CHAPTER XVIII.THE HAPPY, HAPPY LIFEWhen Rupert left the house in Brook Street, he walked on aimlessly down it, down Bond Street, across Piccadilly, where in the mist he was nearly knocked over by a cab, down St. James’ Street to Pall Mall, and along it till he came to the Army and Navy Club, of which he was a member. Here he paused in front of the portico whither he had unconsciously directed his steps, then remembering that he was dead and that it would never do for him to enter there, turned round hurriedly and butted into a portly general under whom he had served, who was about to go up the steps of the club. The general, a choleric person, cursed him, then concluding from his crutch and wretched appearance that he was a poor, homeless cripple, felt ashamed of himself, and with some words of regret, thrust sixpence into his hand.“Pray don’t apologise, General,” said Rupert, “it was my awkwardness.” Then he looked at the sixpence, and adding: “With your permission I will pass it on,” he gave it to a hungry-looking crossing-sweeper who waited hard by, and limped forward.The general stood amazed, for he knew the voice, but could not put a name to it.“Hi!” he shouted, after the retreating figure, but Rupert realising his danger, went on quickly towards the Athenaeum and was soon lost in the mist.“Devilish odd thing,” said the General, as he strolled up the steps. “Whose voice was it? I know—Rupert Ullershaw’s!”Then he ran to the porter’s box and asked: “Has Colonel Ullershaw been in the club?”“No, General,” answered the porter, “he isn’t a member now; he’s dead. Killed in the Soudan, General, some months ago.”“Oh, yes,” said the General, “I remember. He’s the fellow who made a mess of things. Good man too, but there was a woman in it. Well, hang me, if I haven’t seen his ghost without a leg and with a beard a yard long. Can’t mistake that voice. Heard it right across the square at Abu-Klea. Most astonishing thing.”For years afterwards this meeting with the mutilated shade of Rupert Ullershaw was the general’s favourite ghost story, especially in future days when certain facts came to be common knowledge.Rupert passed the Athenaeum. With some trouble, for they were slippery, he negotiated the steps beyond the Duke of York’s column, then hurried on past the Horse Guards and the Foreign Office, till at length he reached the Embankment, and being very tired, sat down on a seat by the river. Before long a policeman came and disturbed him, asking what he was doing loitering there. He replied humbly enough that he believed it was a public place, whereon the policeman stared at him as the general had done, and went by. Still he rose and walked forward till he came to where the shadows were deep between two lamps, for here the thickening fog gave him privacy, and placing his bag by him, leaned upon the parapet and listened to the murmur of the river beneath.Then and there it was, now when the exertions of walking were done with, that the whole weight of his miseries struck Rupert full. His soul descended into hell; he saw and understood the awful truth. Wrecked bodily, ruined in reputation, deserted by the world, scorned as loathsome by Edith, Devene’s daughter, who had only married him for what he had to give, there was no outcast in all that cruel London more lonesome, more hopeless than he, who, not ten months before, had been one of its fêted and sought-after favourites. It was that day twelvemonth, New Year’s Eve, he remembered, that he had proposed to and been accepted by Edith, remembered also the words spoken to him then by Lady Devene and his mother, of which now he felt the full meaning, although he had paid little attention to them at the time. Those women understood; his love had blinded him.What was there left for him to do—who had promised to “remain dead?” The lapping of the water beneath seemed to shape an answer. It spoke to him as the thud of the steamer and the beat of the train had spoken once before, and well he understood its meaning. All his hopes lay buried beneath that water of death, and there also were his mother and many a good friend and comrade. Why should he not seek them? Edith would be pleased, for then he would remain dead indeed. Yet it was a wicked act. Well, sometimes circumstances outweighed scruples, and in that matter he felt as though he must take his chance—like Edith. If there were any worse place than this world in which, after all, with one exception, he had done his best, it must be bad indeed. Here was a deep that could have no depth below it, and therein he sojourned.It would be easy. The wide handles of that accursed and weighty bag would pass over his head, a very fitting brick to drown a dog that had had its day. He was quite alone in the dreary place, where no one lingered on such a night. Why should they, when Salvation Army shelters were available? He could not go there, he could not go anywhere, he would be found out or recognised. The Thames mud was the best bed for him who felt so very tired.Rupert leaned further over the parapet, nerving himself to the desperate deed, he who was almost mad with shame and sorrow. Then it was in the grey mist that lay upon the water, quite hiding it from his sight, that he seemed to see something form which gradually took the shape of a woman’s face, surrounded by cloudy, outspread hair. He could see it clearly, and in it the tender, pitying eyes from which tears ran, so clearly that at once he knew it for the face of Mea, as after all those weeks of darkness it had first appeared to his returning sight. Yes, as it had arisen then upon the blindness of his body with its assurance of light renewed, so did it arise again upon the utter blackness of his soul’s despair, a beacon of hope in the midst of that desperate shipwreck, a token of love unchanging and unchanged above this seething bitterness of scorn and hate.Of a sudden, as the shadow passed, he remembered the promise which he had made to Mea when she warned him that sometimes things went amiss. He had thought it idle enough even then who only gave it to please her, and since that day it had rarely crossed his mind. Now he knew, however, that her true affection for him had endowed her with some strange foresight of the woes about to fall upon his defenceless head, and thereby, in a way unforeseen by herself or him, had provided him with a door of escape from the dreadful habitations into which his spirit was to be driven by Destiny. Mea would welcome back her friend who had no other friend in all the world; moreover, in such an event as this he had sworn that he would return to her.Then, should he sink in that river, he would be a liar as well as a coward. No, the river was done with. Mea had saved him from this sin, at the very thought of which he felt even now that he would live to shiver and be ashamed.New life came back to Rupert, hope was born again, and its first manifestation was of a very material nature. He felt hungry who had eaten little that day and undergone much. Taking up the bag, which but a few minutes before he had intended to put to such a dreadful purpose, he lifted his crutch and made his way briskly across the Embankment, and along one of the side streets into the Strand. Here he found a modest-looking eating-house, and entering, ordered himself some food, for which the waiter, noting his appearance, demanded payment in advance. While he ate he bethought himself, and as a result, took up a paper that lay near by and began to search the advertisements. Soon he discovered what he wanted. On the following morning, Monday, a steamer of one of the smaller and less known lines was advertised to sail for Egypt and other places, leaving Liverpool at eleven o’clock a.m. Rupert asked for an A.B.C. Railway Guide, and found that there was a train from Euston about 10.30, which reached Liverpool in the early morning.This train in due course he took, and on the next day, as soon as the Liverpool office was open, booked a second-class passage to Egypt under an assumed name.It was spring in the oasis of Tama, where the crops were growing fast.“Bakhita,” said Mea suddenly one afternoon, “I grow weary of this place. To-morrow morning I ride down the Black Pass to look out at the desert beyond, which now should be beautiful with flowers, for heavy rains have fallen.”“It is not flowers that you would look for in the desert, if indeed any can be found there,” answered Bakhita, with her peculiar smile, and shaking her white head. “Nor shall you enter on to that desert where the Khalifa’s man-stealing savages roam in bands, yelling on Allah and killing peaceable folk. Still, if you wish it—or if you have dreamed a dream—you can ride down to the mouth of the pass with a suitable escort of spearsmen, and stare at the desert till you are tired.”“Bakhita, my aunt,” asked Mea angrily, “who is mistress in this land—you or I?”“Tama, my niece,” answered Bakhita calmly, “where you are concerned, I am mistress. You set no foot in that desert.“If you try to do so, I will order your own council of emirs to shut you up. He can come to seek you if he wishes, you shall not go to seek him.”“Bakhita, I spoke to you of flowers.”“Yes, Mea, you did; but the flower you mean has a red beard; also, an Arab has trodden on it and crushed it out of shape. Moreover, it grows in another land, and if it did not, what use would it be to your garden?”“I am tired of this place and wish to look at the desert,” answered Mea. “If you trouble me much more, I will cross it and travel to Egypt. Even that school at Luxor is not so dull as Tama. Go; do my bidding.”Then Bakhita went, full of her own thoughts, and ordered the emirs to furnish an escort of a hundred spears as a devil had entered into their lady, and she knew not where it would lead her. The emirs grumbled because the crops required attention, and asked if the devil could not be sent away for a little while, but Bakhita answered them in such fashion that before the sun was well up on the following morning the hundred horsemen were in attendance.So they rode to the mouth of the Black Pass and camped there. The whole of the next day Mea stared at the desert, in which, after all, there proved to be few flowers. The captains of the escort, who were thinking of the weeding of their crops, asked if they were to return on the following morning. She answered no, the desert air was improving her health. Next night they repeated their question. She answered no, her health was being completely re-established by the desert air; but if they wished, they could go home and leave her. This, however, they declined to do, saying that if the crops suffered, it was bad, but if anything happened to their lady, then they were disgraced men, and even their women-folk would refuse them.Another evening came on, and in the light of the setting sun appeared far away one solitary man riding a very tired camel. In that vast plain from the horizon of which he emerged, he looked an extraordinarily lonesome object.“What is that man?” asked Mea of Bakhita in a strange voice.“A Bedouin thief, I suppose, a spy of the Khalifa’s. How should I know what he is? Bid your people go to find out.”“No,” answered Mea, “we will wait and see what the thief does. Let the men keep hidden and be prepared to attack him.”The thief or the spy continued to approach, till presently his camel seemed to go dead-lame, and he was obliged to halt in a little clump of bush about half a mile from the mouth of the pass.“There is no moon, so he will have to sit there till morning,” said Bakhita. “Well, it will be easier to capture him in the dark.”The night fell swiftly.“Now,” said Mea, “bring five men and let us go to take this spy. Anubis, come hither, little dog, we are going to take a spy and a lame camel, but, Anubis, do not bark, or you will betray us to his fury.”So they went out through the gloom, and when they drew near the clump of bush, dismounted and advanced on foot, Mea leading the dog Anubis by a string. One of the men, who walked a little ahead, came back and reported that the spy had lit a fire and hung a kettle over it to boil; also that he was seated with his back to the fire and by its light engaged in reading a book, which he thought a strange thing for a spy to do.Mea listened and said nothing. They were travelling up wind towards the stranger, and now the dog Anubis began to sniff the air and grow excited. Whether by design or by accident, Mea let one end of the fibre string by which she held it slip, and away it bolted into the bush, whence presently arose a sound of joyous yelpings, mingled with the deep tones of a man’s voice.“That dog is not angry,” said Bakhita.Mea looked at her, a wonderful look. Then she, too, ran forward into the bush more quickly even than the dog had run. Waving back the escort, for now she was sure of the truth, Bakhita followed, and presently this was what she saw. The man in Arab dress, with a book beside him, was seated on the ground, while behind grazed the lame camel. In the man’s arms, still yelping and licking every part of him that it could reach, was the cur-dog Anubis, whilst standing in the shadow, as yet unseen by the man, with that wonderful look still upon her face, was Mea. She advanced silently, like a dream or a ghost, till she stood between him and the fire. Feeling its heat cut off he ceased fondling the dog, and looked up and round trying to see who it was, for no light fell on her. Then Mea spoke in that rich and love-laden voice of hers which, to him at any rate, differed from the voice of any other woman—spoke in her pretty, broken English:“Rupert Bey he know the nasty little dog Anubis which runs from his mistress to him, but the mistress Mea, ah! he know her not.”Next moment there was a great commotion. Poor Anubis rolled from Rupert’s lap into the fire, where he burnt his tail, and then sat down with a yelp and licked it, his eyes still fixed on Rupert, who snatched his crutch and struggled from the ground. He was up, his arms were outstretched; then suddenly he seemed to remember, for he let them fall and with his right hand seized that of Mea and pressed it first to his forehead and then to his lips.“What a fool,” said Bakhita to herself in the background, “to kiss her fingers when he might have kissed her face. I always thought that these white people were mad, but this Bey is a saint as well. Poor Mea, who has fallen in love with a holy man. Give me a sinner! say I.”Meanwhile, Mea had returned the “holy man’s” compliment by kissinghisfingers, but toherselfshe said: “So the woman with the snow face and the sapphire eyes has only ill-treated him. It may be evil, but oh! I wish that she were dead, for then he would not only love me, he would say it also.”“You have come!” she exclaimed, in Arabic. “Oh, my lord! did I not tell you that we should meet again, and have I not felt you drawing near to me, and therefore taken these people from their gardens and sat here for three whole days?”“Yes, Tama, I have come,” he answered, in a somewhat shaky voice.“Is that all you say?” she went on, and there were doubt and fear in her voice. “For how long have you come? Perhaps you do but sojourn for a night or for a week. Oh! tell me quickly—for how long have you come?”“I don’t know,” he answered, “it depends on you. For all my life, I think, if you will keep me as your servant.”A great sigh of relief burst from Mea’s breast.“Oh! stop for this life and the next, too, if you will. Stop till the mountains melt into the desert and the Nile runs through Tama—that is, if I may stop with you. But what mean you? How can you be my servant—you who are—something else?” and she waved her hand upward.“Mea,” he said, “I must make you understand. I—I am a poor man now; I have nothing left in the world, or, at least, the little that I have I cannot get, because I have promised to be dead to the world, and if I asked for my money, why then, they would know that I am alive. Look! that is all that I possess,” and putting his hand into his pocket, he produced seven and a half piastres—“that, a gun, and a lame camel. I have had to live hard to make my money last from London to Tama, and, as you see, even to risk the desert alone. Well, I must earn my bread, and I remembered your kindness, and your promise that I should be welcome, so I thought to myself: ‘I will go back to the lady Mea, and I will ask her to let me manage her lands, and in return to give me a house to live in and some food, and perhaps if I can make them pay better than they do, a little percentage of the profits to buy myself books and clothes.’ I don’t know if you think I am asking too much,” he added humbly.“No,” answered Mea, “I do not think that you are asking too much, who might have had more; but we will strike hands upon our bargain afterwards. Meanwhile—my servant—I engage you for life, and as a luck-penny will you give me some of that dinner which you are cooking in the pot, for I am hungry? No,” she added, “I forget; it is I should give the luck-penny, and Anubis, whom you love better, shall have your dinner.”Then she clapped her hands, and the five men advanced out of the darkness, looking curiously at Rupert. She turned upon them fiercely.“Are you stones of the desert or palms of the wood,” she cried, “that you stand so still? Down, dogs, and make obeisance to your lord, who has come back to rule you!”They did not hesitate or wait to be told again, for something in Tama’s eye informed them that prompt obedience was best. Nor, indeed, did they grudge him fealty, for Rupert was loved by all of them as the great man and the brave who had saved their lady’s life or honour. Flat they went upon the sand, and in spite of his protests laid their hands upon his foot and did him homage in the Eastern style.“It is enough,” said Mea. “Back, one of you, to the camp, and bring my mare for my lord to ride, and bid the emir turn out his men to greet him.”A man went like an arrow, while the others retreated to see about the sick camel, and to lead it into camp.“Mea, Mea,” said Rupert reproachfully, “you are putting me in a very false position. I am nothing but a broken wanderer, and out of seven piastres what gift can I give these men whom you force to do obeisance to me as though I were a sultan?”“You can give them the best of gifts, the gift you have given me, that of your presence. Let us understand one another, Rupert Bey. You may call yourself my servant if you will, I do not quarrel with the word, for lack of a better. But with me you are my people’s lord, since, but for you, I should not be here among them.”“How can it be?” he muttered, “since I may not ask—” and the look upon his face told her the rest.Her hand shook a little. “She still lives?” she said, glancing at him.He nodded.“And you still hold yourself bound to her and her alone?”“Yes, Mea, by my law and my oath, neither of which may be broken.”She drew nearer and looked up into his face. “Do you still love her, Rupert?”“No,” he said shortly. “She has behaved cruelly to me; she is quite dead to me.”“Ah! And do you love any other woman?”The great head drooped forward. “Yes, Mea.”“So! Now what is her name?”Rupert looked about him like a man who seeks escape from dangers and finds none. Then he answered:“Her name is yours—yours and no other’s. But oh! have pity on my weakness. Remember that this lonely path is hard; do not drive me back into the wilderness.”She let her head fall a little, and when she lifted it again he saw by the light of the fire and of the bright stars above, that her sweet face shone with a great and abiding joy.“Have no fear, Rupert,” she said. “Is my own path so easy that I should wish to plant thorns in yours? I am well content; I tell you that I am well content. This is the best and happiest hour of my life; it shines bright above me as that star. I understand 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 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 of 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 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 of 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.”“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.”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. But though you have found a new faith, laugh no more at my ancient magic, Mea. Did not the sinking boat sail back to your arms that night?”“It sailed back, Bakhita, and when it sails forth again mine sails with it. I laugh at nothing. Old faiths and new, they are all shadows of the truth—for those who believe in them, Bakhita.”Oh! happy, happy was the life that began for these two this night. Soon Rupert was installed in a little house not far from Mea’s, and the wide, neglected lands were in his care. He worked early and late, and made them to blossom like the rose, so that wealth began to flow into the oasis of Tama. Then in the evenings when the work was done, he and Mea would eat together, and talk together, and read and study together, and together daily grow more changed and wise. But at an appointed hour they shook each other by the hand and separated, and on the morrow that blessed, peaceful round began again.He was her world, her life, the very altar of her faith, whence the pure incense of her heart went up in ceaseless sacrifice to Heaven. She was his love, his light, his star—all this yet unattained—as stars must be.
When Rupert left the house in Brook Street, he walked on aimlessly down it, down Bond Street, across Piccadilly, where in the mist he was nearly knocked over by a cab, down St. James’ Street to Pall Mall, and along it till he came to the Army and Navy Club, of which he was a member. Here he paused in front of the portico whither he had unconsciously directed his steps, then remembering that he was dead and that it would never do for him to enter there, turned round hurriedly and butted into a portly general under whom he had served, who was about to go up the steps of the club. The general, a choleric person, cursed him, then concluding from his crutch and wretched appearance that he was a poor, homeless cripple, felt ashamed of himself, and with some words of regret, thrust sixpence into his hand.
“Pray don’t apologise, General,” said Rupert, “it was my awkwardness.” Then he looked at the sixpence, and adding: “With your permission I will pass it on,” he gave it to a hungry-looking crossing-sweeper who waited hard by, and limped forward.
The general stood amazed, for he knew the voice, but could not put a name to it.
“Hi!” he shouted, after the retreating figure, but Rupert realising his danger, went on quickly towards the Athenaeum and was soon lost in the mist.
“Devilish odd thing,” said the General, as he strolled up the steps. “Whose voice was it? I know—Rupert Ullershaw’s!”
Then he ran to the porter’s box and asked: “Has Colonel Ullershaw been in the club?”
“No, General,” answered the porter, “he isn’t a member now; he’s dead. Killed in the Soudan, General, some months ago.”
“Oh, yes,” said the General, “I remember. He’s the fellow who made a mess of things. Good man too, but there was a woman in it. Well, hang me, if I haven’t seen his ghost without a leg and with a beard a yard long. Can’t mistake that voice. Heard it right across the square at Abu-Klea. Most astonishing thing.”
For years afterwards this meeting with the mutilated shade of Rupert Ullershaw was the general’s favourite ghost story, especially in future days when certain facts came to be common knowledge.
Rupert passed the Athenaeum. With some trouble, for they were slippery, he negotiated the steps beyond the Duke of York’s column, then hurried on past the Horse Guards and the Foreign Office, till at length he reached the Embankment, and being very tired, sat down on a seat by the river. Before long a policeman came and disturbed him, asking what he was doing loitering there. He replied humbly enough that he believed it was a public place, whereon the policeman stared at him as the general had done, and went by. Still he rose and walked forward till he came to where the shadows were deep between two lamps, for here the thickening fog gave him privacy, and placing his bag by him, leaned upon the parapet and listened to the murmur of the river beneath.
Then and there it was, now when the exertions of walking were done with, that the whole weight of his miseries struck Rupert full. His soul descended into hell; he saw and understood the awful truth. Wrecked bodily, ruined in reputation, deserted by the world, scorned as loathsome by Edith, Devene’s daughter, who had only married him for what he had to give, there was no outcast in all that cruel London more lonesome, more hopeless than he, who, not ten months before, had been one of its fêted and sought-after favourites. It was that day twelvemonth, New Year’s Eve, he remembered, that he had proposed to and been accepted by Edith, remembered also the words spoken to him then by Lady Devene and his mother, of which now he felt the full meaning, although he had paid little attention to them at the time. Those women understood; his love had blinded him.
What was there left for him to do—who had promised to “remain dead?” The lapping of the water beneath seemed to shape an answer. It spoke to him as the thud of the steamer and the beat of the train had spoken once before, and well he understood its meaning. All his hopes lay buried beneath that water of death, and there also were his mother and many a good friend and comrade. Why should he not seek them? Edith would be pleased, for then he would remain dead indeed. Yet it was a wicked act. Well, sometimes circumstances outweighed scruples, and in that matter he felt as though he must take his chance—like Edith. If there were any worse place than this world in which, after all, with one exception, he had done his best, it must be bad indeed. Here was a deep that could have no depth below it, and therein he sojourned.
It would be easy. The wide handles of that accursed and weighty bag would pass over his head, a very fitting brick to drown a dog that had had its day. He was quite alone in the dreary place, where no one lingered on such a night. Why should they, when Salvation Army shelters were available? He could not go there, he could not go anywhere, he would be found out or recognised. The Thames mud was the best bed for him who felt so very tired.
Rupert leaned further over the parapet, nerving himself to the desperate deed, he who was almost mad with shame and sorrow. Then it was in the grey mist that lay upon the water, quite hiding it from his sight, that he seemed to see something form which gradually took the shape of a woman’s face, surrounded by cloudy, outspread hair. He could see it clearly, and in it the tender, pitying eyes from which tears ran, so clearly that at once he knew it for the face of Mea, as after all those weeks of darkness it had first appeared to his returning sight. Yes, as it had arisen then upon the blindness of his body with its assurance of light renewed, so did it arise again upon the utter blackness of his soul’s despair, a beacon of hope in the midst of that desperate shipwreck, a token of love unchanging and unchanged above this seething bitterness of scorn and hate.
Of a sudden, as the shadow passed, he remembered the promise which he had made to Mea when she warned him that sometimes things went amiss. He had thought it idle enough even then who only gave it to please her, and since that day it had rarely crossed his mind. Now he knew, however, that her true affection for him had endowed her with some strange foresight of the woes about to fall upon his defenceless head, and thereby, in a way unforeseen by herself or him, had provided him with a door of escape from the dreadful habitations into which his spirit was to be driven by Destiny. Mea would welcome back her friend who had no other friend in all the world; moreover, in such an event as this he had sworn that he would return to her.
Then, should he sink in that river, he would be a liar as well as a coward. No, the river was done with. Mea had saved him from this sin, at the very thought of which he felt even now that he would live to shiver and be ashamed.
New life came back to Rupert, hope was born again, and its first manifestation was of a very material nature. He felt hungry who had eaten little that day and undergone much. Taking up the bag, which but a few minutes before he had intended to put to such a dreadful purpose, he lifted his crutch and made his way briskly across the Embankment, and along one of the side streets into the Strand. Here he found a modest-looking eating-house, and entering, ordered himself some food, for which the waiter, noting his appearance, demanded payment in advance. While he ate he bethought himself, and as a result, took up a paper that lay near by and began to search the advertisements. Soon he discovered what he wanted. On the following morning, Monday, a steamer of one of the smaller and less known lines was advertised to sail for Egypt and other places, leaving Liverpool at eleven o’clock a.m. Rupert asked for an A.B.C. Railway Guide, and found that there was a train from Euston about 10.30, which reached Liverpool in the early morning.
This train in due course he took, and on the next day, as soon as the Liverpool office was open, booked a second-class passage to Egypt under an assumed name.
It was spring in the oasis of Tama, where the crops were growing fast.
“Bakhita,” said Mea suddenly one afternoon, “I grow weary of this place. To-morrow morning I ride down the Black Pass to look out at the desert beyond, which now should be beautiful with flowers, for heavy rains have fallen.”
“It is not flowers that you would look for in the desert, if indeed any can be found there,” answered Bakhita, with her peculiar smile, and shaking her white head. “Nor shall you enter on to that desert where the Khalifa’s man-stealing savages roam in bands, yelling on Allah and killing peaceable folk. Still, if you wish it—or if you have dreamed a dream—you can ride down to the mouth of the pass with a suitable escort of spearsmen, and stare at the desert till you are tired.”
“Bakhita, my aunt,” asked Mea angrily, “who is mistress in this land—you or I?”
“Tama, my niece,” answered Bakhita calmly, “where you are concerned, I am mistress. You set no foot in that desert.
“If you try to do so, I will order your own council of emirs to shut you up. He can come to seek you if he wishes, you shall not go to seek him.”
“Bakhita, I spoke to you of flowers.”
“Yes, Mea, you did; but the flower you mean has a red beard; also, an Arab has trodden on it and crushed it out of shape. Moreover, it grows in another land, and if it did not, what use would it be to your garden?”
“I am tired of this place and wish to look at the desert,” answered Mea. “If you trouble me much more, I will cross it and travel to Egypt. Even that school at Luxor is not so dull as Tama. Go; do my bidding.”
Then Bakhita went, full of her own thoughts, and ordered the emirs to furnish an escort of a hundred spears as a devil had entered into their lady, and she knew not where it would lead her. The emirs grumbled because the crops required attention, and asked if the devil could not be sent away for a little while, but Bakhita answered them in such fashion that before the sun was well up on the following morning the hundred horsemen were in attendance.
So they rode to the mouth of the Black Pass and camped there. The whole of the next day Mea stared at the desert, in which, after all, there proved to be few flowers. The captains of the escort, who were thinking of the weeding of their crops, asked if they were to return on the following morning. She answered no, the desert air was improving her health. Next night they repeated their question. She answered no, her health was being completely re-established by the desert air; but if they wished, they could go home and leave her. This, however, they declined to do, saying that if the crops suffered, it was bad, but if anything happened to their lady, then they were disgraced men, and even their women-folk would refuse them.
Another evening came on, and in the light of the setting sun appeared far away one solitary man riding a very tired camel. In that vast plain from the horizon of which he emerged, he looked an extraordinarily lonesome object.
“What is that man?” asked Mea of Bakhita in a strange voice.
“A Bedouin thief, I suppose, a spy of the Khalifa’s. How should I know what he is? Bid your people go to find out.”
“No,” answered Mea, “we will wait and see what the thief does. Let the men keep hidden and be prepared to attack him.”
The thief or the spy continued to approach, till presently his camel seemed to go dead-lame, and he was obliged to halt in a little clump of bush about half a mile from the mouth of the pass.
“There is no moon, so he will have to sit there till morning,” said Bakhita. “Well, it will be easier to capture him in the dark.”
The night fell swiftly.
“Now,” said Mea, “bring five men and let us go to take this spy. Anubis, come hither, little dog, we are going to take a spy and a lame camel, but, Anubis, do not bark, or you will betray us to his fury.”
So they went out through the gloom, and when they drew near the clump of bush, dismounted and advanced on foot, Mea leading the dog Anubis by a string. One of the men, who walked a little ahead, came back and reported that the spy had lit a fire and hung a kettle over it to boil; also that he was seated with his back to the fire and by its light engaged in reading a book, which he thought a strange thing for a spy to do.
Mea listened and said nothing. They were travelling up wind towards the stranger, and now the dog Anubis began to sniff the air and grow excited. Whether by design or by accident, Mea let one end of the fibre string by which she held it slip, and away it bolted into the bush, whence presently arose a sound of joyous yelpings, mingled with the deep tones of a man’s voice.
“That dog is not angry,” said Bakhita.
Mea looked at her, a wonderful look. Then she, too, ran forward into the bush more quickly even than the dog had run. Waving back the escort, for now she was sure of the truth, Bakhita followed, and presently this was what she saw. The man in Arab dress, with a book beside him, was seated on the ground, while behind grazed the lame camel. In the man’s arms, still yelping and licking every part of him that it could reach, was the cur-dog Anubis, whilst standing in the shadow, as yet unseen by the man, with that wonderful look still upon her face, was Mea. She advanced silently, like a dream or a ghost, till she stood between him and the fire. Feeling its heat cut off he ceased fondling the dog, and looked up and round trying to see who it was, for no light fell on her. Then Mea spoke in that rich and love-laden voice of hers which, to him at any rate, differed from the voice of any other woman—spoke in her pretty, broken English:
“Rupert Bey he know the nasty little dog Anubis which runs from his mistress to him, but the mistress Mea, ah! he know her not.”
Next moment there was a great commotion. Poor Anubis rolled from Rupert’s lap into the fire, where he burnt his tail, and then sat down with a yelp and licked it, his eyes still fixed on Rupert, who snatched his crutch and struggled from the ground. He was up, his arms were outstretched; then suddenly he seemed to remember, for he let them fall and with his right hand seized that of Mea and pressed it first to his forehead and then to his lips.
“What a fool,” said Bakhita to herself in the background, “to kiss her fingers when he might have kissed her face. I always thought that these white people were mad, but this Bey is a saint as well. Poor Mea, who has fallen in love with a holy man. Give me a sinner! say I.”
Meanwhile, Mea had returned the “holy man’s” compliment by kissinghisfingers, but toherselfshe said: “So the woman with the snow face and the sapphire eyes has only ill-treated him. It may be evil, but oh! I wish that she were dead, for then he would not only love me, he would say it also.”
“You have come!” she exclaimed, in Arabic. “Oh, my lord! did I not tell you that we should meet again, and have I not felt you drawing near to me, and therefore taken these people from their gardens and sat here for three whole days?”
“Yes, Tama, I have come,” he answered, in a somewhat shaky voice.
“Is that all you say?” she went on, and there were doubt and fear in her voice. “For how long have you come? Perhaps you do but sojourn for a night or for a week. Oh! tell me quickly—for how long have you come?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, “it depends on you. For all my life, I think, if you will keep me as your servant.”
A great sigh of relief burst from Mea’s breast.
“Oh! stop for this life and the next, too, if you will. Stop till the mountains melt into the desert and the Nile runs through Tama—that is, if I may stop with you. But what mean you? How can you be my servant—you who are—something else?” and she waved her hand upward.
“Mea,” he said, “I must make you understand. I—I am a poor man now; I have nothing left in the world, or, at least, the little that I have I cannot get, because I have promised to be dead to the world, and if I asked for my money, why then, they would know that I am alive. Look! that is all that I possess,” and putting his hand into his pocket, he produced seven and a half piastres—“that, a gun, and a lame camel. I have had to live hard to make my money last from London to Tama, and, as you see, even to risk the desert alone. Well, I must earn my bread, and I remembered your kindness, and your promise that I should be welcome, so I thought to myself: ‘I will go back to the lady Mea, and I will ask her to let me manage her lands, and in return to give me a house to live in and some food, and perhaps if I can make them pay better than they do, a little percentage of the profits to buy myself books and clothes.’ I don’t know if you think I am asking too much,” he added humbly.
“No,” answered Mea, “I do not think that you are asking too much, who might have had more; but we will strike hands upon our bargain afterwards. Meanwhile—my servant—I engage you for life, and as a luck-penny will you give me some of that dinner which you are cooking in the pot, for I am hungry? No,” she added, “I forget; it is I should give the luck-penny, and Anubis, whom you love better, shall have your dinner.”
Then she clapped her hands, and the five men advanced out of the darkness, looking curiously at Rupert. She turned upon them fiercely.
“Are you stones of the desert or palms of the wood,” she cried, “that you stand so still? Down, dogs, and make obeisance to your lord, who has come back to rule you!”
They did not hesitate or wait to be told again, for something in Tama’s eye informed them that prompt obedience was best. Nor, indeed, did they grudge him fealty, for Rupert was loved by all of them as the great man and the brave who had saved their lady’s life or honour. Flat they went upon the sand, and in spite of his protests laid their hands upon his foot and did him homage in the Eastern style.
“It is enough,” said Mea. “Back, one of you, to the camp, and bring my mare for my lord to ride, and bid the emir turn out his men to greet him.”
A man went like an arrow, while the others retreated to see about the sick camel, and to lead it into camp.
“Mea, Mea,” said Rupert reproachfully, “you are putting me in a very false position. I am nothing but a broken wanderer, and out of seven piastres what gift can I give these men whom you force to do obeisance to me as though I were a sultan?”
“You can give them the best of gifts, the gift you have given me, that of your presence. Let us understand one another, Rupert Bey. You may call yourself my servant if you will, I do not quarrel with the word, for lack of a better. But with me you are my people’s lord, since, but for you, I should not be here among them.”
“How can it be?” he muttered, “since I may not ask—” and the look upon his face told her the rest.
Her hand shook a little. “She still lives?” she said, glancing at him.
He nodded.
“And you still hold yourself bound to her and her alone?”
“Yes, Mea, by my law and my oath, neither of which may be broken.”
She drew nearer and looked up into his face. “Do you still love her, Rupert?”
“No,” he said shortly. “She has behaved cruelly to me; she is quite dead to me.”
“Ah! And do you love any other woman?”
The great head drooped forward. “Yes, Mea.”
“So! Now what is her name?”
Rupert looked about him like a man who seeks escape from dangers and finds none. Then he answered:
“Her name is yours—yours and no other’s. But oh! have pity on my weakness. Remember that this lonely path is hard; do not drive me back into the wilderness.”
She let her head fall a little, and when she lifted it again he saw by the light of the fire and of the bright stars above, that her sweet face shone with a great and abiding joy.
“Have no fear, Rupert,” she said. “Is my own path so easy that I should wish to plant thorns in yours? I am well content; I tell you that I am well content. This is the best and happiest hour of my life; it shines bright above me as that star. I understand 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 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 of 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 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 of 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.”
“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.”
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. But though you have found a new faith, laugh no more at my ancient magic, Mea. Did not the sinking boat sail back to your arms that night?”
“It sailed back, Bakhita, and when it sails forth again mine sails with it. I laugh at nothing. Old faiths and new, they are all shadows of the truth—for those who believe in them, Bakhita.”
Oh! happy, happy was the life that began for these two this night. Soon Rupert was installed in a little house not far from Mea’s, and the wide, neglected lands were in his care. He worked early and late, and made them to blossom like the rose, so that wealth began to flow into the oasis of Tama. Then in the evenings when the work was done, he and Mea would eat together, and talk together, and read and study together, and together daily grow more changed and wise. But at an appointed hour they shook each other by the hand and separated, and on the morrow that blessed, peaceful round began again.
He was her world, her life, the very altar of her faith, whence the pure incense of her heart went up in ceaseless sacrifice to Heaven. She was his love, his light, his star—all this yet unattained—as stars must be.