The Way of the Spirit
.pdfH. RIDER
HAGGARD
THE WAY
OF THE SPIRIT
Москва, 2018
УДК 82 ББК 84
H.Rider Haggard
The Way of the Spirit / H. R. Haggard. – М. : T8RUGRAM /
Original, 2018. – 394 с.
ISBN 978-5-521-06617-9
A young man named Rupert Ullershaw falls in a love with the wife of his much older cousin, Lord Devene. The woman commits suicide, and the young Rupert promises his mother to henceforward “follow the way of the Spirit, not that of the Flesh.” After 11 years of soldiering in India and Egypt, Rupert returns home to England, where he marries his cousin Edith, a woman who is repelled by him but agrees to matrimony only because of Rupert’s career prospects. Edith is actually in love with another of her cousins, the dastardly Dick, who arranges for Rupert to be sent back to Egypt, for a highly dangerous mission…
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УДК 82 |
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ББК 84 |
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© T8RUGRAM, оформление, 2018 |
ISBN 978-5-521-06617-9 |
© Original, 2018 |
«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.»
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.
Ever sincerely yours,
H. Rider Haggard. To Rudyard Kipling, Esq.
Ditchingham, 14th August, 1905.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 PROLOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
CHAPTER I. THE VOICE OF THE SINGING SAND . . . . 19
CHAPTER II. TWO LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
CHAPTER III. THE RETURN OF RUPERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
CHAPTER IV. A BUSINESS CONVERSATION . . . . . . . . . |
56 |
CHAPTER V. THE DINNER-PARTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
67 |
CHAPTER VI. RUPERT FALLS IN LOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
CHAPTER VII. ENGAGED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
CHAPTER VIII. EDITH’S CRUSHED LILIES . . . . . . . . . . . 112
CHAPTER IX. RUPERT ACCEPTS A MISSION . . . . . . . . . 128
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H. RIDER HAGGARD
CHAPTER X. MARRIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
CHAPTER XI. AN OFFERING TO THE GODS . . . . . . . . . |
166 |
CHAPTER XII. THE WANDERING PLAYERS . . . . . . . . . |
180 |
CHAPTER XIII. THE END OF THE FIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
193 |
CHAPTER XIV. MEA MAKES A PROPOSAL . . . . . . . . . . . |
208 |
CHAPTER XV. RUPERT MAKES OBEISANCE . . . . . . . . . 223
CHAPTER XVI. MEANWHILE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
CHAPTER XVII. WELCOME HOME!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
CHAPTER XVIII. THE HAPPY, HAPPY LIFE . . . . . . . . . . |
278 |
CHAPTER XIX. AFTER SEVEN YEARS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
296 |
CHAPTER XX. REVELATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
CHAPTER XXI. ZAHED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
CHAPTER XXII. EDITH AND MEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
CHAPTER XXIII. THE WHEEL TURNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
365 |
CHAPTER XXIV. RENUNCIATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
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
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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.
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
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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, ivoryskinned, perfectly developed in every part, except perhaps her brain. Good-natured, courageous after a fashion, wellmeaning, 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 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.
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