The Way of the Spirit

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

derstand 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

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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 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

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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 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.”

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“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.”

“Dead as you are – who live for me.”

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.

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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 demonstration 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.

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“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.

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“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 hardly 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

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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.”

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“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 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.

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