“My lady Tama,” he went on, “after one other my life is yours, for you gave it back to me, and after her and my mother there lives no woman whom I honour half so much as you, my lady and my friend. Therefore, Mea, since you wish it, and think that it would make you happier, should I perchance be left alone—which God forbid!—I promise you that I will come to you and spend my life with you until you weary of me—not as a husband, which you say you do not desire, which also might be impossible, but as a brother and a friend. Is that what you wish me to say?” and he loosed her hand, bowed to her once more in the Eastern fashion, with his own outstretched, so that his fingers just touched her feet, and raised himself to the step again.
“Oh!” she answered, in deep and thrilling tones, “all, all! More, by far, than I had hoped. Now I will not die; I will live! Yes, I will keep my life like a jewel beyond price, because I shall know, even if you do not come, that you may come some time, and that if you never come, yet you would have come if you could—that the marsh-light is true fire, and that the flower will one day be a star. For soon or late we shall meet again, Rupert Bey! Only, you should not have prostrated yourself to me, who am all unworthy. Well, I will work, I will learn, I will become worthy. A gift, my lord! Leave me that holy book of yours, that I may study it and believe what you believe.”
He limped into the house and brought back the tattered old Bible bound in buckskin.
“You couldn’t have asked for anything that I value more, Mea,” he said, “for I have had that book since I was a child, and for that reason I am very glad to give it to you. Only read it for its own sake—not for mine—and believe for Truth’s sake, not because it would please me.”
“I hear and I obey,” she said, as she took the book and thrust it into the bosom of her loose robe.
Then for a moment they stood facing each other in silence, till at length, perhaps because she was unable to speak, she lifted her hands, held them over him as though in blessing, then turned and glided away into the shadows of the night.
He did not see her any more.
CHAPTER XVI.
MEANWHILE
It was the last day of the old year when, had there been anyone to take interest in her proceedings among so many finer vessels going to or returning from their business on the great waters, a black and dirty tramp steamer, whose trade it was to carry coals to the East, might have been seen creeping up the Thames with the tide. A light but greasy fog hung over the face of the river, making navigation difficult, and blurring the outlines of the buildings on its bank, and through it the sound of the church bells—for it was Sunday—floated heavily, as though their clappers had been muffled in honour of the decease of one of the great ones of the earth.
In his cabin—for after the suns of the Soudan the winter wind was too cold to face—sat Rupert Ullershaw, dressed in a mustard-coloured suit of reach-me-downs, somewhat too small for him, and of a peculiarly hideous cut and pattern, which he had purchased from a sailor. Physically he was in good health, but his mental condition may best be described as one of nervous irritability born of weeks and months of suspense. What news awaited him on his arrival home, he wondered, and how would he, a discredited and mutilated cripple, be received?