The Way of the Spirit

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

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

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story of the lady in the desert, which, of course, she had a right to learn in its very 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.

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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 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.

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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 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?

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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 the 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.

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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

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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

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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.

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“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.

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