The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

“I have learned,” she answered, “but how could I pardon him who would have forced me, Tama—(she pronounced it Támá as though the word were spelt with two r’s)—me, born of the ancient blood, into his vile harem? Nay, that perhaps I might have forgiven, but when I saw you, Rupert Bey, with that rope about your neck, blinded and with your foot struck off, all for me—all for me, a stranger to you, not of your family, not of your house—oh! then I could not forgive. Nay, I wished that he had a hundred lives that I might take them all, and—be not angry with me—I wish it still. I am not unkind. Ask my people here if I have ever slain, or even beaten one of them without a cause, but that sight, it made me like a leopard whose cubs have been killed before her eyes. Think not the worse of me. I will repent, I will learn better, but oh! I am glad that I drove the spear through the heart of Ibrahim and watched him die. And Bakhita is worse than I am, remember that, she wished to kill him slowly.”

“What is done, is done,” answered Rupert. “This desert is a cruel place, and God forgive us all for many things.”

Then he paused, nor did he resist her when timidly she took his hand again, he who guessed that she had sinned for him.

“Tell me, Mea,” he said, “shall I always be blind as well as maimed?”

“I do not know,” she answered, with a sob. “Our doctors do not know. I pray not. Oh, I wish that Ibrahim were alive again that he might go blind for all his days. Nay, pardon me, pardon, but that deed of his was evil, because you would not worship his accursed prophet, or so he said, who hated you for other reasons. Now rest you, Bey, rest you; you must not talk so much. I will sit at your side and keep the flies from off your face. Rest, and I will sing you to sleep,” and she began to croon over him some ancient song that may have come down from the days of the Pharaohs, as a mother croons above a fevered babe.

This was the beginning of Rupert’s life at Tama. By degrees his strength came back to him, but for three months he remained stone-blind, and during all that time Mea’s hand was seldom out of his. With the help of a little dog that he held by a string, she led him to and fro; she nursed and doctored him; she watched his sleep. He remonstrated, he grew angry even, and then for a while old Bakhita came, and he was left with her and the little dog, but next morning it was always Mea’s soft hand that he felt in his, and not Bakhita’s bony fingers. For a long while he thought little of all this. Even in health and strength, Rupert was the least vain of men, but broken, mutilated, scarred, blinded as he was, a horror such as those that sit the streets of Cairo to beg for alms, it never even occurred to him that a woman, lovely, and in her own world high-placed as he knew Mea to be, would think of him as more than a friend to whom she was grateful for service rendered. Yet at last he did begin to have misgivings. He could not see her, but there was a note in her voice when she spoke to him, there was something in her touch when she took his hand, a kind of caress, which alarmed him.

He took occasion to talk to her about his wife in England, and even gave her to look at the miniature of Edith, painted upon ivory which he had in a gold locket. She studied it carefully, said that the lady was pretty, but cold as the hour before a winter dawn, and then asked if she were really his wife, or only called so, and she used a phrase that can best be translated by the words, “for political reasons.”

“Of course,” answered Rupert. “Why do you ask such a question?”

“Because if she is your wife, why is she in England, not in Egypt? She is not ill and she has no children to tend, is it so?”

Rupert was forced to answer that so far as he was aware, Edith’s health was good, and of course there were no children. In order to explain her absence, he added that she did not like heat.