"Egypt to-night," she said, "for me means a big ball and gay dresses. I have lost the other sense of Egypt." She turned up her eyes to the heavens. "Except for the heavens," she said, "I really might have been at the Carlton Hotel in London, at an Egyptian fête held there, or something of the kind."
"As you said, Egypt has so many souls, but its heavens have only one. The best starlight night at home is a poor, poor affair compared to this."
Before he had finished speaking Freddy appeared and claimed Margaret for a dance. She left Michael almost gladly, yet hating the feeling that they were still as far apart as they had been when they sat down to supper.
What a strange night it had been! The one half pure joy and the other certainly not happiness.
Alone in the open space in front of the hotel, Michael stood and cursed his own weakness. Why had he stooped to those lips? Why had he allowed himself to be unworthy of his intimacy with Margaret? He was sorry for Mrs. Mervill, for he believed her stories about her husband's drunkenness and degrading habits, as he almost believed that she had for some strange reason fallen in love with himself. He wished with all his might that women were nicer to one another, so that one of them, a woman like Margaret, for instance, might have given this lonely, lovely creature the affection and intimate friendship she craved for. Women shunned her and so she had to resort to men for the companionship and also for the affection she needed.
Michael understood very well the pleasures of sympathetic friendships; he was conscious that to himself human sympathy meant a very great deal, and so he felt sincerely sorry for the woman who was denied it. He liked the quiet places of the untrodden world; cities had no charm for him. But he needed human sympathy in his solitude to make his enjoyment complete. He felt sorely annoyed with the fates which made it impossible for him to give Mrs. Mervill all that she asked of him and at the same time continue on the footing on which he had been with Margaret.
And how was it that he could not? How was it that Margaret had instantly divined that there was more than an ordinary or desirable intimacy between Mrs. Mervill and himself? How was it that he had felt dishonoured and ashamed?
He had to return to the ball-room to find his partner for the next dance. As he did so, he passed Mrs. Mervill, who was coming out of it. She looked at him with laughing eyes, a soft, beautiful creature, of supple movements, whose perfect lips had told him the promises which she was capable of fulfilling. If he had not known Margaret, what would he have done?
But Margaret held him. He knew that she was worth a thousand Mrs. Mervills, in spite of the latter's more vivid beauty and her quick wit. For Mrs. Mervill was clever and could be extremely witty and amusing when she liked. Her daring tongue stopped at very little, but it had the gift of suggestion, which always saved her stories or repartees from indelicacy or vulgarity.
Margaret, who had offered him nothing but friendship, stood out in his mind as one of the women with whom it was a privilege for any man to be on intimate terms. In his thoughts of her, Margaret was high and strong and pure. When his mind dwelt on her, it soared; when it dwelt on Mrs. Mervill, it grovelled. He did not wish to grovel; it was not in his nature to do so; it took a woman such as Mrs. Mervill to bring his lower self to the surface. He hated himself for even unconsciously condemning her and he tried always to remember her charming moods, the hours they had spent together when they first met on the gay pleasure-boats on the Nile. Those were the days when the clever woman hid from the man whom she had selected her baser nature. During those guarded days she had been gay and amusing and apparently as innocent as a schoolgirl. It was only after a considerable number of meetings and many exchanges of thought had passed between them, that she began to show her hand, or dared to convey to him in a hundred insinuating ways and expressions the real nature of her feelings for him. Very grudgingly and very reluctantly Michael had to admit to himself that she had fallen in his estimation, that he would not be sorry if they were never to meet again. Yet he was not strong enough to cut himself off from her; her appeal to his pity stood in his way.
He had never met any woman before in the least like her. Her fearless audacity had at first, just at first, somewhat amused, as it amazed him. He had scarcely credited its being genuine. As she owed nothing to her husband, or so she said, she saw no reason why she should not live the life of a wealthy bachelor, who enjoyed it to the full. What was sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose.
To gain any hold on Michael's affections, she had recognized that she must go carefully. It was her role to let him think that her passion for him was a totally new thing in her life, that she had at last found the man who could help her to be the woman she longed to be. With her knowledge of man-kind, she knew how to awaken and keep alive in Michael the only element in his character upon which she could work, the very element he strove to banish and subdue.
Later on in the evening she sought him out, because she had discovered that Margaret Lampton was living in her brother's camp and that she was in daily companionship with Michael. Freddy had told her this to anger her. He was proud of his sister's beauty and pleased that Mrs. Mervill had seen her admired.
"Michael," Mrs. Mervill said, "that dark girl is in love with you. She hates me."
"Don't talk nonsense!" Michael said. "Why will you spoil our interesting conversation by reverting to a forbidden topic?"
They had been talking intellectually and seriously for quite half an hour. Mrs. Mervill was a great reader, and she had determined to place herself in a position to talk intelligently, if not learnedly, to Michael about things Egyptian. She had been reading what Ebers had to say about the tragedy of Isis and Osiris being the foundation of many latter-day Egyptian romances. It had even found its way intoThe Thousand and One Nights.
Mrs. Mervill was much more word-fluent than Margaret. Often her imagery was charming.
"Because it fills my heart, Michael. It is the background of everything. I saw the birth of hatred in her eyes—she has never hated before."
"I don't think she knows what hate means," he said, "and I wish you would leave her alone."
"I have not spoken about her before."
"You said she would be fat and coarse at forty."
Millicent Mervill caught his hands in hers. "You dear silly boy, so she will, both fat and complacent, but then I shall be thin and shrewish and shrivelled."
Michael laughed. "You are a tease!" he said good-naturedly.
"'The Rogue in Porcelain' used to be my name at school. But tell me—how long is that dark-haired girl going to stay with her brother?"
"I don't know," Michael said. "If she doesn't feel the heat, perhaps until he returns to England and the camp breaks up."
Mrs. Mervill clenched her pretty teeth. "And you expect me to be good and quiet and submissive and stay here?"
"I want you to be reasonable."
"That's out of the question—I very seldom am, and I am not going to be to please Miss Lampton, I can tell you!"
"Then what are you going to do?" He could not be hard on the woman for loving him; he wished he could help her and induce her to be reasonable. If she had been free, he would have felt himself bound to marry her.
"I will arrange something," she said. "I don't know what."
"What sort of thing?" he said. "Nothing foolish! Do look at things dispassionately."
"I won't!" she said. Her face was upraised to the stars. "I won't give you up to that dark-haired girl."
He swung round and spoke roughly. "Don't you know I can't be yours, and you can't be mine?"
"And you want me not to be a dog in the manger, while you enjoy the next best thing that comes along!"
"I never said so. Your mind jumps at conclusions. I hate such ideas and conversation. I wish you would stop it."
"I will be worse than a dog in the manger," she said, "if you make love to that girl in the desert."
"Hush!" Michael cried. His grasp of her wrist hurt her. "Hush! You will make me hate you."
"No, you won't, Michael," she said, "because you have kissed me. Words were made to hide our feelings, kisses to reveal them." She suddenly paused and looked as sad and innocent as a corrected child. "I would be a saint, if you would let yourself love me, Michael."
"What would be the good?" he said. "You belong to some one else."
"A nice sort of belonging!" she said, disconsolately. "He doesn't care a scrap what becomes of me."
"Can't you possibly divorce him?" Michael did not mean that he would marry her if she did; his mind was groping for some solution of the problem.
Millicent Mervill remained silent. "I could let him divorce me," she said at last.
"Don't!" Michael said intuitively. His voice amused the woman.
"I don't mean to," she said. "Why should any woman be divorced because she lives the same life as her husband does when he is apart from her?"
"You don't, and aren't going to," Michael said earnestly.
"I would, Michael, with you—only with you."
"I wish you could have been friends with Miss Lampton instead of hating her," he said sadly.
"Pouf!" Millicent Mervill cried. "Thanks for your Miss Lampton—I can do without her friendship! I prefer hating her."
"You are so perverse and foolish and . . ." Michael paused ". . . and difficult."
"No, loving, you mean, loving, Michael—that's all I'm difficult about."
They were back in the valley again and splendid work was going on at the camp. Another two weeks' hard digging had done wonders, and Margaret and Michael had found each other again.
In the dawn, two mornings after the dance, when the mysterious figures, heralding the light, were abandoning themselves to their God on the desert sands, Mike had seen Margaret standing at her hut-door, watching, as he himself so often watched, for the glory which was of Aton to flood the desert with light. Meg's eyes the day before had told Michael that she was unhappy; he knew now that she had not slept.
While the white figures were still bent earthwards and the little streak of light was scarcely more than visible, Michael went to her and asked her forgiveness.
"Forgive me," he said. "I need forgiveness."
Meg took his hand. "I hate not being friends. Thank you."
"It made me miserable," he said.
"Then let's forget. I was stupid. This is all too big and great for such smallness." She indicated the coming of the unearthly light.
"Thy dawning, O Aton," Michael said.
Margaret smiled. "He was very far from us at Assuan."
"He was there. I stifled my consciousness of him, Meg."
"Don't," she said. "Let's go forward."
"I know what you mean," he said. "Regrets are weak, foolish."
"I don't want to bring the hotel at Assuan into this valley. Let's just watch the sun transform its infinite mystery into our waking, working, everyday world—if Egypt can be an everyday world."
"May I say Akhnaton's beautiful hymn to you? It is about the sunrise.He must often have seen it just as we are seeing it now."
"Akhnaton's? Yes, do. How wonderful to think that he wrote hymns!"
Michael began the famous hymn. "'The world is in darkness, like the dead. Every lion cometh forth from his den; all serpents sting. Darkness reigns.'"
"We might substitute jackals," Margaret said gently.
"'When thou risest in the horizon . . . the darkness is banished. Then in all the world they do their work.
"'All trees and plants flourish, the birds flutter in their marshes, all sheep dance upon their feet.'"
"Oh," Margaret said delightedly, "how like it is to the hundred and fourth Psalm! Do you remember how David said: 'The trees of the Lord are full of sap. . . . Where the birds make their nests. . . . The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats'? I think that's how it goes. I love that Psalm."
"Yes," Michael said, "verse for verse, the idea is absolutely similar and the similes are strikingly alike. The next verse is just as much alike. Listen. . . . I am so glad you like it."
"First look," Margaret said, "at that light. Yes, now go on—I love hearing it."
"'The ships sail up stream and down stream alike. The fish in the river leap up before Thee and Thy rays are in the midst of the great sea. How manifold are Thy works. Thou didst create the earth according to Thy desire, men, all cattle, all that are upon the earth.'"
"How extraordinarily like!" Margaret said. "How do you account for it? I suppose it is still allowed that David wrote the Psalms? Did he live before Akhnaton or after him?" She laughed softly. "Don't scorn my ignorance. You see, I have kept my promise—I have read nothing at all on the subject."
"Akhnaton, you mean? Oh, before David, by about three hundred years. There are all sorts of theories on the subject. The commonest is that Akhnaton, having come of Syrian stock, on his mother's side, may have got his inspiration from some Syrian hymn, as David also may have done. I reject that theory. The whole of Akhnaton's beliefs and teachings prove the extraordinary originality of his ideas. He borrowed nothing; God was his inspiration."
"You are going to tell me about him, about his work?"
"Yes, soon, some day. Have you thought about him since?" Michael referred to the God of Whom Akhnaton was the manifestation, the interpreter. He always spoke of Akhnaton as a divine messenger.
His voice betrayed a sense of regret, of unworthiness. Yet in his heart he knew that, weak as he had been, he had not sinned against the spirit of Akhnaton, that he realized even more fully his watchword, "Living in Truth." Akhnaton's love for every created being because of their creator filled Michael's heart even more fully than it had done before. He had learned his own moral weakness, his own forgetfulness. Blame and criticism of even the natives' shortcomings seemed to him reserved for someone more worthy than himself. They had simply not yet seen the Light; their evolution was more tardy; they were less fortunate. Some day all men would be "Living in Truth." Akhnaton's dream would be realized. How impossible it is for our material selves to do without the help which is outside ourselves, that help which is our divine consciousness, Michael had learned over and over again. His lapses had not affected his beliefs. They were only parts of the struggle, the oldest struggle known to mankind, the struggle between Light and Darkness. Just as the Egyptians from the earliest days believed in the triumph of Osiris over Set, he knew that no thinking man could doubt the eventual triumph of all those who fight for the spiritual man.
"Yes, I have thought about him," Margaret said. "And last night I dreamed about him—my . . ." she paused ". . . wonderful visitor."
"What did you dream?" Michael said. "Do tell me."
The light was breaking over the valley—not the sun's light, the cold light of dawn. The "heat of Aton" was still withheld.
A blush which was invisible to Michael tinged Meg's clear skin. Her dream had been beautiful, vivid. It had illuminated her world again.
"It was nothing very coherent. I saw no vision, as I did before." Her words were spoken guardedly. "It was the lesson the dream revealed."
"I should like to know, Meg."
"A voice seemed to wake me. It spoke to me of you. I was to help you . . . you were struggling."
"You can help me," Mike said. "You have."
"It spoke of the oldest of all stories, the battle of light against darkness. It said that Egypt in the early days worshipped light; in the days which followed light was swallowed up in the worship of false gods."
"Osiris and Set—you know the legend—the fundamental ethics of all religions."
"I know a little about it," Margaret said. She paused. "Please go on . . . tell me everything."
"In dreams we are so vain, so wonderful . . . you know how it always is! The ego in us has unlimited sway. In my dream I dreamed that my friendship was to be 'light'; if I withdrew it, you would have darkness. What glorious vanity!"
"Oh, Meg, it's quite true! Will you give me back your sympathy?I . . ." he hesitated, ". . . I am trying to be more worthy of it."
"We are friends," she said. "I was foolish and conceited, my dream made me see how foolish. I had no right to . . ."
He interrupted her. "Yes, you had . . . you weren't foolish. Your sensibilities told you what was absolutely true. . . . I would explain more if I could."
"No, don't explain—things are explained. I thought I should find you here; I wanted to begin the new day happily. My dream made me see so very clearly that the world is made up of those who sit in darkness and those who sit in light, that thoughts are things. My thoughts were unjust, unkind, so my world was unkind, unjust. I made it."
"The light which is Aton," Michael said.
"If we wish to enjoy happiness, we must sit in the light. We must make our own happiness."
"In the fullness and glory of Aton."
"God, I suppose you mean," Margaret said.
"The one and only God Whom every human being has striven to worship in his or her odd way ever since the world began. There is God in every man's heart. It doesn't a bit matter what His symbol may be. Some races of mankind have evolved higher forms of worship, some lower; their symbols are appropriate. But they are all striving for the one and same thing—to render worship to the Divine Creator, to sit in the Light of Aton."
"But the sun," Margaret said—she pointed to the fiery ball on the horizon—"I thought your divine Akhnaton was a sun-worshipper?"
"He worshipped our God, the Creator of all things of heaven or earth, even of our precious human sympathy, Meg, for nothing that is could be without Him, and to Akhnaton His symbol was the sun. The earlier Egyptians worshipped Ra, the great sun-god; Akhnaton brought divinity into his worship. He worshipped Aton as the Lord and Giver of Life, the Bestower of Mercy, the Father of the Fatherless. All His attributes were symbolized in the sun. Its rising and setting signified Darkness and Light; its power as the creative force in nature, Resurrection. It evolved mankind from the lower life and implanted the spirit of divinity in him through the Creator of all things created. The sun was God created, His symbol, His manifestation."
"Look," Margaret said, "look at it now—it is God, walking in the desert."
* * * * * *
For a little time they stood together, their material forms side by side.
* * * * * *
Michael's house-boy, with a deferential salaam, suddenly informed him that his bath had been waiting for him and was now cold.
Before Michael hurried off Margaret said, "Thank you for my first lesson in Akhnaton's worship." She held out her hands.
"We all worship as he did, all day long," he said, "when we admire the sun and the stars and the flowers, when we admire all that is beautiful, we are seeing God."
"I adore beauty," Margaret said, "but I forget that beauty is God.You, like Akhnaton, are conscious of God first, the beauty He has madeafterwards. If there had been the text 'God is Beauty' as there is'God is Love,' it might have helped us to understand."
"I forget him," Michael said, "you know how easily."
"It is far better to know and love, even if you are human and forget. . . ." she paused ". . . than always to sit in darkness, to sit outside the door."
"I don't see how any one can," Michael said. "It is all so exquisitely evident. The desolation must be so terrifying, like living in this lonely spot with no watch-dogs to keep off evil-doers. It takes great courage to live on one's own strength, one's own material self."
They had parted, Margaret going to her room, Michael to his tent. Freddy, who was almost dressed, saw two figures approaching, wrapped up in big coats.
"That's a good job!" he said. "The sunrise has made them friends again." He was out in the desert the next moment, hearing the roll-call of the workmen, who had all ranged themselves up in a line near the hut.
One evening, some weeks later, when the trio, Margaret, Freddy and Michael, were busily engaged in sorting and cleaning the day's finds, which had been more than usually interesting, Margaret held up for inspection a tiny alabaster kohl-pot, which she had freed from the incrustations of thousands of years. It was exactly similar to a little green glass bottle which she had bought in the bazaar at Assuan, in which the modern Egyptian, but more especially the Coptic, women carry the kohl which they use for blacking their eyes and eyebrows. Margaret showed Freddy the bottle, which led to a discussion about the similarity of the customs of the modern Egyptians and those in the pictures in the tombs, whose decorations always reveal the more human and intimate side of the life of ancient Egypt than the decoration of the temples.
"They were as vain and fond of making up as any woman of to-day," Freddy said. "We find no end of recipes for cosmetics and hair-dyes and restorers. One popular pomade was made of the hoofs of a donkey, a dog's pad and some date-kernels, all boiled together in oil. It was supposed to stop the hair from falling out and restore its brilliancy. There is another, even more savoury, for hair-dying."
"Do you suppose they still use that receipt?" Michael said.
"I shouldn't wonder. Customs never die in Egypt—they have had the same superstitions and the same customs for thousands of years. The Copts have clung more jealously to them, of course. The Moslem invasion did a little to change some of them, but not many."
Margaret listened while Freddy explained how the Moslems, after the Arab invasion, behaved with regard to the festivals and superstitions of the pagans very much in the same way as the Early Christian church in Rome behaved with regard to the pagan festivities and superstitions—adapting them, as far as was possible, to the new religion, grafting on such things as the people would not or could not renounce. The wisdom of the custom was obvious. The new converts, who believed in one God Whose Prophet had come to knock down all graven images in the temples, were still allowed the protection and comfort of their personal amulets, which were powerful enough to protect them from every evil imaginable, or to bring them all the blessings their simple souls desired. Arab workmen, who believe that Allah wills all things, that whatsoever happens, it is his purpose, will flock round any soothsayer who professes to see into the future and do the most absurd things conceivable to keep off the evil eye. The eye of Horus is still their favourite amulet.
"Abdul professes to tell fortunes and see into the future. They do sometimes manage to hit off some wonderfully clever guesses," Freddy said. "Abdul has been curiously correct in a number of things he has foretold relating to this bit of work."
"What did he tell you about this excavation?"
"He didn't tell me—I overheard the workmen's chatter. He has worked them up to a pitch of absurd excitement."
"What sort of things has he foretold? Good or bad? What things have come true?"
"I forget the small points now. I really can't tell you. He predicts all sorts of extravagant things about the inside of the tomb, says he has seen visions of a wonderful figure of a queen, dressed as if for her bridal, and the place all glittering with gold and precious stones—the most superb tomb that has ever been opened."
"Oh!" Meg said excitedly. "I wonder if it will be?—if there will be any truth in it?"
"Tommy-rot!" Freddy said. "But the excitement's spread—the men are working like mad—never did so much good work before."
"May I talk to Abdul? I'd love to have my future told!"
"I'd rather you didn't—at least, I would rather the other workmen didn't know he had spoken to you. I don't like them to imagine that we believe in such things."
"Very well," Meg said. "I see what you mean."
"You are never wise to let the natives lose their respect for your disdain of spooks and superstitions. I never scoff at their fears and beliefs in every sort of imaginable supernatural power, but I like them to think that my religion places me above such terrors. We pray to our Christian God to protect us according to His will; they say five prayers to Allah daily, the one and only God, and at the same time at every hour of the day they perform countless acts and ceremonies to propitiate malign spirits and powers. They are a curious people—the best of them are very devout, but some of the most devout are not the best by any means."
"Do you mind if Michael sees the fortune-teller? It would be so interesting."
"He knows Abdul." Freddy looked at Mike. "It's different to letting one of our womenkind meddle in such things."
"Did the ancients believe in dreams?" Margaret said. Michael's eyes had spoken; he had seen the man.
"Don't you remember Joseph's dream?"
"Oh, of course!" Margaret said. "But Joseph seems a modern in this valley."
"The ancients looked upon dreams as 'revelations' from a world quite as real as that which we see about us when we are awake. They were sent by the gods and, according to the texts in the tombs, much desired."
Margaret's and Michael's eyes met. Her dream which had brought them together again had undoubtedly been sent by God.
There was an industrious silence for a little time, then Margaret asked, "Have you ever come across any traces of Akhnaton's religion in the tombs in this valley?"
An amused smile hovered round Freddy's mouth. It was obvious thatMargaret had caught something of Mike's enthusiasm for the hereticPharaoh.
"No, nothing of his religion," he said. "It is too far from his scene of action; his influence was almost local—it was a personal influence and died at his death. He was a man born before his time; the world was not ready for his doctrines—they were far above the people's heads."
"How do we know?" Mike said eagerly. "Surely God knows best when to send His messengers, when to reveal Himself?"
"Anyhow," Freddy said, "you know that when he died his teachings died too. The people who had professed his beliefs returned to their old gods. The one and only trace of Akhnaton's influence here is in his mother's tomb, where every sign of Aton worship has been chopped off the wall, every trace of his symbols obliterated. Akhnaton had no doubt introduced them into his mother's tomb; she had shared his beliefs, which had not, of course, become extreme at the time of her death."
"Truth never dies," Mike said. "His beautiful city was abandoned, his temples neglected and overthrown, his people again became the victims of the money-making, political priesthood of Amon-Ra. But who can say that the spirit of Akhnaton is dead to-day? Who can tell that the seed of his mission bore no fruit? Thought never dies."
"As you like. Anyhow, even before he was buried—embalming was a lengthy process—his religion as a state religion, as anything at all of any influence, or as a power in the land, was doomed."
"You don't admire him as Mike does," Margaret said. "He seems to have been almost as perfect as a human being could be—the first living being to realize the divinity of God."
"As a religiousdévoué, he was, as you say, almost a saint. He spent his life throwing pearls before swine—you might as well try to make a charity-school class see the beauty of Virgil in the original—and letting his kingdom go to rack and ruin."
"Oh," Margaret said, "you didn't tell me that." Her eyes searchedMike's. "Did he let Egypt go to pieces?"
"He was anti-war, as I am," Mike said, "as all lovers of God and of mankind ought to be. He was perhaps foolish in his belief that if the world could be converted to the great religion of Aton, which meant perfect love for everything that God had created and absolute reverence for everything because He created it, then there would be no wars. If God is love and we believe in God, how can we kill each other? Akhnaton's idea of the duty of a king was the improvement of mankind. He tried to give men a new understanding of life and of God. The moral welfare of the human race was more to him than the aggrandizement of its emperors."
"I've no patience with all that," Freddy said. "He inherited a magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with his mission work at Tel-el-Amarna, his cult of flowers and his new-fangled art."
"A man can't go against his own conscience. He didn't approve of war. It's an interesting fact that the only one of the old gods he recognized was Maît—he built a fine new temple to the goddess of truth at Tel-el-Amarna. He carried his enthusiasm too far," Mike said, "I grant that, but from his point of view these things were of little account. If he could have turned the heart of Egypt from the worship of false gods, if he could have imparted unto the minds of men the wonder and the love of God, all else, he thought, would follow after."
"A fanatic!" Freddy said.
"So were all saints."
"'For what shall it profit a man,'" Meg said, "'if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'" Her voice was significant. "In his day, Christ was as great a fanatic, if you like to look at things from that point of view. Fancy fasting forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, calling upon men to leave their work and follow him, preaching against the rich! How you would have scoffed at him!"
"If Akhnaton hadn't been a king, if he had merely been a prophet and a teacher, he'd have been all right. But just you listen, Meg," Freddy said, "while I read you what a modern writer says about him, and he is an intense admirer of the character of Akhnaton. This is how he describes what the messengers must have felt when they hurried back to Egypt to the new capital of the fanatical king at Tel-el-Amarna, bearing entreaties from the commander-in-chief of the army in Syria to send reinforcements to help to deliver his distant kingdom from the oppression of her enemies." Freddy found the book and opened it. "Here it is—listen to this: 'The messengers have arrived at the City of the Horizon,' as Akhnaton called his new capital, 'Their hearts are full of the agony of Syria. From the beleaguered cities which they had so lately left, there came to them the bitter cry for succour, and it was not possible to drown that cry in words of peace, nor in the jangle of the septrum or the warbling of pipes. Who, thought the waiting messengers, could resist that piteous call? The city weeps and her tears are flowing. Who could sit idle in the City of the Horizon, when the proud empire, won with the blood of the noblest soldiers of the great Thothmes, was breaking up before their eyes? What mattered all the philosophies in the world, and all the gods in heaven, when Egypt's great dominions were being wrested from her? The splendid Lebanon, the white kingdoms of the sea, Askalon and Ashdod, Tyre and Sidon, Simgra and Byblos, the hills of Jerusalem, Kadesh and the great Orontes, the fair Jordan, Turip, Aleppo and distant Euphrates . . . what counted a creed against these? God, the Truth? The only god was He of the Battles, who had led Egypt into Syria; the only truth the doctrine of the sword, which had held her there for so many years.'"
Freddy turned over the leaves of the book which he had been reading from, and began again quoting from Weigall'sLife of Akhnaton.
"'Love! One stands amazed at the reckless idealism, the beautiful folly of this Pharaoh who, in an age of turbulence, preached a religion of peace to seething Syria. Three thousand years later mankind is still blindly striving after these same ideals in vain.'"
"How pathetic!" Margaret said. "And yet . . ." she hesitated, ". . . the God of Battles . . . Akhnaton's was the God of Love, the God of everlasting Mercy."
"What right had Egypt ever to go into Syria?" Mike said. "It sounds fine and one can grow enthusiastic over these beautiful old names and visualize a million greatnesses that Akhnaton was resigning, but what right had Egypt in Syria? The right of might, the right of the stronger against the weaker—Prussia's might against Poland, Spain's might against Flanders, any large country's might against a weaker, the right of armies, the right of the greed of monarchs! Akhnaton believed in God, and to his thinking war could not go hand-in-hand with a love for all that God had created."
"Get out, Mike!" Freddy said. "You'll get on to Ireland next—I know him, Meg!"
"I agree with him in a way," Meg said. "To give people the love of God and the proper sense of beauty, the enjoyment of all that God has made for their good, in the best way, which was surely the way of Akhnaton, seems better than spending the kingdom's wealth and brains in maintaining armies to kill human beings and invade new territories."
"The great question," Freddy said, "is nationality. If you don't care who wipes you out, or to what country or king you belong, well and good, live the idealized life. Someone will think quite differently and gobble you up. If Akhnaton hadn't died, there would soon have been no Egypt, no Egyptian peoples."
"They'd have been quite as happy," Mike said, "for in those days the kings actually owned their empires, they were their own property to do what they liked with. The people fought for their King, not for their country. An absolute monarch was an absolute monarch, the kingdom was his to do as he liked with."
"How was it saved? Was it ever as great again?" Meg asked.
"It was saved by his son dying almost directly after he did and Horemheb, the great commander-in-chief, at last got his way. He persuaded the reigning Pharaoh, who had married Akhnaton's daughter, to himself lead an expedition and go into Asia. After that Pharaoh's death, and the death of the next one, Ay, Akhnaton's father-in-law, who reigned for a short time—and who, to do him justice, tried to remain faithful to Akhnaton's ideal Aton worship—the great warrior and commander-in-chief, Horemheb, was raised to the throne. He brought Egypt back to its old conditions. Do you care to hear what Weigall says about him?—how completely he wiped out the 'idealism of the dreamer'?" Freddy found the passage he wanted. "'The neglected shrines of the old gods once more echoed with the chants of the priests through the whole land of Egypt . . . he fashioned a hundred images. . . . He established for them daily offerings every day. All the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver and gold. He equipped them with priests and with ritual priests, and with the choicest of the army. He transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all necessary equipment. By these gifts to the neglected gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt back to its natural condition and with a strong hand he was guiding the country from chaos to order, from fantastic Utopia to the solid Egypt of the past. He was, in fact, the preacher of sanity, the chief apostle of the Normal.'"
"It was in his reign," Michael said, "that Akhnaton's fair city at Tel-el-Amarna was utterly abandoned; his beautiful decorations, which were intended to illustrate to the people the beauty of God in Nature, were ruthlessly destroyed. His body, which had been laid in the far-away cliffs behind his city, was removed and placed in his mother Queen Thi's tomb in this valley."
"What a tragic life!" Margaret said. She was thinking of the sad face as she had seen it in her vision. Did any one understand him? Freddy evidently understood Horemheb, the apostle of the Normal, who scorned the fantastic Utopia of Akhnaton, much better.
"He was very much beloved and probably as much understood by a few as most pioneers have been. It was in his father-in-law's tomb that his beautiful hymn was discovered, for he was one of his devoted followers in Akhnaton's lifetime."
Margaret smiled. "The beautiful hymn you said to me that morning at dawn, Mike?"
"The same," Michael said. "I have often thought of it in connection with St. Francis' Canticle to the Sun."
"It is difficult," Margaret said, "to know how far wars and empire-building, and everything that makes for worldly-ambition and encourages the vanity of monarchs, are compatible with the true meaning of the words 'God is Love,' with the true conception of Christ's doctrines."
"Which were Akhnaton's," Michael said. "He did all in his power to raise the morals of his people. He was the first king to recognize the higher rights of women, to insist on the reverence of womanhood. He brought his queen forward on every public occasion, and that had never been heard of before. He tried to introduce a new ideal of home-life. He was a model father and husband. He thought of nothing but the moral welfare of his people and of their happiness. He was willing to lose his kingdom for the saving of their souls."
"And yet he was a bad king?" Margaret said.
"He had none of the qualities of a ruler or an empire-builder," Freddy said.
"Damn empire-building!" Mike said. "If people would only stick to their own natural territory and not go straying into other peoples!"
"I wonder what you'd do if Germany strayed into ours? Sit down and let them walk over you?"
"I'd do what you'd do," Mike said, with a flash of Irish anger in his eyes—"kill every damned one of them!"
"There you are!" Freddy said hotly.
"No, I am not," Michael said, "for, as I said, what we've got, let us keep—England's possessions no more belong to Germany than my soul does. But some of our wars—well!" he laughed. "Empires are built up in rum ways, ways I don't agree with, but we won't do any good by handing them over now to feed the vanity of the Kaiser. But the Egyptians had enough land in Africa to expand in, there was no need for their warrioring in strange lands."
"Let's chuck the subject," Freddy said good-naturedly, "and stick to work. I want to get these boxes cleared out to-night and we never do good work while we argue."
"I can't help smiling," Margaret said. "It's really too funny to think that we've got quite cross and snappy over the character of a man who lived more than three thousand years ago."
"Oh, we often do that," Michael said. "You should have heard about a dozen of us quarrelling some time ago over hair-splitting theories on a much less human subject, one belonging to pre-dynastic times!"
"I wish Aunt Anna could see us, Freddy, sitting in this funny hut in this lonely desert valley, cleaning little objects and broken fragments of things that were buried three thousand years ago and fighting over a mummy, as she would say!"
Margaret had been working busily, so her tin cigarette-box, which had been quite full early in the evening with all sorts of small blue beads and tiny bits of pottery, was almost empty. She had been able to enjoy and follow all her brother's remarks about Akhnaton, as Michael had told her a great deal about him. In the three weeks which had passed since their visit to Assuan there had been no return of the vision, so she had insisted upon Michael telling her all that he could about Akhnaton. She felt anxious to understand something about the king whose personality interested and influenced him so greatly.
Michael had by no means banished the vision from his thoughts. He was convinced that Margaret had been privileged to see a vision of Akhnaton—indeed, the more he dwelt on his message, the more he felt sure that it was the beginning of a new phase in his life.
Over and over again he had repeated to himself the message: "Tell him to carry on my work."
Was he doing any work at the present time to help forward mankind? He was enjoying himself in a delightful way and to a certain extent he was assisting Freddy; but such assistance as he gave could easily be given by another; he was not essential.
There was only one man whom he had a longing to consult and that was Michael Ireton. Since his marriage with Hadassah Lekejian, a Syrian girl of great beauty and strength of character, Michael Ireton had given his time and brains and money to the founding of settlements in various parts of Egypt for the raising of the moral status of women in Egypt. He was a practical man of the world, with a charming personality. His wife was one of the most cultivated and fascinating women Michael had ever met.
If he confided to Freddy his growing desire to do the work which he felt was the work he was called upon to do, Freddy would only look upon it as a fresh example of his drifting character.
The subject of Akhnaton had been dropped and perfect good humour was restored again. Michael's thoughts had soared into what Freddy called his "Kingdom of Idle Dreams." Freddy's thoughts were very practical, although they related to the history of a lost civilization and to the unearthing of objects which the sands of the desert had concealed for thousands of years. He and the workers knew that the next few days would be days of intense excitement.
So far Freddy's surmises had been correct. The chaff and scoffing which he had so good-naturedly put up with from the fellow-excavators who had been to visit the camp were likely to be turned the other way. He had little or no doubt left that he had struck an important tomb, probably the tomb of the Pharaoh for whom he was looking.
In a few days the big shaft which led to the mouth of the tomb would be cleared. Tons upon tons of debris had been thrown out of it; the work had been stupendous. The two hundred native workers and the other more experienced diggers had worked unremittingly. Freddy was living in a high state of nervous tension. The news had spread far and wide that "Mistrr Lampton" had discovered a new tomb and one which presumably had never been entered. Freddy knew that this news would spread, would be carried on the wings of the morning in a manner which no European can ever discover. Means of transmitting news is one of the secrets which no native in Africa, North or South, has ever divulged to an European. There are hundreds of theories on the subject. Do pigeons act as carriers? Some people suggest this theory. Or is it by some wireless method which has been known to all primitive races and only lately discovered by scientific scholars of the West?
So far no one has fathomed the mystery. But Freddy knew that the news would be sent far and wide, and that every seeker after "antikas" would be prowling round the opened site. Directly the tomb was opened, it would be the Mecca of every tomb-plunderer. He had sent word for a guard of police to be ready to come when he summoned them.
When the tomb was opened he would have to prevent anyone from going into it until a photographer had arrived from Cairo to photograph it and until after the Supervisor-General of the Monuments of Upper Egypt had arrived on the spot and inspected it.
He could feel the excitement of the natives, who have absolutely no sense of honour where "antikas" are concerned. It has proved almost an impossible work to convince them that the excavators and the scholars who are engaged in the work of archaeology in Egypt, or the wealthy man who has paid for the expenses of a camp, are not one and all "out on the make." They are convinced that these eager, enthusiastic scholars are just the same as they are, interested in it from a pecuniary point of view. The curios and wonders which they dig out of the bowels of the earth put gold into their pockets.
Freddy'sRas, or native overseer, was a highly intelligent man, who had a genuine appreciation for antiques—he was a clever hand at faking them and did a good business with tourists—but at heart even he doubted the sincerity and single-minded purpose of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, and "Mistrr Lampton's" absolute clean-handedness in the business.
Freddy had never left the camp for more than half an hour since the excavation had become "hot." It was a strenuous time.
Naturally Margaret's thoughts were centred and engrossed in her brother's work. She could scarcely hold her soul in patience while the deep shaft was being cleared, a long and tiresome job. But at last they could count the time by days before the entrance to the tomb would be reached.
The little store-room in the hut was packed full of boxes which held the small finds. Margaret's work for some days past had been to piece together (Freddy had taught her how) the tiny fragments of a smashed vase which her brother had found. The pieces were all there, for it had been discovered in a little hollow in the sand. The conventional decoration was of an unique type; and on it was traced a branch of a plant which seemed to Freddy to resemble with extraordinary exactness a branch of the Indian fig, the prickly pear, so familiar to all travellers in Southern Italy. As the Indian fig was not introduced into Egypt until the Middle Ages, or so it had generally been supposed, for it was not indigenous, Freddy was anxious to find out if the decoration on the vase was going to prove that after all it was known to the Egyptians long before it was brought over from America. He also held that there was something in the theory which has of late become current that camels may have been known and used in Egypt from very early times, that their absence in all pictorial art in temples and tombs may be owing to the fact that the Egyptians divided animals into two classes, the clean and the unclean; that neither into temples nor into tombs could the unclean be introduced in any form of art whatsoever.
These were the sort of discussions with which Margaret had already grown familiar. She felt that in piecing together and sketching as accurately as possible the cactus-like branch of the little plant engraved on the broken vase, she was actually helping to forge a link in one of the minute chains of Egyptian archaeology.
Her brother's memory amazed her and his intelligence stimulated her. He had been such a boy at home. Egypt had converted him into a strong serious scholar. His fair head, bent over his work, with the lamplight shining on it, was so dear to her that impulsively she put her long strong fingers on the glittering hair; she longed to kiss it.
"Dear old boy!" she said. "Isn't it all just too exciting? Isn't life thrilling? Isn't it lovely to be alive?"
Freddy did not look up. "Some girls," he said, "mightn't think this being very much alive—the sorting out of bits of broken rubbish, thrown out of a tomb which has been forgotten for two or three thousand years. Did you ever think you'd care to know whether a prickly pear was indigenous to Egypt or was not? Or whether canopic jars had their origin in family grocers' jars being lent by the head of the house to hold the intestines of some dear-departed?"
Meg laughed. "It is all too odd, but being in it, and actually knowing that we are going to see into that tomb in a few days and discover who the king was who was buried there, and all about his personal and family affairs, and be able to touch the jewels he was buried with, it's too interesting for words, I think!"
"I hope you won't be disappointed. It may have been robbed."
"But you don't think so?"
"No, I don't—not at present. There was a tomb opened at one of the camps, not long ago, which told a tragic story of the end of robbery and plunder. The roof had fallen in while the burglar was busy unwrapping the cloths from the dead mummy. He was evidently trying to get at the heart-scarab, I suppose, and at the jewels which the windings held in their place. He had been smothered, taken in the act. Probably he had left his fellow-plunderers at the entrance; the roof may have looked unsafe, but he had hoped to collect all the jewels and scarabs before it gave way. Fate played him a nasty trick. The roof caved in, and we have secured all the jewels he had collected together and have learned a lesson of what must have often happened. The mummy's body was, of course, still perfect. Of the intruder only bones were visible and some fragments of his clothes. Things keep for ever in these hermetically-sealed Egyptian tombs, where neither rust nor moth ever entered in, but where thieves did break through and steal."
"How thrilling!" Margaret said. "How did you guess that the skeleton was the skeleton of a robber? I suppose as he never returned, his friends just went off and left him?"
"By the scattered jewels and the way the mummy was lying. Why should a skeleton be inside a royal tomb? Why should the mummy be out of its coffin and partly unrobed? We have actually found before now plans which the sextons and the guardians of the tombs had made for themselves, of all the tombs in the cemetery which was in their care. They knew how they could be entered one from another. Of course, this valley is different. The tombs are isolated and carefully hidden. It was never a public cemetery."
"Was Akhnaton's tomb intact? Had it been robbed?"
Freddy laughed. "Back again to the tabooed subject?"
Meg laughed too. "We shan't fight this time, I promise."
"His city and palace and tomb were utterly desolated, but his mummy had been taken away from his own tomb, before it was desolated, and brought to his mother's."
"Oh, you told me—I forgot." Into Meg's mind came again the words spoken by the sad voice, "My earthly body was brought to my mother's tomb in this valley."
When the night's work was completed, Meg voted that they should sit for a few minutes in front of the hut and try to get the "mummy-shell" and the microbes of Pharaonic diseases out of their nostrils. Freddy had never allowed them to sleep right out in the open, much as they had wished it. It was not safe, even with the dogs and his trustworthy house-boys. He would not hear of it; and he was wise.
Gladly he agreed to refreshing their lungs with the beautiful night air. Indeed, they were all three so happy together and there was so much to talk about and discuss, that bed seemed a bore. Physically tired as they were, owing to the nervous excitement in the atmosphere of their day's surroundings, sleep seemed very far off.
"Just half an hour, Freddy," Margaret said, as she threw herself down on a long lounge chair, and clasping her hands behind her head, gazed up to the heavens. "How glorious it is!" she said. "I'm so happy."
They all three lighted cigarettes and smoked in silence. Freddy was as happy as Meg; Mike was restless.
At the end of the half-hour Meg got up and said, "Who'd exchange this for a city? Freddy, you ought to get to bed—you're dead tired, really."
He rose reluctantly. "I suppose I must." His thoughts were on the morrow's work. If the tomb was going to be a really big thing, it meant a lot more to him than Meg understood. He was very young; he had not as yet struck any remarkable find; he had his reputation to make. His theories had caused much comment.
"I could never live in a city again," he said. "This life has made it impossible. And the odd thing is that it has made cities seem to me the loneliest, most desolate places in the world. I never feel in touch with anyone. Even the other night at the ball, jolly as it was, I never once talked to anyone about anything that really interested me. I never felt that anyone would understand a single thing about all that is my real life. I suppose everyone feels the same—that their real selves are lost in crowds."
Michael and Margaret looked at each other. They had experienced the feeling; they had lost each other. In the valley they had come back to the things of Truth.
"You know I always abhorred town-life," Mike said, "and all its artificiality and rottenness and needless accumulation of unnecessary things."
"Brains congregate in cities, all the same," Freddy said, "if you can only strike them. We'd get too one-sided here, too lost in the past. It's never wise to let your hobbies and work exclude all other interests."
"I begin to think there is no past," Meg said. "Time lost itself in Egypt. Three thousand years mean nothing. The people who lived and ruled before Moses was born are more alive and real to-day for us than the events of yesterday's evening paper. I think I have learned just a tiny bit of what infinity means."
"Or rather, you have learned that you haven't," Mike said. "By the time you have discovered that three thousand years are just yesterday, you have grasped the truth of the fact that no mortal mind can conceive the meaning of the word infinity."
"Have you ever seen a ghost in Egypt, Freddy?" Margaret said, irrelevantly.
"No, never," he said.
"Did the ancients believe in them?"
Freddy was locking up the hut. "We never come across any writing or pictures to show us that they did, so I don't think it's likely. They have told us most things about themselves and about what they saw and feared."
"I wonder?" Margaret said meditatively. "I wonder if they did or didn't?"
"Of course they believed," Michael said, "that the soul of a man, theanima, at the death of the body, flew to the gods. It came back at intervals to comfort the mummy."
"That's nothing to do with what we call ghosts," Freddy said, "and no one but the mummy is supposed to have been visited by it. It took the form of a bird with human hands and head; it was called theba."
"Oh, my friendlyba!" Meg said. "I have just been reading all about it—in Maspero's book you see pictures of it sitting on the chest of the mummy."
"That's it," Freddy said. "You're getting on. But as for real ghosts, there's no record of them—not that I know of. Good-night," he said, "I'm off."
"Good-night," Meg said, "and the best of luck to tomorrow's dig."
For a moment Michael and Meg stood together. "I know what is in your heart," she said. "I begin to think that Egypt is making practical me quite psychic."
"I feel I ought to be up and doing. I believe there is work I can do—I believe it is the work I can do best."
"You only can judge," Meg said.
"I have always maintained that a man should devote himself to the work he can do best, no matter how unpractical or how unremunerative it may seem to others. He must be himself, he must work from the inside."
"You are doing good work here."
"Not my work—another's."
"I can't advise. I know you must judge."
"It means leaving this valley if I do it."
"Oh," Meg said, "not yet? Not until the tomb is opened, anyhow?"
"No," he said, "I'll wait for that. I want to see Ireton—I'm going to see him to-morrow when I go to Luxor for Freddy."
"Are you going?" she said. "I didn't know."
"Yes," he said. "He wants a lot done and he can't leave the dig."
"No, he can't." Meg paused; in her heart a fear had suddenly leapt up. The soft, delicately-tinted woman on the balcony at Assuan stood out before her as plainly as the luminous figure of Akhnaton had done. She was at Luxor! Two letters had arrived from Luxor for Mike in a woman's handwriting.
"I will see Michael Ireton," he repeated. "His work is magnificent; so is his wife's. His work is amongst the men."
"In their settlements, you mean?"
"Yes, amongst the Copts, most particularly."
"It will be sad to break up our trio," she said. "We are so happy." She held out her hand. "Good-night. I was to help, not to retard—I must remember my dream."
"Good-night." Mike grasped her hand. "You are part of the light.Keep close to me when I am in Luxor tomorrow."
Michael not only had to go to Luxor on business for Freddy, but to Cairo also. He had gone willingly, because he knew that someone had to go, and it gave him immense gratification to be able to help his friend in this time of intense anxiety.
It was absolutely essential that as little time as possible should elapse between the opening of the tomb and the arrival of the photographer and the Chief Inspector. Things which have remained intact for thousands of years in the even, dry temperature of an Egyptian tomb, crumble and fade away like the fabric of our dreams when they are exposed to the open air.
It might be that there would be nothing inside it worth all the trouble and the arrangements which had to be made; on the other hand, the Arab seer's vision might be verified. So far, no trace of burglars, either ancient or modern, had been discovered. Not infrequently the finding of an Arab copper coin, or some disk made of modern metal, an amulet similar to those worn by the ancients, but made of a composition unknown to them, will indicate to an excavator that the tomb has been visited, and probably violated, by modern thieves.
Everything when speaking of time in Egypt is comparative. These intruders may have dropped the metal talisman or coin centuries and centuries ago, soon after the Arab invasion.
Michael had done all his business and was well-content to spend the remainder of his day in mediaeval Cairo. He shunned the European quarter, with its expensive hotels and hybrid Western civilization. He preferred the narrow dark streets of the poor natives. In the East poverty has at least its picturesque side; in the East, as in Italy, Our Lady of Poverty has her shrines, not her hovels. In London, he asked himself, could Browning have sung "God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!"?
In London so much is wrong with the world that the true meaning of Christ's words, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven," seems obvious. To Michael Amory the world was beautiful; its systems of laws and customs were all wrong. The misunderstanding of countless human beings, one with another, through their lack of Love, through their obliviousness of God, made a whirlpool of his reasoning powers.
Mike had talked matters over with Michael Ireton, who had allowed him to unburden his full heart. His ideas and plans were quite unformed. All that he was now certain of was the fact that he would never settle down to any profession or career which would mean only the furthering of his own worldly interests.
"The clear voice prevents me," he said. "And the fact is, I don't care a rap about my future position—it can look after itself. I want to work as you are working, even if I prove a failure. I want to get something of this off my chest." He laughed. "It's all so difficult to express, and so easy to see, isn't it? Of course, I know that one man can't set the wrong in the world right, but each man can do what his right self advises. Our right self is never wrong."
"Hadassah helped me," Michael Ireton said, "and life has been worth twice what it was before. I agree with you—we must lead our own lives according to our own ideals, not according to the world's."
"Most people think me a fool," Michael said, "simply a rotter and a drifter, just because I can't settle down to work at a career of my own, while the world's burden is booming in my ear."
"Think things well over," Hadassah said. "Don't rush into plans which may prove a disappointment. Let your ideas materialize. You are never really idle—you will be sending thought-waves out into the world; they will bear fruit. Thought never dies; for good or for evil, it is everlasting."
"But I have been thinking—or drifting, as Lampton says, just idly drifting, for what seems to me like ages."
"Drifting closer to the Light," Hadassah said. "It has all been in order, it has all been a part of the Guiding Power."
"Do you think so? I wish I knew. Lampton thinks I've no ambition. I have, of a sort, but it's not of a money-making kind, it's not going to make my name or what you could call a career. I want to teach people how to live, and I don't know how to do it myself."
"I understand," Ireton said. "There's something out here, in the simplicity of desert life and the East generally, that lessens our wants. The fruits of hard labour are not so necessary as in England; the flesh-pots of Egypt are in the sunshine. If you have just enough to get along with, here in the East, and have cultivated tastes, life can be wonderfully beautiful. Poverty need never mean degradation—in fact, it has its advantages."
"That's it!" Michael Amory said. "I want to let people know how wonderfully beautiful life can be, even without wealth and worldly power, and why it is beautiful. I want them to realize the essence of things, to let those poor, crowded, degraded wretches in London know the sweetness of work in God's open spaces. I feel that I must do my little bit in helping things forward. I want to let in a few chinks of light. . . ."
Hadassah, oddly enough, finished his quotation from "Pippa Passes":"You want to give them eyes to see that
"'The year's at the Spring,And day's at the morn;Morning's at seven;The hillside's dew-pearled:The lark's on the wing;The snail's on the thorn;God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!'"
Michael Ireton suggested that he should go off for a time into the desert and find himself. "There's nothing else so helpful," he said. "I've tried it." Hadassah's eyes met her husband's. She understood; she remembered.
And so Michael Amory left them strengthened and helped, not so much by their advice as by their understanding. Hadassah had charmed him, as she charmed everyone who met her. Her happiness as the wife of the Englishman who had scorned the gossiping tongues of Cairo by marrying her, and her pride in the young Nicholas, their son, who was just learning to walk, made Michael Amory a little envious. Michael Ireton's home and life seemed almost ideal. This wealthy, happy couple lived in the world and yet not for the world; they had discovered the true meaning of life.
Michael's thoughts were brimful of Hadassah and her husband, her beauty and the romance of their marriage, the details of which were familiar to him, as he pushed his way through the labyrinth of native streets in mediaeval Cairo.
After the silence of the desert, the noise was terrific—the shouts of the water-carriers, the yells of the native drivers of the swaying cabs, as they dashed at a reckless pace through the struggling and idling crowds. It was the most crowded hour of the day; the native town was wide awake. Camels laden with immense burdens of sugar-canes brushed the foot passengers almost off the narrow sideway; small boys, with large black eyes and small whitetakiyehs, darted in and out with brass trays piled high with little enamelled glass bowls.
Michael longed to close his ears with his fingers, but had he attempted to do so, a donkey, carrying terracotta water-jars of an ancient and unpractical shape, or a portly, high-stomached Turk would assuredly have robbed him of his balance.
He drifted on in a semi-conscious state of all that was going on around him, hating the noise, but enjoying every now and then the feast of colour which some group of strangely-mixed races presented. More than once, in the midst of all this noise and clamour, he saw a devout Moslem alone with his God. Before all the world, he was praying in absolute solitude. His mind had created perfect silence.
And so Michael drifted on. Only his subconscious self was leading him to his destination. He was going to a court of peace, to a strange friend who had taught him much simple philosophy and beauty, an African whose acquaintance he had made two years before, when he was in Gondokoro. Michael had saved the African's life by giving him some pecuniary assistance and carrying him on his own camel to the nearest village. He had come across him while he was on his journey which he performed on foot—from the heart of Africa to the university of el-Azhar in Cairo.
Since his youth, this old man had saved up money for the journey. It had been the ambition and the desire of his life to study in the great university of el-Azhar, the most important Moslem university in the world. His money had all been stolen from him, when Michael's servant found him. When he told his master of the condition the poor creature was in, a state of semi-starvation, Michael had taken him to the nearest village and there paid for a doctor to attend to him, and had supplied him with sufficient money to greatly mitigate the fatigue and suffering of his long pilgrimage to Cairo.
The journey had, of course, not been of such a hopeless character as might be supposed, for in every Moslem village there is a rest-house with free food for poor travellers; but even so, Michael knew that the distances between the desert villages are often enormous, and that they only supplied the food for the period of rest which the pilgrim needed.