The Way of the Spirit

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

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 for 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 him “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

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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 along 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.”

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“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 fell-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 the 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

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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 these 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 exer-

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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

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merchandise to certain sheiks whom he had been informed were anxious to buy at good prices. For this purpose he had a license to trade, signed by the authorities at Cairo, in favour of one Mohammed, 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

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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

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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 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

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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 twoor 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 was not of the

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