The Way of the Spirit

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

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!”

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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;

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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

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him prisoner, or – and they looked viciously at Dick at 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.

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“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.

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“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.”

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“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

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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 mountaincrest 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

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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

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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.”

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