriage
and after his own supposed death, which influence no longer had weight
with her, although she still greatly feared the man. Indeed, upon this
matter he had other sources of information—Tabitha, who told him a great
deal, and Dick himself who had tried to blacken Edith in his eyes by
letting little facts escape him—accidentally. Thus it came out that he
_had_ been lunching with Edith alone on that New Year’s Eve when Rupert
returned to England, and by inference that they were then on exceedingly
intimate terms.

As a matter of fact, this revelation and others had an opposite effect
to that which was intended. They caused Rupert to make allowances for
Edith, and to understand that what he had set down to mere cruelty and
self-seeking, was perhaps attributable to some passion which possessed
her for this despicable man. He knew enough of the world to be aware of
the positive loathing with which a woman who is thus afflicted will
generally look upon any other man, even one whom she has previously
loved.

Now, pondered the gentle and compassionate Rupert, supposing that he
being apparently dead, his wife in name had given way to this impulse
and engaged herself to Dick with the usual affectionate ceremonies (and
he gathered that something of the sort had happened), and that then
there appeared that dead man as he was at the time. Well, should not
allowances be made for her, after all, she who, he was sure, had already
repented in sackcloth and ashes, and to whom this Dick was, to put it
mildly, no longer agreeable?

Meanwhile, hard as he might strive to conquer it—for was not this an
excellent opportunity to exercise his own doctrines of renunciation and
forgiveness?—he was possessed by a longing which at times became almost
uncontrollable, if not to twist Learmer’s neck, at least to kick him
with contumely out of Tama, where, it may be added, he was already
making himself a nuisance in various ways.

Such was the case against himself. But on the other hand, he must face
the terrible fact that those words which he had spoken in the London
drawing-room were, so far as he was concerned, utterly irrevocable. The
sudden detestation, the shrinking of body and of soul that he had then
conceived for his wife, remained quite unaltered. To talk with her was
well enough, but the thought of returning to her made him absolutely
shudder.

Yet the fact that to enter on to married life with Edith would be to him
the greatest purgatory; would mean also abandoning all his hopes and
interests in order to seek others which he did not desire, could not,
his conscience told him, affect the rights of the matter. If it was his
duty to go, these things should not be considered. But there was Mea,
who had to be considered. After all that had come and gone between them,
was it his duty to abandon her also? even though the pure devotion and
deep respect which he bore to her might perhaps be the real cause of
much of the active repulsion his wife inspired in him—the converse, in
short, of her case with Dick.

Mea, he knew, was wrapt up in him; for his sake she had put away
marriage and entered on the curious mode of life that had proved so
unexpectedly happy and successful. If he left her, he believed that she
would probably die, or would at least be miserable for the rest of her
days. Could it be expected of him that because of an empty ceremony,
whereof the other contracting party had at once violated the spirit, he
must do this great wrong to a beloved woman, who had violated nothing
except her own human impulses, which she, an Eastern, trod down in order
that he might be able to keep to the very letter of his strict Western
law?

The worst of it was that through all this terrible struggle, while his
soul drifted upon a sea of doubt, from Mea herself Rupert received not
the slightest help. Whether it were through pride, or a stern
determination to let things take their appointed course uninfluenced by
her, she spoke no pleading word, she made no prayer to his pity or his
love. Their life went on as it had gone for over seven years. They met,
they talked, they ministered to the sick, they dispensed justice, they
balanced their accounts, just as though there were no Dick and no Edith
upon the earth. Only from time to time he caught her watching him with
those great, faithful eyes, that were filled with wonder and an agony of
fear. It was on his head, and his alone, and sometimes he felt as though
his brain must give beneath the pressure of this ordeal. He fell back
upon the principles of his religion; he sought light in prayer and
wrestlings; but no light came. He was forsaken; unhelped he wandered
towards that fatal day, the day of decision.

Richard Learmer also had been observing events, and as a result, found
himself in sore trouble. He perceived that Edith was drawing nearer to
Rupert. At first he had thought that she was actuated by self-interest
only, but during the last few days, many signs and tokens had convinced
him that something deeper drove her on, that now the man attracted her,
that she wished to win his love. Further, Tabitha had told him so
outright, suggesting that the best thing he could do was to make himself
scarce, as he was wanted by nobody. He had refused with a smothered
oath, and gone away to chew the cud of his rage and jealousy.

It was a very bitter cud. His great fortunes had passed from him; they
were the property of Rupert. The only creature that he had cared for was
passing from him also; she and her money were going to be the property
of Rupert, in fact as well as in name. Of course there remained the
possibility that he would reject her, but in this Dick did not for one
moment believe. There was too much at stake. It was inconceivable that a
man would throw up everything in order to remain the sheik of an Arab
tribe, a position from which he might be deposed by any conspiracy or
accident. Doubtless he was temporising merely to save his face with the
other woman, and to make himself appear of more value in the eyes of
Edith.

So Rupert was going to take everything and leave him absolutely nothing.
What a difference the existence of this man made to him! If he had died!
If he should chance to die! Then how changed would be his own future.
Edith would soon drift back to him, after her fashion when Rupert was
out of the way, and he, Dick, would be the master of her and of more
wealth than even he could spend, the honoured lord of many legions,
instead of a shady and discredited person with not a prospect on the
earth, except that of the infirmary or the workhouse. If only a merciful
Providence should be pleased to remove this stumbling-block!

But Providence showed no sign of stirring. Then why not help it? At
first Dick shrank from the idea, to which, however, his mind became
accustomed by degrees. Just for amusement, he considered half-a-dozen
ways in which the thing might be done, but sinking the morality of the
question, put them all aside as too risky. The world called such deeds
by an ugly name, and if they were found out, avenged them in a very ugly
fashion. Indeed, the fate of anyone who was suspected of having
interfered with Rupert in this oasis would doubtless prove particularly
unpleasant. It was not to be thought of, but if only Fate would come to
the rescue, could he help it if by some fortunate chance he were
appointed its instrument?

The student of life may sometimes have noticed that there does seem to
exist an evil kind of entity which, with Dick, we may call Fate, that is
on the look-out for trustworthy tools of his character, and now, just in
the nick of time, that Fate made its bow to him. It happened thus. Dick
had several natives with him, one of whom he had hired as a dragoman at
Tewfikiyeh. When they started on their ride across the desert, this man
seemed well enough, but two days after they reached the oasis he began
to be ailing. Apparently he suffered from ague and nervous depression,
after which he developed glandular swellings in various parts of his
body.

At first Dick, who, it will be remembered, had some acquaintance with
medicine, thought that he was going to be very ill, but in the end the
swellings burst, and he gradually recovered. When he was about again,
Dick asked the man, who could speak English, what he considered had been
the matter with him, whereon he replied that, although he said nothing
of it for fear lest his companions should turn him out, he believed that
he had been attacked by plague, as the day before he left Tewfikiyeh,
where there were several cases, he had gone to visit a relative who died
of it while he was in the house.

“Indeed,” said Dick, “then I bid you say nothing of it now, for though I
think you are mistaken, if once that idea got round, these people would
quarantine us all upon the mountain-top, or turn us into the desert.”

Then, as no one else seemed to be unwell, he tried to dismiss the matter
from his mind, nor did he mention it at all.

A few nights later; it was on the seventh day after Edith, weeping on
her angarib, had made her confession to Tabitha, Dick returned from the
town in a very evil temper. Feeling that a crisis was at hand, and that
he must come to terms while he could, he had attempted to make more
confidences to Rupert, and had even hinted that if the latter were
interested in them, there existed certain letters written by Edith which
he might like to read. Rupert said nothing, so taking his silence as an
encouragement, Dick went on:

“Look here, Rupert; speaking as one man to another, you understand, of
course, that I am in a most difficult position. I thought myself the
heir to about a million pounds’ worth of property, but the happy
circumstance of your having survived deprives me of everything. I
thought also that I was the proud possessor of the reversion to your
wife’s affections; indeed, she left me little doubt upon _that_ point,
for which of course you, who were nominally dead, cannot blame her.
These, too, must go with the rest, since naturally Edith knows on which
side her bread is buttered. Now I make you a business proposition: You
provide me with what I must have, enough to live on—let us say, a
capital sum of £300,000, which you can very well spare, and we will
balance our accounts once and for all.”

“And if I don’t?” asked Rupert quietly, for he wished to get to the
bottom of this man’s baseness.

“Then,” answered Dick, “I am afraid that instead of a sincere friend
Edith and yourself will find me, let us say, a candid critic. There are
many ill-natured and envious people who would be glad to read those
letters, and, like the Sibylline books, they may go up in price.”

“Have you them here?” asked Rupert.

“Do you take me for a fool,” he answered, “to trust such precious
documents to the chances of desert travel, or possibly to the
investigations of Arab thieves? No; they are safe enough in England.”

“Where you intend to use them for purposes of blackmail.”

“That is an ugly word, Rupert, but I will not quarrel with it, who, as I
have remarked, must live.”

Now Rupert turned on him.

“I don’t believe,” he said, “that there is anything in your letters
which either Edith or I need fear; I am sure that she would never commit
herself too far with a man like you. Dick Learmer, you are a villain!
You have been at the bottom of all the unhappy differences between Edith
and myself. It was you, I have discovered from Tabitha and from letters
which have reached me, who got me sent to the Soudan immediately after
my marriage, as I believe—God forgive you!—in the hope that I should be
killed. It was you, by your false information and plots, who
subsequently blackened my character, and as soon as I was thought to be
dead, tried to take my wife. Now, unless you can be bought off, you
threaten to blacken hers also, and indeed, have already done so to some
extent. I repeat that you are a villain. Do what you like; I will never
speak to you again,” and lifting the palm riding switch which he held in
his hand, Rupert struck him with it across the face.

With a savage curse Dick snatched at his revolver.

“Don’t draw that if you value your life,” said Rupert. “You are watched,
and whether you succeed in murdering me or not, you will be instantly
cut down. Take my advice; go for a few days’ shooting on the hills until
your people can get the camels up from the far grazing lands, and then
march. Be off now, and don’t attempt to speak to either Edith or myself
again, or I will have you bundled into the desert, with your camels or
without them.”

So Dick went with a face like the face of a devil, and with a heart full
of hate, jealousy, and the lust of vengeance.

When he reached his house, it was reported to him that another of his
people was very sick in a little outbuilding. He looked at him through
the window-place, and after what the first man had told him—having
refreshed his memory by reading up its symptoms in his handbook of
medicine—had not the slightest difficulty in recognising a bad and
undoubted case of plague, which, doubtless, had been contracted from the
dragoman who recovered. Now Dick made up his mind at once that he would
take Rupert’s advice and go on a three or four days’ shooting trip.
Accordingly, he gave the necessary orders to start an hour before the
dawn; then he sat down and thought a while, rubbing the red mark on his
cheek where Rupert’s whip had struck him.

How could he be revenged? Oh! how could he be revenged? Of a sudden, a
positive inspiration arose in his mind. Rupert was an amateur doctor;
Rupert loved attending to the sick, and here was a case well worthy of
his notice. Perhaps that Fate for which he had longed was appointing
him, Dick, its instrument. He took a piece of paper and wrote this note:

A desire to help another alone induces me to communicate with you. One
of my men is very ill with some sort of fever. Under all the
circumstances, I cannot stop to nurse him myself, as otherwise I should
like to do, having, you remember, asked your kind leave to shoot, and
made arrangements to start at dawn. Perhaps if you have time you will
visit him and give him some medicine; if you do not, I fear that he must
die.

R.L.

Summoning the recovered dragoman who was to be left behind to see to the
camels when they arrived, he bade him take this letter to Zahed as soon
as the shooting expedition had started in the morning, and if he were
questioned, to say that his comrade was very sick, but that he did not
know what was the matter with him.

“If only he would catch the plague!” muttered Dick to himself, between
his clenched teeth. “No one could blame me, and he might—no, that would
be too muck luck.”

Before daybreak, having been informed that the man was apparently no
worse, Dick rode away with his attendants.

Rupert duly received the letter, and about seven o’clock ordered his
mule, and started for the place where the man lay.

“Whither go you?” asked Mea, who met him.

Her voice was anxious, for she feared that he was about to visit Edith.

“To see a sick man up yonder at Learmer’s house.”

“So! It was reported to me that he started at dawn to hunt buck for some
days on the mountain slopes. Why does he not doctor his own sick, he who
told me that he understands medicine?”

“I advised him to go out hunting, Mea, and afterwards to leave this
place.”

“I know. You struck him, did you not? A strange thing for you to do,
Rupert.”

“I am ashamed to say I did,” he answered. “That man is a low fellow and
a slanderer, Mea.”

“I know that also, but whom did he slander this time, the lady yonder,
or me? Nay, I will not ask, but I say to you, Rupert, beware of a low
fellow and a slanderer whom you have struck and who wished to draw his
pistol on you.”

“I can look after myself, I think,” he replied, with a laugh.

“Yes, Rupert, you can face a lion or an elephant, but you hold your head
too high to see a snake. Of what is this servant sick? I heard that they
had strange illness up there.”

“I don’t know; Nile fever, I suppose. Will tell you when I have seen
him.”

“You should eat before you visit a fever case; have you done so?”

“No; I am not afraid of fevers, and I can’t breakfast so early,” and he
made as though he would go on.

“One moment,” she said, laying her hand upon his bridle. “Why did you
not come to visit me last evening? As our hours together perhaps may be
few, I miss you.”

“I’ll tell you,” he answered, smiling. “I was engaged in making my will,
which took a lot of thinking though it is short enough. You see, Mea, I
am a very rich man now, and it so happens that under our law I can leave
my property as I desire, because the settlements are at an end, which he
from whom I inherited it could not do. Now, after that trouble with
Learmer I remembered that if I die, as we all may do, he would probably
take my lands and wealth, which I did not wish. So as the lawyers in
England wrote to me to do, I made a will, signed and had it witnessed
properly by four of our people who can write, and gave it to Bakhita to
keep for the present. Now, Mea, let me go and see this man.”

“May I come with you?” she asked.

“Nay, how can I tell from what he suffers. I will be back presently.”




CHAPTER XXIV.

RENUNCIATION

Rupert went into the outbuilding where the sick man lay and examined
him. His eyes were bloodshot, his tongue was black, he had glandular
swellings, and his temperature was nearly 106. Moreover, he was passing
into a state of coma. He felt his pulse, which was dropping, and shook
his head. In his varied experience as an amateur doctor he had never
seen a case like this.

Leaving the man, Rupert went into the house to mix some quinine, for he
knew not what else to give him. On the table a book lay open which he
recognised as a medical work, and while he manipulated the quinine and
the water, his eye caught the heading at the top of the page. It was
“Plague.” That gave him an idea, and he read the article. Certainly, the
symptoms seemed very similar, especially the bubonic swellings, but as
personally he had never actually seen a case of plague, he could not be
sure. He called the servant in charge of the house and questioned him,
that same dragoman who had recently been sick and recovered, but was
still very weak. With a little pressure he told Rupert all; how he had
visited his relative who was dying of the plague, and as he believed
suffered from it himself, like the other man in the hut. Now Rupert was
quite sure, and set about taking precautions, sending down to the town
for guards to form a cordon round the place, and so forth.

Meanwhile the patient became rapidly worse and he went in to attend to
him, staying there till about two hours later, when he died. After
seeing to the deep burial of the body, Rupert went to Edith’s house on
his way back to the town to warn them of what had happened. Strolling
about near it under her white umbrella he found Tabitha and told her the
bad news, which personally did not alarm her. She inquired where Dick
was, and he replied that he had gone on a hunting expedition, but
luckily left his medicine book behind him open at the article which gave
him a clue. Next she asked to see the letter which Dick had written to
Rupert, and taking it from his pocket, he handed it to her. Tabitha read
it attentively.

“I see, Rupert, you have quarrelled with him at last,” she said. “Ach!
what a coward that man is!” then a light flashed in her eyes, and she
added: “No, I understand now. It is a little trick of dear Dick’s; he
knows it is the plague, he runs away, he sends for you, he hopes that
you will catch it. Mein Gott! he is not only a coward, he is a murderer;
you quarrel with him—what you say?—you beat him? Well, he hit you back
with the plague, or try to.”

Rupert began to laugh, then checked himself and said: “No, Tabitha, he
would scarcely be such a brute as that. Why! assassination is nothing to
it. Anyhow, I am not afraid; I do not catch things.”

“You do not know the dear Dick; I do,” she replied grimly. “Go home,
Rupert, at once, burn the clothes you are wearing, sit in smoke, wash
yourself all over with soaps, do everything you can.”

“All right,” he answered, “don’t frighten Edith; I will take
precautions.”

He did, with the result that it was past two o’clock before he could
find time for food, he who had eaten nothing since seven on the previous
night.

For the next three days, knowing her terror of infectious diseases,
every morning he sent a message to Edith that she must not see him, but
with Tabitha and, of course, with Mea, he associated as before, since
neither of them would listen to his warnings. There had been no further
cases amongst Dick’s people, or elsewhere, and although his camels were
now ready, Dick himself had not yet returned. It was reported that he
was enjoying excellent sport on the hills.

Rupert thought very little more about the plague, however, for he had
other things on his mind. Within four days the month would be up, and he
must give his answer to the great question. Edith, whom for her own sake
he still refused to see, had taken a desperate step; she had sent him a
letter.

Why do you keep me away from you? (she wrote). Of course I know that I
used to be afraid of illnesses, but I don’t care any more about them
now. Sometimes I think it would be a good thing if I did catch the
plague and it made an end of me and my wretched life. Rupert, I know you
forbade me to speak to you about these matters until next week, but you
never said that I mightn’t write, and I will write upon the chance that
you may read. Rupert, I am a miserable woman, as I deserve to be, for I
have been very wicked. I acknowledge it all now. Dick has been my curse.
When I was still quite a child, he began to make love to me; you know
how handsome and taking he was then, and I fell under his influence,
which for years I could never shake off. I tried to, for I knew that he
was bad, but it was no good, he attracted me, as a magnet attracts a bit
of iron. Then you came home, and I really did admire you and respect
you, and I was very flattered that you should care for me. Also, I will
tell you all the truth, I thought that you were going to be a peer and
wealthy, and that you had a great career before you, and I wished to be
the wife of such a man. Dick of course was furiously jealous; he
insulted me upon the very day that you proposed to me, and because I
would not be turned from my purpose, he set to work to avenge himself
upon us both. It was he who gave the War Office the idea of sending you
out on that wretched mission, and who afterwards took away your good
name.

But, Rupert, I did not know all this at the time when you were supposed
to be dead. I let Dick, who seemed to be turning out better then, regain
his influence over me. That day on which you came home I had become
secretly engaged to him. This will help to explain what followed.
Really, I was out of my mind and not responsible. Afterwards, in my
distress, I wrote Dick some foolish letters, which he has held over my
head ever since I refused to have anything more to do with him. Also, I
would have asked your pardon and tried to make it up with you if I had
known where you were gone. But I did not know, and I was afraid to
inquire for fear of betraying the shameful facts.

Rupert, it is true that I have grown to hate Dick, as much as I once
loved him, if I ever did love him. Since I have found out how vile and
treacherous he is, that it was he who set to work to blacken your
reputation, as afterwards he has done by mine, and the rest of it, I
have loathed him; but he follows me like my shadow and threatens me. I
cannot cast him off, and if he says things about me, and shows those
letters, who will believe that I am innocent—I with whom my own husband
will have nothing to do? I shall be a ruined woman. Even here he has
followed me; yes, and the wicked wretch tried to murder you, I am sure,
by giving you that sickness. Well, thank Heaven! he seems to have failed
there.

Rupert, my husband, before the God that made me, I tell you the honest
truth. I love you now, body and soul; it was only Dick that stood
between us, and he is gone from me for ever. I am miserable because I
may not be near you, and, if you will forgive all the past, and come
back to me, no man in the world shall have a better wife, or one more
obedient to his wishes. I know it is much to ask; I know I do not
deserve it, and I know, too, that this beautiful lady Mea loves you, and
that she is as true and good as you are. Oh! Rupert, Rupert, don’t break
my heart; don’t turn me out to wander again in the wilderness alone. If
so, I do not know what will happen to me, but I think that I shall go to
the bad, like many another poor creature. At any rate, it may be amusing
while it lasts. Rupert, be merciful, as you hope for mercy.—Your wife
(for I suppose that I still have a right to sign myself so),

EDITH.

This letter produced a great effect upon Rupert, as its writer had hoped
that it would do. When he received it he was already low-spirited, but
after reading it his depression became acute. The piteous way in which
Edith made the best of a bad case; her evident and honest repentance,
and the curious heart-change which, as she declared and as he half
believed, now inclined her towards himself, all touched him deeply,
especially the repentance.

Yet he could not but see that almost every argument she used might be
urged with even greater effect upon behalf of Mea, who wrote no letters
and made no prayer. Why should Mea’s heart be broken? Why should Mea be
left to wander in that lonely wilderness whereof Edith spoke, or perhaps
to take to those common courses of despair—Mea, who had never offended,
who had always played an angel’s part towards him?

Of course the only answer was that he was married to Edith, and that he
was not married to Mea; that he had taken Edith for better or for worse,
and that to them applied the ancient saying: “Those whom God has joined
together, let no man put asunder.” He knew well enough in which
direction his own feelings lay. Yet, what right had he to thrust her
out, his wife, whom he had asked to marry him? On the other hand, what
right had he to desert Mea, the woman who had saved and sheltered him?

Rupert was sore perplexed; he could find no answer to these problems. He
wrote a note to Edith thanking her for her letter, the contents of which
he said he was considering, adding that he was quite well, but she had
better still keep away from him for a while. Then he took a sudden
resolution. He would go to Mea, and lay the whole matter before her.


Once again they sat in that room in which, after weeks of blindness, he
had recovered his sight. His story had been told, the letter had been
read, there it lay upon the ground beside them.

“And now, Rupert,” asked Mea quietly, “what shall you do?”

“I don’t know,” he answered passionately. “I have come to ask you.”

She looked at him and asked again: “Which is it that you love, your wife
or me?”

“You know well,” he replied. “It is you, and no other woman, you now and
for ever. Why do you make me tell you so again?”

“Because I like to hear it, Rupert,” she said, with her slow smile. “But
it does not make the choice easier, does it? On the one side, love; on
the other your law. Which will win, love or your law?”

“I have come to you to tell me, Mea.”

She looked upwards as though seeking an inspiration, then spoke again.

“I will be no stumbling-block in your path of righteousness. Was it for
this that I was given to you? Love is longer than your law, Rupert, and
is not that doctrine which we practise named Renunciation? It seems that
those who would reap must sow.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, Rupert, that this woman who has behaved so ill repents, and
what says our Book—the Book you taught me to believe? ‘Judge not, that
ye be not judged!’ I mean that since she has kept its letter, that oath
still stands between you and her.”

“Then I must leave you?” he muttered hoarsely.

“Yes, Rupert, I suppose so.”

“And what will become of you then?”

“I,” she replied, with another of her sweet smiles, “oh! what does it
matter? But if you wish to know, I will tell you. I think that I shall
die, and go to wait for you where love remains, and your law is
finished. Shall we agree that together, my Rupert?”

His hands trembled, and the veins swelled upon his forehead.

“I can’t,” he said hoarsely, “God forgive me, I can’t—yet. You are
nobler than I, Mea.”

“Then, Rupert, what?”

“Mea,” he said, “we have still four days. Something might happen in
those four days. Perhaps God may be pleased to help us in some manner
unforeseen. If not, at the end of them I will accept your counsel,
however cruel it may be; yes, even if it kills us both.”

“Good!” she answered, with a flash of her eyes, “such words I looked to
hear you speak, for shall the preacher of a faith fly before its fires?
The sooner we are dead, the sooner will there be an end—and a
beginning.”

“Aye,” he echoed, breaking into English, “an end and a beginning.”


Another two days had gone by, and once more Rupert and Mea sat together.
They were making arrangements for the forthcoming gathering in the
temple; also, he was giving her an account of his stewardship, he who it
seemed must so soon depart. He was ill; he was troubled. He faltered in
his speech, forgetting the Arabic words, his head bent forwards over the
book of accounts. Then suddenly he placed his hands upon the edge of the
table and raised himself with a smothered exclamation of pain.

“What is it?” she asked wildly, as he sank back into his seat.

“Nothing,” he answered, in a faint voice. “It was as though a sword
passed through me, that is all.”

“Oh! Rupert,” she cried, “you are ill.”

“Yes, Mea,” he said presently, “I am ill. I think that God _has_ shown
us a way out of our troubles, and for that blessed be His name. Mea, I
have the plague. Leave me; leave me at once.”

“Aye,” she answered, setting her lips, “when they take you from me dead,
but never before.”


Two more days and Rupert was dying with the dawn. By his side knelt Mea,
and in a chair at the end of the shadowed room, tears streaming down her
placid face, and the grey-haired Bakhita crouched crooning at her feet,
sat Tabitha. Edith was not there. Rupert had refused to allow her to be
admitted, lest she also should contract the plague. Sometimes he was
conscious, and sometimes he sank into sleep. His eyes opened, he woke
again and turned to Mea.

“Beloved,” she whispered in his ear, “I have hidden it from all save
Bakhita, but I have that which I must tell you at last. Our merciful God
has called me—I die also. Before midday I follow on your road. Wait for
me, Rupert.”

He smiled, and whispered: “I understand. I will wait—surely, surely!”

Then he stretched up his arms. She sank into them, and for the first
time their lips met. It was their kiss of farewell—and of greeting.

“Bakhita,” said Mea presently in a clear and ringing voice, “it is done.
Come; tire me in those robes that I have made ready, my bridal robes. Be
swift now, for my lord calls me.”

The stern-faced, aged woman rose and obeyed. Tabitha knelt in prayer by
the corpse of Rupert, and messengers swiftly spread the news that Zahed
had departed from his people. A while later, as high and shrill the
Eastern death-wail broke upon the silence, a door burst open and in
rushed Edith.

“Oh! is it true, is it true?” she sobbed.

Tabitha pointed to the shrouded form of Rupert.

“Come no nearer,” she said, “lest you should die also—you who are not
ready to die.”

The two women, Edith and Mea, stood face to face with each other; Edith,
dishevelled, weeping; Mea, a strange and glorious sight in the rays of
the rising sun that struck on her through the open window-place. She was
clad in silvery robes that flowed about her; in her weak hand swayed the
ancient sceptre of her race, upon her breast lay a pectoral of Isis and
Nepthys weeping over dead Osiris; above her outspread hair was set that
funeral crown worked in thin gold and enamelled flowers which once she
had shown to Rupert. Her wide eyes shone like stars, and the fever that
burned upon it seemed to give to her mysterious face a richer beauty.

“I greet you, lady,” she said to Edith. “Well have I nursed our lord,
but now he has passed from us—home, and I—I follow him,” and she pointed
over the shattered temple and the wall of mountains upwards to the
splendid sky.

“You follow him; you follow him?” gasped Edith? “What do you mean?”

By way of answer, Mea tore open her white wrappings and showed her bosom
marked with those spots of plague that appear only just before the end.

“It was his last and best gift to me,” she cried in Arabic.

“Soon, very soon we two shall have done with separations and with
griefs. Hearken you, his lady according to your law. He had determined
that to-morrow he would have gone back with you whom he forgave, as I
do. But we prayed, he and I—yes, knee by knee we prayed to our God that
He would save us from this sacrifice, and He has answered to our prayer.
Behold! we who have followed the way of the Spirit inherit the Spirit;
and we who renounced, renounce no more. To me it was given to save his
life; to me it is given to share his death and all beyond it through
light, through dark—forever and forever.

“Way now, make way for Tama who comes to her lord’s bed!”

Then while they gazed and wondered, with slow steps Mea reeled to the
couch upon which the corpse of Rupert lay; uttering one low cry of love
and triumph, she cast herself beside him, and there she died.

“Now,” said the quiet voice of Tabitha, as she looked upward to heaven
over the ruined temples of a faith fulfilled and the cruel mountains of
our world—“now, who will deny there dwells One yonder that rewards the
righteous and smites the wicked with His sword?”

FINIS


WORKS BY H. RIDER HAGGARD

PARLIAMENTARY BLUE-BOOK
Report to H.M.’s Government on the Salvation Army colonies
in the United States, with Scheme of National Land
Settlement. [Cd. 2562.]

POLITICAL HISTORY
Cetewayo and his White Neighbours

WORKS ON AGRICULTURE, COUNTRY LIFE, AND SOCIOLOGY
Rural England (2 vols.)
A Farmer’s Year
The Poor and the Land
A Gardener’s Year

BOOK OF TRAVEL
A Winter Pilgrimage

NOVELS
Dawn
Beatrice
The Witch’s Head
Joan Haste
Jess
Doctor Therne
Colonel Quaritch, V.C.
Stella Fregelius

ROMANCES
King Solomon’s Mines
She
Allan Quatermain
Maiwa’s Revenge
Mr. Meeson’s Will
Allan’s Wife
Cleopatra
Eric Brighteyes
Nada the Lily
Montezuma’s Daughter
The People of the Mist
Heart of the World
Swallow
Black Heart and White Heart
Lysbeth
Pearl Maiden
The Brethren
Ayesha: The Return of She
_(In collaboration with Andrew Lang):_
The World’s Desire